15 minutes of fame

In case you don't watch daytime television and you haven't yet heard, Neville, of recent Chinese Idol fame, took his mother Karen to the Price is Right, and she got to play! I won't ruin the ending for you, but let me just say this: it's worth watching.

A Day When The Word Christian Has a Single, Clear Definition With No Assumptions, Implications, Explanations or Disclaimers Needed

In Barnes and Noble today I saw a display of books with a sign that read, "The New Christians." The table was filled with books by those probably calling themselves Emergent. So many Christians, including many in my circles and sometimes even myself, have spent so much energy on insisting that they didn't belong to the Evangelical sect of our religion. They've wanted so desperately to distance themselves from the word, and many times for good and valid reasons. Now that they've made a name for themselves and have pushed past that point, I'm wondering how long it will take before we see the effects of the Emergent church, and the same cycle will begin. We'll have to explain to everyone how we don't consider ourselves a part of the Emergent church, and we'll have to find another new name for it all, and there will be a whole new slew of books written with a new display at Barnes and Noble reading, "The Newer Christians."

I recently finished the graphic novel Blankets by Craig Thompson. This is by far the most profoundly beautiful piece of art I've experienced in a long time; it has deeply affected me. Its many themes are still rattling in my brain several weeks after finishing it. There is plenty to focus on, but I'm busy wondering why such an astute and talented young man could find no refuge, no role, no niche in Christianity, ultimately deciding to leave it behind. The core of the issue is that this artist saw nothing different in the churches or Christians he knew. His parents and girlfriends' parents--professing Christians--fought and abused each other just as much as pagan parents did. He felt like just as much of an outcast in church as he did in his public high school. Christianity, as it does in many parts of our country, meant nothing other than being busy on a Sunday morning and throwing around some fancy rhetoric every now and then that held very little weight when it came to living.

And so with these things in mind, today I am longing for just one thing. I am longing for the day when The Church unites, and its reading of Scripture matches its theology, and its theology matches its teaching, and its teaching matches its practice, and its practice matches its daily living, and its daily living is good and true and meaningful and authentic. I am longing for the day when--rather than relying on hunches, the culture at large, the latest attention-grabbing teacher, or even our beloved well-intentioned pastors--we take a good, hard, look at God's holy Word, take it seriously, read it carefully, and let it change our views, our lives, our actions. I am longing for the day when we see the distracting crap we come up with--our multitude of sacrifices, our meaningless offerings, incense, New Moon festivals, and appointed feasts--for exactly what it is. I am longing for the day when Christians take worship, fellowship, and service seriously and intentionally, because of what they know to be true in God's Word.

I am longing for the day when that is what it means to be a Christian, and that's all it means.

(May the revolution first begin in my own life.)

Pictoral and Prose Review of Spring Break 2008

Erica was very excited to see the wild horses of Assateague in the daytime. Once night fell, though, she became quite petrified of running into them, not quite being sure how to handle them in order to avoid being bitten and kicked, as many signs warned. This one heard us eating pretzels and desperately wanted some, pressing his large nostrils against our car window that had been put up just in time. It was more fun than a Six Flags safari.

We discussed various responses one could take upon encountering a wild horse. Play dead? Back away slowly? Make loud noises? After dark on our first night, we had the opportunity to put our theories to the test. We exited the bathroom facilities and ran into a lone horse slowly walking down the paved driveway of the camping sites. He looked quite eerie in the moonlight. We stopped; he stopped. We started walking, and he started walking towards us. Without hesitating to give it any further thought, this resulted in us sprinting through vacant campsites, running over mounds of sand and through shrubs, giggling frantically most of the way, and diving hurriedly into the safety of our tent.

Our entire trip down was very cloudy and dreary, but the minute we pulled onto Assateague, the sun came out and things warmed up a tiny bit. It was very exciting and made putting up the tent and the outlook of the entire trip a bit more pleasant.

Our humble campsite was just a sand dune away from the beach. It was nice to fall asleep at night listening to the ocean.

We were deceiving ourselves a bit in this trip. Traveling south, hanging out by a beach, and emphasizing the SPRING in spring break made us think that 40 degree weather couldn't possibly be that cold. In fact, I had even packed a pair of shorts just in case they'd be needed. Well, especially with the 20+ mph wind factored in, it was pretty unbearably cold. We had plenty of layers, but no essentials like a coat that breaks the wind or gloves or, for me, a hat.

