Christmas Memories: Upon a Midnight

(Although I'm posting this later, I wrote it in the wee hours of Christmas morning.)

It's past midnight here, and I'd call it partly cloudy.

I went to midnight Mass, though. Always a good thing to do, especially when y0u are feeling somewhat ... uncertain ... about Christmas.

It is strange the odd assortment of Christmas memories I have. I remember the magic of seeing a bunch of packages and some new bikes piled around the tree. I remember most fondly that special wonder of seeing that in the middle of the night, when the world was dark except for the lights on the tree. I remember, later, when I was too old to believe in Santa but my little brothers were starting to question the whole thing, my mom started a tradition of all of us kids sleeping together, and it was the job of us older ones to get the little ones to go to sleep without trying to catch Santa in the act. I remember listening to the radio those nights. We would always find some station that was tracking Santa's progress and playing Christmas carols, and we'd listen until we fell asleep.

Later on, there was all the joy of being home from college at Christmas, and the crazy year that I spent the two weeks before Christmas on a trip to Israel, which was wonderful. But I spent half of Christmas Eve on an airplane from Israel, half in O'Hare airport trying to get a flight to Texas, and my bonus 6 hours on a bus to South Bend, where I was living at the time. Somehow, they had an easier time getting me out of South Bend than O'Hare. I remember the eerie silence of the Notre Dame campus, devoid of all signs of life that still, silent night. I remember how much I appreciated the Christmas humor of the pilot the next morning. I also remember it as one of the strangest Christmases ever, not simply because of my travel, but because my mom had been sick. Between that and not being quite sure when I would get there, they decided we would go out to eat, but it turned out nothing was open. We finally found a Denny's that was open, but it turned out that they were out of food. We eventually found an IHOP that had about half of their menu available. Strange Christmas.

This year is my eighth without my mom and my fifth without my dad. Usually, since my mom died, I spend Christmas with my brother Joey and his wife and daughters. Christmas Eve is the big-deal part, at my sister-in-law's parents' house, with all of her cousins and folks, and they always make me feel included.

I generally sneak out early, for midnight Mass, which the parish there oddly schedules for 9pm. My dad and I used to go together. I decided this morning that I was going to midnight Mass. And I did. And in the quiet, just before it started, I suddenly remembered something very strange. I remember sitting with my dad at that early midnight Mass the year before he died. We had to get there early to get a seat, and as we sat there, he started to nod off. And he just looked so old to me, and I wondered how many Christmases we had left. Strange that I wondered that on what turned out to be his last Christmas. Strange that I remembered it tonight.

Living "alone"

So, I live alone, now ... theoretically. Paul has, of course, moved on and moved out. Theoretically.

So, this afternoon, my doorbell rang. And, as you have certainly guessed by now, it was Paul.

Me: "What's up?"
Him: "I need to take a shower."
Me: "I thought you didn't live here anymore. Shouldn't you shower where you live?"
Him: "Danedy, please. I had an accident."

Well, you probably don't need the rest of the details of that conversation. But I let him take a shower. And make himself a sandwich. And have tomorrow's cigarettes early.

But I don't really feel like I have the house to myself yet.

Cereal and cigarettes

So, Paul is settling in to life in the homeless shelter. Actually, he corrected me this morning, it's called a rescue mission.

The new routine for me and Paul, as far as I can tell, is this. Every other day, I give him a pack of cigarettes. Since the rescue mission kicks him out at 6am, he wakes up, gets his act together, gets on the bus and comes over here. My doorbell rings about 6:45, maybe 7 if I'm lucky.

I try to make him talk to me a little before he goes away again. I worry about him. So, when I asked him today what is going on with him, I got three interesting answers.

First, he told me that he's trying to line up some day-labor working construction or something. So he went to a place and applied. Me: "That sounds promising." Him: "Not really. I failed the psychological exam." He looked at me with a sort of sad smile and said "I always fail psychological exams." And then he sort of laughed. It was the sort of thing that, if you didn't know better, you would almost think he was throwing the exam, trying to fail. Strange.

Then he says: "But Jesus is really looking out for me now." I asked him how and/or why he believed that to be the case. He reminded me that he has to listen to an hour long sermon about Jesus everyday. He didn't really have much sense of what they are saying about Jesus, but Paul knows that Jesus cares about him.

And, finally, almost randomly, I asked him if they served him a hot breakfast in the morning. No breakfast. I guess maybe they think that you'll look harder for work if you take on the day hungry. Maybe they never heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I find it somewhat strange that they don't feed these guys.

So, I suspect that this is my new life for a while. Every other morning, Paul is going to stop by for cereal and cigarettes.

Brother Update

I know some of my readers like to follow this storyline. So, by popular demand, the Paul update.

I went out of town for 4 days just before Thanksgiving. When I came back, Paul had a regularly-scheduled check-up with his psychiatrist, who decided that he wasn't doing that well and that she wanted to switch his meds. She decided to hospitalize him for what turned out to be about two weeks, so that she could make the adjustment in a stable environment. After that, he was back at the house and everything was as it always has been.

Until two days ago.

When I came home from the office on Monday, having finished all of my end-of-semester grading responsibilities (yea!), there was a note from Paul saying that he had been drinking and decided to stay at the Rescue Mission (i.e. the homeless shelter that he stayed at before).

