Away from the blog on vacation this past week - stayed busy and actually went to work one day. Could have gone without the day at work or the extra busyness but that's life.
We had another garage sale fundraiser this weekend - these might actually take a few months off my life.
"Tell me how you feel - and remember, be honest, it's for posterity"
Adopting is a like a huge long pregnancy (going on 15 months now) except my wife is more in the biological father's role this time around with me. This means there are period of times that it doesn't feel like anything is really happening and it all seems so far away. However, lately I have been pondering our transracial identity as a family a little more and that makes it all the more real.
Found myself laughing at my kids the other day and thought - kids are almost worth it - just for the laughs alone.
I am starting to hate living in Texas in the summer time.
Teaching the Gospel of John at church this summer -- maybe it will change the way I feel about it but honestly, I just don't think it can get out of my 4th spot ranking of the gospels. At any rate, I look forward to the challenge of making the class make me dig deeper. Maybe 3rd place isn't out of reach....
Wanting to start planning a "Service Spring Break" trip at school - but knowing I might not be able to go (due to the adoption) surely bitter sweet no matter how I slice it.
blah, blah, blah....
(drumroll please)
Blog Posts Coming Soon
The Paba Free Show - our radio show in college.
The Angel and The One - one of my favorite Weezer songs.
Starting my Experiment - Living the "Not Made in China" Week (planning on this sometime in June or July)
There is a special place in my heart for the band Spoon.
I discovered Spoon on my college radio show - and we played them frequently (usually stuff off Mountain of Sound EP and A Series of Sneaks). They are everything I like about my rock music - singable, catchy, powerful, fun but smart. You get the picture. We saw them in 98 or 99 at a small club in College Station. There weren't more than 30 people there and they rocked the house. I could have had a beer with Brit but I was too shy for that kinda thing back then (hey, I did have a beer and chatted it up with a member of What Made Miluwakee Famous a few years back though).
Anyway, I fell back in love with Spoon with their album from 2008 - Ga Ga Ga Ga and saw them in Houston that fall. Enjoy "The Underdog" from the same album!!
My youngest daughter loves the movie, Horton Hears a Who.
If you are going to sit through a kid's movie over a hundred times, it holds up pretty well and believe me, there are much worse things to sit through than this film. One afternoon on the 132nd viewing, the film's theme of being a minuscule person in a giant, unfathomable universe struck a nerve.
Please note 132 is a vague estimate, there was a period of time during nebulizer treatments that we watched portions of "Orton and Jojo" at least three times a day. My two year old loves Jojo, the misanthropic, non-speaking,Who most of all. Totally fits her personality....
The film deals with the heroism of Horton, who trusts in his big ears and the fact that "a person's a person no matter how small". However, another strand of the film is how the Mayor of Whoville accepts his infinite smallness in the universe. This is much more fleshed out than in the book, "fleshed out", as in the character doesn't exist in the book. I could only think of the great scene from Carl Sagan's "Cosmos". It's amazing, so, you know, watch it.
If you're too lazy to watch (shame on you) let me briefly summarize. Looking back on earth from a satellite thousands of miles away, the earth is only a pale blue dot. That's it. All that we've believed in, accomplished and fought and died for happened on a fraction of a pixel in the universe. The pale blue dot is about accepting the earth's rightful place in the universe - a tiny, unknown planet. It should humble us all and remind us that for all our pomp, we are really a primitive and disconnected race. It should in, Sagan's words, inspire us to "deal with each other more kindly and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot".
The fact is, we are the Whos.
We live in denial of this, almost as well as the Whos do - when Horton flaps his ears over Whoville, over and over again, the Whos just take their sunglasses on and off to adjust to the insanity.
"Nothing ever bad happened in Whoville, never has, and never will" -- as the lead on the Whoville city council says. We take our sunglasses on and off - we tell ourselves the narratives until they fit us like warm comfortable sweaters. Most of all these narratives (nationalist and consumer identities, religions, etc.) tell us we are important. We are the center of the universe.
yeah, i know it's only the world revolving around "me" but it's late and i'm tired...just go with it.
Let me stop here. For long-time readers (ha ha ha ha), you may or may not know that I consider my self a Christian. So these words you might find confusing, troubling, or crazy.
One day I might find the willpower or time to outline my exact theology, but until that unlikely day, just take my word on it - it's complicated. For now, it will be suffice to say I believe God created a universe that is (from my limited human viewpoint) ultimately unknowable. As far as the human mind can conceptualize, the universe is bordering on eternal. If God made the universe, then, we must be small.
In Douglas Adam's excellent The Restaurant at the End of the Universe a torture device called the Total Perspective Vortex, "annihilates you by showing you just how infinitesimally small you are compared to the Universe".
Books 1 and 2 are outstanding and then the series just kinda goes down from there with each successive book. I don't think I finished the last one. Although if I taught an absurdist, existential literature course, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would be on the reading list.
I don't think this smallness is necessarily inherently good or bad. In fact, the recognition that we are small is critical to letting go of our self-inflated importance and seeking a more authentic existence. Have you ever looked up at the stars at night and had the feeling of being inconsequential? The universe has created awe in theists and non-theists alike although with the size of the universe provoking (of course) different response and conclusions.