But hanging out on the beach, fully dressed and completely alone, was quite a bit therapeutic. I've been concerned lately as I feel like I don't always see the world with as much beauty as I did a few years back, but this trip seemed to give me a little bit of a jump start in that regard. I had never had a campfire on the beach before, and that was pretty much one of the most lovely things I've ever done. What a privilege.

The forecast for our final day was supposed to be a bit warmer and nicer. We had our hopes set on staying a bit to enjoy it, but when we woke up to find our tent stakes blown out of the ground and our tent collapsing, we made a pretty quick getaway. The temperature did indeed go up, but with no sun and super high winds, there was no need to stick around and it was time to head home.

This little adventurous trip did our hearts good, I think, with plenty of teamwork and giggles and time off from the rest of the world.

shut up about poetry, already

I won't promise that this is the last thing I'll be saying about poetry, but I'll try to restrain myself a bit more from here on out.

For my Children's Literature class at Taylor, I had to read something like 100 kids books in one semester or something like that. Our library had an ee cummings book for kids. It was tough to track down, but I found a used copy on the world wide web and it came yesterday. I'm excited to share it with my students.

Mr. Cummings is one of those poets I desperately want to like, but most of the time I just don't get it. But in listening to him read his poetry, these lines of his struck me:

--time is a tree(this life one leaf)
but love is the sky and i am for you
just so long and long enough

Elsewhere, I've tried to get back into Chesterton's Orthodoxy after being scared away by the second chapter. Turns out the second chapter had quite a bit to say when I got around to being in the right frame of mind for it. Talking more about a healthy dose of imagination and humility than poetry per se, he says,

"Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."

Who's alive?

This morning, in an attempt to connect with Erica's heritage and visit her fifth grade teacher turned pastor, we ventured to the local Hungarian Evangelical Reformed Church. I'll spare you all of the many interesting details and observations and share the most humorous (or depressing?) moment.

During the fellowship time, over a traditional meal of Cream of Lima Bean Soup and Cabbage Strudel, Erica and I enjoyed some conversation with two women in their late eighties who have been friends "as long as they can remember." At several points in discussing various small-town matters, they reminded each other that so-and-so had died a few years back. This lead them to listing other friends who were dead, and finally they decided it would be easier to change the conversation to who is still living.

Esther said in all seriousness, "Well, who's alive?" They began listing their living friends, a list much shorter than the first. Looking around, something told me we weren't the only table (out of the three set up in the basement) having that discussion.

Things a Camera Can't Capture (i know because i tried)

• A lovely lack of light pollution
  
• The waxing gibbous casting my stark shadow on the hard sand by the water
• My wife skipping towards me, bathed in shades and tones of soft blue light
  
• Rolling waves capturing bright white glimmers of moonlight as they rush forward
• The top of fence posts on the crest of a sand dune dressed in black in front of a blue starry backdrop
• My wife cast in an orange and yellow glow from our fire with the blue sand, gray waves and dark sky behind her

Even on the nighttime setting, nothing would come out except big black rectangles. Photographs can create feelings, sure, but can they capture or replicate feelings? Rarely, very rarely.


Hmmm...even with some iPhoto modification, it's not quite the same.

Poetic Review of Spring Break 2008 (so far)

The only assignment I gave my students over Spring Break was to write just one poem about their travels. I promised I would do the same. Erica and I just returned from Assateague National Seashore, and in a moment of brave vulnerability, I will share some of our poetry:

A haiku by me:
Marks made in the sand
and erased just thereafter
Endless etch-a-sketch

A haiku by Erica:
Waves dance crazily
Sun playing on my cold face
Winter rebellion

A haiku by both of us:
Seven sandpipers
flee quickly from ocean's foam.
Poke & prod, repeat.

And another poem by me:
White foam unrolls
Attempting to reach toes
Two friends walk slowly on a stretch of sand
Sun shining bold
But noses stay cold
Sweatshirts and scarves keep bodies untanned
How odd that we
Pass time by this sea
the last vast expanse keeping us from foreign land


Pictures and prose forthcoming.