That was the last I heard until this morning, when my doorbell rang about 7am. It was Paul and he wanted cigarettes. (Right now, he gets a pack every two days, and he was due.) Well, we chatted a little and I gave him the cigarettes, but apparently he wants (yet again) to live at the homeless shelter.

I don't really know what to do about that, so I decided to blog it, and then forget about it and get back to work. I don't think it's what's best for him, but I don't think I can really stop him.

Sigh.

Letting Christ Play

One of my most faithful readers sent me his Christmas letter. It was inspired by this blog, and does much better than I usually do at naming some of the places that Christ is playing in this world. And one of Jim's great gifts is in sticking with the hard things long enough to see the grace breaking through. And I'm humbled by and grateful for the way he sees Christ playing in my life. Here's his letter:

Christ plays in 10,000 places
Lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins

Dear Friends all,

This Christmas letter is a record of places I went and people I met in the hope of seeing for myself Christ "playing" in our midst.

First, there was the pretty fourteen-year-old who was raped. She held her own against her parents, grandparents, a $400 abortion doctor and just about everybody she knew. She told me she knew the baby inside her was a gift from God. I argued with her father. I never prayed so hard in my life. I got to be there when the little girl was born and I was the first to hold her. I was there when she confronted the rapist in court to ask him what she had ever done to him that he would take her virginity away from her. And I get to see her go back with the baby to day care at the school she attends. Christ plays in that place.

Then I tagged along to Jeanne's Peace Corps reunion. 40 years ago, Americans; Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Mormons - tossed everything aside, careers, family, money, to go to Malawi to help some beautiful African people. These Americans taught, nursed, sang and played with the friends they made. They came back to America but were never the same. Now they were even more generous, more fun. I got to see them being Christ to the Malawians - and to each other.

And then I met some Jesuit Volunteers who went to work at an AIDS hospice after graduating from a Jesuit University. They could have made big bucks. Instead they saw the face of Christ playing in another place. The motto of the Jesuit Volunteers is "It will ruin your life." And it did. No longer can they go back to making money. "No longer at ease here, in the old dispensations."

I have a friend who teaches Theology. She got her Ph.D. the hard way, after helping both her parents through their final illnesses. After her father died, she took charge of her schizophrenic brother. She lets him live with her. Have you ever lived with a schizophrenic? Christ plays there.

A friend from 50 years ago asked me what heaven would be like. I told her I hadn't a clue but I didn't want to go there if she wasn't there. Her 6 children and 10 grandchildren are going to miss her. They stopped her chemotherapy months ago. Now she lives on morphine and is all swollen and ugly. But it is in her face and in her life that her children and grandchildren, and I, have seen the face of God.

After another friend wrote to me that he had Alzheimer's, I went to see him. When he answered the door, he apologized for not recognizing me. He said that the Alzheimer's is really hard. He can't drive any more because he gets lost. I will take him to lunch this week. He was always Christlike in his dealings with others. He is my ideal of what a social worker should be. It's not hard to see Christ gently taking over the life of this once brilliant man.

At an intersection on my way home, a car was stalled. The old lady behind the wheel looked terrified as cars honked and the traffic piled up behind her and passed her. From out of nowhere and from four different directions, came burly young men, some tattooed and ear-ringed. They pushed her car to safety and saw that she was okay. They made her smile. Another place Christ played.

There were actually 10,000 such places. I just didn't notice them all.

Merry Christmas.

Thanks, Jim, for the reminder to keep looking, and to keep letting Christ play in our eyes, in our limbs, in our lives.

Currently Reading

I was reading Catholic Peace Fellowship's most recent newsletter and I followed up on a couple things and found my way to a great book that I've read half of today. (Yes, I know I should be reading papers and writing a dissertation.)

If you like thoughtful cultural criticism, if you want a glimpse into art (especially film) and violence, and especially if you're a fan of Flannery O'Connor, order this book and read it. It's called A Good War is Hard to Find: The Art of Violence in America. It's by an ND grad named David Griffith. It is inspired by the question of what made the photos and abuses of Abu Ghraib possible. I'm thinking about adding it to a syllabus or two next semester.

Trying to blog again

OK, I admit that it's shameful how little I've been blogging in the past couple of months. What have I been doing instead? Well, mostly grading papers, but also dealing with some stuff with my brother who was hospitalized for a couple of weeks, going to DC to give a paper at a conference, struggling to stay a page ahead of my students. Gosh, it doesn't even sound like that much, but it has seemed pretty hard!

Classes are over. I still have about 40 papers to grade and then I'll have 50 finals to deal with, then I'll finally be able to focus on my dissertation.

No rest for the wicked. Or the weary, either.

Something else to do

Well, my to-do list just got longer. My niece and I were chatting online earlier today. She told me that she is being confirmed this year. At church, she specified. Then she asked me if I knew what that meant. I asked her if it meant that she's going to start taking church as seriously as I do. (She is generally mystified by the strange desire I seem to have to go to church every week.) Her response to that was "I don't know yet." Fair enough.

