it's my birthday!!!

Today is my 33rd birthday. Can you believe it? It is 11:43 a.m. and it has been a splendid day thus far. The sun is shining, a first in about a hundred days (and y'all know I like cloudy days, but seriously, folks, there are limits)....the birds are bustling out there in the snow (and watching/listening to small birds is one of my favorite things to do in the world)....my brother made me my favorite breakfast of crepes.....I got to play with my little niece and give her a bath.....and I am generally allowing myself to do whatever I want today and not feel guilty or obligated to do anything I *don't* want to do! (It's strange and amazing how big of a deal it is to give myself this psychological permission.....the fact that it feels so different to give myself this permission lets me know just how anxious and responsibility-driven I am much of the time!)

Yesterday was the beginning of my birthday, I think, which is maybe as it should be, considering that my mom did all her laboring on Dec. 28! Anyway, yesterday I went to Chicago with Jon and also with my brother and his wife, and his wife's twin sister and her husband.

Cast of characters:

Jon: boyfriend extraordinaire

Herman: best bro

Anna: best bro's wife, also super-cool sis-in-law

Karin: Anna's twin; currently pregnant with her first....one of the coolest Swedes ever!

Anders: Karin's husband....connessieur (sp?) of everything

We got up earlier than usual in the morning, drove to a city about an hour from here (we live in a small town), parked our cars and took the train from that city into Chicago. A splendid and stress-free way to travel! The first thing we did upon arriving in Chicago was to ascend to the top of the Sears Tower, which is now called the Willis Tower, but I refuse to acknowledge the change, even though I am a progressive and all. Sometimes conservativism is better. We had such a wonderful time at the top of the tower! It was so cool! And so scary! (The Sears Tower is the highest human-made structure in the western...um....culture? hemisphere? something like that.) More on that in a bit, when I upload photos. After that we walked to Berghoff's, a restaurant famous and extraordinary, recommended by my step-dad. We dined in style and quite enjoyed ourselves! Good beer, good bourbon, good German food. Mmmm.

After that we found the metro, took it to the Watertower Mall, looked around, took the metro to north Chicago, realized the place we wanted to go was closed, took the metro to Millenium Park, looked around, saw outdoor ice skaters and the famous Bean sculpture, realized we were freezing, had dinner at a hotdog place, found the train station, had a beer, and took the train back to the Indiana city, and from there drove home. A long day, and a great day! Probably the best time I've ever had in Chicago. Yay!

So that is why I say that my birthday started yesterday.

The thing is that I rarely just have a *fun* day, you know? I do many enjoyable things in my life, of course, and there is much goodness. But I'm such a serious chap, and I rarely even think about structuring a day just around fun. It also helped a ton that there were a group of us. I tend to be able to relax in a group than with just one other person, however cool that person may be, I think because in a group there is a lot less pressure on each individual person to think up conversational topics or carry the existential-spiritual weight that may present itself, or whatever. In a group there is a kind of pack mentality.....just walking down the street with 6 or 8 people can be a sort of adventure....and if the conversation lags with one person, there are plenty more to go around! Anyway.....I suppose this is the first time since I moved to Indiana that I felt part of a *group* again.....and in Flag I felt part of a group all the time.....and that mattered a lot, when it came to peace and happiness for yours truly.

So!

I'll upload photos soon, hopefully later today!

Yay for happiness, joy, birthdays, and the love of friends and family.

an advent-christmas reflection in 7 parts

Part 1

"Our very poverty is the presence of God, sustaining us perfectly in the midst of our poverty. Whatever it means that God loves us, whatever it means that God takes care of us, it clearly does not mean that God stops painful things from happening to us. If you fell off the back of a boat, and you were drowning and going down for the third time, and you would yell out to God, "save me!" what most likely would happen next is that you would drown. Tonight, in the major cities throughout the world, little girls are going to be incested. Tonight, little boys are going to be beaten half to death. Some of these children will die, and God is not going to help a single one of them. Whatever it means that God takes care of us, it clearly does not mean that God stops horrendously cruel and painful things from happening to us." -James Finley

Part 2

Last week I was looking through the Indiana prisons (via the Internet), trying to locate a former student of mine, who has moved from the local county jail to a state prison. As I combed over the website for the women's prison, I found a link that said, "prison nursery" or something like that, which I quickly passed over because I was in a hurry and needed to find her address. But I thought about it later. "Prison nursery"....wait, does that mean there is a nursery for infants born in prison?

