Monthly Archive for June, 2009

Summer jobs

Published on June 29, 2009 by Dick Benner. Closed

Pick­ing up on the last sen­tence of my pre­vi­ous post, about things that are impor­tant, this next post will be about my lat­est job. This sum­mer I have found three jobs. I like to say this as often as pos­si­ble, because it makes me feel impor­tant, but clearly hav­ing three very part-time jobs does not make me impor­tant. The job that takes up the most amount of time is eight hours. The one that takes the least amount of time is two hours. The job that takes up eight hours of my week is pro­vid­ing per­sonal sup­port work to a young man with intel­lec­tual disabilities.

In the brief time I have been employed there, I have learned many things. The ‘learn­ing’ I would like to share in this post­ing is about friend­ship. One day, while the man I sup­port was out get­ting a hair­cut, his mom came over, and while she cooked, I talked to her. In this con­ver­sa­tion it came up how she, like many other peo­ple, is ner­vous about speak­ing in front of oth­ers.  I tried to tell her how, in my expe­ri­ence, speak­ing in front of groups is really not that bad, but she told me that she knows how mali­cious peo­ple can be to speak­ers. Since a good part of my life is spent talk­ing to groups of other peo­ple, I have learned to get over it. She coun­tered by say­ing that I just teach peo­ple, that I don’t have to share of myself, and the mal­ice is not so strong.

Her asser­tion was partly cor­rect. While I have shared in church and with friends, what I do when I teach is share enter­tain­ing sto­ries about my inter­ests and activ­i­ties, but not that much about myself. I began to real­ize that she can’t talk about her inter­ests and her life expe­ri­ence with­out giv­ing away really per­sonal details. How lucky am I that I have many expe­ri­ences and am able to share what I want when I want. Is that luck? Or is it self-protection that pre­vents really get­ting to know another person?

Meditation on Wandering Thoughts

Published on June 24, 2009 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , .

She guides us through the breath­ing and cen­ter­ing exer­cises used to calm our bod­ies and observe our thoughts. In reflec­tions on a series of ques­tions, our minds wan­der and we are to pick up words, feel­ings, and images that stand out.

“Think of some­one you know and admire. Imag­ine them spend­ing time with you. Watch them inter­act­ing with oth­ers. Envi­sion them when they’re alone. What do you admire about them?” In my mind’s eye, I see a dear friend lis­ten­ing care­fully and ask­ing ques­tions as I express my joys and frus­tra­tions. Her face lights up at the beauty of nature and of peo­ple. She dances lightly with her life on the earth in a spirit of curi­ousity and sim­ple praise. Inno­cence. Won­der. Joy.

“Now think of a time when you were at com­plete rest. Feel your body and senses. Look around at your sur­round­ings. Let the expe­ri­ence seep into your self and mind. What do you need if you were to feel this right now?” I feel the gen­tle swell of the float­ing dock beneath me. Hear­ing the small splashes of smooth waves against the wood against a back­ground of children’s laugh­ter across the lake, my bare feet rub the fuzzy cover of the dock. The sun­shine makes me squint as I look around, and I feel this time all to myself. The respon­si­bil­i­ties and to-do lists lie across the water and noth­ing dis­turbs my sleepy, peace­ful moment. Let­ting go. Giv­ing in. Space.

“Finally, think of some­thing you have achieved in your life. Some­thing that you are proud of. Some­thing that you share with oth­ers and would like to tell your grand­chil­dren. What val­ues did you hold to in your achieve­ment that you would like to tell them?” The strug­gles of the last sev­eral years, start­ing a school, find­ing teach­ers, ana­lyz­ing pro­grams and eval­u­at­ing classes, work­ing with stu­dents and staff, envi­sion­ing an empow­er­ing edu­ca­tional envi­ron­ment yet faced with reality’s lim­its. Per­se­ver­ing in the midst of frus­tra­tion, mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­flict. Seek­ing rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and find­ing it in a bro­ken rela­tion­ship with a col­league. Integrity. Respect. Vulnerability. 

As she drew us back softly to the space of the white-walled class­room, she invited us to take these words and images. Write them down. See who we are and who we desire to become. See what they will mean to us. 

Vul­ner­a­bil­ity.
Respect.
Integrity.
Space.
Giv­ing in.
Let­ting go.
Joy.
Won­der.
Innocence.

Writing (again?)

