Author Robert Raynolds ...What is at the heart of any story?

This book begins with a very gracious setting of tone and scene. 
     The narrative character is a Roman,a pagan,the son of a senator, and a very ambitious man.  He opens the story by sharing a conviction he says he  was born with,that life is good. This,his earliest conviction, has stayed with him in his more than seventy years. Before beginning the action of his story at the climax of the reign of Emperor Theodosius the Great, the narrator wants first to give a view of his Roman world and he says he wants  "... to fulfill the ancient courtesy of introducing myself, a Roman." (page 9 The Sinner of Saint Ambrose by Robert Raynolds (c)  1952) 

A few pages later our narrator says: I hope by now I have conveyed in words something of that warm subtle sense of an actual meeting-how it is to feel the presence of a man before you know his name or hear his story. ( p 13)

And so we meet up with history through the fictive autobiography of Gregory Julian. Author Robert Raynolds artfully tends not to intrude, but I believe I do hear his hope in this passage below: 

 “ I have always been able to find a man or a woman who sensed what I felt and understood what I was talking about.  I think it is as simple as this, that people know life is at center an almost incredible mystery, and we love to communicate our strangeness to one another.  For the true interest of a man’s life to himself and to others is not only in what he did in the lusty days of his doing, but this interest resides deeply also in what the man thinks about it all when he finally matures, reflects and weighs for value. Then the open heart understands the wordless and the unexplained, and in my experience, compassion and sympathy are established.  This is a delightful thought, for it leads me to hope that between the lines of my story the reader is going to meet and understand the inner man of my heart.  For his interior life is the vital part of the man.”( Page 12)

Yes...it is often a storyteller's hope that: "...between the lines of my story, the reader is going to meet and understand the inner man of my heart..."

    "Perhaps one of the tragedies of human society is this, that no public man is as good as his private self might have been.  Or it could be put the other way around, since we are all part public, that society is composed of the tragedies of people.  Once he knows this, a sane man and compassionate man will love individuals more and more and society less." ( page 11)


 I found this book in a second hand shop with  a "Book of the Month Club" review still tucked into it and found myself reading all 443 pages of the tale. 

It's a compelling story; old Romans have quite a bit they can teach us. 

"What use is it for a corrupt generation to preach moral precepts to it's children?...When the state dishonors its obligation...justice is sold,  hatred is preached...children can see for themselves...For have not adults set before them these examples of how life is lived?" ( page 396)

Center pages of the Book of the month Club Review

You are in good hands with this narrator...and his author. "As I said, I was born with a fundamental confidence that life is good.  The fact that I have lived seventy-odd years would not amount to much unless I had been able to retain a respect for life and an affection for people. ( Page 13)

  