I went back to the website to try and find the link, but I couldn't. In fact, I may have misread the webpage. But then I googled "babies in prison" and discovered that many women's prisons do in fact house nurseries, because so many babies are born to women while they are serving out their sentences. Mexico City requires--requires!-- imprisoned women to keep their children in prison with them up until the age of six. Many, many other countries make arrangements for incarcerated mothers with small children, allowing the children to live with the mothers. I found this article about it on salon.com. From Cambodia to Hungary to Bolivia and Pakistan, extreme consideration is taken to allow mothers to keep parenting while they are in prison, believing that the mother-child bond is profoundly important, for both mother and child. This article on NPR shines a light on a women's correctional facility in Ohio where women are allowed to have their babies with them in prison, and are helped in caring for the children.

(The NPR article also points out that more than 1 in 100 Americans are in jail or prison.)

And yet, here at the Kosciusko County Jail, I have a female student who has a 3-month-old son, and she is not allowed to have contact with him. Many of these women have babies or young, young children, and they cannot touch them or be near them. And this is to say nothing of the men, who also often have young children, beyond their reach or touch.

I'm sitting here trying to think what to say about this. I rarely know what charges any of my students are in on, but I do know that something like 85% of the charges in this county are meth-related. This means that a high percentage of our literacy students are in jail for meth-related crimes (possession of meth, trafficking meth, doing bad things while high on meth, etc.). A meth addict (and there really isn't such a thing as a casual meth user) a good parent does not make. So while it's all good and fine to imply that parents should be with their children--for the health and wholeness of everyone--it can also be said that many of the folks in prison were the exact opposite of a model parent when they were on the "outs" and a case could even be made that many of their children are better off without them around.

Then again, in what circumstances do people turn to meth--or heavy alcohol use--or hard drugs--in the first place? I haven't read any studies (and I really need to start educating myself: all suggestions very welcome), but from casual observation I would say that poverty, dead-end labor, and mental-physical-sexual abuse almost always precede heavy drug use, and the kinds of crimes that arise from it. This is so frequently true that one could make a case that unless we take an in-depth look at the economic and psycho-sexual conditions in which people have lived before committing crimes, we have not in any meaningful way studied crime, criminals, or imprisonment.

Part 3

"But what is possible, and perhaps this is what makes the cross so central to the Christian tradition as the great revelation of the path of self-transformation, is that in and through the very pain and the very cruelty and the very undoing is the manifestation of a great grace."

-James Finley

Part 4

Sometimes I sit at the front of class in the jail--we all sit at grey plastic tables, in a square, facing each other--and I look into the faces of the other human beings there--and I think, these people are good and they are holy, and it must paralyze the very angels, to contemplate the fact that they are trapped, as suffocated, as fishes in nets. No matter how they struggle or pound on the doors, they cannot be free. In fact, pounding on the doors will get them a couple days in solitary confinement. Through all of it, they are unable to hold their children, or look at the sky. And then again, I think, as I look at them: they are unfree in a way deeper still than all of that. Unlock the doors, freedom would be as elusive as it ever was, for them and for their children.

Part 5

I do not mean to say that every prisoner is like every other. It is not like that.

One of the great challenges of working with this demographic is the constant temptation to give into class stereotypes. Because, so many of my students come from the working-poor, trailer-trash culture, and here they are in jail, covered in tattoos, speaking grammatically-incorrect English. It just confirms the tired old stereotype. And it is so easy to believe that our goal is to try and shepherd these lost souls (these losers, let's be honest about how so many people think about this demographic) directly into the middle-class, where folks speak English in all the right ways, and do not put their eyeliner on so thick or wear their jeans so tight or get barcode tattoos on their necks.

To peel back the layers, of what we really really really really really really really believe makes a person worth knowing, worth loving, worth considering an equal.

I happen to believe that the heart of Jesus' good news to us is that everyone is equally a child of God, and equally worthy of love. That's what Jesus thought and taught. But what do I think, and what do I embody? Do I believe that everyone is equally a child of God and equally worthy of love though? It sounds so nice and egalitarian, but do I really believe it in my guts?

