The Sailor and the Toilet Brush

[Reposted from an earlier blog written in 2006. I'm thinking about Veteran's Day in the U.S. today. My dad was a Dutch citizen and thus is not a U.S. veteran, but I thought people might enjoy this story anyhow.]As you may recall, my father was born in Rotterdam and grew up in the Netherlands. Soon after the liberation of the Netherlands from Nazi occupation, my dad signed up to join the Royal Dutch Navy. He had turned eighteen, and was ready for adventure.

Yesterday, as we sat around the table after having lunch together, Daddy waxed full speed ahead into a storytelling mood, and I heard one I hadn't heard before: The story of the sailor and the toilet brush. I think it's as good a story as any for ending the year 2006. Are you ready?

The Dutch are known for being very compulsive about keeping their ships clean. One day, as their navy ship was off the coast of Africa, the sailor in charge of cleaning the toilets went up on deck to clean his toilet brush. He was hitting it against a cable as part of the cleaning regimen when it suddenly bounced out of his hand and flew overboard.

"The toilet brush!" hollered the sailor. "It's the only one on board!" The sailors standing around froze, horrified at what this meant, as they still had far to go on this tour of duty. Without further thought the sailor who'd lost the brush jumped overboard and started swimming with the current, singlemindedly going after the toilet brush.

The intrepid sailor did indeed manage to grab ahold of his toilet brush, but then he turned and had to fight the current to swim back to the navy vessel. He struggled, making very little headway as the other sailors and the captain stood on deck, watching the drama.

"Shouldn't we send a lifeboat out to pick him up?" a sailor queried the captain.

"Why? He hasn't asked for help," replied the captain.

As they watched, a souvenir skiff approached their vessel from shore, bearing a local man who was coming out to sell his souvenirs. The sailor in the water, brush in hand, spotted the skiff and swam over to it. As he tried to pull himself into the little boat, he managed to overturn the boat, the man, and the souvenirs.

What a plight! Now there were two men flailing in the water, one with the toilet brush and one having just lost his livelihood.

"HELP!" cried the sailor in the water.

"Put down the rescue boat," ordered the captain.

So they did. The sailors rescued both men and the overturned skiff. But the souvenirs were gone for good, somewhere on the bottom of the Indian Ocean. The sailors took up a collection to help the souvenir man get started again.

"And that's how it is," finished my dad. "When you need help from the Captain, it's a good thing to send up a shout and ask for it."

The Factory Model: Education

[Caveat: I know there are school districts and schools that are bright spots; for purposes of this post I am looking at a system as a whole.]

We have been committed to a deeply wrong way of thinking in our society, a model that I think is killing us educationally and literally. I have been stewing about it for quite some time, until I have built up quite a head of steam. So here goes for a rant:

Both the educational system and the health system are built on the factory model, a model that is as antiquated and as useful these days as a Model A Ford (however fond you may be of Model A's). For the purposes of simplicity I'll focus this post on education, but I may go for Part Two on healthcare at some point.

The basic idea of the factory model is that if you input the unassembled raw material, you turn out handy finished widgets at the far end, ready for whatever you are producing them to accomplish. 

These are the assumptions inherent in a factory model:

• All incoming raw material will meet the standards of production by the end of the factory process
• A standardized process, or small collection of standardized processes, is adequate to producing the end product.
• Factory workers can be organized to do a standardized task at each station, and can be held accountable for a certain output on a certain timetable. [Or a machine can be programmed to do it more efficiently and effectively than a human worker.]
• The factory workers' tasks are prescribed by those who oversee the system from the 10,000-foot level. If the workers do what the overseers prescribe, they will unfailingly accomplish the objective.
• The widgets produced by the factory are just that: widgets; they are not agents with any say in the process, but are being operated on by the process.
• And a final underlying assumption that I find most abhorrent: human beings can be processed like objects. 

Humans pursue the factory model of education worldwide, with some logic to support their approach. After all, were it not at least mildly effective, we would not use it. Children do learn to read and write and do math in factory model systems.

What increasingly discourages me is the fact that we unthinkingly settle for a factory model that addresses skills, but not true education. The deeper, more intangible and more valuable things that make us humans such wonderful beings are either brushed over or ignored altogether, because no one knows how to effectively address those in a factory model. There are just too many widgets passing through the factory, and no programming sufficient to address the intangible human things, to adequately accomplish the deeper parts of education. 