"What could define God [is a conception of divinity] as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God," Hawking told Sawyer. "They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible." - Stephen Hawking (in a recent interview)
Because I do believe, I think our smallness shows us how special we are. At worst, we find ourselves alone in a vast, cold, life-less universe. Even in the best-case scenario, the universe is populated with islands of life surrounded by an almost unimaginable, life-less ocean. There is no doubt about it, humanity does seem to have a special place in the universe by virtue of being alive.
Ok, as you can tell I am not one of those "the universe is teeming with life' people. I could be wrong - but even if there is intelligent life, even lots of it - we still are millions, trillions of light years apart. It would be like telling you that you have a long lost sibling somewhere in the world but we don't know anything about that sibling. So, great you have a sibling but no way of knowing or communicating with he or she nor any idea where they might be in the world....So, so what?
Anyway, back to the film. At first, the mayor lives in denial of the entire possibility (thinking himself mentally unstable).... but eventually, he does accept his insignificance in the universe. He begins to trust a giant elephant in the sky for Whoville's very salvation. Don't confuse the mayor as one of Kierkegaard's "knights of faith" - his faith is based on verifiable evidence. Nonetheless, accepting his place in the universe means he must trust something above himself. Eventually, we all have to let go of something, and ultimately, I think it all ends up being about control.
Once we have accepted our role, and relinquished our ideas of self-importance we can move on to figuring out how best life should be lived. Now that I know I am no longer the center of the universe, what is my role? I answer that question by embracing the smallness - trying to integrate my role as a servant in my life. I struggle with this - but as I continue to surrender self to God every day a little more, I know my role must be one of helping and putting others first.
As the movie crescendo's the Whos must rally together and make enough noise so others hear them (and not get dropped into a boiling pot of oil). They shout "We are Here!" over and over - until they are heard. I imagine that's what we are all trying to do on a metaphoric level every day.
My kids started watching "The Littles" in the past two months on Netflix...one thing stands out - Grandpa Little is a bastard. He is mean spirited and rude, especially towards Binky or Dinky (I still can't remember his name). Just an overall unlikeable character. Only in the 80's could you get a main character name calling others "stupid", "idiot", "flea-brained" several times a show.
Grandpa Little: Helping teach our very young how to insult when angry
Saw The Last Temptation of Christ recently for the first time. I came away really impressed and I already want to see it again. It was moving and thought-provoking. Did I agree with every little thing or think everything worked? Nope. Still, it might even be in my top five all-time faves once I see it again and let it settle.
It inspired me to write a future blog post on post on fear and faith (something that has been kicking around in my head and heart for a few weeks now)....
For those counting at home my current five in no particular order:
The Princess Bride Life is Beautiful Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind The Shawshank Redemption Unbreakable
Just realized I haven't written a long post in a long time. oh well.
I had a dream the other night that I was led by Stephen Colbert (yes, that Stephen Colbert) to a room that opened under a office floor (like a cellar). Once I walked down some stairs, he said something I can't recall and locked me in. The submarine like-door closed behind me and I knew my escape could only lead down the stairs.
Can I overstate the importance of Colbert? Sure, but gosh darn it, this guy is one of my hero's. Only Stewart and Colbert really point out the insanity of it all. Every now and then I will read some high-brow journalist (or conservative) downplay what they do (they are just entertainers/they are no better than Glenn Beck or O'Reilly). This is actually a wrong. Their similarity with the Fox shows are that they have a particular point of view. The fact is they are funnier and smarter than the blowhards at Fox. (Side question: Why are liberals funnier than conservatives?) It's this whole corporate media that continues to show us that there are "two sides to every story" - and forces us to believe that all opinions are equal. No, actually, opinions based on facts are better. The deconstruction of the right by Colbert and Stewart are brilliant. If only every media outlet had the bravery to call the buffoonery of global-warming denying, lies by politicians, bullying, and incompetence when they saw it. This might be the longest photo comment ever. Sorry about that....ahem....
I descended down the winding white-painted metal staircase. It was rickety but it got the job done. The staircase opened into a very small room. There was only room enough to open the door at the bottom of the stairs. It was carpeted, well lit and it looked as thought I could be in any generic office building. I walked through the door, which led to small hallway. On my right, a few feet down was a small white utility door and directly five feet in front of me, another door, identical to the one I just opened.
I opened the door in front of me to find an identical hallway that I just stood in. Of course, I tried the next door, and it too, opened into an identical hallway. Deep down, I knew these corridors repeated for eternity.
Panicking, I ran back to the stairwell fearing I might lose my mind among the endless doors and corridors. I was lost and alone. I wondered if I should go forward towards the endless doors and hallways hoping to find an endpoint or should I stay waiting at the staircase, hoping something or someone would open the door above? Alone, lost and hopeless, the thought occurred to me that maybe I had died and had discovered hell. Yep, it was scary but it was this thought (I think) that actually woke me up.
In other fragment news, I thought of my very own "Experiments in Living" week theme this summer. Last summer I lived like a Muslim for a week (which, by the way, I was a total failure at). This summer my experiment will be called the: Not "Made in China" Week. I will attempt to not use or buy anything made in China for a week. I know, it sounds like a doozey. But it should be a good challenge. I just need to create some ground rules and begin in possibly May or June.
I am almost done with my job as chair of my department. It's a great feeling. It really is.