This is a little litmus test I have invented, to test my own beliefs on the everyone-equally-loved-by-God thing: Say you are having lunch with Joe. You and Joe are having lunch, and then up to your lunch table walks Monica, someone whose opinion and esteem matters a great deal to you. How do you feel about Monica seeing you with Joe? The answer to this question perhaps determines how you really feel about Joe.

I can imagine going out to lunch with any of my students from the jail. But if someone whose opinion I really cared about walked up to me while I was having lunch with one of my students, would I feel the urge to introduce the lunch companion as a "student in the jail," or an "inmate," as a way of distancing myself from that person, so that I wouldn't be directly associated with someone of his/her ilk? So that I would be thought to be a charitable, philanthropic person--giving my time to the less fortunate! Or would I instinctively introduce my lunch buddy as a "friend," with no further explanation needed? To whom am I willing to be charitable, but not really willing to consider a genuine equal? And what, precisely, might be holding me back from considering that I am equally in need of help and hope, equally as fragile and equally as strong, as anyone else?

Part 6

I am a person in process, desiring always to become more human and more divine. I may struggle to believe that every single person is my equal--in fact, I'm about as far away from really accepting that truth as Indiana is from Antarctica--and yet, I can do my best to treat each person as an equal, equally beloved of God, equally worth loving and knowing as the people I most love--meanwhile praying that my heart would be softened anew each day, that I'd daily find new doors into compassion, new doors out towards people and realities I haven't opened to before. My friend Chad reminds me that becoming more loving and more holy is mostly not up to me.

Part 7

If Jesus were born in comparable circumstances to those in which he was actually born, would he perhaps be born in a prison, to a 19-year-old single mother (father unknown!)--maybe white trash, maybe a black or Mexican woman from the ghetto--named Mary?

All Advent I've been hearing echos of Mary's famous song, the one she sang while pregnant with Jesus, now known as the Magnificat. In it she claims that God "has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, brought the powerful from their thrones, lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty." I picture the incarcerated Mary, poor, lonely, huddled in her cell in her striped jumpsuit, nursing a tiny newborn boy, singing those words. Words that bite into the very reality she lives every day, words that speak of denial as much as anything else. Because God isn't lifting her up, she so lowly. And yet she sings. She trusts that God is there, setting her and others free, despite all the evidence, because evidence, by God, doesn't have the final say.

And who is this boy, this infant she nurses? And will she sing to him this song as he grows?

Maybe he is the one who will say, when he is grown, "Then the king will say to those at his right hand, 'Come, you that are blessed...inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.' Then the righteous will answer him, 'When was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?' And the king will answer them, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these...you did it to me."

advent post #22: the magnificat in jail

There's a song by Sufjan Stevens in which he sings over and over, "Oh God, where are you now?" I don't feel that way while I'm in the jail; while I'm in the jail I am focused, trying to respond well to each moment, because so much is packed into every moment. But afterwards, a couple hours or a couple days afterwards, or when I'm reading our students' homework, the overwhelming comes on, the sorrow. Oh God, where are you now?

Last week in class I looked out over all the women and I thought, these are beautiful, deeply good, beloved women, and all that really needs to happen is for the guards to unlock the doors--just the push of a button on a computer screen!--and they could walk out free. I looked at them and saw how good they are, how holy, and I wished I had the magic potion that would allow them to see it, that would sweep away the addictions and the inability to escape violence and the fear and the sense of worthlessness--sweep them all away like you'd sweep flour off a counter, just a sweep of the arm--and they could walk out, live free. Then I thought about how mired I am, so often, in panic and fear and a sense that I am not worth much. Oh if we could only be free, if we could only be free.

And how simple it would all be. How very easy. A woman told me once that Enlightenment is as simple as turning on a light switch. Just a flick of a finger, just a moment. As simple as unlocking and opening a door. Watching the female inmates, those holy women who love their children and yearn to be free, I knew that what this woman had told me was true. It's just that simple. And yet, people live their whole lives in the dark. You know?