What are those intangible things? These are the conversations between teacher and student about who we are in this universe, what makes humans different (more than just biologically) from all other living things. These are the interactions about what makes something valuable on this planet and how we fit into that, what altruism is and how humanity and altruism can and should be linked, what deeper beliefs and values underlie our responsibilities to other humans, and our responsibilities to other living organisms and to the environment. These are the things of true education. They can't be standardized, tested, and made into accountability points.

We have settled. We've settled for those things which we can measure, while ignoring the fact they don't matter as much as the things that we can't measure. And we are spending more and more time on objectives, widget-making processes, the mechanization of education, and attempts at testing our product for quality control all along the way and at the far end. This is not just disappointing; it is evil, and we will reap what we have sown as humanity spirals out further and further into the insane, destructive behaviors we see reflected in the madness of the news stories today.

And that is not all.

There is a dilemma regarding the widgets that don't meet our assumptions. We have in mind an idea of children that meet the norm, and for them the factory model may seem to work at least to some degree. But what about the child that is different? The child that has learning disabilities, or behavioral challenges, or mental health issues, or physical challenges, or emotional wounds that go so deep that they are walled off from learning? The school system (i.e. "the factory") has made a stab at trying to address these needs, but often doesn't get there. Here and there the "widget" falls through the cracks onto the floor, or gets mangled in the machinery, or has a meltdown in some chamber of the factory system. This is so painful.

And then what about the child that is ready to go faster, higher, deeper than the machine of the factory has been set up to go? The conveyor belt is only going to go just one speed, the cooker will only get just so hot, and the extra beauties that could be included to customize the widget are ignored because the efficiency of the factory model says, "We can't stop to add these, can't build in a detour in the machine." It all goes one speed, does one thing, and leaves out others. There is no mechanism in the factory model to adequately customize for giftedness. If we're looking at norms, gearing the machinery for the middle part of the bell curve of humanity, the ends of that bell curve get chopped off. "Sorry, we can't handle you. Just fall into line with the others."

And that is not all. The next one is the one that is making me madder and madder these days:

When you view education as a factory system, you deprofessionalize the widget-makers. Teachers are no longer the professionals, the experts who can decide just how to meet the needs of their students, how to teach and reteach the content as needed, how and when to take a break for the really important conversations that need to be had about humanity, and current events, and family situations, and what is really important in life. The prescribed curriculum and testing schedules are bearing down on them, the accountability measures (well-meaning, but so misguided; can we reference the mechanisms of NCLB, Common Core and other federal initiatives?) rest on them as a heavy weight that obliterates their freedom as thinking, creative human beings to actually spend their days educating (not just teaching or training) their students.

When we deprofessionalize teaching, either from the outside or the inside of the profession, all of society will suffer.

In my state the stream of people going into training for the education profession--if you can call it a "profession" anymore in the public arena--has been drying up. The shortage has begun. Why would you want to enter a profession where you are a treated as a widget-maker and placed under incredible and constant pressures, criticisms and limiting factors and policies? In my state school districts can't find enough credentialed teachers to hire, and are again beginning to throw interns into classrooms to sink or swim with groups of students. I'm a huge fan of new teachers with all their energy, dedication, idealism and love for their students. But if my kid were in a classroom with an inexperienced, non-credentialed, sink-or-swim teacher candidate who was trying to teach without an experienced mentor at his/her side on a daily basis, I would be frantic. I have one shot, ONE shot, at getting it right with my child, and a whole year can make a difference. In two shakes we are going to be in a crisis situation in my state for credentialed, experienced, professionally capable teachers in the public school system.

Let me share a bit of my experience in a private, denominationally-supported school system, as a comparison point. In our system we have had an approved curriculum chosen by a regional committee made up of teachers, and teachers can request a variance if they support their request with a good educational rationale. Teachers are the professionals, deciding how and on what schedule to teach the content. In my classrooms we did standardized testing once a year, and the test results were reviewed simply to provide information, not to rate us as professionals or to decide how much funding our schools would get. My colleagues and I assumed each child was different, and it was my job as a professional to find or devise solutions for helping each student to learn and grow, not only academically, but also personally. If I saw a need to stop for half a day and tend to something that was a human issue for my students, I had the freedom to do that. I was the professional, and we were all in that room to learn together. A "teachable moment" might distract us from the planned curriculum, but that was all right. We ended the year--all of us--one year more educated.

