Parting of the Ways

As the country prepares to welcome an historic president, it is also doing its best to send a formal farewell to its current one.  While President Bush achieved new lows in approval ratings at home and abroad, President-elect Obama prepares to be welcomed into the masses’ waiting arms.

I have to say, though, that I’ve never seen known such a level of unadulterated hatred for an outgoing president.  Even when President Clinton left office after all of his wacky hijinx, I remember a distinctly obvious level of restraint among even his greatest detractors.  Perhaps it is simply the ramifications of President Bush’s decisions that have drawn this new level of ire, but there’s a large part of my political psyche that winces every time I hear vitriol spewed upon the name of our sitting president.  In fact, I worry that this election has signaled the dawn of a nastier era of political commentary than ever before.  And really, that’s something to lament no matter who you rooted for 22 days ago.  To offer up a real observation for once, I think that politics have become too much like a sports arena:  People rarely change their allegiances, no matter what evidence may come their way; People would prefer to favor a professional who is good at playing the game rather than someone they actually like; Most notably, people can rarely discuss their views with those of different opinions without resorting to churlish arguing.

Perhaps we should just accept it and start wearing jerseys…?

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On a more peripheral note, the approaching of a super-majority in the Senate makes me long for the 2F’s rather interesting original plan for the presidency.  I mean, come on — if the popular vote is really as important as everyone in 2000 said it was, why not give it even more power?

Cravings

Micah won tickets and front-row passes/sentences to Scott Weiland in Hollywood tonight.

Really, it was everything I hoped it would be.  He even signed my cd after asking my name — and now I have a drunkenly-signed album cover from the lead singer of Velvet Revolver made out to either “Rod” or “Rog”.  Either way, I win.

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Why do people refuse to slake their desire for intimacy through means other than rash marriages?

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The good that lies in front of me is currently superseding the pleasurable that lies behind me.  One can ask for little more than that.

People Watching

Quickly, I would like to point out one of my favorite new blogs: The Sartorialist

Written by a professional photographer, this site solely consists of photographs taken in Paris and other major metropolitan areas.  The subject matter?  People, dressed…well, you’ll have to see for yourself.

St. Jude

Seems like we’re miles from here

Alighting at some foreign station

With luggage in hand, leaning to the right

Our sight deceives us as we look for the lamp.

Oh, how they love us American boys

Smiling at our insignia

Nodding to faces that never ask for approval,

Nobody passes without taking a little piece

In exchange for their self-congratulations;

As if their gestures were consolation for Hell

And their smiles a balm upon dead flesh,

They tear off layers of insulation

With sinuous smiles

Exposing the mortified flesh beneath

So with a weakened complexion, they hurry on.

Clap your hands, children

Clap your hands tonight

For the boys are coming home

Everything’s gonna be all right.

Quick Notes

I’m still alive.  Barely.  No time for talk about whatever cancer is eating me alive right now, though.  It’s business time.

-Teaching would be more fun if it weren’t for all the other adults.  I’m sure kids feel the same way about school.

-Fire is only good when used to cook meat or start engines.  Anything else is either for women or Smokey-haters.

-Corey and my tirade of hatred for Brendan Morrison made a game into so much more.  Only I couldn’t scream because I was dying.  Did I mention that?

-I really want to love It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  Please, convince me why I should look past the persistently sophomoric humor that undergirds this magnificently-constructed work of art.

-Remember kids, the best medication is always beans and pulp.  Any kind of pulp at all, really.  Grapefruit pulp, Lime pulp, Lemon pulp, womanly Orange pulp…it’s all your white cells need to start kicking butt and taking names.   Also, medicine and health insurance.

Also, this picture:d

Jane Eerie

At Pace, one of the subjects under my purview is reading comprehension.  Basically, this entails the children’s reading a story about two pages long and answering some questions about it.  If you’ve taken the SATs, you know the drill.