Then she sent me this email (unedited, except that I removed her teacher's name):

Hey Danedy, My language teacher, Mrs. S., taught me something i didnt know!(well i guess that thats a givin) but still, she taught us something i didnt know about something i would have figured you would have told me!!! :) well anyways one of our Lit Vocab words was allegory and she sais that The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe was an exzample of an allegory because....Azlan stands for like Christ(i knew that part) And that the four kids stood for the disciples Peter, Paul, Luke and John(i think thats what she siad...Im not TOTALY sure i mean cummon Language is 6th period hehe). AND this is the part i bet u didnt know CS Lewis wrote this for his NIECE(hint hint)when she was being confirmed. Ok Well im gunna talk to u now :)

So now, I apparently need to write a book for her. I asked her if it would count if I dedicate my dissertation to her. No such luck. She wants a book she'll want to read.

I think the best hope is that, at some point, we'll meet in the middle. Maybe I'll we able to write a not-so-academic work and she'll grow into an interest in my field.

Paul's little adventure

Well, the prodigal brother has gone off and returned again since last I blogged.

On Wednesday, Paul didn't come home. I worried, but what else can I do? He called me about 12:30 the next day and let me know that he was fine, but that he had been hanging out with a friend, had a drink or two, and decided that it was best he stay somewhere else, so as not to come home and make a scene. (Translation: he didn't come home so that I wouldn't make a scene.) The same friend who shared the alcohol with him introduced him to a homeless shelter where they had both stayed on Wednesday night. And Paul would be able to stay there for 28 days, so was it okay if he went to the house and packed his stuff and moved out?

Well, this is a strange question for me, because, in a certain way, one of the constitutive components of the good life as I currently envision it is not having Paul living in my house. But this particular possibility for that just doesn't feel right. He's a little too enthusiastic about this place. Or is his enthusiasm about the friend with the alcohol? And, okay, I admit it, I was a little hurt by the idea that he would rather live in a homeless shelter than with me. I mean, I'm not THAT bad a housemate.

So, I go teach my class and then meet him at my house. We try to talk a little about it. My refrain was "Well, it's your decision, but I can't imagine that you'd rather live in a homeless shelter." He kept coming back with "I need to be on my own," "I'll be able to work during the day if I live there," and, my personal favorite, "they have a sermon every day, so I'll get back in touch with my spiritual side."

I tried to point out that I didn't think I was holding him back, that I certainly wasn't requiring him to stay in the house and sleep every day, and he wasn't even willing to go to church with me once a week. But whatever. He was already packed, and he left.

And he was back when I got home from work today. His refrain today: "what was I thinking?" I asked him to tell me about it, and he had three main complaints. He had to wait for almost an hour through the sermon before he got dinner. Then, dinner was tuna, which he hates. And, my favorite: "All the people there were like ... homeless people."

Me: "Well, Paul, it was a homeless shelter right?"

"Yeah.... What was I thinking?"

Prodigal brother

And just to keep the Paul status up to date: he's in trouble.

He went into my room (at least twice now, actually) and stole some change off my dresser. In some ways, no big deal. But it really had to be dealt with, so I kicked him out.

OK, I kicked him out for an hour and then let him back in. But the new rule, which won't last long, is that he isn't allowed to be in the house when I'm not here.

This turns out to be very difficult to enforce. For instance, last night when I went to some friends' house to watch the last 3/4 of the football game, Paul was asleep. Was I really going to wake him up and kick him out? (I didn't.) But what about tonight? I'm watching a movie with my students (Fog of War) tonight at 7, and will probably go up to my office first about 6:30. Should I kick him out?

I guess I'm hoping 3 days of being kicked out has taught him his lesson, exhausted him, and prepared him to be in the house without stealing.

And yes, I'm trying to take temptation out of his way.

And one completely other note. Any of you to whom I mentioned that I was locked out of my garage, that's no longer the case, thankfully. But that's another story.

Accidental Ebay

OK, so I know a couple of my loyal readers are Ebay enthusiasts, Ebay experts even. To you, this might sound strange: last night, I accidentally bought a dining room table on Ebay.

OK, accidental is strong. Everything connected with my placing the bid was, strictly speaking (and I am beginning to consider myself something of an expert on this), an intentional action. But I didn't exactly mean to do it.

Here's the thing. I've only actually bought one other thing on Ebay, and that was a heart rate monitor. I tracked several of them for days to see what they were going for. I researched them on and off Ebay, online and in actual stores. And when I knew what I wanted and what it was worth, I started making bids, knew what my max was, and got a more than fair (but not outstanding) price.

I played around a little back then -- this was maybe a year ago -- and put some ridiculously low bids in. Most of the time, other buyers, like me, were informed, and their bids would automatically bump up to the "reasonable" range. And the first bid was never reasonable.

But, you see, that made me less wary than I should have been. Because I THOUGHT I knew what I was doing. I searched some tables, saw one I really liked the look of, and saw that there had only been one bid on it. So I just barely outbid him, convinced that on the heels of my "bid confirmation" email, I would have a "you've been outbid" email.

(All this, by the way, was going on as I was getting incredibly depressed watching the Irish lose horribly in the first quarter against Michigan St. Shopping is such a great distraction. Sigh. The evils of consumerism.)