Published on June 21, 2009 by Dick Benner. Closed

Since writ­ing is prob­a­bly the activ­ity I do most fre­quently, after read­ing and sleep­ing, it is nat­ural that I spend a fair amount of time think­ing about it. Yes­ter­day morn­ing I began to pon­der the phys­i­cal act of writ­ing, or, the dif­fer­ence between writ­ing by hand and writ­ing on the com­puter. I think it’s safe to assume that there is a dif­fer­ence in the part of the brain used for these two dif­fer­ent, yet sim­i­lar, activites. For one, writ­ing by hand requires con­cen­tra­tion. When I take pen to paper, I can only do that one thing, whereas while typ­ing I can lis­ten to music, watch a youtube video and check my bank bal­ance. Writ­ing by hand also requires the use of hand and arm mus­cles that increas­ingly fall into dis­use. Since I hardly ever write by hand, I begin to get cramps after writ­ing really very lit­tle. The phys­i­cal, focussed, sometimes-painful nature of writ­ing by hand also seems to have the power to clear my mind of all the dust that bounces around in it. If de-technologizing helps me focus, maybe I could gain more clar­ity by buy­ing an inkwell?

The Translator Who Knows Neither Language

Published on June 19, 2009 by Will Loewen. Closed

I recently took part in a peace exchange pro­gram (PAX) with a group of my Korean friends, to visit the Japan­ese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the pre­vi­ous fall, a group of eight teach­ers, stu­dents, and vol­un­teer staff from Japan vis­ited Korea, the largest group ever in the pro­gram. They vis­ited place of cur­rent con­flict, namely one of the world’s most heav­ily mil­i­ta­rized areas which is locally referred to as the DMZ (de-militarized zone), and they vis­ited places where they learned about the dev­as­ta­tion left by Japan’s pre-WWII impe­r­ial poli­cies. Their goal was to build peace in small way by learn­ing about the past by hear­ing people’s sto­ries, and by build­ing friend­ships with peo­ple who may have once been deemed to be ene­mies. They left with the sense that they had accom­plished their stated goals.

This spring, mem­bers of their Korean host orga­ni­za­tions responded by enlist­ing eleven peo­ple to visit Japan as part of the same exchange pro­gram. (We have not heard if they will meet the unspo­ken chal­lenge and send an even larger group next year.)

I was the sole for­eigner on the trip, and for var­i­ous rea­sons, I assumed that because of that, I would be less impor­tant. For­tu­nately for me, the com­mon lan­guage of the vis­i­tors and the hosts was Eng­lish, but I hadn’t had time to attend the Japan­ese lan­guage classes offered before the trip, my Korean lan­guage skills are barely func­tional, and I can’t read the Chi­nese char­ac­ters that appear on both Korean and Japan­ese signs. I didn’t know the his­tory as inti­mately as the oth­ers, so I felt I wouldn’t be able to appre­ci­ate the sites we’d see as much as they could. With regard to this par­tic­u­lar con­flict, I was, by nation­al­ity, nei­ther a vic­tim nor an offender, so I could offer nei­ther an apol­ogy nor forgiveness.

They know each other’s sport­ing suc­cesses and fail­ures as well as their recent polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions. Gen­er­ally, Korean kids grow up watch­ing Japan­ese car­toons and play­ing Japan­ese video games, while Japan­ese peo­ple can’t get enough Korean TV dra­mas and pop music per­form­ers. I exist out­side of all of this cul­tural overlap.

It didn’t take long before the hosts and the guests were talk­ing freely with each other. As they talked, they became more and more aware of these cul­tural over­laps that I was miss­ing. But every now and then, in these con­ver­sa­tions I would see ‘the look,’ the look that says ‘I don’t under­stand what you just said.’ I know that look because it is one that I often give in my every­day con­ver­sa­tions, and it is one that I often see on the faces of my stu­dents, my friends, and peo­ple I meet at stores, restau­rants, and churches.

That look is often fol­lowed by another look that is famil­iar to me, it’s the look that says, ‘I have no idea how to repeat what I just said more clearly.’ These mutual con­fused looks are often enough to derail a con­ver­sa­tion and ruin the momen­tum of friend­ship and com­mu­nity build­ing that was tak­ing place.

It was at times like this that I could use skills that I didn’t know I had. Since Eng­lish is a truly global lan­guage and North Amer­ica is a land of immi­grants, I’ve heard the lan­guage spo­ken in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent accents at a num­ber of dif­fer­ent lev­els. Also, I’ve dis­cov­ered that being com­fort­able with a lan­guage not only means that you can speak effec­tively at a high level, but it also means that you have more ways of say­ing some­thing clearly and simply.

