humility

Kobe Bryant died yesterday.
There was a helicopter crash, and in fact, several people died, including Kobe Bryant's 13 year-old daughter, Gianna, and two other middle-school age students.
This is devastating news for the families impacted. The overwhelming response to Kobe Bryant's loss reveals just how much we connect with and conjure relationships with celebrities and entertainers. It prompted a very meaningful conversation with two guys from the church that I attend. In that way, it surprised me how meaningful this loss is.

Today I went to the hospital to try to deal with a bill from our extended stay back in the summer of 2018. Hospitals traffic in death, even though they exist to prolong life. Walking away, I was reminded of how humbling hospitals are.

If you need to be reminded of the fragility of life, of the importance of your relationships, I encourage you to wake up early one morning, drive on over to the nearest hospital, and venture to the cafeteria for breakfast. Get yourself something decent and take a seat for a while. Notice those going through the line. Notice those seated and eating. Then, walk a few halls. If you don't walk away with a different perspective on the day, let alone your relationships and the things that matter to you, I will be surprised.

I'm terribly sad for Kobe Bryant's family. In the immediacy, his wife and family have to plan two funerals. Soon, his wife will probably have to connect with lawyers and financial advisers who have managed Kobe Bryant's contractual obligations and wealth. There are three living daughters surviving this death, one that is not even a year old. A mother is grieving. Daughters are certainly confused and scared. Things can change so very fast, and when they do, we all tend to be a bit more humble and thankful and kind. Wouldn't it be nice if we could remember this lesson, and walk through life each day living it out?

feeling rotten

Sometimes I make mistakes, and afterward I always feel rotten.

Sometimes I am presented with a possibility, and I don't know what to do. Sometimes I don't feel like I have someone with whom I can talk the possibility through, or the situation through, and I make a decision. I think about it. I consider alternatives. Then I make a decision. And almost immediately after finding someone who can talk things through with me, I realize how stupid my decision was. And afterward I feel rotten.

I guess I wish I allowed myself more time. I guess I wish I had someone immediately reliable who I could go to in order to talk through things. I need to process things verbally, but I also need wise counsel. I am not enough on my own. And sometimes, not being smart enough makes me feel rotten.

I hope that you take your time. I hope that you make better decisions. I hope that you have someone older, wiser, and patient, with whom you can share your conundrums. I hope that you have someone reliable and truthful and understanding to whom you can admit your weaknesses. I hope that you have someone compassionate and encouraging who can encourage you when you admit your mistakes. And I hope that after you've lived through your mistakes that you get to be the older, wiser, patient, reliable, truthful, understanding, compassionate, and encouraging someone to a younger version of yourself. I hope that you get to be that for someone else, otherwise we're all just wanting and wishing for what's available within a friend, neighbor, or coworker, but never sharing ourselves.

in all simplicity

But to deviate from the truth for the sake of some prospect of hope of our own can never be wise, however slight that deviation may be. It is not our judgement of the situation which can show us what is wise, but only the truth of the Word of God. Here alone lies the promise of God's faithfulness and help. It will always be true that the wisest course for the disciple is always to abide solely by the Word of God in all simplicity. 

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Lord, help me to seek wisdom in scripture. Help me to release my own hopes and dreams, to align my desires to yours.

Psalm 121 - The Message

I look up to the mountains;
    does my strength come from mountains?
No, my strength comes from God,
    who made heaven, and earth, and mountains.

He won’t let you stumble,
    your Guardian God won’t fall asleep.
Not on your life! Israel’s
    Guardian will never doze or sleep.

God’s your Guardian,
    right at your side to protect you—
Shielding you from sunstroke,
    sheltering you from moonstroke.

God guards you from every evil,
    he guards your very life.
He guards you when you leave and when you return,
    he guards you now, he guards you always.

Tuesday Morning

We went to the doctor. Kristin's pregnant.
She had to clarify for one of the nurses doing an admittance questionnaire:
"Five pregnancies, one living child."

I walked out thinking about people that have five kids. We have one "living" child at home. It's a different world--five and one.

The more I age, the more I find myself in surprising situations. This was one of them.

College Football Championship

More than anything, I watch English Premier League soccer. I have a huge AT&T Uverse package to watch as much European soccer as I can. Along with all the other activities I have going on, I have little time for much other tv watching. But I do my best to watch LSU football. And since the LSU Tigers are facing the Clemson Tigers in the college football championship tomorrow, I could take some time to contemplate sports writing.