Anyway, it didn't come. And after about 5 minutes of poking around, I realized that the auction was going to end in half an hour and I was going to own the table.

The good news: I got a decent price, and I really do like the look of the table.

The bad news: the delivery charge is a bit steep (I really should have checked that before bidding). Especially considering that, I'm paying more than I wanted to pay.

The great news: I'm going to have a dining room table that I think I'm going to love in less than a week! And I can stop shopping and start doing the things I need to do.

But I still can't believe I just randomly bid on it and got it.

Mission accomplished

Well, I really accomplished something today. I fixed my toilet.

This was my first major adventure in one of those little things that I would have called in to the landlord if I had one, but I had to take care of it instead. Or suck it up and call either a man I know or a plumber to come and take care of it. I was reluctant to do either of those.

The problem was that the toilet wouldn't flush. I easily removed the top of the tank and looked around and found the problem. What it looked like when I first looked in there: the stopper-thingy got disconnected from well, that, other thingy. The "other thingy" moved when you depressed the lever as if to flush. But since the stopper-thingy was disconnected, it stayed in place and there was no flushing.

After 2 visits to Home Depot, here's what I saw: my flush valve actuator system was disconnected from the actuator disk. Bad news: you need a whole new system. Good news: system costs just under 10 bucks. Great news: I figured out how to install it and did so successfully within about 10 minutes.

Paul and I can flush again, which is a good thing.

But I admit it was sort of tempting to keep making Paul hike to the toilet in the basement. That would be one way to keep things upstairs smelling better.

Anyway, it made me feel like I really accomplished something today, even if it wasn't getting ready for class, writing a dissertation, or grading the papers that got turned in Friday.

Ah well, I suppose we have to take the successes where we find them.

Five years later

September 11th is clearly going to be a strange day for the rest of our lives.

I've caught a couple of articles and a couple of shows recalling the heroes/victims of that day. And I've found myself in or near tears a couple of times. There's just no shaking the terrible losses of that day.

But now I've also heard what President Bush had to say about it. Apparently, we're against radicalism. Our fathers and grandfathers fought "radicalism" in Europe and in Asia. And now it's up to us to fight it in the Middle East.

Radical--as I learned from Dorothy Day--has to do with getting to the root of things. She was a radical. So was Jesus. I find it hard to be against radicalism.

I liked it better when we were against terrorism. Is it just me or did an already vague enemy just get vaguer?

And why do the losses have to be answered with more violence? I wonder if we could ever see ourselves not necessarily as the solution but as part of the problem?

Embarrassing moment?

So, I think I may have had my first embarrassing moment as a faculty member. I had my biggest class (25) today. I called roll and then grabbed my notes to do the walk around and lecture thing. I looked down and noticed that my second-from-the-top button on my blouse was wide open.

Well, I pretty seemlessly (I think -- but who knows how long it had already been open?) covered my chest with my notes. And I'm thinking ... I can't make it through the whole class like this. Eventually, I may need to look at these notes, and I'll certainly need to open my Bible. So, somehow, I managed to keep talking and just button the thing with one hand while continuing to hold my notes in front of the whole operation.

But of course none of them said anything or indicated in any way that they noticed. It's very strange. You sort of want some acknowledgement -- gee, you handled that gracefully. Or even "oh my gosh, I can believe you just went on talking like that!" Even -- "hey, so was that your bra or another shirt we were seeing?" Because you wonder just how subtle you are, and it would be nice to know, even to know that you weren't. And you also don't know if you should feel embarrassed, or how much.

By the way, it was actually an undershirt. I'm actually not sure why I wore it. I think maybe I had some issues with this shirt before. I think maybe that's what kept me from panicking. I mean, I was still decent.

Of course, one does wonder what they were thinking, especially since one of the texts we spent some time with was Jesus' denunciation of lust in Matthew's gospel. At least my shirt was buttoned before we got there.

Great line, great feeling

I thought I'd pass this on, because I think it's a great thing to say to the new tenure-track faculty member on her (or his, but in this case her) first day of class: "So, how was the first day of the rest of your life?"

The folks here keep giving me the impression they want me to stick around for a while. And that's a great feeling.

Glad to be where I am

I love my colleagues.

It has come to my attention that some people think that many of them are sexist pigs. Actually, I mostly know this because one of them pointed it out to me. He and I have been joking about it a bit now. But he turned to me tonight, and for the second time now, said to me something to the effect of, "Look, we're joking about this, but also I do know that we're painfully inadequate sometimes and we just don't know how to include women well. Please let us know what you need from us or if there's anything we can do better. We're really glad to have you here."

And all this happened at a Labor Day BBQ where people also very graciously included my brother.

I'm really glad to be here.

Labor day?

Can anyone tell me anything about Labor Day that would make me think it's even really a patriotic holiday, let alone one that churches should support?

I bring this up because the closing song at Mass this morning was "America the Beautiful." I always get really nervous about these things. Since I believe that participating in the Mass through singing is important, and also that one should really sing songs like that in Mass, I'm always quite conflicted. I did something today that sort of surprised me. I hit my knees and prayed silently for our country to repent of the wars we're waging, and thus to live up to the beauty the song was acclaiming.