If I were to choose a metaphor for what happens in my denomination's system of private schooling, I would not reference a factory model. I would say it's more like tending a garden in which it's my job as a teacher to help each young plant--and the students are not all carrots, or tomatoes, or daisies or peach trees; they're a mix of whatever pops up in your garden each year--to thrive and grow and bear fruit. That kind of freedom and meaningful work is what has made it a joy and satisfaction for me to walk into my classroom each day.

I'm not a widget-maker who has to keep up with the conveyer belt and do the prescribed task year-in and year-out in automatic repetitive mode, but a professional teacher who changes my approach yearly to meet the need of the students, and to reflect my own quest for professional growth and effectiveness. I am a diagnostician in the educational sense. A sage. A seeker. A dedicated director, fertilizer, loyal audience and cheering squad for my students.

The data, by the way, document that the "garden" approach not only produces good fruit in our school system's students. But the students (and we are not selective, so there are all kinds of students of all kinds of backgrounds in our schools) score academically above the national norms on standardized tests, and that gap widens with every year that those students continue to attend our schools. Our students do very well, and much higher percentages of them go on to college and beyond to graduate schools, than the national norms. These are things to be proud of, and to investigate more closely.

Having said that, my heart still aches for the public school system in our country. It is full of precious teachers and students who struggle under a multi-layered burden loaded onto them by the factory model. People in power who are not educators (politicians and business moguls with the influence of money) are continuing to operate from the factory model. Non-educators are directing our educational system, deciding how it will be resourced, and using the system to their own ends. I don't see society turning from the factory model any time soon; those in power have bought in so thoroughly to that mindset. Is there any rescue possible?

Let me finish with a quote that has guided my educational philosophy and experience for a long time. This comes from Ellen White, who wrote a great deal about education during the first 50 years of my church's history. This (below) is what I don't see us accomplishing in our society. We could do better, even where we are not free to include the faith-related themes referred to in this quote. These core values are what we should be aspiring to accomplish in educating the coming generations:

Every human being, created in the image of God, is endowed with a power akin to that of the Creator-- individuality, power to think and to do. The men in whom this power is developed are the men who bear responsibilities, who are leaders in enterprise, and who influence character. It is the work of true education to develop this power, to train the youth to be thinkers, and not mere reflectors of other men's thought. 

Instead of confining their study to that which men have said or written, let students be directed to the sources of truth, to the vast fields opened for research in nature and revelation. Let them contemplate the great facts of duty and destiny, and the mind will expand and strengthen. Instead of educated weaklings, institutions of learning may send forth men strong to think and to act, men who are masters and not slaves of circumstances, men who possess breadth of mind, clearness of thought, and the courage of their convictions. 

Such an education provides more than mental discipline; it provides more than physical training. It strengthens the character, so that truth and uprightness are not sacrificed to selfish desire or worldly ambition. It fortifies the mind against evil. Instead of some master passion becoming a power to destroy, every motive and desire are brought into conformity to the great principles of right.

Gives me goosebumps. That is true education. 

Who is Nigel Hawley?

With my dad, recently

Truth be told, I have been trying all my life to get my dad's recognition and affirmation.

Before you conclude that I'm some blithering wreck of a daughter, let me assure you that by the time I figured this out I had differentiated from my dad enough that it was simply a "situation," not an ever-present wound. There has only been one situation in my adult life when it was really painful to not be able to gain my dad's verbal affirmation, and it is what it is. My dad simply does not grant me recognition when I do well, and that's more about him than it is about me. Nowadays it's just interesting or even amusing when it happens. He loves me dearly, but he has passed up some good opportunities to bond.

So a couple of days ago I was visiting my parents and said to my dad, "You know, dads like opportunities to brag on their kids, so let me give you some good bragging fodder."

"Oh yes?" he said. I saw the glint of interest in his eye. He was pretty perky that day, not at all fuzzy, and ready for stimulating conversation.

"I got an e-mail from one of our students," I said. "You don't know her. She's a teacher in Taiwan. She works with Nigel Hawley, who I met again when I was working at the booth in Texas." I had been at a large church conference, taking my shifts at our university's booth. Nigel had walked in and we had some initial discussion about the university providing professional development for his teachers in Taiwan.