"At the heart of any story I could ever tell would be the tragic wonder of the human spirit..." (page 13)

~~~

It is certainly a good question for any storyteller to ask themselves...what is at the heart of any story I tell?

best to you,

Jeannette

P.S.  I have not yet seen any other of  Robert Raynold's work but here are a few titles: 

Brothers in the West

The Choice to Love

In Praise of Gratitude 

Thomas Wolfe: Memoir of a Friendship

J.R.R.. Tolkien on Peril in the World...

"The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there

 are many dark places; but still there is much 

that is fair, and though in all lands love is now 

mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the 

greater."

J.R.R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings

Stop, Drop and Write - First Aid with a Pen

Journaling never ceases to amaze me, not for the product on the page ( handwritten and tucked away, not these public pages) but for the internal trek across the landscape within.  Whether  the initial spark be troubles in the world, the arson of a stranger, accidental fire from a moment of carelessness in ones own camp,  or the spontaneous combustion of a loved one...a little time alone helps me to clean up my own tinder and wet down the vulnerable structures.

Often I start out removed, feeling the heat and not quiet sure I can battle the blaze:
6-26-12

Impartial, imperfect perceptions tangle up with each other and the amalgamations of fragments and dissimilar cultural artifacts pile up like junk yard sculpture. The noise of any channel of communication reduces the completeness and accuracy of the transmission.  To hear the trustworthy still small voice within, not only does the noise out and about need to fall away, quiet needs to well up from within me.

And then I plunge into the personal and descriptive  right after penning " ...but I am almost afraid to write in my own journal. "   But of course I do write in it, and I suppose I can always  do a little redacting with a black pen... process is messy... sorting out what others are up to can be helpful if it ultimately leads to kneeling down and checking out my own heart.

And eventually I wind up able to look out again...

There are wars and rumors of wars and boats on the bay and birds in the trees.  Pelicans fly by and elections take place in distant lands.  Men hold guns and children cower while grain grows in golden fields and bakers fire up ovens in the  early hours of unbroken mornings.  Trucks rumble by and birds cry out from their nests. 

And I get up and do the next thing...

I so often need to hear...."Therefore strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees..." ( Hebrews 12:12) and  "Let us not grow weary of doing good..."  ( Galatians 6:9).

Capturing those Quotes that Stimulate further Reflection and...

What I have learned from about twenty-years of serious reading is this: It is sentences that change my life, not books. What changes my life is some new glimpse of truth, some powerful challenge, some resolution to a long-standing dilemma, and these usually come concentrated in a sentence or two. I do not remember 99% of what I read, but if the 1% of each book or article I do remember is a life-changing insight, then I don’t begrudge the 99%. ~John Piper 

I have not read the book this quote is from nor anything from the author, but when I encountered this quote,  I recognized an experience I too have had.   As one ages, forgetting 99% of what you have read becomes an ever stronger possibility. 

And of course much of what one reads over the years is forgettable, some of it best forgotten...but words that are life changing, have life in them can be, to paraphrase an instruction in The Book of Common Prayer, read, marked and inwardly digested.  You are what you eat...

I  am currently reading a book on short story writing that has some great insights. It's valuable on many levels and yet due to the tone and perspective of the author I find myself unwilling to broadcast her gems. I may not begrudge the 99 %  I forget, but when work as a whole is marbled with mixed influence that requires significant work to sluice the gold from the dross, I am reminded how much matrix matters.  And it is what we draw into the very matrix of our own beings that matters the most.  

What will I do with Write Purpose and Bread on the Water this year?  There are a few  posts I have put up and then taken down... It is again the issue of  influence.

Recently I looked over entries that I began and never finished or chose not to post and found several that I began on boundaries.  Sometimes, seeing others' personal revelations on line, I  scurry off.  I remember a mandated group process class years ago, where one member offered herself up and others lured her  deeper into the woods of self revelation where wolves snarled and as a pack devoured her.  She completed the coursework, but did not become a psychotherapist. Perhaps it was ultimately a service to her.  She didn't belong, standing alone out in that field of work, but I couldn't reconcile the willingness of other up-and-comers to use her vulnerability against her.  And of course I learned that good Samaritans were next on the menu.

So what sort of reticent goop did I find trekking around in my unposted archives? 

2-11-11 The idea of making a true journal entry here is really beyond me.  Boundaries prohibit some revelations that would be completely central to the fluid stream of consciousness and dot connecting that are the benefits and delights of private writing.  Some boundaries are natural, true to my identity and are worthy  of observation, but others, though I may feel  their strong mandate may be external and unnecessarily restricting...

Okay, I am good with this...I don't want to do an on-line journal per se.  Journal and memoir writing, as rich and wonderful as it is, best not be confused with the art of literary fiction.  I may be both too otherwise occupied and too lazy to ever do the work fiction requires. 

7-2-11 As regards boundaries, the demands of work, profession, and identity are powerful. People ask,  "What do you do?"  Some people answer that question all the time with their neckline, from  collared priests to those sporting plunging cleavage on dark streets.  Others don't find identity in the doings of life.  Identity transcends what we do and yet we struggle with what how what we do  might be shaping, defining  or redefining us. 

Who can avoid asking "What am I doing?"  "What  have I done? "  " What can I do?"   "What  must I do? "

"What do you do?"  as a question is often just an honest attempt to get to know another, but sometimes,  it is asked just to size another up and compare how one fits into their personal hierarchy of importance.  Sometimes people are just asking how you put bread in your mouth, how do you get bread? Some want to know, if by their standards,  you can justify your existence.

Well themes such as these two unfinished, un-posted examples, apparently important to me, but thus far, hard for me to write about as they bring me up against my reticence, may have to come into clearer focus.  

Words Escape Me but DNA Prevails

They do...words escape...but butterflies, Monarchs in particular, have captured my imagination of late.

 My only net is  my camera and my desire to understand them a little better.  I am fascinated that every fourth generation of Monarchs is like Methuselah, they live longer.  Most Monarch butterflies live for about two to six weeks, but every fourth generation, the ones born in the fall, live for several months.  They migrate to hibernate in warmer climes through the winter.   I marvel at these little wings and how many miles, they fly; 1000 to 2500 miles in some cases... to come back home.   Even the butterflies who have never been "home" before know how to get there....it is DNA as a relay race organizer. 


Well, you know if you really want to know about butterflies you can google them and read a proper entomological and scientific explanation of what I just garbled out.  As I said, words have been escaping me.    Here is my self portrait that I drew this morn...a bird in a nest of letters, nary a word in sight.



D N A must be in there somewhere...


I haven't written much of late.  I haven't even written to my daughter  because I miss her and knowing she is, off and on, a little homesick, out on her adventure...well  if I say how much I miss her ...
But this blog is for her, isn't it?   Of course.