I don't think anyone noticed. But that's okay.

No more tears

I cried twice today. So far.

This has nothing to do with teaching. It has to do with state inspection stickers.

The lovely little state I've moved to requires a "safety and emissions test" once every two years. This is the fifth state I've lived in. Most such inspections are annual, but they take 10 minutes and basically just make sure all your blinkers and windshield wipers work.

Not here. The test takes an hour and a half. And, after that 90 minutes or so, it turned out my car had failed due to too much wear on the brake pads. They could, of course, replace them for me. Since they had them in stock, it would take an hour. Two, tops. I look at the time: about 10:15. Two hours and 45 minutes until my brother has his evaluation scheduled, the one that will really get the ball rolling on the plan for his long term care and for housing. The one that's been on the books for almost three weeks now. OK, go for it, but I really need to be out of here in 2 hours, tops.

About 11:45, I'm getting really restless and I ask the guy for a progress report. It turned out they didn't have the parts in stock. I explain that I really have to be somewhere by 1:00. He says he's sorry, he'll try to expedite the parts and then, as soon as the parts get here, it will be like 20 minutes.

Now, at this point, I start making phone calls. Annoyingly, I can't call Paul because I don't have a home phone. I call his social worker. Not there. I will call him 8 times in the next hour, but only leave 3 messages. And the main thing I want is for him to let the front desk know that we're running late, because I have two major fears. First, of course, is that it will take us a month to get another psych evaluation scheduled. Second, I'm vaguely recalling all these threats about what will happen to you and your firstborn if you miss an appointment without calling. I'm wondering if Paul will ever be allowed to receive psychiatric services again, in any state.

I try to think of who else to call, but, you see the bind, right? Being new to the area, how many people can you call and say, "Look, I need a big favor. Go to my house, walk right in. Go upstairs. Paul will probably be asleep. He will probably have clothes on. Wake him up, get him dressed if necessary, and get him to this appointment at a place that I can find and can give you an address, but can't really tell you how to get to. Oh, you'll also need to find his meds and his cigarettes and bring them with you." I mean, it's a lot to ask.

At 12:53 they tell me that the car will be ready in 5 minutes. OK. It'll take me about 15 or 20 to get home to grab Paul and then get to the appointment. That's not so late.

And then the guy went into the garage. And didn't come back for 20 minutes. Seriously. I was going crazy. I actually had the thought go through my head "If we miss this appointment, I'm going to check whether I can sue to make them pay for Paul's psychiatric care." Then I remembered that I didn't believe in that sort of crap. But it's hard to remember who you are when you're under this sort of stress.

Then they told me that the computer was broken and they couldn't print my inspection sticker. Everything was ready, but for some reason they couldn't account for or fix, it wouldn't print. And I was stuck, or at least illegal until it did. That's when I called the social worker with message #2 ("looks like we won't be there at all"). Then my car pulled up and they let me pay for the brake job and leave without the sticker, but warned me I was driving illegally and encouraged me to call and check if the machine was fixed and come back to get my sticker.

Well, Paul and I got to the place at 1:45. And he had completely missed the appointment. They wouldn't reschedule. They would let him see a doc to get meds to get him through the weekend, and they set up an appointment with his nurse on Tuesday to evaluate and consider rescheduling the other. My heart just fell. And all of a sudden, you realize how much you've hung your hopes on something. I've been telling myself to hang on until Sept 1, because then he'll get the psych eval and we'll begin to move forward. And then ... no.

So, we sat there waiting to be called for the meds. I went to the bathroom and cried. I was just so frustrated I wanted to kill somebody. Well, hit somebody. Hard. I decided I was focusing too much on my anger (much of which was directed at myself) and I decided to say Hail Mary's. That's one of the great things about being Catholic. When you're too angry to really pray, you can just ask Mary, over and over again, to pray for you. It generally calms me down.

And because God (and Mother Mary!) are good, an incredible thing happened. We were still sitting there waiting to see the doc for meds at 2:25 and the woman at the front desk called me up there. "The 2:15 psych eval hasn't showed yet. If you guys can stay another hour, and that person doesn't come in the next 5 minutes, we can see him." "Absolutely."

About 15 minutes later, they called him back. I still didn't quite dare believe it, so I asked, "I'm sorry, did he get called for the full eval, or just the meds." The full eval. Thank God.

I cried again. I couldn't quite believe it. All the stress, all the hopes, all the frustrations, and he got in.

Of course, it turns out the psych eval isn't magic. He'll file a report and we have a follow-up appointment in 10 days. But we're moving forward.

The one remaining loose end was that I was a bit worried about driving to Boston to pick up my friend Kyle in my illegal car. I was also worried that all this would make me late to get him. But his flight was delayed and the computer got fixed. My car is legal, and braking better than ever, and should be in Boston in plenty of time to get him.

Sigh. Hopefully, no more tears. Not today.

Legal, moral, mission?

Yesterday, I sat through a 3 hour workshop run by "college counsel" for new faculty called "legal issues." I want to be clear that this was "legal issues," not "moral issues." And let me also admit that the summary below of course loses a lot of the nuance of the three hour session and leaves a couple of the topics completely untouched.

