The Woman Who Rides Like A Man

I have been reading fiction novels as a way of dealing with some of my emotional turmoil over the past two months. Recently, I have read three novels by Charles DeLint in a row. I have four favorite authors: Neal Stephenson, Isaac Asimov, Tamora Pierce and Charles DeLint. These are authors whom I am always in the mood to read a new book from and whose entire library I've mostly read. Except for Asimov. With over 500 books written, I haven't got a chance with Asimov. For the most part, they are also authors that have influenced profoundly the way I think about the world. Except for Stephenson, I have read them all since I was very young and when I re-read some of their work, I have huge insight into why I think the way I do because I am hit with the memory of when I first read a particular passage and times when I deliberately shaped my life to be more like that particular moment in the book.

I'm in the middle of rereading Tamora Pierce's books about Alanna. I have seriously considered naming a child after this character. A middle name, but a name nonetheless. I started rereading it with the intention of taking notes about the specific passages that have been influential with the idea that I would craft a longer essay with quotes and anecdotes. It would be funny and somewhat moving and have some overarching message. You know, something to work on as a hobby for a little while. You see, I first read these books when I was in the seventh grade. It is the story of a ten year girl living in a fictional kingdom who doesn't want to go to the convent to be a lady but instead disguises herself as a boy to study at the palace to be a knight. It follows her from age 10 to about age 21. And it's perfect. Alanna was everything I ever wanted to be but was too shy or embarassed to actually pursue. She said the first thing that came into her head and people thought it was charming. She lost her temper and her friends simply shook their heads. She could set a long term goal and have the focus and discipline to work in secret for months to accomplish it. She had worthwhile secrets. I mean, how cool is that? Plus, she had friends. People who weren't her family but loved her unconditionally and included her consistently and who stood by her when she made mistakes. Who gives a shit about swords and magic, this was escapist fantasy!

So, I began reading them again with the intent that I would take notes, but I am pleasantly surprised at how they still hook me in. After the 4th chapter of the first book, I made no more notes. I just kept reading to experience what happened next. I have read the series over 20 times. You think some of the magic would have worn off by now.

But it hasn't. I'm still completely pulled in by Alanna's adventures and her relationships. In fact, let me tell you a story about last Friday to illustrate Alanna's power over me.

Morning routines are powerful things. Last Friday, I had to disrupt my routine because I had no food for breakfast. No eggs, no bread, no juice. That holy trinity can occasionally sustain the loss of one of its members for a morning. Maybe. But all three? Might as well not get up out of bed.

But no worries. We had meetings on Thursday that involved bagels and cream cheese and the good orange juice and there were plenty of leftovers, so I knew I could get acceptable breakfast at work. I figured that I would wake up at the same time that I alwasy did and instead of spending 25 minutes of the second part of my morning preparing my breakfast and eating it, I would simply leave and spend twenty minutes at work eating breakfast. (Five minutes would be lost in the stumbles that would be the consequence of changing the routine. See, I planned for it!) So, I did exactly that and got on a train that was 20 minutes ahead of the train I normally take. I opened In the Hand of the Goddess and proceeded to read. About 35 minutes later, I got the uncomfortable feeling that I was too high in the air. I looked up from my book and looked around and sure enough I was pretty high up and the scenery looked a little different. I shook off the odd feeling, explaining to myself that I usually don't look out the windows while I read, at least not since it has been light in the mornings and that I was sitting in a side-facing seat instead of a front-facing one like I usually do, so the scenery might in fact look a little different. But I realized that on the side of one building was a GIANT building-sized banner that read "Teamster Town" and I had to admit that I'd never seen that before. I looked around in a panic and finally thought to look at the sign in the window that indicates which train one is on and, sure enough, I had boarded the wrong train back at my stop. I forgot that part of my morning routine is to look out my kitchen window while I cook my eggs at the passing trains and keep track in the back of my head their every-other pattern. (There are only two that come through my stop and they actually follow a parallel course all the way through downtown until they get two or three stops out to the westside.) So, because I'm keeping track, I generally do walk right on the next train that pulls into the station. This morning, though, I followed habit without having the foundation there to support me. But the really rediculous part is that the train announces over the loudspeaker at every stop, "This is a blue line train to 54/Cermak." Every other morning I hear, "This is a blue line train to Forest Park." Every stop. But I was so into Alanna's fear of letting the King of the Rogues love her that I never heard the announcement. Not once in the entire 15 or so stops.

So, as soon as I realized that I was only one station down from where the trains split, I got off the train, went down the stairs, across the hall, up the stairs and got on the eastbound train back toward the city. I got off the train, crossed the platform, got on the westbound train, settled myself for the rest of the ride and opened my book again. Soon, though, I started to get this uncomfortable feeling that I was too high off the ground. I looked around in a panic and, there it was again! Teamster Town! I had gotten right back onto the wrong train! So, I had to get off the train, go down the stairs, go across the hall, go up the stairs and get on another eastbound train. Then I got off the train at the next stop, waited for the 54/Cermak train to pass, finally got on the Forest Park train, settled in for the rest of my ride and opened my book. So, because of a book and an interrupted morning routine, not only wasn't I early to work, I was actually late.

So, Alanna is still wonderful. And you know what? I'm a lot more like her now than I ever was. I say the first thing that comes into my head and people laugh. I dated a man that I loved but could not ultimately make a life with (although he wasn't a Shang Dragon, master of bare-handed fighting). And I have friends that will stick by me and want me around. I'm ready now for the next quartet, where Alanna is all grown up and the stories follow a younger woman coming of age in Tortall who follows a completely different path with different experiences but with Alanna as an influential figure. However, I don't think that Daine makes quite as catchy a middle name for a small girl.

This is my story; this is my song.

When I was 12, my father went to prison and broke my heart. It has healed, but while my chest was cracked open, the harmonies and energies of gospel music fell in and were sealed up into my heart as it mended.

You see, my father spent his time in a minimum security prison that was mostly populated by men who had committed first-offense drug crimes with minimum sentencing mandates. We usually went to visit on Sundays and so attended the Protestant church service with him, which mostly centered around 9 or 10 African American men singing while an older black man played the upright piano. Slow, densely harmonic, traditional gospel. Then, over the summer while Dad was gone, I went on my first church mission trip to Mississippi and spent a week at Canton Bible Baptist Church, welcomed and surrounded by its members and their worship.

I have been chasing the black church ever since.

I have attended gospel choir weekend workshops and done research projects on Mahalia Jackson. I attended day-long Martin Luther King, Jr. celebrations on campus and wrote a paper that was published on the influence of the traditional black preacher on James Weldon Johnson's God's Trombones. I can sing at least the first verse of the black national anthem, just like Bill Clinton. My calling to work with urban kids is directly related to my utter sense of contentment being surrounded by black speaking patterns and vibrancy.

But I have never felt comfortable enough to just walk right into a black church and worship with them. I'm not sure why, but it seems to be one of the last lingering self-conscious bits of my personality. I'm willing to make a fool of myself in every other arena for the sake of curiosity and spiritual enlightenment, but I am unwilling to be the only white person in a church full of black Christian strangers. It's ridiculous, but I've learned that life is rarely rational.