What I hadn’t thought about, however, was where they got the short stories or essays that are included in the textbook.  I’ve seen everything from the biological reasons for left-handedness to abridged tales of Holmes and Dupin.  While this never really bothered me, I have held occasional curiosity about how these collections come about.

Unfortunately, I don’t care how they’re collected.  I want to talk about Jane Eyre.

One of my 6th graders came up to me towards the end of the day yesterday and told me that she was having trouble understanding one of her stories.

“Well, let me see it and I’ll try to help you with it,” I said.

Lo and behold, I found myself looking at a two-page version of the scourge of literature classes everwhere.

While I try not to disparage the often sub-par textbooks in front of the kids, I found myself having to bite my tongue harder than usual as I realized the task before me: I had to make a two-page synopsis of this (of all books) 400+ page novel seem accessible to a student who grew up in China.

This was going to be tough.

Here’s what Irene probably heard me say:

So this girl who is kind of ugly and plain grows up in a scary orphanage sort of and then gets a job as a governess (yes, like in Sound of Music! That helps!) at an old (but not too old) guy’s house. One night, she smells smoke and saves his life right after hearing spooky noises from upstairs but he tells her not to tell anyone because apparently fires are very low-key sort of things that no one else noticed.  He sort of loves her and finally asks her to marry him but she asks him who that freak up in the attic is and he says he can’t tell her until they’ve been married for a year and a day (wow, that’s a long time not to know that! Yes, it is. He’s weird. They’re both weird). So they get married but except not because some guy says that Mr. Rochester’s wife is still alive and it’s the beastie living in the attic so Jane is sad because she can’t marry the guy who lied to her and she runs away to live at freak village with creepo pastor then comes back and marries the guy because his beastie wife jumped off a roof after burning the house down and now Mr. Rochester is blind and crippled and burnt but she loves him and they kiss (ew!) and they’re happy I guess even though this seems like a sad story.

How that one made it into Reading Comprehension Level 3A, only Mrs. Rochester knows.

Personally, I prefer Wuthering Heights.

Frontier II

With the undying hope and the blazing conviction

Even the skeptics fell in with the victims

Of passionate love and unfathomed forgiveness

Truth with the Beautiful for all to witness

Burning and searing what falls in its path

Demanding nothing but sane psychopaths

To wander this land of no regret

One cannot hold onto one’s head

It’s within the releasing that truth can be grasped

For dreamers and skeptics with logic collapsed

The Logical Truths and the Frivolous Fancies

Have been collected through singing and dancing,

Understanding free madness shall anger discourage

As Truth will be found by whomever will forage

Into the forest of fanciful fate

Naught but their delaying shall make them to wait;

As nothing before now has ever impacted

A heart, with the Light, is finitely refracted.

Dethieving Ourselves

Of all the clearly egregious sins that permeate society, theft never ceases to sadden me.

While I’m not a recent victim (unless you count taxes and street sweeping), I would vote for anyone who promised to heavily increase the severity of consequences for such actions.  Locke’s views on property are fairly in line with my own, and when I see friends and family lose things to theft, it angers me as much as anything really does.  Taking that which is not yours undercuts all that is fundamentally necessary to sustain society, yet thieves care nothing for this fact.  The temporary need to slake want overpowers any residual thoughts of conscience.

It strikes me now that perhaps it’s the valuing of the temporal above the eternal (the most universal aspect of sin, I think) that causes such a visceral reaction.

While my initial reaction should surely be (and sometimes is) more merciful and forgiving, this is much harder to do when my friends and family are affected as opposed to myself; perhaps it has something to do with the joy of forgiving those who have harmed you — Matthew 5, after all.

I suppose that a better reaction would be one of sadness for the state of the hearts of those who are driven to steal from their brothers, whether by greed or by perceived desperation.  Furthermore, it is a testament to the poor state of the church that people would sooner suffer (or risk suffering, in their minds) the spiritual and earthly consequences of theft.  That the church does not appear a viable option for those in need is as much its fault as it is the world’s. Perhaps this is also why I resent paying taxes to help the poor — the church can (and should!) use that money to much greater effect, simply because it is able to minister to more needs than any government check ever could.