But here's my summary: sure, we're a religiously affiliated school, but legally, you can sleep with anyone you want, as long as you don't have sex with anyone over whom you have direct power nor they over you. But NEVER, I repeat NEVER EVER, violate copyright law or student confidentiality. Perhaps we need to sort out our priorities.

And there's this odd edge, right, one that I've heard about from several theology folks around here, of wanting new faculty not to feel as though the religious commitments of the school are a big deal. And of course, there is a tension here. A colleague of mine told me a story about how, at her new faculty orientation session on the "ministry and mission" of the school, the veteran faculty members leading her group's breakout session basically told them that they should nod and give lip service to the mission-talk when administration or friars asked, but then ignore it for the rest of their professional lives. She just asked the question "But what about those of us who came here because we want to give our lives to that mission?" Apparently, they didn't have much response. They weren't sure she was serious.

Boys' Night Out

The “boys” in my department and the other department which shares our building started going out for “boys night at the movies” several months ago. In an unprecedented bending of gender lines, they decided to invite me along for this week’s feature film, Nacho Libre.

If you know nothing about Nacho Libre, this will get you through: it’s by the directors of Napolean Dynamite and stars Jack Black (of School of Rock and Tenacious D) as a monk at a Mexican orphanage who moonlights as an amateur wrestler. I loved Napolean Dynamite and School of Rock, though I confess that I have very bad associations with Tenacious D (associations that I imagine some of my faithful readers who are former housemates may share). Regardless, I figured 2 out of 3 isn’t bad, plus it’s a good idea to embrace unprecedented opportunities for bonding with the boys.

The movie was horrible, though it was well worth the 2 bucks we each paid for it for the following five reasons.

5. “The brothers don’t think I do, but I totally know a buttload of crap about the gospel.”
4. “I don’t believe in God, I believe in science.”
3. An awesome song done as only Jack Black can, monk-to-nun, involving lyrics along the lines of “If I’m going to break my vows, I want to break them with you.”
2. The pre-wrestling match locker room baptism scene.
1. Street fight: knife vs. corn-on-the-cob. Corn wins.

Plus, it was good to hang out with the boys. I think they either think I’m crazy, or that I really liked the movie, or both. I was in a mood to have fun with it, and I had a lot of training one year learning to enjoy really stupid movies (Bubba Hotep?) for the sake of building relationships, or trying to.

Waiting room romance? No thanks.

A couple quick updates and one story.

My car is up and running again--4 working tires, which turns out to be rather important. Also, Paul had his first appointment for services up here, and we're in business. No housing yet, but he's on the roll for psychiatric and social services up here, which is a real blessing.

So, I'm sitting in the waiting room quietly (re)reading Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass while Paul is being seen. A man and his son come in. We had run into each other before when I had been in the back talking to Paul's social worker (who also happened to be an Episcopal priest!). Anyway, I'm reading and I hear the dad telling the son something to the effect of "If she smiles, she's married, but if she doesn't look up from the book she's single." Actually, though, it was low enough, and accented enough, and I hadn't really been paying attention because I really was reading, that I didn't really hear well enough to get the whole "code." But basically, I ignored it.

The boy was probably 10. They were Hispanic, so he had this beautiful brown skin but then also striking green eyes (I thought: Harry Potter meets A-rod). He did something a little loud and then suddenly the dad says "You see, it's because you're bad like that that women ignore me. They want to go out with me but then they see you do things like that and then they won't even talk to me, just keep reading their books, because why would they want to go out with a man with such a bad son?" Then, to me: "Excuse me, if you weren't married, would you go out with a man with such a bad son?"

Well, now I had to respond: "I'm sure he's a good boy."

"But you're married, right?"

And I'm thinking: just tell the lie. It's easy. Make something up. Tell a story. "No, actually I'm not." (Do you sense the "almost virtuous" theme here again? Virtuous enough to tell the truth, but not virtuous enough to refuse to consider the lie. Vicious enough to sit there through the rest of the conversation thinking that I could be reading instead if I'd just told that little lie.)

"Do you have a boyfriend?"
"No."
"Weren't you with a man before?"
"That was my brother."
"Why don't you have a boyfriend?"

Ugh. We got through vague references to my being too busy for a social life before we moved on to his own story of disability (having been hit by a bullet intended for someone else, though in what particular situation, he didn't mention and I didn't ask), his health having been made worse by ill-treatment from "state doctors," as his inability to sleep since the whole ordeal began.

Then I was saved by Paul's return with the nurse.

I had been so afraid that he would actually ask me out. Never say never, but, unless something rather extraordinary happens, I don't foresee myself going out with anyone I meet in the waiting room at a county mental health center. In a way that sounds obnoxious, because of course I was someone in such a place myself yesterday, and can think of at least 2 occasions in the next 2 weeks when I will find myself there again. But there it is.

Sexist Pepboys

I had a flat tire today. Such things are odd stoppages in the blur of life. Although the ten thousand things you should be doing just get worse, they also somehow fade to the background. Now you must do one thing: get the car fixed and moving again. It's a strange twist on Kierkegaard. I don't think it's what he had in mind, though, when he said that purity of heart is to will one thing.

I'm now safe at home, though my car isn't yet. But I want to continue my exploration of my life as Paul's sister.