"Who's Nigel Hawley?" my dad asked.

"A principal of an American school in Taiwan," I said. "You don't know him."

"Hawley, Hawley," said Daddy, rolling over the name and trying to make a connection.

"Never mind!!!" I exclaimed. "You don't know him. So let me read you what our student wrote to me. You can brag on this stuff, you know."

"What's his name? Where is he from? Do we know him?" my dad queried again.

"Nigel Hawley. You have never met him and he's not related to anyone we know. He's probably 30 years old. Let me see, ..." I fished around on my e-mail and then read him the line from our student's e-mail: "Oh yes, here it is. 'Nigel Hawley tells me that he met you at the GC session. He also said that he wishes he had a brain like yours, and I must say that he said that with more than just a touch of envy.'"

I looked up at my dad in triumph. There you go, Daddy. You sprouted a daughter who impressed a young principal with her great brain. Come on, show some pride.

There was a pause.

"Nigel Hawley," said my dad. "Now who is Nigel Hawley?"

Standing on a Burning Grate

Not an attractive illustration, but necessary for the topic

I had just learned to walk by the age of 1 when my parents took me and my brother (the newborn) on our first airplane ride all the way from Bangkok to the United States. On that long trip across the Pacific Ocean, my mother has told me, I refused to keep my shoes on. I ran up and down the aisle of the plane barefoot, she said, to the delight of other travelers. Well, at least she remembers them as being delighted. As I ponder the scenario, I can't imagine why they would have felt that magnanimous.

My barefoot ways continued at Grandma's house in La Puente, a suburb of sprawling Los Angeles. It was winter, and the heat was on in Grandma's California bungalow-style house with heating grates set into the hallway floors. No one considered that this little one-year old might be in any danger. 

No one, that is, until cousin Esther, who was on crutches at the time, saw me run into the long hallway barefoot and step onto a heater grate. I screamed and stood still with the hot grate burning into my little foot. Esther also screamed as she tried to move in my direction to rescue me. My mom came running, grabbed me up, raced out the back door and plunged my feet into icy-cold rainwater in the barrel behind the house. And for a while I ceased walking as my foot healed.

As I grew, the scar from the burn grew with my foot. My size 9+ foot bears a scar much bigger than my 1-year-old foot. It doesn't hurt and it hasn't impeded my walking. I remember it from time to time and take another look at it (even though it requires me to contort myself around to see the bottom of my foot), occasionally peeling off a little layer of skin where new cells have replaced the old, still maintaining the scar.

As a child I liked to think about what would happen if I were ever kidnapped. Would my mom still recognize me if I was found years and years later, looking different? I knew I would prove to her who I was by showing her the distinctive scar on my foot. (Yes, I was a dramatic child, full of unlived stories.)

I ponder that criss-cross scar. Through the years I have wondered, "Why did I just stand there with my foot on the grate? Why did I not immediately jerk my foot back and thus avoid the depth of the burn? Why did the scar grow as my foot grew? Why is it that we use scars to verify people's identities?"

The scar of the grate on my right foot has become a metaphor.

Too many of us are willing, for whatever reason, to "stand on the grate" and not move away while we are getting deeply burned by a person or situation. You don't have to do this. There are times to stay where you are and stick it out, and sometimes that is the righteous thing to do. But I think we apply that "stay and stick it out" principle far more broadly than we should.

Once you have been burned by a person or situation and the injury results in a scar, there is a possibility that the scar will grow larger and more pronounced as you continue to develop throughout your life. For those of us who grow our scars, I believe we are complicit in their growth. I don't know why they grow in some and not in others, nor what "aloe" you can apply to keep the scar from growing. But I think the first step is to recognize the fact that the scar has grown bigger than the hurt, and to deliberately remind yourself that the original hurt was smaller than its scar. When you allow your scars to grow larger than they should be in the whole body of your life, they can overwhelm and cripple you.

Finally, we can all identify certain people by their scars. These people tell and retell the stories of the hurts that created their scars. They can contort themselves around to view their scars again, and they will do so often. They have grown their scars bigger along the way. They make their scars part of their identity, so that even if you lost track of a person, someone describing the scar would discover that you could tell them exactly which person it belonged to. For these people, their scars become a core part of their identity. 