Since the championship match-up has been set, I've been checking in on what writers have to say about it. I've looked at South Carolina newspapers, with little of the biased coverage that I expected. I've checked in on Baton Rouge and New Orleans writing, with all of the bias to LSU that I expect. I go to ESPN every day to read about something, and mostly I'm underwhelmed with what I find there. But today I read a lengthy and detailed analysis that is worth sharing.

College football championship--LSU-Clemson analysis, prediction, and more from Bill Connelly from ESPN provided more substantial writing than I have yet to encounter on the topic. Maybe that's what's been most disappointing. I feel like I've been hit with more analytical writing on the wild card match-ups in the NFL than in the actual college football championship.

I feel like Bill Connelly produced one of those detail-oriented, statistics-heavy, jargon-rich lengthy pieces that we used to get from Bill Simmons, and which I loved so much. I can remember, as a college freshman in 1999, tearing out Bill Simmons' articles from the actual ESPN The Magazine, to post on my dorm room wall. I love Bill Simmons' writing so much, and while I don't encounter the same voice here, Connelly does have some of the pieces that left me satisfied after having read for multiple sittings.

I've checked fivethirtyeight.com (Nate Silver) and theringer.com (Bill Simmons) and have been significantly underwhelmed. Fivethirtyeight is focused on politics and the NFL right now, and The Ringer is full on with NFL and NBA coverage. Both of those focal points should be assumptions, given who is driving the car, but I guess I would just like to see more substantial coverage of college football. Is that too much to ask?

At the end of the day, more than wanting a good football game, I want LSU to win. I'm highly biased. I'm highly invested. I can't justify it, but I could say that I need an LSU win. That wouldn't be true, but it would feel true. And that's a bit of a problem, right? When I feel like I need a time to win a game to be happy, I've got problems. I have even more problems when I'm complaining about the media coverage of said game and team.

Ambitious

I read The Lesson to Unlearn because it was recommended in Daniel Pink's newsletter. I didn't even know who the author was.

Questions:

1. What level of respect and awe does an individual have to achieve to make recommendations that other people follow without even considering the ultimate source? I must love Daniel Pink so much that I'm willing to follow his advice without even considering who is influencing him. As I'm having this thought, I'm recognizing that I need to reconsider my stance. I need to evaluate who is influencing Daniel Pink. That stuff matters. 
2. How self-important does an individual have to feel to call for an entire society to change? I learned that Paul Graham is a programmer, writer, and investor. He's immensely smarter than I am. He makes interesting and thoughtful points. But he legitimately ends The Lesson to Unlearn with a call to action by our entire society (I don't think he defines what his/our society is, but I'm pretty sure he's talking about the USA) using the third person plural. 

I can agree with Mr. Graham on multiple levels, including that college entrance exams are hackable, which make them deceptive and bad rather than predictive and meaningful. I can agree that grades often do not reveal learning, and that tests often don't measure learning. But in making a hard point that ends with a call for societal reformation he must write and argue in extremes. That's the weakest part of his argument, and the most provocative.

I think there is potential for people of influence to advocate for reforms in assessing student learning, throughout all of formal education. I think there are opportunities for anecdotes from lived experience as well as data from formal education to be used to change how learning is valued and assessed. I wonder what it would take for Mr. Graham to invest in a startup that pitched that.

Understanding?

It took me a few days, but I recently finished the Quanta Magazine article, Machines Beat Humans on a Reading Test. But Do They Understand? There's something interestingly satisfying about reading a lengthy article over the course of several days. I encounter the reading like I do with a book, based on the day's events and my mood and appetite. Congratulations to John Pavlus for what I can tell, as a serious novice, is excellent reporting. I appreciate how he connected with so many different sources and asked questions of the technology and the promised progress.

There's a whole bunch of details in this article about AI and neural networks and technical pieces that I won't pretend to understand. But there are some fun things to think about from this article. Below are my favorite quotes followed by my mundane brain.

It might be the case that understanding language in a linear, sequential fashion is suboptimal.

From Jakob Uszkoreit, an engineer at Google Brain. How absolutely wonderful is that statement? If we want to train computers to learn language, or equip computers to learn language, why do they have to do it in the typical, linear, left-to-right sequence that humans use? Computer "brains" are much more powerful than our own. If they piece language and words and sentences together in both directions, wouldn't they learn faster and have a higher probability of being correct?