So, when one of my co-workers invited me to her CME church for her Women's Day service, I immediately responded that I would go, even if it was at 8:00 in the morning. Even if I would have to abandon my uniform of jeans, hiking boots and a fleece vest. Because, I'll tell you, those black ladies get dressed.

I arrived at the church at 79th and Wabash exactly at 8:00. I stood in the narthex, where I told Vanessa I would meet her and waited a minute or two. Several people smiled at me but no one really spoke to me. I really was the only white person there. Then, my phone rang and it was Vanessa. She had to drop her husband off at the airport, so she'd be a little late. She usually sits about 4 or 5 rows back on the right side. I could go sit down and she'd be along soon. "Four or five rows from the front?" I asked. "Yes."

So, now I'm the only white person in the church and I have to walk all the way down the aisle and ask an old woman in a great hat to let me in because the only pew that qualified as 4th or 5th and had enough space for the party of 3 or 4 that I knew we'd be eventually only had space in the middle. Then I just had to sit by myself in the middle of a pew, being white, and wait for either Vanessa or Princess, who Vanessa had said would be joining me. Interestingly, as I sat there, although people smiled but didn't say anything to me, both sets of kids that filed into the pews around me said hello.

But I was comfortable. I had been invited and I had already seen things that delighted me. Five women sat in a pew in front of me wearing different white outfits that looked faintly like nurses uniforms and all had matching white hats. I know that women in uniforms in black churches often have more than a ceremonial role, so I was caught up in wondering what they would be needed for. Lots of women were wearing great wigs. All of the women who would be running the service were wearing white outfits. In fact, as the choir filed in, they also wore white, with yellow wrist corsages to celebrate the day. By this time, Princess had arrived in full African regalia (she's from Zambia) and the choir started singing.

It was marvelous. I cried. A lot. Experience has taught me it does not seem to matter what type of gospel it is, it all makes me cry. There is such a catharsis possible because there is so much power sent out from the women singing. Unless they are modulating volume or intensity for a specific dramatic impact, no one has to hold back. Each of those women gets to be exactly herself and with full force. Women who are more physically expressive than others are not discouraged, they are simply placed at the ends of the rows, so as not to knock anyone over. And, because gospel has become part of my heart, I have no defenses against its power. So, I cry. The 7 or 8 year old girl in the pew in front of me who kept looking back to stare at both Princess and I throughout the service, Ashante, brushed her face at one point at me in obvious sign language and when I leaned forward to hear what she had to say, she told me, "Your cheeks is getting red." At points in the music when the entire choir would all of a sudden start clapping more sharply and raising their hands higher in unfathomable choreography or when they would change keys, I would catch my breathe and my joy would get ratcheted up just a little higher.

At my own church later that morning, I thought a lot about the differences. I realized that although I can achieve a state of worship and feel a real ability to actually talk with God in my normal service, I do not always leave joyful. Often, God and I have heated discussions and the time is more akin to meditation. I'm often exhausted when I get home. Black church makes me joyful. I left full of energy.

After the opening song, a woman stood at the pulpit and said for the first time, "Good Morning, Carter Temple." Every woman who stood at the pulpit after that repeated the greeting and, every time, the congregation would give the woman an enthusiatic, "Good morning," in response. When I would participate in worship in the suburban Presbyterian church that I grew up in, the pastor would advise us not to greet the congregation unless we were the first participant to speak that morning. He told us that we would only get a lackluster reponse and that would affect the flow of the service. And, as I watched over the years, he was absolutely right: after the first good morning, Presbyterians feel like any additional greeting is a bit of an imposition. Not this morning, though. After the woman with a vaguely Asian face greeted us, she launched into the announcements in a strange monotone that I have come to associate with the black churches that broadcast on the radio. But people were listening because occasionally they would shout in encouragement or call out to Jesus for prayer for the sick.

When it came time for the Affirmation of Faith, this church took a turn from my Presbyterian peers again. We will recite that we believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ his own son, our lord, glimpsing down at our bulletins to help us with the words to something we have recited thousands of times. Carter Temple, however, proclaims that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried, nearly shouting in their fervor that on the third day, he ascended into heaven. It was cool.

When my extended family gets together, we often have devotionals and sing in the evenings. We have Murphy hymnals that some of my cousins made 15 years ago with construction paper and glitter glue covers. These hymnals are full of the best hymns from all of our traditions. From "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," my Lutheran grandmother's favorite hymn to "Victory in Jesus," a standard in my aunt's charismatic Nazarene church. When we sing, my mother doesn't need the hymnals. She knows all the words from growing up Methodist. So, some years when we have forgotten the hymnals, or if we are singing several songs in an evening and so hesitate to sing the third and fourth verses of some hymns, she tends to just roll right over any hesitation and simply belt out the next verse. Perfect submission, all is at rest. I in my Saviour am happy and blest. So, I could sing along when we sang "Blessed Assurance" and think of my mother at the same time.

Then, it was time for the Poetry Ministry, a choral response and the Praise Dance Ministry. I am delighted by the African American cultural trend of poetry recitation. I've seen Maya Angelou and Gwendolyn Brooks and 12 year old girls reciting the poetry of Maya Angelou and Gwendolyn Brooks. All stand dignified and with a dramatic impulse that puts the dry chanting of old white guys mumbling their poetry so that "the focus is on words I've crafted" to shame. The woman who wrote the poem and read it got standing shouts and applause when she finished reading it.

The congregation files to the front to turn in their offering. I realized that the elder men of the church must sit in that front pew so all the people walking by greet them. They all wished me God's blessing as I filed up. Vanessa pointed to one older woman in a pink suit who danced all the way up to the front, danced with the pastor, then continued dancing up the center aisle. She is 80 years old and leads the country line dancing group for health.

The musicians in a gospel service play chords underneath most of the service, changing keys, picking up or slowing down the tempo and generally underscoring the emotion of the particular element of the service that is taking place. Because of this underscoring, the choir can follow the rising pitch of the clapping and shouting of the congregations and sing a few more repetitions of the chorus of the song they had finished before the preacher started.