Okay, here is the truth....I missed her so much that I even played a hand of on-line scrabble with her kitty...
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  
Today I am going to a garage sale of a sweet lady who is returning to her home-land.    The other day I was helping her with a simple task and suddenly she took a phone call...rapid fire she chattered away in her native tongue. I did not understand a word...except I could hear how deep a resonance the mother tongue has in her heart.   She ( my friend's  request to keep her departure a bit quiet on the web has me being impersonal here) has lived in the United States for thirteen years.  This land gave her shelter  from the kidnappings and dangers of her native Columbia.  Many of her friends and much of her family have moved away...but not her parents... and now, like a butterfly, she returns.   She has reduced the accumulation of the years down to four boxes to ship home; that and a heart full of memories and hopes and an awareness of  the truth  that her path did not fully open up here.   She described the dreams she has and that she returns to her land with her dreams still asking.  She says she has created a situation where it is hard to leave but knows she must not stay...
.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  
Did you ever  play connect the dots?  You follow the numbers and draw the lines between each numbered dot and then maybe the picture will be a bird in a nest sitting on letters that won't quite make the words she wants.... to express her love and hope for those she loves....

The day calls, I look out the window and see what I see?  There is a little sailboat on the blue. As my dear runaway- to- the-circus daughter says....onward.  I guess if she can write about being homesick, it is okay for me to admit that I miss her proximity here mightily... and this doesn't even get into the much closer but still not quite nearby other "story."  This post is for you too.  

Framing One's Perspective

     There's a dead tree in the view.  It's just as tall as its living neighbor, but green no more.  How one looks at a dead tree, feels about it, may be important.  That tree has held that spot for many years and for now there is a dead tree in a very lovely view.

It has reminded me that life cycles are not neat, the comings and goings are unexpected and then the view is changed.

   

It's important not to consider the view imperfect.  

There are so many young trees striving to get established...

Snippets after Shut Down

I belong in bed.   I had actually shut down my computer.  I have been set to a purpose that is an honor and very hard  but a write purpose task.  To write a eulogy... I know there are all sorts of experts in the field, tips on how to write a eulogy abound  on the internet, but what is needed is heart.  Brevity, clarity, organization and hopefully a voice to read can all come...but heart for he who is gone and for each one who feels  his loss ( and I am such a one myself)   is really all I care about at this point.  And I came to a place where I knew it was time to retire and trust the rest of it to tomorrow.

And then I was told there were two new blog posts from my traveling daughter and I fired this computer back up and ignored the exhaustion ahead signal lights that had been flashing for so long the batteries are almost stone...  One of her posts was so long and so brilliant and painful and funny and convoluted I know I will read it again in the morning.  The other, the latest one was short, a snippet she said...a day that had not held time for writing but she typed out a little marker for the trail...and so both  in support of  her and because I am encouraged by her, I have hereby officially written a snippet too.  Good night.

Alarmists Were Predicted Long Ago

Recently a woman I know was trying to factor some fearful predictions into some economic decision she needed to make.  It’s hard enough for Lily to navigate realms of finance not having been entrusted with singular or even mutual decision making before being widowed, let alone with someone whispering in her ear that she should sell everything she has and just stock up on supplies.

Of course I’m aware of earthquakes and up-risings, and “down-troddings” and wars and rumors of war on a daily basis but I don’t tend to pay much attention to people who think they can give time lines for the future.  

I was concerned as she described to me a man who was not currently living up to his financial obligations but was offering her financial advice and either basing it on or peppering it with time tabled predictions of various global disaster scenarios.  As a result of his certainty she now felt confused and uncertain as to what she should do.

 As much as I was concerned about Lily making a hasty decision about her largest financial asset, in some ways I was more concerned that she thought she would have to be a Bible scholar to sort through this man’s predictions and the seemingly direct line of implications he drew to her circumstances. I’m no scholar myself, but I knew the Gospel according to Matthew addressed cosmic predictions.

Jesus was asked directly by his disciples what are the signs of the end of the age.  Matthew 24:3 records that  Jesus began his answer this way: "Watch out that no one deceives you...you will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed..." 

What a great place to start while figuring things out, “See to it that you are not alarmed..."   Not only is not being alarmed a desirable state of being, the 'see to it’ language intrigues me.  It’s an invitation to look inward.  Yes, what are you doing in there, getting alarmed and to what end?  

I’m struck with the emphatic quality of the instructions of Jesus to his questioning disciples. “Watch that no one deceives you and see to it that you are not alarmed.”  I really can’t imagine any realm where this isn’t good advice.

I find it interesting that before the end of the eons is discussed, or even the precursor times of trouble are described, a mindset is mandated.  If you think about never being alarmed or anxious about anything, you know that it is not something most of us embody all that well.  

So if you are going to read Matthew chapter 24 about earthquakes and famines, and the end that is not yet, if you are going to read the hard words about persecutions and fleeing Judea...it seems important to first soak in the admonition to watch that no one deceives you and see to it that you are not alarmed.  If you don’t read the chapter, but just wander around in the world and listen to the opinions and predictions of others, it seems the right response as well.

In Matthew chapter 24,  there are thirty-five verses describing days of distress before Jesus describes "the Son of Man appearing...." 

and then he says, ( 24:36)  “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."      

 NO ONE. 

 I sure don't know, do you?  It sounds as if we are neither expected nor supposed to know about the future, and that is certainly one of the things that I wanted to remind Lily; people telling us when something will happen in the future is not validated by the very book they purport to interpret.

 Jesus does say (verse 42) that one should keep watch.  Pay attention, keep watch. But watch for what?  In Chapter 25, Matthew records Jesus launching right into a series of stories starting with his parable of the wise and foolish virgins. Those women weren’t sent out to watch for or prepare for disaster, they were waiting on a bridegroom. That’s the first example that follows all the hard to read about trouble, a story about having enough oil to have light in your lamp no matter how long you have to wait in the dark for the promised arrival.

I know I’m more than capable of imagining all manner of difficult things that may, but haven’t, happened.  Perhaps I have to fight that tendency because a few hard losses and difficult trials did come my way early in life, but maybe not, maybe it is just how I am; perhaps it’s how many people are?  As I read these familiar stories, I glimpsed the futility of trying to be prepared for woe, except by being faithful day by day and being ultimately prepared for joy.  How many dollars per barrel do the oils of gladness or gratitude go for?  