So I got to be a trans­la­tor after all. I wasn’t switch­ing from one lan­guage to another, the peo­ple I was help­ing were already doing that, but by using sim­pler words and gram­mar and speak­ing more clearly and care­fully, I could help peo­ple com­mu­ni­cate. Sud­denly I felt useful.

I think peo­ple of peace often feel that they are not use­ful. I’m sure that peo­ple within the con­flict often sus­pect that those attempt­ing to be peace­mak­ers don’t fully under­stand the con­flict. When peace is always on your mind, when it is the thing you’re striv­ing for, can you truly under­stand the lan­guage of those who are pro­long­ing the conflict?

When we are on the out­side of a con­flict, we often turn to the peace­mak­ers for a bal­anced account of the dis­pute, but within the con­flict itself, it is not the role of the peace­mak­ers to explain the nature of the con­flict to those enwrapped in it. Ulti­mately every­one wants peace (only the most sadis­tic indi­vid­u­als and those hold­ing on to posi­tions of ill-gotten power enjoy con­flict), peo­ple just dis­agree on how peace should be achieved. Peo­ple speak about peace, but they speak in the lan­guage of war, strife, oppres­sion, sup­pres­sion, vic­tim­hood, vic­tim­iza­tion, pre-emptive defense and retal­i­a­tion. It is at these times that peo­ple of peace need to inter­vene. It is their role to ensure that both sides are being heard clearly by the oth­ers, and to facil­i­tate a rela­tion­ship that is built on gen­uine understanding.

“Call me by my true names”

Published on June 6, 2009 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , .

Last session, my pro­fes­sor intro­duced a poem by Thich Nhat Hanh enti­tled “Call me by my true names.” The sharp con­trasts of the descrip­tions in the poem shock and dis­turb. Yet he elic­its the appro­pri­ate feel­ings of con­fu­sion in chal­leng­ing the human ten­dency to divide our world into dichotomies of good and evil, right and wrong. We all hold all of that within us, he argues. We all inter­con­nect and our lives swell with the good and evil in our world and no one can deny that both lie inside us and seep out of us at times. If we deny this con­nec­tion, we only deny our “true names.” Call­ing me by my true names, rec­og­niz­ing the shad­ows within me, frees me to fol­low the con­nec­tion to the “other” and find myself there too.

“Please call me by my true names,
So I can hear all my cries and laugh­ter at once,
So I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
So I can wake up
And the door of my heart
Could be left open,
The door of compassion.”

–excerpt from Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Please call me by my true names”

My first conference

Published on June 5, 2009 by Dick Benner. Closed

Anx­i­ety about the future is some­thing that is, I believe, com­mon to many. At my ten­der age, I find myself often anx­ious about my own future. Am I doing the right thing? Am I fol­low­ing my call­ing? What if I never heard God call me? How can I know, then, that what I am doing is the right thing? Since I am not a per­son blessed with last­ing feel­ings of cer­tainty, I sel­dom have good answers to any of these ques­tions. I find myself rely­ing on my feel­ings about par­tic­u­lar events, some­thing that makes me uncomfortable.

Recently, how­ever, I was for­tu­nate enough to do some­thing that I found per­son­ally and voca­tion­ally ful­fill­ing. I went to my first real aca­d­e­mic con­fer­ence related to what I study. There, I pre­sented a paper I was fairly inter­ested in, and was lucky to be part of a panel of peo­ple who pre­sented even more inter­est­ing papers. I found their ideas so inter­est­ing, in fact, that the two or so hours the panel lasted were, for me, a brief moment of bliss. This dis­cov­ery is heart­en­ing, because it shows me that I find at least part of what I spend my time doing is fulfilling/enjoyable; yet, it con­tin­ues to unset­tle me. While I like learn­ing, I always thought I should do some­thing that would help peo­ple or make the world bet­ter. Being a stu­dent makes my life pretty good, but it doesn’t help peo­ple the way a real doc­tor would. But being a stu­dent pro­vides me with many oppor­tu­ni­ties to build rela­tion­ships, and I hope that through these, the world becomes a lit­tle bit of a bet­ter place.

A Building Project

Published on June 2, 2009 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed

“We need ene­mies to pro­tect our ‘shadow’ side” the pro­fes­sor explained. “Per­haps the first step in rec­on­cil­i­a­tion lies in rec­og­niz­ing this shadow and for­giv­ing oneself.”

For­giv­ing myself? What do I need to for­give myself for? What do I dis­like about myself so much that it even makes me angry when I rec­og­nize it in others?