There are people around you who can help you to "step off the grate," and who can help you examine the scars and heal from the hurts. And I believe there is a Healer who is eager to work through these people, who can take away your pain and give you a new identity apart from your scars. For human and divine healing, I am grateful.

I will heal you of your wounds, said the Lord. Jeremiah 30:17

Pictures From the Life of a Wannabe Altruist

Picture #1:
Years ago on a relatively cold winter's day for southern California, I came upon a little family pushing a grocery cart along a road through an orange grove. Always a bit impulsive, I pulled over. A God-thing, I wondered in the moment? It felt like I was actually being urged to pick them up. Whatever it was, I rolled down my window and asked if they needed a ride. The kids were dirty-faced and the parents were hauling a few bags of belongings. They happily abandoned their cart at the side of the road and piled in--all five of them--to my warm VW Rabbit.

"Where do you need to go?" I asked.

To the Rosewood Motel off Anderson Street, they told me.

Wow, I thought. They would have had to walk about five miles to get there. How did they end up in this orange grove? They were vague about it, as I recall, and I drove them to the motel, one of those low-budget two-storey types with the doors opening right toward the street.

Having been raised on angel stories, moral stories and miracle stories, I'm a hopeless storyteller--to myself if no one else. The inner chatter in my head tested out one dramatic scenario after another as I drove along, breathing in the unwashed scent of the family. One story went like this: They are angels, and God is testing my heart for unselfishness. Or: They were going to meet some horrible end, but I have unwittingly saved them. Or: They will throw themselves at my feet in gratefulness for making their lives bearable today in the midst of their hardships.

But I got no story, no moral or miracle. The couple didn't offer anything other than a simple thank-you as they all hopped out of the car. They didn't disappear when I looked away, didn't tell me "the rest of the story," didn't give any indication that I saved their lives or made their day.

Being a curious and overly-responsible sort of person, I stayed in the motel parking lot to see what would happen after the little family checked in. They got a room on the ground floor and let themselves in. As I drove away, the last glimpse burned itself into my memory: the door of the motel room still open, kids up jumping on the bed while the parents moved around in the room beyond them.

Picture #2:
Driving to the grocery store one snowy, bitterly cold New Year's Day when I was in college, I saw a young woman standing by the road with her thumb held out. No one should be out in this cold for long, I thought. I "felt the urge," pulled over and she got in.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"Burbank," she said, warming up her hands in the flow of air from my heat vents.

Burbank! That was twelve miles away.

"But you can just take me as far as you can, and then I'll get another ride," she said.

I started in the direction of Burbank, and my little VW Rabbit just kept on going. All twelve miles.

She started talking. She'd gotten in a fight with a guy at the bar the night before, and he'd hit her, she said. She showed me where he'd ripped the belt out of the seam of her coat. And then she asked about the music playing on my stereo system. "That's Christian music, isn't it?" she said, starting to cry. She was so distraught, I reached over and held her hand. All the way to Burbank.  I dropped her off and drove back to the grocery store.

That was all. No story with a moral or a miracle.

The picture burned itself into my memory: my right hand by the gear shift, holding the hand of this teary young woman, about my own age.

Picture #3:
Yesterday I went through the drive-in at Starbucks. It was a beastly hot, humid day, a day that didn't feel like it was hanging together with any cohesiveness. I wanted something to ease my journey while doing errands. As I drove up to the speaker post, I noticed a sweaty middle-aged freckled man in a straw hat squatting down and working on some kind of conduit pipe right next to the speaker.

I placed my order, feeling odd that the man was forced to listen in. Then I addressed him, friendly-like: "Are YOU getting something cold to drink on a day like this?"

It took him a second to register that I had spoken to him. "Hah," he said, glancing over his shoulder.

How do you write that so a reader hears all that was conveyed? His tone was cynical and off-putting. He wasn't just irritated or wishful; he thought I was a bit nuts.

Fine, I thought. I'm weird and I say things people don't understand.

I drove on to the window and got my order, then "felt the urge" and handed the girl another $5 bill. "Do you have someone who can take the time to get that man a cold drink?" I asked. I motioned over my shoulder.

She craned her neck to look out toward the speaker post. "Sure," she said. "What do you want to order?"

"I don't know," I said. "Whatever you think he would like. I'll just leave the $5 with you to cover it."