On Teaching Poetry

I am no poetry expert, that much is for certain. In all honesty, I don't even like that much poetry. One reason might be because I've never had much of a formal education on it. I can't remember a whole lot of it in high school, so the last thing I can remember is writing quite a few poems for Mrs. Serridge in 8th grade.

Billy Collins, of course, seems to have made poetry popular again in this country. I often wonder what real poetry-lovers think of him. Is he like the easily-digestible popular romantic comedy film-lovers despise? All I know is I love his knack for turning a commonplace situation into a beautiful, extraordinary daydream. I've always wanted to like poetry, but after a lot of fumblings elsewhere, Billy Collins made me able to like poetry.

So I got a bit excited when I found out it was time to start the poetry unit with my fifth graders. But when I introduced it to them on a Friday afternoon, they seemed quite uninterested. Upon probing this disinterest a little bit, I concluded it was founded upon three reasons:

1) Poetry is Childish. Maybe these kids are sick of writing haikus year after year, counting 5 on their fingers, then 7 on two hands, then 5 again, over and over and over. One can only write so many haikus on the season of your choice before becoming a little nauseous after a while. And maybe these kids are simply maturing, ready to move on to the too-cool-stage of middle school. For example, when I mentioned Shel Silverstein in passing, one boy yelled from the back row, "Shel Silverstein's a child!" (No, not childish, in fact, he is so childish that he is quite frankly a child. Wow.) So, I'm setting out to show them that grown-ups can like poetry, too.

2) Poetry is Girly. No surprise here. I noticed a trend in then gender of the protesters. It was the boys. And if they don't consider poetry to be girly, it's at least artsy, which is pretty close to the same thing. When I told them a story about Wes and I finding a haiku in an art gallery that we both really loved, a boy raised his hand and asked accusingly, "Is your brother-in-law artsy?" Um, yes, yes he is, I had to reply. But hopefully, if they don't write me off as being artsy (girly) perhaps what little masculinity I possess can persuade them that men can like poetry, too.

3) Poetry is Hard to Understand. What can I say? I'm with them on this one. But I'm trying to convince them that not all poetry is hard to understand (ie: Billy Collins) and sometimes if you give it just a little bit of a chance it might be a little bit easier.

I found these reasons to be quite interesting, and I would venture to guess they are the same reasons most of our society doesn't appreciate or value poetry. Would you agree?

So, I've read these kids a bit of Billy Collins, and there are a few fans in the room. Those few fans make it worth it, I suppose. I've picked up a few other poetry treats that I hope to scan over spring break...an Ogden Nash anthology, ee cummings reading his own work on CD, and two other anthologies each with 100 other poets reading their work. I also want to have some friends in on some Friday afternoons to share their favorite poems with the class.

I simply want these kids to realize that, with a little creativity, anything can be turned into poetry. When we were having a quiet writing session this afternoon (with Sufjan Stevens playing in the background), one girl insisted on using the electric pencil sharpener incessantly. It was annoying everyone pretty badly, causing them to mumble and talk and complain and call out. I told them if they needed to describe how loud and annoying that pencil sharpener was, they should write it down and make a poem out of it. It took some work to convince them I wasn't joking about it, and finally one boy took me up on it.

I've hung a list of words that are banned from our poems. At my previous place of employment, this might be a list of profane or vulgar words, which I don't need to worry about so much here. Instead, I'm banning the boring words like good, bad, nice, it, and thing. This afternoon before leaving for the break, I created a small sign and hung it above the list of banned words. It reads, "Poetry transforms commonplace into extraordinary."

Here's hoping these fifth graders can accomplish exactly that.

π

Happy Pi Day!

I played the song at the above link for my students today, trying to get them jazzed up about pi and all, but I seemed to be the only one affected by that hott bass line. I couldn't contain myself.

The son of a math teacher brought in two chocolate pies for us to eat during snack time.

And I had each of the kids write three digits of pi on individual sheets of paper and hung them up at the top of the front wall in my classroom. That means we have 54 digits covered. After spring break, I hope to up that to at least 108, but I don't anticipate reaching the first ten thousand any time soon.

selling out

So, Reader's Digest promises $100-$300 for funny true stories that end up being published in their pages. Guess who's digging through six years of blog archives and submitting away?