They had a guest pastor to speak that morning in celebration of Women's Day. She was a tiny little woman who shouted and rocked and swayed in the best gospel tradition. She spoke on the Canaanite woman who begged Jesus, "Lord, help me. My daughter is sick." When Jesus asked her why he should deny the chosen people his service in order to help someone of her race, comparing her to a dog in the process, she gives him the only back talk he gets in the entire Bible, telling him that even dogs can eat the crumbs that fall from the table. The preacher took that story and made it a metaphor for the plight of the African American woman, who is at her wits end. She didn't do this by explaining how this story was a metaphor for the African American woman, who is at her wits end. She did it by acting it out, repeating, "Lord, help me! My daughter is sick! Lord, help me! My son is in prison! Lord, help me! My husband can't be found! Lord, help me! I'm sick and tired!" And it was big and it was moving and those women in that congregation called back to her, shouting agreement and exclamations and praising God for her message and their pain and the kinship that they shared. As I listened to both the pastor and the women around me, I could pick out individual voices and was drawn to a woman in the front row. Her diaphramatic strength astounded me. One of favorite quotes from my collection is from a book called Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan, "'If a woman is stronger than her husband, she comes to despise him. She has the choice of either tyrannizing him or else making herself less in order not to make him less. If the husband is strong enough, though. . .' she poked him again, even harder, 'she can be as strong as she is, as strong as she can grow to be.'" I think this is true of all relationships and if the church is the bride of Christ, then people should be able to be as strong as they are in worship, like the woman who projected so well and without a hint of reserve. Another woman in the front row stood up stick straight and called, "Come on! [pause] Come on! [pause] Come on! [pause] Come on! [pause] Come on!" like she was cheering a baseball player who was digging in to make it to homebase before the ball did, her head snapping forward with each repetition. At one point, the preacher quieted the intensity and talked about her use of emotion saying that some would say, "It doesn't take all that," which was a phrase that the women knew and so I inferred that it was the standard phrase to criticize the style of worship. She handled the rhetoric of bringing up the opposing argument in order to refute it perfectly, pointing ou that those who criticize that particular aspect of their worship didn't know what these women felt like or they would realize that it does take all that. The disciples thought the Canaanite woman was overreacting as well. I like this preacher because in addition to the emotion and the shouting and the call and response, her sermon was well-written and linear, with good, solid logic. I could access it. Perfect experience.

I enjoyed watching the little girls in front of me as they experimented with their own participation in the service, occasionally shouting something and then dissolving into giggles. I also loved to see the little girl standing with her mother in the choir, a full member alongside the adults. As children, their hearts are wide open and this worship will always feel like home to them. And they will always feel welcome in this home.

I'm jealous.

SMRT

Well, folks, my very particular type of intelligence has been validated by an outside agency and I'm very excited because, actually, it's a very prestigious outside agency. I have been accepted into the University of Chicago's Harris School for Public Policy "based on outstanding academic achievement, professional commitment, and personal motivation." What's more, they're giving me a scholarship worth 2/3 of the total tuition for the first year with a chance to renew it based on my performance.

My toes are wiggling and I have a goofy smile on my face.

I mean, this is the school of Carl Sagan and Studs Terkel. Kurt Vonnegut and Phillip Glass. Indiana Jones and Susan Sontag. And, of course, the ever-popular Martin Gardner, everybody! We are stardust, indeed. This program last year only accepted 122 students out of 635 applicants and most of those applicants had to have thought they were some sort of hot shit even to apply. I'm very excited. Did I say that before?

I'm also a little nervous. I applied before I got my current job and the tasks that I signed on to do at work will not be completed before the fall. Also, the school recommends taking an introductory microeconomics class and brushing up on one's calculus before one starts the program, as well. I never took calculus! I'm considering asking them to let me defer for a year to finish the job that I've started. If the added bonus is that I get a little time to brush up on my quantitative thinking, then, so be it. We'll see, though. It also depends on what they say at work.

I'm very excited, though. Three weeks ago, my roommate Paige got accepted to study for her doctorate at Brown, with a full ride plus a stipend for the next five years. We've been waiting to hear from U of C so that we can have a joint party. Wait, careful, not a party where joints are smoked, just a party thrown together in honor of two of us. :-) I think we should call it the Paige-and-Rebecca-are-a-certain-kind-of-smart-enough party. I think I may get voted down on that, though. I'm going to fight for it, though, unless one of my gentle readers has another suggestion?

I'm very excited.

Super-model

I'm sorry that I haven't been writing much lately. I know that my life is fairly entertaining to some of you all out there. I keep pretending you're laughing with me and if you would play along, I would appreciate it. :-)

I haven't been doing much of anything. If I've done it, you've read about it. Since I've only posted twice (and one of those was to ask for money) in the month of March and today is already the 11th, that should give you a sense of the scope of my not doing anything. I'm dealing with some internal things; figuring out what I want and so forth. But, unlike some of the other internal things that I've shared with you in the past, these aren't really connected to events that can be made into stories. If there were stories, I would tell them to you. I promise.

Today is the first day of spring in Chicago. It was 60 degrees and when Daniel and I went out to Target, I actually felt like the air was warm, rather than not-so-cold-anymore, like it has been these last couple days of 50 degree weather. And, just like magic, the warm weather has raised the spirits of young men across the city. So, as I was walking to the El from work yesterday, wearing every piece of warm clothing that I have worn all winter except my hat, I was asked by a young man with a cigarette dangling oh-so-attractively from his lips, "Have you ever dated a black man before?" with the obvious next sentence being, "Do you want to?" It was terribly clever and I'm not sure why I didn't stop to continue the conversation. It must have been that I had a train to catch. Yes, that's it. I'm feeling all fuzzy inside that my big coat and scarf must accentuate my figure to the extent that once I strip my hat off, I'm like a super-model to men on the street. Ah, good times.

Orfeo y Eurydice

Finally, tonight, maybe, the city has redeemed itself. I guess it's not just cold and dirty and full of strangers. I guess community can happen here, too.

I've made a friend. A real live friend that I can call to see if she's busy or not and if she's not, ask her to come over for tea or walk the few blocks to her house to say, "Hi." That type of geography, in itself, is something that I've always wanted. Even on the island, I had to drive (or at least hitchhike) to see people I liked. I've always wanted friends that lived down the street. So, now I have Jess. I met Jess at a party for church. I was sitting quietly in a chair, watching everyone else do their small-talk. I had been animated earlier when the music minister was there because I knew him and I find him to be fairly intriguing. However, he had left and I wasn't interested in all of the pretty girls and their chatter. But, I had this nagging sense that if I didn't actually spend time with strangers and their chit-chat, I wouldn't ever know them well enough to move beyond chit-chat. So, I sat in the chair quietly. Then, I heard the girl with very cool dreadlocks in the chair next to me say to her friend, "I've recently realized that my energy and large groups of people just don't seem go together." It was so completely like something that would come out of my mouth that I laughed to myself and started edging in on her conversation.

When I have students write about what makes a good friend or write an anecdote about when they first met someone important, invariably, they turn in their papers and "something in me just knew that we would be friends forever." Of course, by the time they are writing the essay, forever has been, oh, about five years. Maybe seven. It's pretty funny and they laugh when I point out the unrealistic nature of their not-too-subtle foreshadowing.

I take that little tangent to illustrate that I am not making any predictions about my friendship with Jess. We still don't know that much about each other, nor have we spent much extended time with each other. But, I'm comfortable with her. And she asks questions that I would ask. And she answers questions like I would answer them. And she calls to see if I'm busy or not. And when I call, she tells me if she's busy or not, rather than thinking about how tired she is and that she just wants to veg out in front of the TV.

It could still bomb but it's a start.

So, why am I telling you about Jess when I started the post talking about the city? Well, one reason is that her physical location illustrates a redeeming social value of the city: I can have friends that live down the street. Other than Kelly and PJ, the bad influences that lived across the street when Daniel and I were kids, I have never had a friend that lived down the street. I've always craved the ability to just go hang out at someone's house because it's close and I'm comfortable there. College and tour were close to this ideal, but those are constructed communities. They weren't what I really wanted.