She looked rather confused, and I drove away. I tried to imagine a young Starbucks worker handing the freckled man a cold coffee, and couldn't come up with any scenario other than a vague one of him responding with some slightly negative remark. As I rounded the corner with my eye on the rear view mirror, another picture got filed away in my head: the man in the straw hat standing up with his back to me, arms at his sides, silhouetted in the sunlight and looking off slightly to the left.

No moral or miracle or divinely-arranged quiz here. Just another picture.

Your Name Shall Be

"No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations." Genesis 17:5

I may have written about this before, but here goes for another round. I have wondered off and on about names. It was fairly early in my teaching career that I noticed that every Brian I knew seemed to face challenges. They made trouble in school, were hard to miss because of strong personality, and were very active. Could there be something about a name that shapes a person, I wondered?

According to this website, where I looked up the name "Brian":

The meaning of this name is not known for certain but it is possibly related to the old Celtic element bre meaning "hill", or by extension "high, noble". It was borne by the semi-legendary Irish king Brian Boru, who thwarted Viking attempts to conquer Ireland in the 11th century.

That doesn't explain the Brians I know, unless you extrapolate that Brians are willing to stake out a "hill to die on," in terms of being less than malleable.

I still wondered.

And I wonder about other names. In the passage I quote at the start of this post, did it make a difference in the character of Abraham to have his name changed to mean "father of a multitude," rather than "exalted father"? What was the difference for him? Did he become different in any way because of that slight shift in meaning?

And what's up with all the people in the Bible whose names actually describe their stories? Samuel means "God has heard," and he was a child who was much prayed for. David's name means "beloved," and somewhere the Bible comments that David "was a man after God's own heart." Ruth, a character who stood loyally by her mother-in-law, bears a name that means "friend." Esther, the queen who shone for her beauty as well as her bravery, bears the Persian name that means "star." The name Moses is said to bear the meaning, "deliver." Elijah, the prophet who stood alone against Baal in the Mount Carmel story, has a name that means "my God is Yahweh." The new testament writer who began as Saul (which means "prayed for"), after his life-changing and debilitating Damascus road experience, becomes "Paul," which means "small" or "humble."

So did any of those characters get those names later, as people retold their stories? Or were those the real names? Did their characters determine their names? Or did their names shape their characters? Is it simply coincidence?

I wonder, off and on, about names.

My mom's name comes from a name that means "to speak well." And indeed, my mother was always articulate and had an excellent vocabulary up until her Alzheimers started to diminish her ability to find the right words. My dad's name means "God has heard" or "dark," both of which could describe his life when taken together. My brother's name comes from the Dutch nickname for Cornelius, which means "horn." Okay, it's a stretch, but my brother did once play the tuba in his high school band. Perhaps this whole name thing is a figment of my imagination. Perhaps not.

I was nicknamed "Ginger" by my dad, who started calling me that on the day I was born with red hair, despite the fact that my mom named me "Rena." You could trace "Rena" back to a meaning of "born again," according to the website, whereas "Ginger" refers to spicy-ness. No one ever called me "Rena" in my life.  I would theorize that my nickname, which I took on legally as an adult, shaped me. I do tend to live on the spicy side.

People have come to me over the years--just last week again--and commented on the fact that I'm a brave person, one who speaks up and people listen, one who is unafraid to call a spade, a spade. Fortunately, they tend to indicate that this is done in an admirable way, not just flinging about rude observations about the emperor having no clothes. I have to admit, I am pleased when I hear it. You may not agree with the things I say, but there is some worth, in my opinion, in standing up for what I think or believe. Because I am by nature compelled to please/appease people and seek their approval, I aspire to be a woman who can with dignity voice a personal stance or concern, and a solid rationale with my observations. I want to be courageous enough to speak up for what I see to be just or righteous (in the broadest sense of that word). Although I try to always consider other points of view and am willing even change my own point of view when it seems indicated, there are times to stand my ground, to know who I am and what I believe in face of who you are and what you believe. I have the right to that. I want to be able to calmly take the displeasure of others who may be unhappy with either the substance of what I said, or the fact that I was willing to voice it.

My hope and goal in being "ginger" about my world is that I will be kind--not destructive, not acerbic and not snarky--in voicing where I stand. I may be energetic in what I say, even dramatic in how I say it. But I hope that people on the hearing end of my words will always perceive that I am at my core respectful, personally interested in them, and value them as fellow humans of great worth in this journey, regardless of differences in opinion, belief, lifestyle, culture or ethics.