It's a bit counterintuitive, but it is rooted in results from linguistics, which has for a long time looked at treelike models of language. 

Again from Jakob Uszkoreit. In this case he's referring to how the nonsequential processing of sentences produced treelike expressions. The neural network made connections between words throughout text, much like a tree or a sentence that was diagrammed by an elementary student. It allows for "associations between words that might be far away from each other in complex sentences." So, looking at text from both directions allowed the computer to create treelike structures of the sentences in order to learn the syntax of the language, to increase it's capabilities in natural language processing (NLP). Is this not why we ask students to diagram sentences? It's based on teh postulation that there's a static, highly structured task and expectation of what natural language is, and in order to engage in natural language you must understand how each word works and connects throughout a sentence. If we agree to the starting point and the end goal, sentence diagramming is worthwhile. It's teaching computers how to learn our own language at a faster rate that we can learn it. Why can't it work for us?

It seems like we have a model that has really learned something substantial about language, but it's definitely not understanding English in a comprehensive and robust way.

It's okay everyone. You can catch your breath. (That's from Sam Bowman, a computational linguist at New York University.)

According to Yejin Choi, a computer scientist at the University of Washington and the Allen Institute, one way to encourage progress toward robust understanding is to focus not just on building a better BERT, but also on designing better benchmarks and training data that lower the possibility of Clever Hans-style cheating.

This is sort of a confusing statement, but it lets me go off about education again. The people who are trying to enhance artificial intelligence--they're trying to propel the capabilities of computer learning--understand that formative assessment and responsive instruction are the methods for improving learning. Building a better brain won't stop cheating. Building a better student won't fix education. Building a better BERT won't prove much until the benchmarks and training are to a similarly high quality.

Bowman points out that it's hard to know how we would ever be fully convinced that a neural network achieves anything like real understanding. Standardized tests, after all, are supposed to reveal something intrinsic and generalizable about the test-taker's knowledge. But as anyone who has taken an SAT prep course knows, tests can be gamed. 

This is where I really was won over by the author, John Pavlus. He moved through a bit of history and some serious explication regarding NLPs and the tasks to assess AI capabilities, and eventually he came around to the quality of the assessment, the bias of the assessment, and the capabilities of a computer to learn how to do well on a specific test/task. And he pushes the issue by asking the validity of the results of the assessments. We're making newer and harder tests. Are the computers getting better at taking those tests at faster rates than humans? Do the results really tell us anything? This is my question every time we promote the ACT or some other standardized test. We subject every student to a standardized test to measure their learning, to judge the quality of instruction, the score a school and district. But what are the results really telling us?

We're definitely in an era where the goal is to keep coming up with harder problems that represent language understanding, and keep figuring out how to solve those problems.

Again from Sam Bowman. Why can't this be our drive as humans? Why can't we live in a time, every time, the present, when we're coming up with harder problems that represent improvements in our quality of life, and then keep figuring out how to solve them? One of those problems might be enhancing AI capabilities in language acquisition and understanding. Another of those problems might be health care in remote areas. Why can't we measure our success on those types of problems, instead of some standardized questions in a timed assessment?

Read the article. Even if it takes you multiple days, you'll have new thoughts and ask yourself some interesting questions. And the writing will be much better than this.

I'm waiting.

A central measurement of a democratic regime can be gauged by questions its leaders share with the public, how important decisions are explained and defined for the country at large. The business of war entails the severest sacrifices that can fall on ordinary men and women. In war, more than at any other time, the people must be sufficiently informed to understand the choices that are being made. In the end, no statesman can successfully pursue a war policy unless he has instilled a sense of shared direction and purpose, unless people know what to expect and what is expected of them. By all these standards of candor and collaboration between a leader and the people in the critical time of war, Lyndon Johnson had failed.

Page 342 in Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Today is Sunday, January 5, 2020. Three days ago, on Thursday, January 2, 2020, President Donald Trump moved the United States one step closer to another war in the Middle East. NPR has a nice timeline available in Timeline: How The U.S. Came To Strike And Kill A Top Iranian General. The quote regarding Lyndon Johnson, which I read just last night, seems timely.

Doris Kearns Goodwin worked for Lyndon Johnson, standing before him in the Oval Office of the White House. She went on to teach at Harvard. She worked with Lyndon Johnson on his memoirs, wrote one book about him, wrote the previously mentioned book which featured him, and is coming out with another book about his domestic affairs. She likes the guy's work. She admires him. But she minces no words when she says that he failed as a war time president and she is quite clear in her reasoning.