One of the moments in today's adventure, which of course involved Paul, had the two of us in a Pepboys store looking for an Allen wrench, aka a "hex key," that would get my special extra-cool hubcabs off so that we could change the tire. So I walk up to a Pepboy guy, probably 20 years old, and Paul is trailing 5 feet behind me listening to my iPod. I speak in complete sentences, something to the effect of "Hello, can you direct me to the Allen wrenches? I can't find the hex-key that came with my hubcaps and I need to change a tire." Pep-guy looks at me and says something like "Uhh... I don't know if we...." Then Paul pipes up, shouting because he is listening to an iPod at a higher volume than any human should, "Allen wrench! Hubcap!" Then Pep-guy looks right past me to Paul and says to him, "Oh, okay, aisle 11. Do you know what size? Blah blah blah."

So, part of me was irate. Are you seriously going to talk to the guy under any circumstances? You sexist pig! But part of me was sort of happy. Maybe Paul doesn't seem as off to strangers as he does to me. But mostly I was irritated with the sexist peppy pig....

Virtuous as a cucumber?

My friend Cyberian Tygre posted his "rules of cool" in response to an encounter he had with a not-so-cool SEXYDIVA driving a cool car. His thoughts on coolness inspired some of my own, which I posted on his blog, but thought I'd post here as well.

Cyberian Tygre's idea that one either is or is not cool reminded me of Yoda telling Luke "Do or do not. There is no try." That made me wonder whether trying to be cool necessarily rules out actual coolness. And I think it does.

Now this is intriguing ground for someone who spends as much time as I do thinking (though not necessarily writing) about intention, action, and virtue. Aristotle and Thomas both argue that, to be fully virtuous, the virtuous action must be done for the sake of the virtue. My current thinking--and I'm open to correction here--is that coolness (though in a certain way a virtue) functions precisely opposite of virtue in terms of this relation. You can perform a cool action (or purchase a cool car), but insofar as you do so for the sake of the coolness, it is in fact no longer cool. The intention to be cool nullifies the coolness. One is not truly cool if one is trying to be cool.

Interestingly enough, I think coolness functions like goodness does for Thomas. For Thomas, for an act to be good, it must be good in every respect, but a single defect is enough to mar its goodness. In the same way, coolness is a package deal. For something to be truly cool, it has to be totally cool. A single defect ruins the whole.

SEXYDIVA stands as evidence of this.

By the way, I humbly admit and appreciate that citing Aristotle and Aquinas on the subject of coolness also, in most circles, rules it out entirely. Alas, the best I ever did really was being "pretty cool for a smart kid."

I think I've ruled out my own coolness and virtuousness in about 24 hours in this blog.

Perhaps this is why Christians have begun to aspire to that much vaguer and therefore easier virtue of "niceness." Perhaps I'll aim at that.

Roommate issues and the life of virtue

If you know me, you know that for the past 5 years I lived in an intentional Christian community in North Carolina. Much of my life was about roommate issues, and well it should be, since charity, which is the form of all the virtues, begins at home. What better way, then, to be schooled in the virtues, than to live with other people whom it is sometimes hard to love.

For me, life at Iredell was a constant confrontation with my own limitations in virtue, my own inability to be thoroughly called out of my individual life in order to be attentive to the needs of my brothers and sisters. Oh, I did well enough at times, but often the interior questions and resentments piled up. One friend and one-time housemate used to kid me about the "notebook" -- my mental list (book!) of resentments tallied.

So, of course, I've been looking forward to a little time in my own space, to cook whatever I want, to watch whatever movies I want, to clean up after myself and not wonder what the score is on how many times which housemate has emptied the dish drainer.

But alas, that's not how it turned out. Clearly, God decided that I needed to be more deeply schooled in charity. It has become clear that my brother will be living here at least until Sept 1, unless some hefty miracle intervenes. (Feel free to pray for such.) Meanwhile, having him for a housemate is interesting schooling indeed.

Now, let me be clear that my brother has a debilitating illness. St. Augustine was brought to tears by the mere thought of what it means to have one's intellect so thoroughly shattered. I've been brought to tears by it myself many a time, believe me.

I'm listing my top 3 complaints, just to put them out there.

3. Frankly, I resent the fact that he has more extensive conversations with the voices than with me.
2. He is a very sloppy eater. He gets more food inside him than anywhere else, but the #2 spot is a toss up between the floor, the table, and the edge of his plate.
1. He is either unable or unwilling to care whose toothbrush is whose. My new one lives in my travel bag.

Actually, this is going better than I would have imagined possible. But it does wear on one to always be the one who cooks and cleans, and always the one who nags the other to do even the barest minimum of cleanup to contribute. And the toothbrush thing really grossed me out. Ugh.

I have the sense, as I often have before, that I bear the curse of being an almost-virtuous person. It seems to me that, if I were a truly virtuous person, I would find perfect joy in serving my brother in his affliction. If I were a completely vicious person, I wouldn't bother at all. It seems to me that I am in the somewhat difficult position of knowing what the right thing to do is, and even being willing to do it, but because I lack complete virtue, I still carry a certain amount of resentment over the whole thing.