So, because Jess lives down the street, we can easily come to redeeming social value #2, which is that we can do things of an impromptu nature because we don't have to waste a lot of time getting to each other before we go somewhere.

Today, I was working out at the new Curves that I found where the women aren't fakey nice and I don't have to walk half a mile in the cold to get there. It's right next to one of the stops on the El on my way home. So, I just get off the train two stops early, walk around the corner, work out, then get back on the train and go home. It's perfect. So, I was nearing the end of my workout and my phone started to ring. I left the circuit to pick it up and it was a breathless Jess.

"What are you doing tonight?"

"Nothing. Why?"

"Do you want to go to the opera?"

"Yes."

She kept talking about which opera and yadda yadda. But really, with the Lyric Opera in Chicago, does it really matter which opera it is? It will be an experience no matter what.

So, it's 6:30, I'm at the gym and the opera starts at 7:30.

Which leads me to redeeming social value #3: in the city, it's possible to fulfill that kind of timeline successfully. I left the gym, got on the train, got off the train two stops later, went up to my apartment, changed, ate, researched the public transportation route we would take, met Jess downstairs, got on the train again, got off the train downtown, walked by the Picasso statues and the "I Am" Temple and was in my seat in the highest, backest, toppest row at 7:20. We were so high up that we could see straight down into the orchestra pit to see the violins playing.

And the opera was wonderful. Which is, I guess, redeeming social value #4: art and culture abound. Tonight's production wasn't perfect. I think it lacked overall energy, Hades wasn't scary, some of the silences were too long and there was some odd corpse choreography that involved the chorus and supernumeraries wrapped in burial sheets rolling like a big game of high-school steam-roller. Plus, just as I was feeling good that one can always rely upon opera to go ahead and give you that tragic ending, the goddess Amor steps in and fixes everything! What gives!? That's not the way the story goes! But that's part of art and culture. Analysing the emotional communication during the experience and still feeling your heart twinge when Eurydice dies. Plus, the performance could have all out sucked and it is still always worth it to see the sets at the Civic Opera House. The scope is just so epic. The lighting design for tonight's performance was particularly stunning. (My friend Camilla's friend Amy is one of the lighting designers for the Lyric and she's making Boys-Are-Dumb Mudslides next week for the Boys Are Dumb party so I will try to communicate this delight I'm feeling to her then.)

So, it might not be quite the torture I have been dreading it to be living somewhere other than my island in order to be with my family. Yesterday, I spent the entire snowy afternoon curled up on the couch in front of my mom's fireplace, with my dog sitting on the cushion at my head, reading my book and eating her food. Even without the opera and Jess, being in Chicago is still where I want to be because I can have days like yesterday in addition to days like today. Redeeming social value #5.

There was a boy

There was something very right and comforting yesterday about lying on the couch with my book in my hands, my dog sleeping on my chest and Daniel's music filtering into the living room from his room. These are some of the best parts of my leisure life up to this point all mixed together into one Saturday morning.

Although I have always loved music, I have never really had the focus to pursue new sounds on my own. I have always tended to get references from friends and I really only assimilate about 4 new albums into my life a year. However, lots of music is familiar to me because my brothers listen actively. As a child of about 5 or 6 in the old house, I listened to my bother Paul's classical from the room next door. Once, Daniel and I went to investigate Grieg's "In the Hall of The Mountain King," which quickly developed into a whirling dervish of chase dancing around the room, onto the bed, through the closet, around the room, onto the bed, through the closet, faster and faster until we collapsed into classic giggles. Paul would have been about 15 at the time, playing with the little kids that were his siblings. As a pre-teen in the new house, I remember investigating the music in David's room to find him jumping up and down with his body perfectly straight like a pogo stick to the Violent Femmes, "I Hear the Rain" and being just a little weirded out by the discordant harmonies and dark lyrics. Again, David would have been around 16 or 17 at that time. As I entered junior high, though, my friends and I would share dubbed tapes of all the Femmes albums and in my teenaged angst, they spoke to my soul that was now so dark. HaHa.

But Paul and David are so much older than I am that these two memories are about the extent of their musical influence. Daniel and I, however, grew up at the same time. So, I lived out that summer he learned Jimi Hendrix's rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner," the Poison, "Look What the Cat Dragged In" winter, the Thin Lizzy spring, the multi-season Kiss experience and the full-on David Bowie era. So, to listen to him working out Nat King Cole's "Nature Boy" on Saturday morning and to hear, "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town" while he worked out the chords was a nice recreation of our childhood, as well as a relieving indication that his musical taste has grown and matured as he has gotten taller and acquired tattoos and a mustache. Oh, that mustache.

Other than Saturday morning and a weekend dogsitting Retha, I don't have much to report lately other that to tell you that I had my first Superdawg. I'm still not sure how I feel about that. I'm hoping Spring is going to restore my adventurous spirit. Thanks for hanging in there with me through these last, dull days of winter.

Shamrock Shuffle

I will be participating in a 5K walk to raise money for kids in poverty around the world. Over 30,000 kids die every day, mostly from hunger and preventable diseases, so I've set a goal for myself to raise $1,000 to help World Vision's efforts to relieve both the immediate needs of the kids and to address the root causes of their poverty. (I know it sounds like I copy/pasted that sentence in from a website somewhere, but I actually wrote it. I'm pretty familiar with World Vision and I'm really comfortable with the way they spend donors' money. Otherwise, I wouldn't ask you for it.)

Additionally, my friend Michael is trying to get a new program up and running called Team World Vision, which is trying to make it easy for other athletes like me (did you catch that funny right there?) to raise money for these kids while running the races that they are already intending to run. So, my participation in this race will raise visibility of the new program.

So, I will be walking in the Shamrock Shuffle on Sunday, April 2. Apparently, many of the walking participants are also drunk, but I don't think that I will get to do that while wearing a World Vision T-shirt. It should be fun, though.

I want to ask you to consider three things:

1. Please consider sponsoring my participation. My goal is $1,000 so $25, $50 or $100 would make a sizable dent in that goal. Of course, if this opportunity to help kids causes you to want to give more, please go ahead and do so. The best way to sponsor me is to go to my secure website.

2. Please consider walking with me on my team or running in the 8K version of the race. Although registration for the race is closed, they are extending the deadline especially for Team World Vision participants. We have until this Friday to get in hard copy registration forms, so let me know as soon as possible if you want to do this. The website for the Shamrock Shuffle is, strangely enough, www.shamrockshuffle.com. I hear the after-party is pretty cool.

3. Please consider sending a link to anyone you think might be interested in the mission of World Vision, either by sponsoring me, participating in the Shamrock Shuffle or participating in future races. I certainly don't understand what it is about running that appeals to runners and triathletes, but I know they are out there and I guess that they, too, should get a chance to do this good work. :-)

Thanks for thinking about it.

Bus Stop

I'm experiencing some instances of smile-and-the-world-smiles-with-you and it's kind of fun. This morning I was walking to church and neared a group of some homeless guys on the corner. I started my hesitant gearing-up-to-ignore-vulgarity-but-trying-to-stay-open-enough-in-case-they-turn-out-to-be-human face. And they smiled and asked how I was. I smiled and said I was well and asked how they were. They were also fine and smiled and waved as I kept walking. I actually think maybe my hesitant face had a little more joy in it this morning than it usually does. As I got to the next corner, the bus was pulling up alongside the curb and the same two homeless guys got off the bus and exclaimed, "Hey, here you are again! It's good to see you!" We all laughed and I went on to church.