So going to this storied chapter that I have been exposed to my whole life and read any number of times, with concern for someone else really struggling with fear, was a great reminder for me how important it is to not be distracted by what you think you know.  How easy it is to gloss over the essence of something.  How easy it is to focus on the earthquakes and wars and stars falling from the sky, and miss the admonition to neither be deceived nor alarmed. 

It’s true that there’s plenty of trouble to go around and it isn’t that I don’t believe in being as prepared as able, I do, but preparedness and routine caution is not the same as anxiety. When people make global predictions others’ anxiety is generally what they are preying upon.

If troubles we don’t yet have worry us we are likely to miss the opportunities of today.   The Bible says that there is trouble sufficient unto the day and that there will be troubles, but Jesus is very clear with his disciples that no man knows when specific events will come and then illustrates in three parables, the parable of the 10 virgins, the parable of the talents and the parable of sheep and goats, a ready focus.  The examples are each so straight forward.  Have oil for your lamp so you can be ready with light, be a good steward of all that is entrusted to you, feed and visit the poor, the sick and the imprisoned, and by all means be watchful and ready.

Suffice it to say that I was glad that I didn’t undertake to answer Lily’s request for help “straight off the hip,” rather than use the very book being loosely referenced.  She was quick to respond to my letter about what one could readily glean from these  two chapters and wrote back that she had received “...peace in the eye of the storm.”  

 I had to laugh at the effective way her expressed need had caused me to it sit down and study a bit.  I can always use all the reminders myself.

Why Do We Do the Things We Do? Basic Assumptions: A Paradigm to Use and Share.

I was reminded lately of a model, a simple paradigm, which has been helpful at times in thinking through things.

What got me going was an exchange between a man and a woman, fortunately they weren’t married to each other, about typically hot topics all having to do with control: sex, choice, population, babies, birth.

They came at each other from diametrically opposed viewpoints. It wasn’t the content of their attempts to influence each other’s stance that triggered my thinking; I was only privy to a description of it by one party, but rather an image that formed in my mind of two people with their feet definitively planted trying to change each other’s posture by whipping each other’s heads around, or suggesting a different tilt of the hips.

                             ( I am resisting popping in pictures of Indian wrestling here. How about just a small picture of attitude from an Engelbeit birthday card?)

Although I have shared this framework, this paradigm with others, it was always shared in person and I could draw charts and crisscross them with arrows and ask questions to employ examples to make sure the applicability of the connectedness was getting through. It will be a good challenge for me to simply write about it but don’t be surprised if I wind up sticking pictures in here and there.

THE PARADIGM

Here’s the rough framework: Basically, out of underlying assumptions we develop values, which are in turn directly tied to more specific concepts and beliefs. Beliefs shape our methods and methods, ideally, are focused on achieving particular goals which would themselves be in sync with our basic assumptions.

GOALS

METHODS

SPECIFIC CONCEPTS & BELIEFS

VALUES

BASIC ASSUMPTIONS

You can approach this paradigm from either end. In some ways it makes most sense to me to explain it from the ground up. It’s the way one builds a house and the concreteness of that image makes it memorable for many.

So that’s how I will explain it from the bottom up.

However, I’m typing at a word processor and we read top to bottom and one could as easily make the argument that before you lay the foundation to build a house you first need a vision and a plan. As soon as you ask what the structure is for, you are at the top of the chart with goal and purpose. Both goals and primal assumptions have operative and transforming power directly over each other.

How you wring any value out of the line up might depend on your own style of learning, but in as much as I have conceded that the approach is arbitrary, perhaps you’ll suspend whatever your preferences might be and look at the bottom of the list above.

Basic Assumptions:

?? Is it a created universe, is there a creator or is it just a material world? How we answer primal questions about reality, time and space and what we think of human nature, it is out of such basic or underlying assumptions, even if our assumptions are sometimes fuzzy or obscure, that values develop.

Of course we have assumptions about smaller questions in life as well. I was taught about this way of exploring things in the early eighties in a university class focused on designing effective lesson plans. Bernice Goldmark emphasized offering students alternative ways to learn. She hypothesized two teachers where one assumed that all people can learn the same way and the other who assumed that there are variations in how people learn. It is relatively easy to anticipate the different values, core concepts, and teaching methods likely to emerge from such different basic assumptions, even if both teachers’ goals were ostensibly the same.

I don’t remember if Professor Goldmark attributed the basic assumptions paradigm to anyone in particular, but as I wrote this post I found online the work of MIT professor Edgar H. Schein whose work on cultural awareness and organizational behavior explores these concepts at depth.   Not that these ideas belong to anyone in particular, they are laced throughout the lives and writings of  many.  Studying  the life of  President Lincoln  to elucidate executive strategies for current times,  Donald T. Phillips, in his book, Lincoln on Leadership,  encounters these same concepts. Phillips wrote that Lincoln's understanding of decision making was backed by solid visions, " not simply a string of individual orders.  Rather...a continuous, uninterrupted process that is similar to the beating of a heart that sends blood throughout a body."( p 97)
In the concluding chapter of his book, Phillips writes of Lincoln, "He lifted people out of their everyday selves and into higher level of performance, achievement and awareness." (p 173)

I suppose one reason I think the paradigm  I am sharing is helpful in making one more conscious in  thinking and relating in our complex world, is that of the many things over the years I have studied, I remembered it and found myself, in various settings, putting it to use.

As with many houses, the foundation of why we say and do the things we do isn’t always visible but  a foundation determines the footprint and bearing capacity of the structure built upon it.

Values often reflect what we think should happen, how we think things ought to be. Whether or not we articulate them, what we have learned and chosen to value under girds and shapes our more specific concepts and beliefs in life.

I know I'm not always fully tuned into what  I actually value.  For example, I can say I value fitness, and that I believe that it would be good for me to walk as much as possible everyday, but I didn’t walk today. In reality, in my free time, I valued the other things I wanted to do more and now it is way too dark and cold and … well you get the point. While my espoused value was fitness, my behavior valued comfort or productivity in another realm. I didn’t value fitness in a way that was expressed in a solid actionable concept such as “I will walk whether I am inclined to or not.” Maybe I really believe that I can get away without taking care of myself? That belief could certainly shape my daily choices, my daily method. Actual values and specific concepts and beliefs can become visible in scrutinizing one’s methods or way of life.

I ask myself, why am I writing this essay?  I am sitting down to do it, I could be out taking a walk with my cat.

As with all tools, this paradigm has its  proper uses and limits; generally speaking I might use it to help myself read carefully. Or when listening to people argue and I am trying to make heads or tails of what is going on, it helps me to pull back and try to find a path into what either person’s priorities might be, and ask myself if I can begin to understand how life looks for them and out of what assumptions  they might be operating.

Well…it’s all up to you in the comment section now…