This quote is timely because I don't know if I've heard a good explanation for the killing of the Iranian general Suleimani. Although I am not a fan of President Trump, in this moment I'm awaiting to be convinced of the necessity of this act. I have not come to judgment yet. I've read some about it (example: Pompeo scrambles to defend Trump claim killing Suleimani will save US lives), and I'm still unconvinced. I acknowledge that there's a lot that I may not need to know, as I'm further than far from a need to know basis. But I'm pretty sure that details regarding why Suleimani might have been a bad guy and actively been against the US and its citizens could easily have been disclosed to paint a sufficient picture. Current details are insufficient. News that President Trump was golfing on Sunday while his Secretary of State was standing (and sitting on talk shows) to defend the actions does not give me great confidence. President Trump may have taken to Twitter to make his case, but I'm not going there. I probably should, to be more informed, but dear God, he's the president. Stand at a podium and tell us what is up.

In Leadership in Turbulent Times, Doris Kearns Goodwin shares how four presidents moved from ambition, through adversity, and into leadership as the President of the United States. Her depiction of Lyndon Johnson was nuanced. His ambition seemed selfish and self-righteous. He might have done good for others, but he seemed to only find worth in himself when he was in charge, hard-charging. His adversity appeared to be a mixture of nature--heart disease in his family--and the negative aspects of his ambition catching up with him. And then when he found himself in office as president, he did so much good, making so much progress domestically. I went from despising him to admiring him and thinking that I needed to read more about him. But Goodwin couldn't leave it there, because she knew how her description of Johnson would need to include reference to the Vietnam War. That is where the above paragraph was shared.

I've judged President Trump in lots of situations, but I'm forming my opinion on this issue. My mind is mostly made, but Doris Kearn Goodwin's writing has pushed me to welcome a message from our standing president after taking decisive war action. So I'm stepping back. I'm listening. I want the decision to be explained. I want to understand the choice. I want to know what to expect and what is expected of me. Given that information, I can support a cause and rally, but without it I can't.

I'm waiting.

Kowalski Christmas

We celebrated a Kowalski (in-laws) Christmas today.
The simple details: Brunch at our house at 10am.
More details: Gifts for grandparents and your own kids; variety of breakfast casseroles and cinnamon rolls, and cereals for the kids.
Fun details: We have a mystery gift tradition that we've started, where someone buys a mystery gift and we have to guess what it is. This year, my wife (I should introduce her, she's Kristin, pictured below), was the purchaser, and the item turned out to be unicorn tape dispenser. Also, we take a traditional kids picture on the couch each year.

Counter-clockwise from top left: Kristin is all about the details, including prepping the K-Cup drawer, the kids opening the mystery gift after Aunt Chelsea won, the family having fun, kids on the couch, parents taking pictures of the kids on the couch.

It's a bummer that we're not all together for Christmas day. This family is dispersed around the country, with us being in New Orleans with my family. This is the first year I've contemplated the fact that my family's traditions are my New Orleans family's traditions, not our own. I've never had a Christmas in Springfield; I don't know what it's like. However contemplative this prompts me to be, I haven't made any changes. And now, at the end of this day, I find it really wonderful to have had some time to rest and relax during our school's holiday break and then for us to come together to celebrate this Christmas. We were all together during Thanksgiving in Kansas City. Putting unnecessary pressure on ourselves to do something prior to Christmas, when we all disperse, would be foolish. This was a wonderful day that did drag on, just like a good family Christmas celebration should be. We had plenty of food, and went back for seconds and thirds whenever we wanted to. The kids played their guts out, spilled a ton and didn't finish any part of a meal they started, but that's the way it's supposed to be. So maybe I'm going to encourage this family to do it this way again next year. And maybe this can become our tradition as a Kowalski family for Christmas. If so, I think I would enjoy it.

Proverbs 20:15

"Wise words are more valuable than much gold and many rubies."

That's from the New Living Translation.

I'm reading through the Bible in chronological order, according to Tyndale publishers. I'm nearing the end of Solomon's reign, and since he wrote much of Proverbs, I've recently finished his writings therein. This verse was one of those motivating things to push me to write everyday. Seth Godin also advocates for writing every day. Actually, many things are converging to push me forward in my writing, but I can't give away all of my ideas.