Last Sunday the folks at the Mennonite church where Jon and I have been attending were talking about Mary's song, the one she sang after Gabriel told her that she was carrying the son of God. She echoes the songs of Hannah and Miriam, from the Torah, praising God who "scatters the proud" and "gives food to the hungry" and "turns the rich away empty." And someone pointed out during the church service that Mary was singing these things about God and yet she was living right in the middle of all sorts of oppression in which the rulers were crucifying prisoners, the rich were eating til they were fat, and the poor were walking around hungry. She was praising God for something that was not actually happening. And yet, it's as though she were coaxing God out of hiding, as if her praise of God's liberation were actually a challenge to God. Are you God or what? Are you going to help us out here or do you just like to sit in the outer reaches of space and listen to pretty angel music? Get up off yo' divine ass and do something.

Respect is cool, when it comes to God, but when it comes to arguing on behalf of the suffering, sometimes perhaps a stronger approach is needed.

Today in class, one of our young female students, Jessica, read a story about waking up on a quiet morning with her infant son. One of the lines in the story is, "All I can smell, all I can breathe, is innocence." She began crying a few lines into the story, so Diann picked up the story and read the rest of it. Meanwhile, Summer held Jessica while she cried. After Diann was finished reading the story, Summer said, "This is the first time she's cried since she's come to jail." Jessica has a baby son, and in two days it will be Christmas.

In the next class, Marc began reading a piece he'd written about how he wishes he would have spent more time with his children when they were little. A few sentences in he began to cry. He could not continue. Without saying a word, Mike continued reading for him, and Stuart put his arm around Marc's shoulder. At the end of the piece, the reader finds out that Marc's son died when he was 11-years-old.

These are holy moments. While I'm in them, I'm so intent on keeping the class on track, and responding to every moment as it comes (so many things happen in two hours at the jail--so many emotions, so so much). But in retrospect I could fall to the ground, to the cold cement floor, in those moments. Where is God in those moments? With us, yes, suffering with us. And yet I want to say: oh God who scatters the proud and lifts up the lowly, where are you now? Are you going to help us or what?

advent post #21

Susanna

by Anne Porter

Nobody in the hospital
Could tell the age
Of the old woman who
Was called Susanna

I knew she spoke some English
And that she was an immigrant
Out of a little country
Trampled by armies

Because she had no visitors
I would stop by to see her
But she was always sleeping

All I could do
Was to get out her comb
And carefully untangle
The tangles in her hair

One day I was beside her
When she woke up
Opening small dark eyes
Of a surprising clearness

She looked at me and said
You want to know the truth?
I answered Yes

She said it's something that
My mother told me

There's not a single inch
Of our whole body
That the Lord does not love

She then went back to sleep.

advent post #20: for asheya & mel (& buffy, jana, mer, emili, lori & etc.)

I have a few minutes this morning. So, a few Advent posts, I think.

A while back, I wrote this post, asking readers what would happen if they took the words of Isaiah and John the Baptist literally, and actually headed out into the wilderness to prepare the way for God. Asheya wrote back in the comment section (and then I posted what she said as its own Advent post) saying, "I'll tell you what would happen if I drove out into the desert, literally," and then she wrote about how her three children would have to come with her, of course, because they are dependent on her--and in the case of her two little ones, actually dependent on her body--and how the time in the wilderness would be spent cooking for the children, answering their questions, monitoring their play, changing their diapers, etc., etc., etc., etc. She wrote, "Advent is about waiting for God, who will appear in good time in the form of a baby. Let me tell you: that baby is going to take everything you have and then more. It all seems so picturesque and serene and calm and just comforting. God as a baby. What could be easier to accept? But there is so much responsibility there. Babies are helpless, needy, demanding, constant, relentless. If you don't take care of this baby, this baby will wither, shrivel, die."

I've thought a lot about what Asheya wrote, and so have many of you. Some people have told me in person how touched they were by what she said, and several of you responded to her on the blog. It seems to me that when she wrote that comment, she came from a very raw and real place, a place many mothers seem to be able to identify with quite intimately. She told truths that are sometimes hinted at, but very rarely just said so straight-out, so from-the-gut.

As I've thought about Asheya's experience, and the experience of motherhood, something Alvaro said once in yoga came to me. I was in one of Alvaro's classes--and his classes tended to be the most challenging of any offered at the studio where I practiced, even though they were supposed to be all-levels classes, not advanced classes! He worked us over like we were driftwood in surf, like we were meat to be tenderized, or clay in the hands of a potter. I suppose, in a quite real way, that's what students are, under the care of a great teacher.