What say you? Let me know if this gestates any new ideas…or awareness about your wiring or helps you decode an encounter, a book or even if you got to the finish line here!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Waiting for the cat to come on home.

It's night. She likes to prowl around. Or perhaps she just likes to curl under a bush and sleep.  Whatever the case, I am waiting for the cat to come home.  I'd be happy for her to be free to come and go, but she can't have her own door or other creatures would wander in and it can be dangerous at night, other animals, wild cats, roam the cliffs.

Sometimes, after staying out all night, she wants to sleep all day, on my bed.  Seeds tangled in her fur, she curls up and wraps a paw over her eyes.  Don't bother me, I'll groom later.

Sometimes if I wait, she will come and whisk her face against the window, or press her outstretched front legs on the door latch while she stands two legs on the back of a stuffed chair at the entrance.   When I can wait up no longer, I get ready for bed, her whereabouts unknown.  After I've brushed my teeth and am ready to shut the lights, I check one more time at the front window.  I step out in the night and call her. I am grateful she has drug me into the night, whether the sky be cloaked in fog or full of stars, I feel the night, the balm of air.  I call to her again.  I hear the waves crashing on the rocks below. This is the night she stays out in.

It is fortunate that we have no neighbors to hear my plaintive meow.  Later, as I am falling asleep, I  may hear  meowing  and see her silhouette through the skylight.  That doesn't mean if I go out into the night that she will climb down off the Spanish tiles of the roof  or come inside.  But we play that game too, me  barefoot in my nightie, pleading to a cat on the roof. 

Like tonight, she  came to the door and  it was opened for her and she ran off into the forest.  What a tease.  I am waiting for the cat to come home, but I think I'll go brush my teeth and then check one more time...later.

Civility: treating others with dignity, compassion and respect can save lives

On September 22, 2010 at Rutgers University, a young man who had apparently been pitilessly spied upon, videotaped and broadcast on the World Wide Web ( later reporting did not confirm this) in private dorm room moments, left a one-sentence suicide intention note on his Facebook page and subsequently jumped to his death.

Whatever glorious potentials his life may have held for him are now ended and his parents and others near and dear must weather his loss the rest of their days.

Who are all the actors in this forlorn story? Transitions in general and developmental leaps in particular are times when many of us need help. Various aspects of coming of age, such as leaving home for the first time, living amongst strangers, intense exposure to new people with different backgrounds and values, becoming sexually aware or active, loss of a first love, school or other performance pressures, unwieldy group dynamics or being singled out for differences, can put a strain on the most well adjusted young person.

Who can calculate the added complexities or intensities of one's privacy being shared on social networks?

The danger that is created in such circumstances of vulnerability should never be underestimated. People sometimes enact in one moment of despair an irreversible end even if every other moment of their lives and the instincts of their being would stand against the threat they, in their pain, suddenly pose to themselves. For reasons perhaps forever beyond knowing, Tyler Clementi did jump from the George Washington Bridge to his death in the Hudson River. Tyler Clementi was eighteen years old.

The alleged tormentor, Dharun Ravi, is eighteen years old. As he faces his capacity for hard heartedness toward his roommate, what other depths of feeling will he reel through? He’s out of school now, but likely learning about how fast things can spin out of control and how unintended consequences can leap in a single bound from the shadows of our deeds.
Was Ravi’s alleged partner an active participant or did she just witness the travesty and do nothing? If she did just stand by, Molly Wei, may be realizing how dangerous it can be to be complacent about other’s bad ideas, and what it can cost to be passive or afraid to stand up for what is right.

And what of those individuals who tuned in and watched and wrote about the invasion of Tyler Clementi’s privacy without concern for him or the principles, ethic and laws violated? We err in commission, but there are also errors of omission.
Mr. Clementi’s family statement has been quoted in several news stories I have read:

"We understand that our family's personal tragedy presents important legal issues for the country as well as for us," said a statement from the family.

"Regardless of legal outcomes, our hope is that our family's personal tragedy will serve as a call for compassion, empathy and human dignity," the statement said.

We are already a land of many laws. Even if it weren’t illegal to invade another’s privacy, to do so is gross disrespect of others; and ultimately we cannot disrespect the lives of others without diminishing our own. What we need to enact is heart for others, not just for people like us, or for people we understand, but for everyone....for  we are the  people, that hold  such truths "to be self-evident, "  that is to say, to be part of natural law.  Person by person, will our social institutions affirm that development of character evidenced by respect for others is of primal importance and the foundation of any real education?   I hope so.

Life is fragile and civility, treating others with dignity, compassion and respect, can save lives.

I want to believe that the Clementi’s are not asking for the impossible.
                                                                  ~~~~

In Search of a Bottom Line Ethic of "Good Fences"

In search of that really bottom line almost everyone could see and agree upon as an ethic of boundaries…I woke thinking of the conflicts that abound on our round spinning world.

In the quiet time, newspapers still on the ground outside the gate, computers still dark for the night, I scribbled thoughts not only of physical boundaries, heated political boundaries - the Middle East, the boundary between the United States and Mexico - but also boundaries in nature, species boundaries, genetic boundaries. I recently saw videos of experiments now common in research fields, the extraction of the genetic material of a cell or an egg of one species being replaced or combined with genetic information from another.

I thought of seeds I encounter everyday, the sesame seeds on the crust of my morning toast and the kale seeds I just planted in my garden. Seeds are astounding blueprints. Is it wise to alter the very nature of things wild? Will altered seeds, their altered plant forms alter all their neighbors? Will originals be lost?

Nation to nation neighborliness has grown so complicated, but then so can garden variety neighbor relations. If your neighbor lets tall strong thistles grow along his border, you too will have thistles and you will either have to entertain them or labor to weed and scour them out. If you poison the thistles, your poison will drift into the air and the water and the soil, yours and your neighbor’s.
At times we resort, rather than working out these dilemmas where unique boundaries and communicative cooperation are needed, to dishonoring our neighbors and spreading complaints abroad.

“Look at that neighbor, he doesn’t even clean his land of thistles,” says one man.
“Look at my neighbor, he denudes the land of all that is wild with poisons,” says another.

Of course the most important place we usually need to look is at ourselves.

An old saying is often summarized as “good fences make good neighbors…”

Exploring the origin of the phrase in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs I found the first noted reference to be from a 1640 letter written by an E. Rodgers in the “Winthrop Papers.” “…a good fence helpeth to keep peace between neighbors; but let us take heed that we make not a high stone wall, to keep us from meeting.” So while the fence is seen as vehicle to help keep peace, once clarity of boundary is defined, there is an emphasis on meeting across the fence on positive terms.

In Modern Chivalry, 1815, H.H. Brackenridge is quoted: “ I was always with him (Jefferson) in his apprehension of John Bull…Good fences restrain fence breaking beasts, and …preserve good neighborhoods.”