I like this verse. I like it a lot. I don't know if I have wise words just yet, but I think I do have wise words within me. And I do believe that wise words are more valuable than gold and rubies, so I'm here to write every day, and hopefully some wisdom will find its way out.

Another Year, Another Resolution

It's another year--2020!!!--and that means another resolution to use this blog to write and publish. I'm starting the year sharing my goals. My fourth goal maybe should be revised to "Think and publish every day."

I have been thinking about this for several weeks, and I'm thinking my categories will be personal, spiritual, educational. If there's stuff beyond that, I will be surprised. I used to have Pages for Writings and Readings and Pictures, but now everything is going together. In 2020, I'm going to post pictures with my thoughts, I'm going to post videos with my thoughts, I'm going to post quotes from what I read or listen to with my thoughts, and I'm going to post some things that I might write. It's all going together, because it's all making me who I am and it's all what I'm thinking. Back when I started this blog, that was the whole purpose.

But I think this year, a year that I'm walking into with more of a grip on my sense of love and being a spouse and father and what parenting and loving is about, and also discipleship and education and aging (I turn 40 and that is actually meaning something to me), it's about me openly dialoguing with myself. That's what I hope to do here.

So here are my goals for 2020:

1. Date Kristin every month.
2. Write to Magnolia every month.
3. Seek God every day. Study his word. Pray. Externalize the teachings of Christ.
4. Write and publish every day.
5. Flexibly follow a budget. Reflect each month and learn through the process.
6. Decorate the basement. Paint the stairs and hallway. Create new visuals of Bible verses, sayings, pictures.
7. Be a partner with Kristin, not a dictator. Be a leader and father to Magnolia.
8. Love others as Christ did—not in fear or scarcity, but earnestly, with no strings attached.
9. Learn something new as an educator. Finish EU classes.

structures instead of processes

"Better structures lead to better work. People who care can magnify their impact by building structures that bring in more people who care."

- from Seth Godin's blog

I'm all about better work, but I tend to think of better work as a result of better processes. I've been a huge fan of identifying processes that lead to greater efficiency, but I'm definitely at fault for not bringing in more people who care. I'm guilty of thinking of myself or my team only, of not branching out or bringing in. When I think of processes, instead of structures, I think of reproducibility or replaceability (if either of those are words). I think of replacing one individual with another, applying the processes to the same situation. But as I listened to Seth Godin's book, Linchpin, I developed a deep philosophical problem with processes that allow for people to be viewed as cogs, easily replaceable with another cog following the same processes. For efficiency sake, maybe it's okay to assess some situations within the realm of processes, considering the best practices to become most efficient. At some point in that spectrum though, there must be a tipping point at which people are no longer the replaceable entity, and the move is made to robots, allowing for the ultimate replacement of the individual. That's a different discussion though, I think.  

So, back to structures instead of processes. It's good to be challenged in my thinking. Scaling up might not be Seth Godin's go-to topic, but it is something that he has written about. Anyway, the second sentence in the top quote, the part about bringing in more people, makes me think of scaling up within a structure. If I can identify a better structure, rather than a process, and bring in people to fill out that structure, allowing for growth, then the impact can be magnified. This is a different way of thinking for me. 

No more thoughts about simple processes that allow for people to be easily replaced. I want to work for better structures that can bring in more people to magnify impact. That's a much more inclusive principal, rather than exclusive. I like that a whole lot better. 

it's subversive to be joyous in public

In listening to KSMU on the way home from exercising on Saturday morning, I heard a quick story about Yiddish music. There were a few interesting bits, but most of all a statement from an accordion player at the center of a documentary and tribute album. Read (or listen to) the article if you’re interested.

Here’s the bit that interested me: “it’s subversive to be joyous in public.” I’m pulling this straight out of context, and simply considering the statement in isolation.

Is this true? Where is it true? When is it true? Why could it be true?

Is it false? Where is it false? When is it false? Why could it be false?

I’m not sure what “joyous” or “public” means in this situation. Is this just the foolish words of an accordion player, deeply troubled by the lack of Yiddish music on hit radio. Does he need a “more accordion” skit from Saturday Night Live? Are the average workplaces of everyday Americans not overwhelmingly joyful enough for this guy? I don’t get it.