Pon­der­ing this ques­tion, an answer arose when I vis­ited a Pres­by­ter­ian church in Ten­nessee. I entered the old stone build­ing car­ry­ing a heavy load of bricks, stones and mor­tar in my mind. I was ready to build a wall. My crit­i­cisms began with the first posters I saw on the bul­letin board by the door. Evan­gel­i­cal short term mis­sions. One layer of the wall went up. A book about reli­gion in Amer­ica with the stars and stripes bold­ing call­ing for alle­giance. Another layer. I looked at the ban­ners. More bricks. The images of swords and fire. I started to feel the wall ris­ing. The creeds and hier­ar­chy expressed through the elab­o­rate dec­o­ra­tion of the church. Faster and faster the stones came, build­ing the wall with a sour taste in the bot­tom of my throat. Some­thing that tasted like… judg­ment. Ah, that was the famil­iar flavour. At this point I finally tried to resist, but I had real­ized too late. I couldn’t take the bricks down as fast as I laid them.

wall

Wor­ship began with me, sit­ting awk­wardly inside the wall I had built between an “us” of my per­cep­tion and a “them” on the other side. Turns out, I had walled myself into a very tiny spot. As we started to sing, though, a strange thing hap­pened. A note from the hymn slipped through a crack in the wall. Famil­iar words of peace and liturgy invit­ing the spirit began trick­ling around the care­fully piled stones. A Memo­r­ial Day week­end prayer con­demn­ing all war and vio­lence every­where caused chunks of the still-wet mor­tar to fall off in sur­prise. By the time the Rev­erend approached the pul­pit to give the ser­mon, I was quickly and qui­etly pulling down my wall of judg­ment, piece by piece, hop­ing that no one noticed my foolishness.

She began to speak and the remain­der of my wall crashed down with a great, hum­bling thud. From the ground I lis­tened to her speak of Jesus’ prayer in John 17 which yearns for us to be in unity as the Father and Son are one. This unity, she said, does not only include the peo­ple I like and get along with and the peo­ple who agree with me. Jesus longs for me to be united even to peo­ple with whom I dis­agree. Even united with my enemies!

Some­one was call­ing. She spoke directly to me, still sit­ting among the fallen rub­ble of the wall with pieces of brick in each hand, echoes of my for­give­ness and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion classes last week ring­ing in my ears. Finally, I rec­og­nized it. The voice of God, call­ing me to peace, in unity, to give up my silly judg­ments, lis­ten first, learn with an open heart and mind, and look for the com­mon ground God has given all cre­ation. To start with my sis­ters and broth­ers in this con­gre­ga­tion. “I didn’t give you those bricks to build a wall,” the voice said, “I gave them to you to build a bridge.”

What do I need to for­give myself for? I have too much to list! Where do I even start? Per­haps I need the gift of jubilee. The gift of start­ing over, for­given, accounts all bal­anced. With free heart and hand, per­haps I can work with those remain­ing stones, bricks and mor­tar to build some bridges. Start­ing from my side, of course.

It was after return­ing home that I saw what was writ­ten on the cover of the bulletin:

    “How great is your love, Lord God, how wide is your mercy!
    Never let us board up the nar­row gate that leads to life…
    But give us a Spirit to wel­come all peo­ple with affec­tion,
    So that your church may never exclude secret friends of yours,
    Who are included in the love of Jesus Christ, who came to save us all.”

Biking

Published on June 2, 2009 by Dick Benner. Closed

This morn­ing I biked all the way from my home to down­town. In my ride I had time to do many things, includ­ing one of my all time favourite hob­bies, peo­ple watch­ing. It is inter­est­ing to see what kind of peo­ple live where and what their activ­i­ties are at 9 in the morn­ing. One of the most dis­turb­ing activ­i­ties, in my opin­ion, is look­ing through garbage. I am def­i­nitely not above this kind of activ­ity. In fact, by keep­ing my eyes peeled I have acquired a dry­ing rack and yes­ter­day evening, two new books. The dis­turb­ing thing this morn­ing was watch­ing peo­ple look through the recy­cling for cans and bot­tles to be returned to the beer store for money. The amount of money per bot­tle is so small that many peo­ple appar­ently don’t even bother, but for these peo­ple this appears to be an impor­tant part of their income. Watch­ing these peo­ple makes me sad. Their poverty existed before our cur­rent reces­sion and what­ever eco­nomic stim­u­lus pack­ages our gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing will likely not reach them. My own life barely crosses paths with theirs. Look­ing at a sit­u­a­tion like this I feel help­less and won­der what I should do. Maybe I don’t need to ‘do’ any­thing right away. Sit­ting help­less, some­thing that does not come eas­ily to me, could be what I am meant to do right now.