Anyway, in this particular moment we were preparing to do 3-minute headstands. Al was showing us how to get up into the headstand (which we all knew, but he was reminding us on the subtleties of technique), he was demonstrating and then doing more of his teaching from inside the pose. It's quite a powerful way to teach, actually: to teach while in the pose itself, to talk in a measured, thoughtful way, while balancing on one's head! Because he was not just telling us what to do; you are showing us what to do: how to breathe and stay calm and grounded while expending great effort and being upside down! It's very easy to tell someone to get into a headstand, to press down on the wrists and press through a spot just forward of the exact top of the head; to breathe steadily and deeply, to extend upward from the belly and to flex the feet. It's much, much harder to do it yourself, and then to teach from that place of practice.

Anyway, he came out of the pose and then he said: it is very easy to breathe and to stay centered when you are just standing straight up (in what is called mountain pose: a simple standing position). It's very easy to breathe and stay grounded when you are in an easy pose, when your heart is beating easily and steadily. It's a little harder to breathe when you're upside down, in headstand. And it's much harder still, to breathe and stay grounded while you maintain headstand for one minute, two minutes, three. Panic begins to set in, your heart is beating hard, you start second-guessing yourself.

But that is why we practice yoga, said Alvaro. To learn how to breathe--and more than that, how to be in union with God--even in the midst of difficult or unfamiliar circumstances. You started off learning to breathe, to be present to yourself and to God, while doing the simplest poses: mountain or a seated position. But eventually, you have to learn other poses, some of which are uncomfortable or frustrating, some of which you simply do not like. And the question is: can you breathe here? Here? Can you feel the grace of God even here? Sometimes the answer is no. We are all just learning together. That is why we practice. And it is why we have teachers, teachers who can give living witness that what we seek is real.

All of this reminded me of what Asheya wrote because I feel like Asheya, and other new/young mothers I know, are trying to do an extended headstand while trying to remember to breathe. Trying to somehow be connected to God while in the midst of a seemingly-impossible pose. How can you remember God, or feel any kind of mystical connection to God, when all you can think about is how your heart is pounding, how you're exhausted, totally spent, and would just like to lay down and sleep for a year?

And I guess what I would say is that, in the very act of taking care of your children, doing everything you can to love them well and care for them wholly, you are the connection to God, your very life is that union with God. Like in yoga, if I were the teacher what I would say to the students is that all of your efforts to practice well are not leading to some great moment in which all of your striving will be realized (although that moment may come); all of your striving is the evidence of a grace already present, of a God already present, here with you in all the distraction and messiness of your life, just as it is. Caring for your children when you are totally exhausted, stressed out, confused, and grumpy--but doing your best to care for them anyway--what could be more evidence of God among us?

I'm not saying that we should needlessly work ourselves past the point of exhaustion. Another important facet of yoga is something called "ahimsa" which means care of the self, or non-harming. Resting, asking for help, these are super important. But it also seems (and I'm going off watching other people; obviously I don't know motherhood first hand!) that there are times when rest and help just aren't possible. Or when they're not enough. And yet, you mothers keep on going, you keep on giving of yourself, keep on loving your children. To me, this is as much evidence as I ever need of the incarnation: that God is among us, because God is born in each of you every day, every time one of you--one of any of us--chooses the way of love, though it is often the more difficult way.

Blessings, Asheya and Mel, Lori and Emili and Jana and Buffy and Meredith. You are embodied evidence of divinity and love among us. God is in your hands, your hearts, your songs, all those quiet acts of love you do that no one ever knows.

oh, advent

I am really tempted to give up on the Advent posts for the rest of Advent. I'm already behind and it's sort of a lot at the moment, between cleaning my house, having house-guests arrive from Sweden, having my brother arrive from Sweden, volunteering at the jail, putting together an anthology of jail writings, fighting for the right to even still teach at the jail, keeping the dishes clean, and making Christmas presents. A person hardly has the opportunity to think a new Advent thought a day, on top of all that! I'd like to come up with at least one more Advent post though, before Christmas. So, maybe it'll just be one more and we'll call it good. We shall see!!

advent post #19: arabic christmas hymn