I guess I’m stuck asking too many questions about this statement, trying to get to authorial intent, to get anywhere. All I can do is think about my little sphere of existence. And I admit that it’s pretty little and quite insulated. Most days I spend most of my time in a high school. There’s a good bit of public joy taking place there. The next place I spend the most time, other than home, would be church. That place is full of joy. Sometimes I get overwhelmed by the joy there, and wonder if it is manufactured or authentic. We aren’t nightlife or party people, so I can’t speak to that--I did say my sphere is small. We go to the grocery. We go to Barnes and Noble. I don’t see joyful people as subversive; I see that as wonderful.

Here’s where I can imagine the statement, “it’s subversive to be joyous in public,” rings true. Any time I watch local nightly news or national 24 hours stations, I am met full in the face with anger, disappointment, failure, disgust. Rarely does it seem that the public face presented, locally or nationally, is one of joy. So that I get. And that aligns with the statement. Life is hard, and we often don’t get what we want. Forces, sometimes in the form of people, conspire against us. We lose. All of this means we often lack joy. As I said, I get that.

So here’s my deal, and this is where I wear blinders. I rarely watch any news. I listen to a lot of KSMU and I read a lot of NPR and ESPN and my feedly feed is filled with what I would actually call news. But I avoid all that negative stuff. I change the station, or ignore the story after reading the headline, or don’t follow the link. And in that ignorance, what I see is the joyful, or the interesting, or the instructive.

Maybe I'm wrong on both accounts: when the statement could be true, and how I handle life. Maybe I over-insulate myself. Maybe I'm a naive fool. I guess if I'm a joyful one, I'm okay with that.

another year, another try

So, it's 2016. I'm going to give this another go. I'll start by sharing my goals for the year.

1. Learn sign language with Kristin.
I want to do this, because I love hanging out with Kristin, and I love learning, and I see it as an opportunity to connect with more people. Communication is important, and learning to sign will help me grow my opportunities for communication. We're going to use apps on our phones, and hopefully take some classes at OTC.

2. Read 25 books. Posts and reviews to follow here and on Goodreads. 
There's a nice blog I like to read, Farnam Street, and it's got a pretty good piece titled "Just Twenty-Five Pages a Day." The headline may seem more hardline than the theme, and that's why I encourage you to read the article. The theme is really good.

3. Write every week. Publish here at least twice a month.
I want to reflect after a week at work. I want to write of my thoughts based on what I'm seeing and experiencing at work. I want to get down my own ideas after all the reading that I'm doing. I want to form some of my own thoughts in longer form. Sometimes I'll be tentative to publish, so sometimes what I'll put up will be crap. Other times, after more mulling things over, hopefully what I write will be better.

4. Exercise three times a week. 
I've got a membership to Planet Fitness. It's cheap, and it's good for me. I like going there and listening to the Bible or podcasts, especially Serial. If I can kill two birds with one stone, then I can listen to three podcasts and exercise three times a week. Wednesday and Thursday are off, and I usually hate doing that stuff on Sundays. So I've got Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Let's hope I can do it.

5. Eat well.
Vegetables with every meal: three or four cups a day. Two to three cups of fruit a day. Moderate meat protein. Minimum sugar. Little to no wheat, whey, and/or gluten. It helps me feel better, lighter, healthier.

Let's see what the year brings!

a poem I wrote while freewriting with my students today

There can be no knowing
without intimacy.

There can be no intimacy
without consent.

There can be no consent
without trust.

There can be no trust
without familiarity.

There can be no familiarity
without proximity.

There can be no proximity
without luck, or God, or whatever you call providence
that you may or may not believe in.

Yes,
you can know someone
without being intimate,
but that knowledge is not very deep.

Yes,
you can be intimate with someone
without consent,
but that intimacy is not freely given.

Yes,
you can have consent from someone
without trust,
but that consent is not perfectly honest.

Yes,
you can be trusted by someone
without familiarity,
but that trust is not properly earned.

Yes,
you can be familiar with someone
without proximity,
but that familiarity is not truly genuine.

And where you are not genuine,
you will always lack depth.

Intimacy can be stolen.
Consent can be forced.
Trust can be broken.
Familiarity can be pretended.
Proximity can be artificial.

So why go on?
Why wake up in the morning?
Why engage with another human?

Because of hope.
Because of authentic people.
Because of truthful speakers.
Because of patient listeners.
Because of me.
And because of you.

root canal

Yesterday I experienced a root canal. Basically, I have a bad tooth that needed a lot of work. It originally had a filling, but since I grind my teeth so much, I broke my tooth and the filling, and I've basically been without about one-third of that tooth for about six months. The root canal was necessary to seal up the nerves and make sure I don't infected, which is a bit scary to me. So, the doctor drilled out a decent-sized hole in my tooth, down to where he could get to the nerve. Then he filled the nerves with something like cement to basically kill the nerves and stop them from ever getting infection. Hopefully.