Last year, when my friends’ room was burglarized, we all began talking about what we would like to say or do to those responsible if we were to catch them.  More than a few of us began talking about how undeserving our roommate was of suffering the loss of his valuables, and how good it would feel to reclaim the valuables while also meteing out justice upon the thief.  While our roommate was (for good reason) distraught at the catastrophe, he never seemed to approach our level of outrage.

A few days later, when his car was stolen, he began riding a bike to work a few miles away rather than ask for rides, despite our offers.  He rode to work in the rain rather than let someone skip a class to give him a ride.

It became apparent to me that he was able to withstand these things because of the restoration God promises to his children when we suffer.  Rather than worry (too much) about how he would continue to manage finances and a myriad of other issues that necessitated a computer, he did what he could and accepted the help of others when he needed it.

I hope I can find myself capable of viewing my own trials in such a way; furthermore, I hope that I can recognize when to be angry and when to be trust God when my friends and family suffer at the hands of sin.  We are not our own, much less our ipods or clothes or cars.  Losing those things not only allows us to practice the virtues of forgiveness and humility, but also to experience the love of others in the midst of our trials.

At the end of time, how infinitely more will these graces be relished by our souls than the sheen of our laptop!

Case: Just In

http://www.patrolmag.com/times/922/how-shall-we-then-vote

Derek Webb gives his perhaps more-than-melifluous tones a try in the world of political decision-making, with mixed results.

The basis of the argument, however, manages to intrigue me to some degree.  I suppose my main issue would be with the fact that the most important votes you ever cast will probably not be for something as black or white (bam!) as the presidency, but for local measures and county politicians.  But then, those things aren’t sexy on any kind of large scale, so it may be a while before a serious enthusiasm permeates the halls of your local city council chamber.

A punch(line) in the nuptials

While I’ve been up here for Matt and Kayla’s wedding this weekend, I’ve been overwhelmed with thoughts of what marriage is.

Tangibly, it’s the sharing of everything; a weird sort of sharing in which more is gained (aw, just like love!) the more things are shared.  Matt and Kayla are hardly operating independent of each other anymore, at least on the whole.  It’s gushingly obvious that everything from the window dressing to the wedding march will be little more than, well, window dressing.

Essentially, Marriage is the ultimate comeuppance of human love.  Given that God is the true and final object for all of our love, Marriage seems to be greatest horizontal (to use stale analogies) love that is permitted, or perhaps encouraged.

Of course, as we groomsmen (all but one of us single) look at the bridesmaids (all but one of whom are married) whom we are accompanying up and down the aisle, thoughts of our own matrimonial ends (or beginnings! — OH, DEEP!) can’t help but be allowed to creep in.  Personally, I’ve been haunted by the level of intimacy these people have with each other.  To give of oneself with such unselfish abandon is as foreign to me as the thought of jumping in front of the president during an assassination attempt.  (thought: If S. Colbert were to be elected, would he even need bodyguards?  Surely the commies wouldn’t be that stupid.)

As part of me craves this intimacy with another (hot, please) human, the more conscious part recognizes that it is, really, this desire that manifests itself perversely in most every form of tained love.  As we headed to the rehearsal dinner downtown, my vision was continually plagued with women (and men) dressed (presumably)  to elicit illicit (BAM) feelings from men so as to boost their self esteem in the wake of intimacy’s short-circuited beginnings.

To rephrase: love is powerful enough to mystify me, and mysterious enough to overpower me.

Which is why I’m thankful that there are Kaylas out there who make the mysteriously powerful into the obviously blissful.  So, until I get back from China, I can kick up my feet and enjoy the less mysterious things as best I can.  After all, this leftover candy ain’t eatin’ itself.