City Vignettes

I got in my first city stranger conflict a couple of days ago. It was strangely island-style because although the girl was a bitch, it was like she knew the whole thing was her fault and acted pretty guilty as she yelled at me the whole time. (Here are a examples, just as reminders if you're interested.) However, unlike island encounters where I felt like community was advanced because we had simply added another thread of interaction to the web, this just left me feeling jittery (after my massage, no less) with the adrenaline that was coursing through me. So, I was parking in the parallel spot near my apartment. It was the spot on the end, so the area in front of my car would usually be wide open. That night, a big mini-van was sitting all skewed to the sidewalk with people in it, just waiting for something. So, I treated it just like it was another parking spot and pulled up alongside the mini-van in order to back into the spot. I knew it would be tight, but I figured that once the driver saw me, she would pull forward a little. Well, she didn't and that was fine; I would still fit. I proceeded to park and I bumped her car twice. No big deal. Happens all the time. But, she gets out with her Urban Outfitters look blaring and walked past her Indiana license plates so I roll down the window and smile at her and say something mildly apologetic about just trying to get parked. She starts raging about how I've "rammed" her car. I told her I didn't mean to ram her car, I was just trying to get into the spot. "Well, you could have asked!" I stayed conversational through the whole affair and said in an almost bewildered tone, "I was a little surprised when you didn't pull forward when I pulled up alongside you." At this point, she starts sputtering a little and that was when I realized she was venting some other problem at me as an easy target because realization of her own responsibility flooded her eyes but she just kept yelling, saying something else about hitting her. Remembering her license plates, I shrugged my shoulders and said, "That's just parallel parking in the city." She said, in that pretty-college-girl tone of voice, "You're a f---ing rude bitch, you know?" I just shrugged my shoulders again. Then, oddly she starts pointing to the no parking sign that I'm well behind and she's definitely in front of and starts threatening to have my car ticketed. The sputtering at this point increased, I think because she realized that technically, she was illegally standing and blocking a legal parking space. She then stalked back to her mini-van. I wrote down her plate number and went calmly into my apartment building. It was a little like an island fight, but there's no reflection inspired. This doesn't build community. I don't learn anything about myself or someone else that I might have a deeper relationship later. It's just ugly.

**********
Today, I watched the 5:00 CBS news and the 9:00 WGN news because I had been interviewed by both stations regarding the volunteer project I was supervising. I had 40 teenagers in my warehouse today as part of the service project element of their 30-Hour Famine, which is a project to raise money and awareness about world hunger. It was a good media event, so the two stations came by. Both interviewers seemed surprised and a little appreciative when they told me that I did well after the interviews. I had a little coaching by our marketing staff about restating the question when I answered to create a sound bite and about using the company name as much as possible. The marketing staff also gave me a fact sheet to refer to for statistics and stuff. I was not savvy enough to stand in front of boxes with the corporate logo, but, hey, you've got to leave some room for improvement, right? Actually, one of the marketing staff was there and she said I did a nice job. See Dad, all that money spent on performance education was worth something. Unfortunately, neither program aired the segment, I think because basketball games ran into overtime for both. Too bad.

**********

I walk by a used car lot on my way to work. Yesterday, a tan Buick that had to be from the late 80s with a fair amount of rust and small dents proclaimed itself in white paint on the windshield to be, "GAS SAVEY." I thought that to be quite funny.

I've Got Tears in my Ears

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stiched with its color.

-W.S. Merwyn, "Separation"

Is it OK to cry about a place that is gone? I've cried so much in the last three years over a person that was gone, I'm wracking my brains to remember if I've ever cried for a place. Camp? Maybe. College? Possibly. But I can't remember this very visceral longing that I am feeling in the center of my chest ever being created by a place.

I have been struggling these last three weeks to be joyful. Although I am mostly at peace, there is a dullness that has come over me since I went back to the island to visit when I was in Washington for some training. The first two weeks after I came back were full of heartbreak that Jeff and I were truly done. He is dating someone new now and although we had a fabulous time together that weekend, not being able to be comfortable with him and not being able to revisit the role I played while I lived there as his partner really rammed home emotionally the reality that I missed him. Up until that point, I just thought that when grown-ups make a mutual decision to part ways, that was all there was to it. I congratulated myself on it. A few twinges of loneliness and then on to the next stage were exactly what I expected and exactly what I experienced up to that point. Not very smart, am I? So, I spent two weeks living out every pop break-up song you've ever heard. "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" rolled into Melissa Manchester's "Don't Cry Out Loud," resolving into "Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain, telling me just what a fool I've been. Pitter patter, pitter patter, whoa-oh-oh-oh." It was interesting, though, because it was only sadness that I felt. There was no hurt at all mixed up with it. Remembrances of when it had been perfect and sadness that the perfection cannot last, but no hurt or regret. Breaking up with Dennis was so huge and had so much hurt and betrayal mixed up into the sadness. This was totally different. So, I just laughed at my tears and completely gave in to my adolescent urges to journal a lot and to stare off into space imagining alternate realities. Jeff and I have talked about it a fair amount, which is why I'm comfortable sharing this with you.

But after two weeks, specifically at yoga last week, my internal movie switched to showing scenes of the island in general and other people there that I missed. It was so easy to be happy there. I was surrounded with beauty. Even coming home stressed from whatever little drama I had to deal with at whatever little job I had, I drove by ocean and trees and mountains. I knew people and they knew me. After the first few months, I didn't have to worry about when to tell people I was divorced or think about whether or not they would judge me for my lifestyle choices because I'd met just about everyone or I knew that everyone had heard my story from someone else. It wasn't so fucking cold. I had time to create art. I could go work in my friend's farm garden and talk to the sheep with the crazy alien eyes.

I know that I left because in five years, I was going to look back and think that I hadn't accomplished enough with my life. I know it with my head. But there isn't a pop music genre that encompasses the universal human response to leaving a place where one was happy so that one can be fulfilled. That path of catharsis is denied to me so I guess I'll just have to wait until this hard little knot of emptiness in my chest loosens on its own.

Suck.

Never sit with your back to the door

Two days ago, my brother told me that although he is a loudtalker and that his loudest is much louder than my loudest, in the morning, it seems that I'm capable of being very loud, seemingly from the moment I get out of bed. I agreed that my first period students have said much the same thing about me over the years. He and Paige speculated that my ability to be fully
alert from the time I first become aware of dawn's rosy fingers arises from the fact that I don't drink any coffee at all and, therefore, am not reliant upon those chemicals to wake me up.

Today, I wish I drank coffee. I had a tough start to my day today. Who knows why. I just did. Getting out of bed wasn't any harder than it normally is but becoming cheerful was. Even after a reasonable shower, eating breakfast, enjoying my orange juice and catching the earlier train, followed by getting the opportunity to read this good book that I'm immersed in for half an hour while I rode the El, I still wasn't engaged enough with the world to smile out of anything more than polite response.