This version emphasizes the dangers that good fences can protect us from and that the need for boundaries and clarity is very real in this world where beasts of many species do indeed roam.

Robert Frost wrote “Mending Walls” in 1914. In this famous poem, he describes how hunters have dismantled the fences and how he and his neighbor walk the boundaries of their adjoining land together in the springtime mending stonewall fences to contain their respective cows and protect their crops and gardens. Frost knows he needs fences but as he lifts and rebalances the stones he also longs for openness, earth without a boundary. Perhaps the fence does not need to be continuous: “My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines.” Not meeting the same opinion in his neighbor, as Frost watches his neighbor lift another stone in place Frost imagines him as “an old-stone savage armed.” Frost too has armed himself. He is armed with words; judging his neighbor for fencing all his land, as less sophisticated and thinking than he is. As the neighbor continues the line of the fence he repeats what Frost now calls “his Father’s” saying, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Our fathers’ sayings might be a way to reference traditions, culture; even the laws that represent what G. K. Chesterton called “ the democracy of the dead.”

"Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead." Chesterton goes on to say: "Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father." Orthodoxy, Chapt 4 "The Ethics of Elfland."Page 48 Doubleday Image

Frost apparently didn’t fight with his neighbor about the fence; he went home and wrote a poem about it. In his poem, he reveals an internal dilemma. He knows that he himself, a self he perhaps imagines as having little in common with the stone-age, a self unarmed and perhaps even a self free of his and other fathers’ precepts, this self still needs some fences, some boundaries. It is a dilemma.
A dilemma, by nature presents competing needs, horned alternatives, which are perhaps best met when there are two clauses in answer. Often times people breathe both clauses but join them with a “but.”

If one says, “We need to communicate but we need to maintain strong boundaries.” is it not different from saying, “We need to communicate and we need to maintain strong boundaries.”?

We do need strong fences and neighborly kindness.

Boundaries exist; they are part of a hierarchy found in the most primal realms of life. As a family therapist, my model for boundaries in relationships came to me from the biology classes of my youth and university days.

A living cell is a working model of boundaries. A cell wall is defined as a semi-permeable discerning membrane. A healthy cell wall can let what is needed in and release that which is no longer viable. Families are healthy when they flexibly both shelter and expose vulnerable members to experience. Dynamic tensions, such as the balance between rights and responsibilities are paramount in development of competence and integrity.

Discernment in a cell is a process of maintaining equilibrium. Stable laws govern the passage of molecules through the cell barrier and the concentration of solvents in the cell interior, unless damaged by trauma, physical or chemical.

Every house has a door, and every good fence a gate; every land has laws as to how people may come and go and what rights and responsibilities we bear to each other.
As it is written in Psalm 85:10: Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed [each other].
Some realities cannot be separated, and some realities should not be teased apart. Boundaries in the ideal bear these merged qualities. “…a good fence helpeth to keep peace between neighbors; but let us take heed that we make not a high stone wall, to keep us from meeting.”

A Tee Shirt Vendor Hero in New York

Truly he is a a good model...for how often do people see things and figure it isn't their business to attend to or rationalize that someone else will take care of it, or maybe it isn't really a big deal anyway.  Just walk on by...

I hope New York finds a way to thank the man who the news reports that I have read currently only identify as a Viet Nam Vet who is a Tee Shirt Vendor in Times Square.  

I'd be glad to buy a tee shirt from this man. 

Hello Anonymous Commenter and Lurkers, This Post is for You

Dear Anonymous,

 I wonder if you are one return visitor or if several students studying English have visited.

Even though you don't have a profile, you could sign your first name to your comments and maybe even tell what country you reside in, or where you are visiting from.  It would be interesting to know what your main course of study is.   It would make your comments more meanful and personal for me.

I would be curious to learn how reading a  blog helped you accomplish an assignment  for college?  Are you searching for particular subject matter?  Is leaving a comment part of the assignment?  Notice the spelling of the word  a s s i g n m e n t.  One reason I wonder if "anonymous" is one  return reader is because this word is always misspelled in the comments the same way and I get comments with almost identical wording.  I should have saved all the comments I haven't published, I could have done a whole post with them.

I mean to post more of my writing here on WRITE PURPOSE but then I have second thoughts.  When my children were small I did not let them play out in the street  where they might be run over or stolen.  That's a little bit how blog land feels.  In some ways, anonymous readers  are part of that feeling. So maybe if the lurkers and anonymous commenters say hello it will help me risk more in this public place.   What do you think?

Ageless as the Star and the Lily

In Praise of the Friendship of Books
Quotations from the writings of Oswald Chambers
(c) 2000 JPR

“Books…friends that are ever true and ever your own.” I certainly feel this way about some books and as for Oswald Chambers, the man who penned these words, I count him, through his writing, as such a friend. His days began in the year 1874 and ended in the year 1917, years before my days began. He had not himself rushed to publish, but after his death those who had known and loved him sought to preserve and share what he’d written, gathering his lectures, lesson notes, journal meditations and letters. Numerous titles were published posthumously and some remain in print.

I had made my first acquaintance with Oswald Chambers, as many people do, through the renowned collection of short readings, My Utmost for His Highest. My husband presented the slim volume to me. I had no idea what a challenge I was being given, nor what a friend I was about to meet. Morning after morning I let this man’s words encounter me, but it was not until seven years later that I discovered other writing of Oswald Chambers on the bookshelf of one of my generous friends.

Even though our homes were distant and our visits rare, my friend insisted that I borrow his entire collection of Oswald Chambers, including the 1959 out of print Oswald Chambers, His Life and Work. Knowing that I might never have my own copy of this treasure, or be able to borrow or read this book again, as I read (1996) I created a notebook of favorite passages from this work . That notebook has been tucked away on a shelf for the past four years. Tonight, I came across it and found that it is filled with quotes of a translucent nature that beg to have the light of additional sharing shine though them.

In the pages of Oswald’s biography, when I say I encountered a friend, I mean, to borrow his words, I encountered “a living mind competently expressed.” Oswald was willing to think vulnerably and strenuously. “To think is an effort; to think rightly is a great effort, and to think as a Christian ought to think is the greatest effort of a human soul,” he wrote in a paper he titled “Holy Patience.”

Stick to the Point

Oswald wrote and lived obedient to his own maxim to “stick to the point.” Listen to the pure poetry of his internal dialogue, the economy of his self-counsel, which is found scattered throughout his journal entries. “Be definite…Never lower the ideal…I refuse to worry.”

As I glimpsed how truly thinking this way could shape and energize otherwise lost time and energy of my days, I lamented. Oh the time that I have cast away in the billowing sails of the ship named “waste and worry.” My friend was ready with another word for me, “Arise and do the next thing…never let the sense of failure corrupt your new action.”