And I would hope for exactly the same courtesies in the way that others exercise their "ginger" with me.

Going Back

[Last night I had dinner in real life with my blogger friend Jayne, and it brought to mind for me how I miss blogging. I miss putting my thoughts down and thus finding out what I think. I miss having at least a few loyal readers dropping by, not necessarily agreeing with what I think, but doing me the great honor of reading, considering and commenting in some kindly way. So here we go again. I'm posting. And today my thoughts are on the portion of Bible I copied by hand this morning--a daily practice for me--from Genesis.]

Map from here

"[Abram] went on his journeys from the Negev as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place of the altar which he had made there formerly; and there Abram called on the name of the Lord." Gen. 13:3-4

Going back to a place of spiritual significance is a recurring theme in the Bible stories.

Abram built an altar just after he entered the land of Canaan for the first time and heard the promise of descendants, near Bethel. It was to this place he journeyed from time to time to reconnect with God. Much later Joshua had the Israelites set up twelve stones to commemorate their crossing of the Jordan River. They were to bring their children back to hear the story there, to reconnect and to connect for the first time. (Joshua 4)  Samuel, later again, set up a memorial stone which he named "Ebenezer" to mark a time when God routed the Philistines after they invaded Israel's territory. (1 Samuel 7) Ebenezer was a place to reconnect with a memory of being saved from annihilation.

I think that most people have a place of spiritual significance... and I use that term broadly. It's a place where thoughts or experiences happened that seemed transcendent. I have several of those "going back" places. The first of mine is found at the north end of Hayden Lake in northern Idaho.

Picture found here

I worked at summer camp on Hayden Lake for two summers during my college years. Every morning I'd walk out to the campfire bowl where the view was in the direction of the above photo, and I would spend time seeking God. Above me towered huge trees. Right in my line of sight from my customary place on the wooden bench was a busy hummingbird, building her nest on a lower branch. Each morning I watched and saw the evidence of the eggs hatching, the bird feeding her babies and finally the little family abandoning the nest as they grew up and flew off. I can't recall any significant event that took place right there, but I clearly remember the feeling of well-being as I'd sit there in the mornings, putting first things first. When I'm in the area I like to return and to sit quietly, letting the senses of those mornings return.

Another significant spiritual place is the front room of the first house I owned, in northern California. Also the mornings, I would sit on the sofa by the window (you see the window behind the tall tree in the middle) with my mug of tea, reading my Bible and writing in my prayer journal. Significant insights bloomed there, troubles were written out and worked through, and people were prayed for. This was where I lived as I settled into my career as an academic, and where I dwelt as I got to know my husband and married him. Again the visual image and the feelings from those mornings are clear and happy ones, with the morning light streaming in the windows, the neighborhood quiet and peaceful. A friend lives there now and loves my little house, but I drive by whenever I'm "on the hill."

My third significant spiritual spot is an island called Koh Kood off the coast of Thailand where I visited, on my own, for a retreat when my work had been long and hard. I was contemplating a possible move to California and not knowing if the possibility would work out or whether I would feel free to move. On the way across the South China Sea to the island I was sitting alone on my bench in the boat and listening with an expectant heart. I didn't know what I was listening for. But almost loud enough to be audible there was a voice inside me that said, "It's time to go." Just like that, as I was looking at this cloud in the picture. "It's time to go."

The rest of my time on the island was precious, thoughtful, rejuvenating, and I have written about here. If I were to pick any place like Abram's Bethel altar that seemed life-changing in terms of an event and a connection with God, it would be Koh Kood. Abram only had to travel about 55 miles from where he lived in the Negev desert to reconnect with his place; when I return to Koh Kood--and I certainly intend to do so--I will have to travel for about 20 hours in a journey that takes me all the way across the Pacific Ocean by air, van and boat.

There is something compelling about a connection with a person or experience that is transcendent to one's frail human self, pegged to a particular place. I think it's a good thing to be able to return, to be quiet, to experience the memory of promises and insights, and "call on the name of the Lord," as it was described of Abram. A Bethel, or a Jordan crossing, or an Ebenezer. Whatever you call it, a going-back place brings us full circle in the very best sense of the word to a touchstone that signifies meaning in our transient lives. It's good.