And my coworkers noticed.

There aren't many people there when I get here at 7:45, so I thought that only Fred (who I was going to ride with to go pay for gas for the truck) would have the chance to say something. And he did. And I smiled. And over the course of the conversation in the truck to and from the gas station, I began to open up to being alive and I felt a little better. So I thought that was that.

Apparently, though, my colleagues rely upon my smiling disposition in the morning a little more than I thought because when we returned, James, who doesn't say much at all, told me, "Now, that's the face I wanted to see this morning." What? James saw me this morning before Fred did? Why didn't I see him? That's actually not all that creepy because James is often up in the warehouse racking working with the inventory and I certainly was in no mood to be looking up this morning. James continued, saying, "You looked like you were dragging this morning." It's interesting to know that when I didn't realize I was being observed, my countenance reflected my inner feelings. Too many novels when I was growing up about intelligent, spunky kids having to endure oppressive educational environments have left me with the delusion that I'm actually capable of schooling my features to hide my thoughts like those protagonists could. Although I know that it is a fantasy similar to the fantasy that most of my male friends have that if they sit facing the door in the restaurant, their ability to see their
attacker sooner will actually make a difference in their ability to protect themselves and me, it's good to have it proven every once in awhile that I'm not a plucky heroine, just like they are not actually a spy or a cowboy.

It's also good to know that my co-workers see me as consistently joyful to the point that they notice when I'm not. On days like today, it's helpful to have proof that not every day is like today. In fact, most of them aren't.

My boss is a Jewish carpenter

My day started badly yesterday. I'm generally a good morning person but I woke up from a really bad point in my sleep cycle and was just grumpy. It didn't help that as I looked at the day ahead of me, I was going to have to confront a co-worker, I was still feeling a little betrayed by what the co-worker had done, I had several meeting all stacked up on each other, which I knew would get crazy and, although I had plans to have lunch with a friend, I was going to have to rush that lunch to get back for the stacked-up meetings.

I was not in a very productive mood when I got to work.

It's tough for me when I'm not in a productive mood at work because, frankly, I work for Jesus. And I don't really have any sort of supervisor to put the fear of Jesus in me. I have to rely fully on my own moral fibre so that I don't waste Jesus's time by surfing the internet when I just don't have the creative energy to pull together some document I'm working on. So, I tend to dock myself any time that I do waste and stay later in the day to make up for it.

I was all set to take 15 minutes out yesterday to call a new friend whose house I was going to later that evening for the first time in order to get directions. As we conversed, I was feeling so de-energized that I said, "It's not going to be a good day today." We talked a little while longer and he said, "Hey, I went to that clinic down on Ogden for my nutrition class. That place has really got it together." The clinic on Ogden is a ministry that my family has been involved with for most of my life. It's a part of a church that is working holistically to reform one of Chicago's Westside neighborhoods, so they provide low-cost, sliding-scale health services. The clinic is also a partner in my program. My friend went on to say that he can't pay much for the classes right now because he's pretty cash-poor, but he'd like to offer the clinic pro-bono or low-cost remodeling work. That's what he does for a living. He's a licensed contractor in the city of Chicago and fully insured with workers and everything. He even works with an architect that does low-cost housing. He was going to call the director of the clinic himself, but since I am already connected with the guy, asked if I would make the offer.

How cool is that? God shows up in some totally unexpected places. I was looking at my day with an expectation of disappointment and stress and in the time I was going to dock myself because I wasn't working for Jesus, he showed up anyway. I dropped my forehead into my hands as the tears that come from being touched emotionally started to well up. I thanked God for reminding me that my day won't go the way I expect it will go. It will play out the way he wants it to play out.

I'm not going to end this story all shinyhappy and tell you how many lives I changed because of this moment but I will tell you that it wasn't as bad as I thought. I was able to get to work and get things done. My appointments did stack up on one another but it was manageable. My co-worker was defensive but agreed to respect my program restrictions in the future. My lunch date cancelled but rescheduled for a time when we wouldn't have to cut it short. Then, I went home and watched a bunch of Gilmore Girls episode before the fun party at my contractor friend's house.

Not a bad way to start and end the day.

His yoke is easy; his burthen is light

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

On Sunday, my pastor used this verse as his support for his answer to the question, "Why should I pray when God is going whatever he's going to do anyway because he's so much smarter than me?" That's not quite how Pastor Daniel phrased the question, but that's the gist of it. Daniel's answer was that we pray in order to be intimate with God. That we will be happier and healthier in a deep relationship with God rather than just a casual acquaintance. He said that time and space matters when it comes to intimacy. Just like in a romantic relationship, you need to go out on dates, away from everyday life, to really feel intimate with someone. He said that this intimacy helps us to align ourselves with God's goals for our lives. Just like we have to really get to know someone well in order to work well with them (anticipating their needs, predicting their reactions), as we spend more quality time with God, we will live our lives more and more in a way that works well with what he's trying to do in the world. Pastor Daniel said that the reward that is promised to us for seeking intimacy is peace. As we align ourselves with God's goals through intimate, simple prayer, our heart and our head begin to want the same things. We get peace as the different parts of ourselves stop walking different directions, which means they are pulling at each other, and begin walking in the same direction. Pastor Daniel said that this peace can been in how people handle crises. He asked us to think of people we all know that seem thrown into disarray at the tiniest possible disturbance and of other people who remain solid through the most horrendous trials. Those who remain solid are more at peace. Their hearts and their heads want the same things. Writers in the Old Testament ask God to create in them an "undivided heart."

The pastor that married me recently asked me if I had any new insights about how I process faith and love and direction now that I seem to walking out the other side of a fairly huge storm. I sent him my rather lengthy response the Friday before Pastor Daniel gave his sermon. I wrote, "If I am centered and fully aware of myself and my surroundings in the present, I am less likely to get tipped over by the unexpected. Rather than walloping me because I wasn't paying attention, the future can only run at me in little taps because I am paying attention to the now and all futures must ultimately become the now."

That rather hifalutin sentence that parallelled but preceded Pastor Daniel's interpretation of what God's reward for our good prayer will be was not about prayer, it was about yoga.

I went to my first yoga practice on Tuesday and it felt so good. Like when I was a kid on the softball field, I forget to think about anything in my life while I'm in a yoga studio. Iyengar yoga puts so much emphasis on aligning the body exactly right and moving slowly but correctly into stretches that there isn't a chance to think about what I have to do next or how badly I messed up earlier in the day. I'm working so hard to remember to keep my knees lifted, my pelvis tucked, my chest open, my eyes straight and any number of other tiny adjustments in addition to remembering to breathe, it just never occurs to me to think about anything else. The word yoga means, "yoke," as in to yoke two animals together so that they will pull the plow or the cart in the same direction. By practicing yoga, we yoke our hearts and minds and bodies together toward one task with the idea that in life, we will be able to perform the same focus for all tasks what we have practiced in the studio. When I practice yoga, my heart and my head are in alignment and there, I find peace.