And at what pace does one need to stride to keep in step with such a friend? “Unhasting, unresting…” How do two small words capture such dynamic balance?

“Unhasting,” it is a challenging word; laments about the fast pace of life these days are common. Oswald wrote of how he found it a blessed thing in life that “a man carries his kingdom on the inside, and that makes the outside lovely.” The cry of his heart was for the courage to rely on God’s provisions; redemption in Christ Jesus and wisdom of the Holy Spirit to avoid the world’s polarities of rationalism and common sense on the one hand or worry and fear on the other.

Oswald Chambers was known for urging others to recognize any experience that ought to be theirs but was not, and to promptly confess this before God and to put one’s self in the right attitude to make it one’s own. He thought of counseling and teaching as opportunity to experience holiness in human relationships. He prized “spontaneous moral originality.” He urged that organization must be seen “to be the scaffolding,” and that it not be confused with the body that erects it.

This focus on the essence and the essential is delightfully present in so many passages that may have been just the scribbles of some moment he claimed in quietude.

“The thing that comes to me just now is that children, love,straightforwardness, simplicity, are all very old,so old that there is no time about them. They are ageless and they partake of the order of the star and the lily. The busy-nesses, the importance, the worrying, and the doing-goodness are all recent and passing.”

And so is my friend, Mr. Chambers, “very old, so old that there is no time about” him. He too partakes of the “order of the star and the lily” and the order of friendship that transcends time and place and is passed down and along to us in books.

Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night"

A Common Thread

I dislike having to categorize where one day's writing goes versus another. Organizing my journal feels like splitting hairs. There's just one of me, why did I sprout twenty-two labels on this blog and why do I have two blogs? As diverse as the thoughts, feelings and happenings are that prompt me to write, there's a part of me that resists categories and acknowledging divisions. I don't like politics of any kind. For years I managed to pretend politics were of no account, but there is no realm where they do not seem to penetrate. School yard, grocery, bookstore, doctor's office, church, where can one go? Yes, even my notebooks...but I long to just spin and weave with a common thread... I say...with my own embroidery in mind.

Don't get me wrong about wanting to ignore divisions, boundaries are good things. For your visual and mental convenience, I've even started a new paragraph here, hoping to protect all of us from blurry thinking. I see boundaries in nature....niches of functional richness, spatial and temporal and seasonal variations of an environment both allow and limit what grows, and who sings or crawls in any particular place.

Gretchen Johanna at Gladsome Lights leaned on George Bernard Shaw to solve her dilemma of categories : "Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of organized life..." wrote Shaw and so G. J., acknowledging her debt, labeled her archive of posts "Crude Classifications." That helps me, remembering that many of our divisions are but "crude."

Here is an example of the ubiquitous nature of politics: I recently read an interview of a young author, editor, publisher who among other literary efforts, compiled and edited a book of birth stories. Here she is discussing feedback she's received.

Despite the fact that I didn't have a political agenda when I edited the book, I've noticed that people do have a political response to the book. I didn't have any criteria for the essays except that I wanted each essay I selected to reach the highest literary standards. I've found Christians who like the pro-natal aspect of the book but object to the fact that I've included a couple of essays by lesbians. Natural or home birth proponents have objected to the fact that I include hospital births in the book. And hospital birth proponents have argued that the book is biased towards natural birth. Whatever. About half the births in the book are hospital births and half are natural births so I don’t see how there could be a “bias” from either side. And I included essays by Christians, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, and who knows what. I honestly didn't care about that part of it. I just wanted to show that whatever TYPE of birth a person experiences, and no matter what spiritual persuasion a person has, the process of giving birth is life-affirming (even when a baby dies, as happens with one of the birth stories in the book) and that process changes men and women in profound and measurable ways.

I take her at her word, she either didn't have an agenda or was not fully conscious of it, but either way she has set out on an up hill battle. I see her desire; she's looking for a common thread and she, not a mother herself, chose to edit a book focused on something that we each and all do in fact have in common, being birthed. Other of her ventures reveal that she is neither unaware of nor ignores the divisive facts of life; it's more like she's willing to head into the eye of the storm in hopes of transcending them.

But of course it is very political to write about anything primal because the body politic wants control and claim over anything of the essence. That is a very old story. It does no good to proclaim our innocence, even if sitting home sewing crib quilts for peace, the critics, representing a full spectrum of goodwill to skulduggery are likely to come and point out how one's underlying assumptions are revealed by every choice, by what one has deigned to include or exclude. It is out of our assumptions that our more specific and concrete beliefs arise. And our beliefs do shape our methods and if we are worth our salt, so to speak, then our methods ought to line up and bring about our goals. Not to just circle about here, but those goals, in a life of purpose should be a practical reflection of the most primary assumptions, the foundation of our being. As tempting as it is to try and ignore politics, there is a war going on.

Divisions themselves are full spectrum, ranging from positive and purposeful to destructive and profligate. Within one side, one division, other divisions often occur; while occasionally ( and happily) reunions or offers thereof, also happen.

The wires of communication are hotly lit of late with news and opinions about the the recent offer that the Roman Catholic Pope has made to priests and parishioners fleeing the Episcopal Church. While some focus on the divisions that exist between these two ( three, four ?) bodies established over the last four hundred plus years, I read one analysis that explores some of the forces in the world that these entities struggle with. Richard Fernandez describes, in Lighting of the Beacons, some of the division and competition he sees this way: "From one side, there is the religion which pretends to be a political movement — socialism/communism. From the other flank there is the political movement which pretends to be a religion — Islam. Both religions have massive amounts of money, heavy weaponry and great cultural power."

It's an impressive essay, but I won't quote more of it here because it needs to be read in its entirety to be appreciated. Fernandez receives hundreds of comments within hours of posting on his web log. Many of the comments are essays unto themselves, some quite worthy of attention.

As I said, the thoughts, feelings and happenings that prompt me to write are diverse and as tempted as I am to resist nailing things down categorically, there is a difference between splitting hairs and seeing the real fissures in the world. It's a big conversation to enter and I never do so without trepidation but I trust that ultimately, whether in the wild or the civilizations of man, not one bird is forgotten and the hairs on our heads are counted. And I aim to lean into the word found in a letter to the Romans 12:18:

In as much as it is up to you, be at peace with all men

In other words, while standing among clear distinctions, it's also up to us to find a common thread.