Got any favorites?

namedrop

Not only is this video quite amusing and yesterday's #1 at YouTube, but it also stars my friend Jamin in a full-size squirrel costume. Yep, it's him. And, it will also be a nice addition to my Earth Day curriculum.

Sir Isaac Newton, Rest in Peace

The boy with a much-too-mature sense of humor called out in class today when I was teaching physics. Frustrated by never accounting for air resistance when calculating the acceleration and velocity of imaginary tennis balls falling from imaginary buildings, he shouted,

"I heard Isaac Newton died by suffocating in a vacuum!"

Beautiful Beauty

Faithful readers have probably caught on that I talk about--and look for--beauty quite a bit. Whenever I'm talking about my latest favorite film, album, or book, I get worried about sounding so redundant if I keep using the noun beauty or the adjective beautiful. But to me, the words capture a certain, specific feeling to which no other word is synonymous. All along, I guess I'm hoping the people who hear me use the word can sense that deeper meaning, rather than thinking I'm one of the Staten Island natives my brother-in-law always talks about, the people who use 'beautiful' to describe anything and everything they come across.

(As delicious as a grilled cheese sandwich is, for example, there would have to be some pretty special circumstances--the type of cheese, accompanying soup, the weather outside, the setting, the music playing in the background--in order for me to call the sandwich beautiful.)

Despite my intense interest in and heightened awareness of beauty, it's a topic that is largely philosophically and theologically unexplored for me.

So, I was excited to see Overstreet's post on the topic today. His thoughts sound familiar and he's given some extra reading material. I have yet to delve into it, but perhaps you'd like to join me in reading?

On Being a Shareholder in Your Own Happiness

Be Kind Rewind was pretty much everything I hoped it would be. I giggled and giggled and giggled some more, but that might be mostly because I think I'm Jack Black's biggest fan. So, yes, I thought the movie was wonderful, but keep in mind that's coming from a person who also liked Nacho Libre, a movie which, I'm continuing to find out, is not as "cool" to like as I might have hoped.

While being a simple and fun movie, there are plenty of avenues one could take when looking at the themes. Mostly, the film is once giant glorious ode to--Gondy's favorite subject--imagination. And although the ending will probably be too sugary sweet for some people, the entire process of the community recreating these movies and fabricating stories about its past is a beautiful picture of imagination and creativity bringing people together.

And just when I was ready to run to the streets spreading the message, I sadly realized that this notion is an act of imagination in itself, just as much as the rest of the preposterous storyline.

Maybe it's the cynic/pessimist/realist/melancholic in me, or maybe it's simply true. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but look around and it doesn't take long to see that not too many people are jumping in on the act of creativity going on in town. And not only are they not getting in on the act, few even notice, recognize, or appreciate it. Gondry's beautiful utopia that transforms lowly Passaic, NJ is purely imagination.

To be fair, sure, imagination and creativity bring people together. But they don't bring everyone together, as the story of Mike and Jerry seems to suggest.

But before we linger too long on that downer, we can realize that its untruth doesn't make it any less beautiful of a notion. If the movie shows us the joy of imagination in "sweding" creations onto VHS tapes and in the simple of act of storytelling, it also shows us the joy in the act of imagining a world where everyone comes together to create and be happy. It may be imagination, but it's a lovely thought.

Whatever the case, it was a lot of fun, and if you have an evening and some cash to spare, go watch it with low expectations, enjoy yourself, giggle a bit, and let your imagination run wild.

(#1 Movie of 2008? Time will tell.)

Signs of Spring

Even with the extra day yesterday, it's March already. Last night's snow storm made way for a warm and sunny day today. The sun has been rising earlier, and we're a week away from Daylight Savings which means it will be setting later.

But nothing shouts Spring at me more than spotting a North American Robin hop across the yard. Growing up, my backyard neighbor/early Sunday School teacher/grandmother figure/friend Mrs. Cassel used to have contests with me on who would spot a Robin earliest in the year. And even at age 24, it still comes to mind.

So, when I pulled up to my parents' house and saw five of those red bellies hanging out together for the first time this year, the little kid in me smiled big and grew very excited. I had the urge to run down to Mrs. Cassel immediately, but the adult in me says it's best to just wait until I bump into her, maybe at church tomorrow.

Most of all, I'm just relieved that Spring is coming. My love for and tolerance of winter decreases a little bit every year.