Yoga is just another form of intimate prayer. It is a way to go into my room and close the door. When I clear my mind, God can fill it. One of the women I work with was in therapy the day after her foot surgery and was told that she had to wiggle her toes for the doctor before she could leave so that he could be sure everything worked still. Her head wanted to do this but her body feared the inevitable post-operative pain and although she stared at her foot and tried to will the one end to wiggle, her toes would not respond. The doctor recognized that she was psyching herself out and told her, "Clear your mind and the toes will wiggle." Lo, as she began to center herself, the fear left her and the toes wiggled without being told to. In fact, she missed the success entirely because she had cleared her mind so completely that she forgot what she was supposed to be watching for.

The reward for pursuing intimacy with God is peace. Peace is when our hearts and our minds want the same thing. Yoga makes the heart, the mind and the body practice wanting the same thing. If you clear your mind, the toes will wiggle. Yoga creates intimacy with God.

Namaste.

Wave of Chaos

If every day at work were like today, I could do this forever and never miss teaching. There was a chaos cloud that I was caught in today where almost nothing went right, random things happened rediculously and all of it was fun.

Out of the four years that I taught, I had maybe two or three classes of kids over whom I had absolutely no control. It was like from day 1, they gave me a handfull of leader points that I had to use sparingly or I wouid run out by the end of the year. Any other time that I wanted them to do something, I had to cajole or entertain or persuade or trick them into doing it. Scaring them had absolutely no effect and neither did threatening them with anything other than the total withdrawal of my humor and affection (which I knew would make my life as miserable as theirs so I rarely used that ultimatum). Most classes will grant a teacher a certain amount of blind authority most of the time simply because it is just easier to follow where a teacher leads. Sheep. Or at least shy goats. Occasionally, these classes will spin out of control when the teacher proves to be totally unworthy of this leadership (you've all heard those horror stories) but usually, classes run along with fairly moderate gives and takes of power, with the teacher having control most of the time.

But occasionally, a class will have just the right mix of kids who were never ever destined to be sheep. A class full of strong-willed, intelligent kids. I can think of nothing more terrifying. Or more fun. These three classes made me cry. But I also laughed so hard I cried on a regular basis. On all three occasions (luckily, never in the same year), I recognized the situation pretty quickly and stopped beating my head against the wall. It wasn't their fault that they were powerfully sharp and charismatic kids bouncing off of each other. I wasn't going to get mad at them that my box of a classroom wasn't big enough to contain their combined energy. So, I broke down and made deals with them. I made them laugh. And I waited. Oh, did I wait. At least once, I waited the entire class period for them to notice that I was at the front of the room, standing at the podium ready to start. The next day, I quizzed them on what they were supposed to have learned. Did they yell and complain? The funny thing is, they didn't. These kids took a frightening amount of responsibility for their own actions. They knew I had no control over them and they didn't fault me for it, much like I didn't fault them for being unable to submit themselves to the confines of a traditional classroom. When they failed a quiz or got sent to the dean, they had their emotions - mad, sad, etc. - but they rarely blamed me. Since I admitted I had no control and instead asked them for the favor of their attention, they often gave it to me. I think they saw my humility as a sign of respect rather than defeat. This actually made these classes a pretty dynamic place to teach. No one worked because the had to. When they worked, it was because they wanted to. I became a better teacher because of these classes that I could not control. I had to make my lessons worth their attention or they wouldn't give it to me. Each thing I taught had to be applicable to their lives or they wouldn't do it. So, I could explain that a particular assignment was to keep them quiet while I conferenced one on one with their peers and they would, for the most part, keep quiet. If it also helped them practice their grammar, well, so be it. That's what I mean about tricking them. I could explain that an assignment was to practice not looking suspicious when they took their ACTs and they would accept that and would practice not looking around the room when they were thinking about answers to quizzes or they would practice not whispering to their neighbor that somthing smelled funny, because I explained that a proctor wouldn't know them like I did and would just assume they were cheating. Or, I could explain the things that they should experience from an assignment and the type of knowledge that they should have when they were done and get the most amazing pieces of creativity and passion. Compare that to having to line out exactly the minimum that needs to be done to get an A, B or C and getting just that: the minimum.

I loved those classes.

Today was like one of those classes. A total of four people showed up today for "appointments" that I knew nothing about. Two were tentative appointments that they never called back to confirm. One couldn't make his appointment at 10:00 yesterday so just showed up at 10:00 today and the fourth had never spoken to me, just told the woman at the front that she had an 11:00 appointment. I can't fault her for not understanding the concept of appointments as an agreement between two people to meet. In her life, when you tell the gatekeeper that you have an appointment for whatever time it is that you have arrived, she tends to get to see that person, even if that person is only emerging from her office to clear up the understanding. Saying that she has an appointment has the desired result. Who am I to insist upon the correctness of abstract definitions? And they work so hard with the poor of this community and feel so blessed by God to have access to the product that I provide that I can't fault them for their lack of business communication skills. Luckily, I have the flexibility in my day to accomodate them. I don't think that's a mistake on the part of my predecessors.

Other things happened during the day. I had to apologize to a woman at HQ for being mean to her a few days ago, but got her support to change what had made me that frustrated in the process. I got pizza at Lou Malnoti's and got another sympathic ear for what I am trying to accomplish. I moved another step forward on two projects that I'm working on. I had a good conversation about yoga and Christianity with my colleagues. My boss, totally unprovoked, acknowledged that I was experiencing a major life-altering segment of my journey by working at this job and absolutely affirmed me. And then the teachers showed up.

Almost every day, at the end of my shift, I spend an hour with teachers who have come to the warehouse to "shop" for free office supplies. They come as a group, all from the same school at the same time. Most have been there before and it runs pretty smoothly by itself with me there to supervise for the little snags and to get them both started and checked out. But today, oh today. Wait, let me start a new paragraph so that this is a complete narrative in itself.

At 2:00, I was paged to the customer service desk to explain to a teacher that her school's appointment was not until 3:45. I was in the middle of something, so I left her there at the desk calling her principal and went back to my little office. At 2:30, I was in the office having the aforementioned conversation about yoga and Christianity when I heard myself being paged to the Customer Service desk in the warehouse again. Since this would have been the fifth unexpected "appointment" of the day, I went ahead and finished the conversation before heading out to see what was going on. As I walked toward the Customer Service desk, there was a gaggle of people trapped by the railings that create a reception area to the warehouse so that people can't steal stuff by slipping out while the customer Service ladies are busy. It was the most raggedy, varied group of people I've seen in a long time. And all of them were sort-of meandering in place, maybe even bumping up against the railing every once in awhile like fish bump their noses on the sides of the tank. Rather than trying to draw out their leader, which I must have instinctually known was futile task, I called to Lisa, "Are these my 3:45 teachers, Lisa?" This led to a slight increase in their physical and verbal agitation much like when one moves the lid on the fish tank, signalling that one is about to start dumping in dehydrated flakes of something yummy. They were not at all frightening in their indignation. They all called out in degrees of muted despair that they had a 2:45 appointment. I stopped. Looked at them. Then asked if teachers were also coming at 3:45. "Oh no!" they assured me. So, I made a big, magnanimous gesture with my arm and said, "Come along then," like an American Mary Poppins with pigtails and led the way back to the teacher section of the warehouse. Their relief and beginning hesitant tendrils of delight were reminiscent of children whose mother stopped yelling scary things like, "Why did I ever let your father convince me. . ." and guiltily offered them a trip to Oberweis for ice cream.