I guess I should say that I went to Dr. Newberry at Endodontics of the Ozarks. He was recommended to me by 417 Smiles.

Here's the real deal: I was really scared. I was nervous about this procedure. Honestly, I thought I might die. I thought that I needed to tell Kristin, "I love you" before I died. The situation forced me into thinking about what I wanted the last thing to be that I communicated to Kristin. It was rather surreal, in my mind, at least. I love Kristin so much, and I'm so scared of losing her, or even of her losing me.

I tried to stay calm through the whole check-in/preparation time, but my heart was racing and I couldn't stop it. When things finally started, when the doctor came, I think he could tell I was nervous. But when he really got going, I just closed my eyes, focused on steady, deep breaths, and said Psalm 23 to myself over and over.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

I remember having to write Psalm 23 over and over and over in elementary school, and I still remember it in that old translation, the King James, to this day. I said that psalm over and over in my head, and it calmed me so much. When everything was over, the doctor even said I did some "pretty serious mind-over-matter calming stuff." That made me feel good, but it also reinforced how good God is to me, and how thankful I need to be to him for his protection and comfort. 

I wanted to thank the doctor for his work, but he seriously already had another patient ready to roll. He was working so fast. I will totally recommend Dr. Newberry to anybody who asks, but I also have to recommend Jesus as well. They're both really good at what they do. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

This weekend the United States government recognizes and remembers the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. with a holiday in his honor. I don't have to go to school--meaning Springfield Public Schools honors the day. My wife has to work--meaning Willard Schools doesn't honor the day. That kind of blows me away, but then I looked online about the holiday, and I was blown away even more.

According to Wikipedia:
The campaign for a federal holiday in King's honor began soon after his assassination in 1968. President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, and it was first observed three years later. At first, some states resisted observing the holiday as such, giving it alternative names or combining it with other holidays. It was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time in 2000.

I am dumb-founded by the fact that the holiday was officially observed in all fifty states for the first time in 2000. 

Sidenote: I know there are some out there who significantly doubt the veracity of Wikipedia, but I am not one of them. Regardless of my own naivete, or judgment, depending upon your perspective, I kept looking. 

According to Infoplease:

1983: Congress passes, President Reagan signs, legislation creating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
1986: Federal MLK holiday goes into effect
1993: For the first time, MLK Day is held in some form—sometimes under a different name, and not always as a paid state holiday—in all fifty states.
2000: Utah becomes the last state to recognize MLK Day by name, renaming its Human Rights Day state holiday. South Carolina becomes the last state to make MLK Day a paid holiday for all state employees. Until now, employees could choose between celebrating it or one of three Confederate-related holidays.

I discovered more surprises. It took fifteen years for Congress to pass the legislation, and three years to go into effect. I guess I am both naive and stupid, and for more reasons than just using Wikipedia. I didn't think it took fifteen years to get legislation passed in Congress or three years for something to begin to be implemented. It actually took seventeen years before the legislation was fully implemented in all fifty states. 

Since I've been reading about some U.S. Presidents lately, I have started thinking of history in terms of presidents. John F. Kennedy was president when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Kennedy himself was assassinated, and Lyndon Johnson became president. Then came Richard Nixon. Then came Gerald Ford. Then came Jimmy Carter. Then came Ronald Reagan, who signed the legislation that Congress had passed. Then came George H.W. Bush. Then came Bill Clinton, who was president when all fifty states officially observed the holiday. That's a long freaking time. And get this, after Bill Clinton came George W. Bush. And after him came Barack Obama, the first African-American president. Now, by this point I should be writing in all caps and using lots and lots of exclamation marks. And if you heard me talking this through, you would hear it in my voice. Is that not amazing?!?! How is this possible?!?!

So, Infoplease seems to be owned by Pearson Education, Inc., at least according to the bottom of the webpage and their Company Overview page. If I was really smart, or a really good writer, I would take the time to juxtapose Wikipedia (big, free, collaborative, organic) with Pearson (big, expensive, obstructive, diplomatic), but I am neither of those things. 