~~~~~~~~

The Guard was Down

You have seen today's headlines...dressed as a diplomatic guard a man asks to use the toilet facilities in the lobby of the World Food Center in Pakistan. Hidden behind his vulnerable sounding request was 16 pounds of explosives. As I first read the story I am thinking in normal human terms, this person has a primal need, we all have these needs, someone took pity on him. It takes me only a moment though, as touching as my first thoughts may have been, a guard had to let him pass.

People need to eat and five people who made it their job, their focus to feed displaced and hungry people in Pakistan, have been murdered. The survivors, those workers who live on and the neighbors of the compound in the surrounding residential area in Islamabad are traumatized. Whether the guard let his guard down or was part of the plan...all human relations are challenged by such treachery.

They were feeding the displaced, those who themselves have no accommodations of their own, those who are daily hungry. To the memory of those killed, in their honor, I paraphrase from the Epistle of James: Pure religion is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction...

~~~~~~~~~

The Ishimwe Center a Home for Children in Rwanda

There is a Rescue Home in Ruhengeri, Rwanda that continues to expand in heartfelt response to the pressing needs of children. Ishimwe Center has decided it is time to expand their vision to care for more children without abandoning the primary goal to raise all the children as a family rather than in an institutional setting.

The nanny and the gardener and some of the family

The couple that began this mission are readying themselves to leave their employment and comfortable California home to move to Rwanda to be with the children full time. I hope you will visit their website and read the story and hopes of Rwandan born Faith Shaw and her English born husband, Roger.

Faith Shaw at the Home in Ruhengeri

Little Faith & Hope are part of the family

Recently Ishimwe Center nanny, Judith, came across a child whose parents had both died and then subsequently her remaining grandparent died. The center really was already full, and everyone agreed that no more children should be brought in, but what do you do when you see the face and know the needs of someone truly bereft? The orphaned child hung around the house of a neighbor but the neighbor truly couldn't provide care. Judith became aware of this child when she visited the neighbor. She found herself returning to visit and check on the child and saw that the child was suffering from a skin disease.

As Faith and Roger wrote:

“We had told Judith not to take any more children, but
perhaps we didn't drive the point home and after all she has a soft heart and
was face to face with the suffering. She brought the child to the Rescue Home,
thinking it was a girl about 4 or 5 years old. Later she discovered it was a
boy. When she told us, we also did not want to send him away.

Furthermore, Judith told us that the boy had a sister, one year
older and now struggling alone, but she had only dared to bring one child. We
decided not to break up the remnant of the family and sent Judith back to rescue
the sister. Now both are living at the Rescue Home. The girl (left) is called
Ishimwe (what a great name! So that's what the Ishimwe Center is all about!) and
the boy is called Niyonkuru (or Christian).”

Ishimwe & Niyonkuru

Faith has traveled to Rwanda each year to stay with the children and the people hired to care for them. Roger also goes when his vacation time has allowed it. This March they were able to buy 4 acres of raw hillside land on the outskirts of Kigali. You can read more about what they hope to build and how they plan to both offset running costs and help integrate the children into the local community, by raising and growing food, and building a computer learning center, a day care center and a multi-purpose hall.

I met Faith at a fundraiser a few years ago where she had been hired as a translator. All my encounters with Faith and Roger have been a joy and I will be sorry to have my new friends physically so far away, but the joy of visits will be replaced with the joy of knowing people who are inspired and stretching themselves in love. I will continue to enjoy the energy, peace and fragrance that flow out of their purpose and commitment.

Flavia & Ruka are part of the family too.

Go check out the website of Ishimwe Center and see if it doesn't make you smile.

Thanks for visiting me. I always enjoy your questions and comments.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~