I walk faster than most customers around the warehouse because I know where I'm going. So, I reached my introduction spot and asked them to gather around me for instructions. It was at this point that I noticed Mr. O'Leary (not his real name, but close enough for you to get the idea). Mr O'Leary was a large African-American man, wearing nice leather shoes, plum-colored pants and a red and black checked quilted flannel for a coat. All of his hair was tucked up in a black beret that could not have looked less like a Black Panther beret by the way it was draped on his head. Mr. O'Leary had giant, ping-pong eyeballs that were locked onto me as I spoke. He looked a little like Kermit the Frog. In fact, the entire group looked like a gaggle of about 8 Muppets, all different and with their heads at different levels like some were standing on boxes, with an underlying thread of rediculousness that identified them as belonging together. Part of this effect came from the fact that Mr. O'Leary had immediately sat down on the round, wheeled stool, which had been located on the other side of the teacher section and immediately began scooting toward where the rest of the teachers were standing in short, jerking motions. As I watched his slow and very slapstick progression toward the group, I realized that he was eating a piece of fried chicken. Where did he get a piece of fried chicken?! So, he stared at me raptly with his bug-eyes, eating his chicken while I gave very clear instructions with lots of visual examples for how they should go about procuring their product. As I was finishing and about to transition to showing them where to sign in, his head snapped up and he said, "Wait, what are we supposed to do?" Classic. Then, everyone was clamoring for the clipboards that they would need to shop and I had to slow it down and tell them that "the clipboard is a reward for signing in over there. No, over there." It was very much reminiscent of my special classrooms. These were teachers at an alternative school for kids who can't make it in regular school. Of course they resemble my smart, can't-stay-in-the-box-if-we're-all-together kids. The rest of the hour was spent further demonstrating their high-maintenance status but also demonstrating their great good-will and willingness to laugh at themselves.

I need to emphasize to you what a great diversity of weirdness there was to this group. Aside from Mr. O'Leary, there was the 23-year-old sandy blonde white kid, with his sirt unbuttoned to his sternum showing lots of chest hair. Adding to his sun-kissed skater good looks was his nascent beard or overgrown 5 o'clock shadow. After him came the small, tidy African American woman in her 50s who, although neat in her person, showed absolutely no tendencies toward style whatsoever. She wore flat dress shoes with socks and jeans and had large red glasses and a black Old Navy ballcap. Contrasted with her was the African American woman of about the same age who was making her shiny red workout pants and white tennies look good. The way the totally normal looking white guy in his 50s that could have fit in as a junior high science teacher anywhere in the suburbs, And the absent-minded art professor white guy with the hair that he obviously ran his hands through compulsively, creating little tips that stood out straight. He had a thick beard and thick glasses, with eyes that didn't focus in the same direction. His red wool letterman style coatcoat was too nice for him to have bought it for himself and, sure enough, there was a wedding ring. The man they addressed as Rev. Michaels was a classic Billy Dee Williams-stylish church man by the look of him, with pressed jeans and long black leather coat but who couldn't seem to focus on his surroundings and was helped variously by all the other teachers there even though he only appeared to be in his 40s. As he walked around, he made gutteral noises of vague agreement. "Uh-huh, all right, yeah, uh- huh, look at that, all right." There was also a stylish white lady in her late 60s wearing high-class all black and a hot pink fedora-style hat over her silver hair. The principal, a large African American woman eventually showed up wearing a blue sweatsuit with green piping, matching blue Nikes and a fur coat. Every type of crazy urban teacher, except the very stylishly-dressed, recently-engaged young woman, was there. I loved every minute of it.

I'd do days like this forever. They are so full of fun and good purpose. There are enough minor frustrating moments and little successes to keep me from taking any of it for granted. And I have no control over it. I just have the to ride the wave of chaos and persuade and cajole and bribe the people the people I'm working with to get them to go in the same direction with me. Perfect.

Churchspeak

The perky 24-year-old woman (a different one) with flawless complexion and artful eye makeup stood in front of our group of new employees two weeks ago dressed in a business suit that would make every career woman turned suburban mom proud, with it's tasteful tweed comnibed with subtle grosgrain ribbon accents. She asked us, "What do you think when you hear the words, Christian Comitments?" The capital letters were audible.

After the obligatory embarassed pause (it was the first presentation of the morning and of course we weren't expected to actually have to participate this early), people began responding and it became clear to me that the words, Christian Commitments did mean something to most of the people there. I, on the other hand, knew that commitments were things one has promised to do and that the word Christian is a proper discriptor that can fundtion either as an adjective or adverb (depending on the word it is modifying) that idicates that something is associated in some way with a psuedo-historical man named Jesus, who was called the Christ. But the simple sum of these words was obviously less that the definition from which these people were working.

So, since I am occasionally possessed by the Imp of the Perverse, I raised my hand. (Let's pause a moment while we wait for my mother to sigh inwardly as she fears for my job.) "Can we back up a little bit? It sounds to me like the phrase already has an understood definition and I don't really know Churchspeak. Can you translate first before we interpret?" the girl was only slightly thrown since her Powerpoint presentation, when it finally booted up, was going to address just this question. So I apologized for presenting the trasition question too early, everyone laughed and I hoped the Imp of the Perverse had been distracted some little bit of wildlife struggling to accomplish a task without opposable thumbs in the tree outside the window.

Now, it's possible that I misrepresented myself a little when I said that Chruchspeak was unknown to me. I can fellowship with the best of them. I have agreed with people that I am saved. Heck, I've even seen the light. But I don't like it when I talk like that. It is jargon and the nature of jargon is exclusionary. The nature of the gospel, however, (gospel means "good news") is the absolute opposite of exclusionary. Jesus loves everyone. He is the epitome of inclusionary. The holy Spirit works in everyone's life. There is nothing anyone can do to make God love us more or love us less, not even if we call him by another name or deny his existence altogether. So, I believe that the language of Christians, if they truly believe that all people are equal in the eyes of God, should be the language of the people. There should be no phrases that have special meansing only to Christians or to the anthropologists that study Christians. Besides, jargon is a characteristic of cliques and I don't want to be painted with the same brush as someone who became a Christian because she wanted the popular kids to like her.

Now, the good thing that came from my visit from the Imp of the Perverse is the conversation that I had at the break after the presentation. In the women’s restroom, another new employee approached me and thanked me for asking that particular question. At least one or two other women at the sinks spoke up also and we had a short conversation of agreement along the same lines as my previous paragraph. This is important because it is yet another experience in a recent trend of interacting with Christians that seem to resemble me in their lifestyles and doctrines, which is pretty much the first time this has happened in my life. Since there have been two or three of these interactions in the past few weeks, I am finding some of the walls that I’ve built up between myself and other Christians have begun to crumble a little. I hope the Crusaders don’t come charging over the fallen bricks once I let some of the guards go home for the harvest.