I am a white man. Simply based on my physical description I am in a position of power, according to most recent history in the United States. The world and the U.S. have changed quite a bit since the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and even since 1983, when a holiday in his honor was created. We have an African-American U.S. President. We almost had a female U.S. President. Those are great advances, and testimony to the good work of Martin Luther King, Jr.

I admire the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. because of what it advanced: equal-rights. I hate unequal playing fields. If the life is one big game, then the game is rigged. So many people are playing at a huge disadvantage, while others have huge and unfair advantages. But life isn't fair either. I learned that, too. So what are we to do?

I guess, this weekend, I'll join in with many others in remembering someone who worked to make life somehow more fair, more hospitable, more welcoming. And I'll remember that the work is not done.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

"I told my doctor about that, and he gave me new medicine, so it won't happen anymore."

I said this to Kristin, when discussing the absurdity that the giant format graphic text World War Robot was used as a lap desk for my computer, since I had recently broken my plastic lap desk in a fit of rage while grading some nonsense assignment. Kristin didn't like using World War Robot as a lap desk, and argued that a proper lap desk would be much better.

Really, I was responding to what her eyes were saying, not her words. After I said these words she laughed a lot, which made me feel better about the whole thing.

And she's right. A proper lap desk would do better than a 12" x 12" hardback book. But right now I think that's my lesson to learn, and not hers, since I'm the one that broke the previous lap desk. 

2014 resolution, some changes

We're a week in to 2014 and since I've only had two days of school, and two snow days, I've had lots of time to read and think. So, today I've made a new year's resolution for 2014--the first so far.

I've made a few revisions to this blog, which I don't seem to have used since 2010, and I plan to post to the Writings page, Readings page, and Pictures page once a week. I'll write something myself, to practice my skill and hone my craft. I'll share something that I've read, and what I think about it. And I'll take a picture and post it, along with a caption or a thought. I'll try to do each of these things once a week. I want to learn. Right now, I'm inspired. Let's see how disciplined I can be.

National Day on Writing - a few minutes late

I’ve been sitting on this for a while, and haven’t posted it because I’m a bit timid. I’m a Christian. There’s nothing that I think more about than Biblical literature, interpretation, and application. But this subject is a bit different than anything else I’ve written about, so expanding into new territory isn’t easy. I figured today, on the National Day on Writing, I would be adventurous.

Four weeks ago I started going to an old school, proper Sunday School at Jefferson Avenue Baptist Church where a friend of mine leads the class. They started a series on the book of Philippians, which is one of my favorite books in the Bible, so I decided I would try it out.

The study started out by looking at Philippians 1:1-26. I was surprised by the idea of Christ’s work in Christians as a process. This is something that had occurred to me, but never quite so explicitly from the Bible. Personally, I had grown weary by the idea that when one “becomes a Christian” everything changes. We are physical beings, with urges and impulses and drives that become so ingrained within us that they become almost impossible to break—almost. But through the work of Christ, over time, change occurs. I think it’s pretty cool, even if it is a little crazy.

The verses that stand out to me, that encourage me in my thinking are Philippians 1:4-6, and 9-11.

In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

Later, after confessing his desire for death more than life and pleading with the Philippians to have the same attitude as Christ, he persists in his emphasis on process oriented Christianity in 2:12-13.

Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

Now, chapter 3 of Philippians is probably my favorite chapter in the entire Bible, and in this chapter, specifically verse 12, Paul looks toward his goal and realizes he has far to go.

Not that I have already obtained all this*, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 

*This refers to verses 8-11.

Paul is a man who, if we believe the Bible, heard and saw a blinding vision of the Lord, and this experience transformed him in an amazing way—he stopped persecuting the Church and Christians, became a Christian himself and was himself persecuted. But still this transformation was not absolute or complete. Paul uses words and phrases to represent a process or journey oriented life in Christ. This often is not what is represented in the modern Church, and often not what is presented by Christians as they live their lives. Often I have encountered a Christianity of immediacy and perfectionism, and experienced nothing but a stifling mood. According to Paul, and his letter to the Philippians, this should not be. Why not approach life in Christ as a journey in coming to know Him more? Why not approach living as a Christian as a process in coming to know Christ more, and allowing that experience to change oneself? 

The Sunday School class was really fun for me to attend. It was good to meet some new people, and experience a new a different church experience apart from the one I’ve had for the past nine years. It’s always good to be challenged in my thinking, and I’m grateful that I’ve been exposed to new ways of reading one of my favorite texts.