I suppose I should be thanking God for this wonderful opportunity to learn to be more charitable. Sigh.

Suicide hotline

It just came to my attention that the best number to call for a suicide hotline is 1-800-273-TALK. I wanted to post that here because of a previous post I made that involved a suicide hotline. That post is also updated to include this number.

On the Rhode

I promised that I would go back and say a bit about the trip up to Rhode Island.

My friend John, who was moving from Durham to Boston, was my designated moving buddy. But my brother ended up being released from the hospital just in time to make the journey too. So we were three in the big yellow truck.

Paul was supposed to be released at 8am, so after a stop at the divinity school to say an early morning goodbye, I arrived at the hospital about then. Breakfast had just been served, and there were morning meds to be given out, but by about 8:45, we were back at my house and ready to roll. Almost. We also had to get 5 prescriptions filled (the kid's on some serious stuff). So we rolled out about 10:30am, 3 little adventurers in a big yellow truck dragging a little green car behind us.

The voices were nearly constant. Not that I could hear them. But it was like sitting next to someone on a cell phone the whole way: hearing half of a conversation. I'd try to point things out ("Look, Paul, we're in Virginia." "Hey, the Washington Monument!"), but the only thing that got much of a response from him was Philadephia. All of a sudden, he was fully alert, totally attentive, and totally responsive: "This is awesome; it's so big and bright and alive...." He was so pumped. He barely seemed to notice NYC.

Note to weary travelers. If you are driving up 95 to New England and thinking, as we were, "we'll just get past the city, and then we'll find a place," BEWARE. You know the convenient signs that tell you what lodging is available at a particular exit on just about EVERY interstate you've ever been on? The state of Connecticut apparently has something against them. We drove and drove and drove, and then finally just tried our luck at an exit or two, without any at all. Well, perhaps some, but it was all bad. We found a couple of places that would have been possible, if they had had parking for a truck and trailer. One such place may find very slight evidence of our passing on its fence and/or in its landscaping. (Sorry!)

Another note to travelers, in case you haven't already thought of this. If you have a cell phone, and if you can find a friend who is connected to the internet, you basically have access to the internet, even when you're flying down the interstate in a big yellow Penske truck. So, I called my friend Kyle, who eventually got to a computer and called me back. Of course, by this time we were to the part of the state that has billboards and other helpful road signage. But Kyle gave us the number for an upcoming motel and we called and confirmed that they had a vacancy and that they had truck parking. And we slept.

The next day, the plan was to swing by Boston to drop John's stuff off. When I first made this plan, it hadn't occurred to me that we would go right through Providence on our way. I did realize Boston was north of Providence and not precisely on our way. I just wasn't thinking we would actually go through Providence. This was no problem really, except for the fact that it confused Paul a lot. About 20 minutes after I'd pointed out "Hey, look Paul, Providence," he suddenly turned to me and said, "Why aren't we stopping? I thought we made it to Providence." I explained (again) about dropping John's stuff off. Paul conceded that perhaps John was worth a little extra time in the Penske.

By the way, I should note here that for me, John's worth was immeasurable. Not only did he drive the truck the whole way and oversee all the loading and unloading, but he was also good and patient company on a journey that would have been stressful enough without Paul. John was great with Paul as well. It was a real gift and blessing to have him along for the ride.

Once in Boston, John's unloading went smoothly, thanks to the help of some of his future BC colleagues. We hung out with the Coolclan a bit that night, then went halfway back to Providence and found another hotel. Walk-through and closing went smoothly, and Paul and John were able to unload while I signed my name a thousand times.

We took the truck back with about an hour to spare, though we got slightly lost on the way. There are apparently multiple combinations of "North" "Main St" and "Providence" possible around here. I think we were looking for North Main St in Providence, and I somehow got us to Main St in North Providence. Oh well, I'll learn. It all worked out eventually.

And that, more or less, is the story of the road trip to Rhode Island.

Home, Sweet Home

The papers are signed, and I'm sitting in my new house. Strange to be a homeowner after so much renting. Strange, too, to have shared so much of householding for the last 5 years with the other 5 or 6 members of the intentional Christian community that I used to live in. Strange to think I used to live there, I used to have housemates.

The house is lovely. The seller had promised to paint the interior and have the hardwood floors refinished. It turned out great. I really am quite pleased.

I'm also exhausted, and will perhaps post a bit about the trip up soon.

Thinking of my dad

I've been working on some changes to some life insurance policies I inherited when my dad died. My dad took out insurance policies on all of us kids when we were less than a year old. They aren't huge, but they're whole life, and they keep gaining value. And the other interesting thing about these policies is that they come with "guaranteed purchase options." This means that you have the option to purchase additional insurance, without having to prove that you're actually "insurable."

Well, I've inherited two sets of policies, the set that insures me, and the set that insures my brother Paul. It's occurred to me lately that not having to prove insurability is the only way that Paul will qualify for life insurance (a smoker with severe persistent mental illness?!!). So when I got a notice a few weeks ago that he had a "guaranteed purchase option" coming up, I decided to set up an appointment and exercise the option.

This is a strange experience on so many levels. It is very strange to buy life insurance for someone else. Let's be clear: there's still not enough money involved to cover a funeral for Paul. It's not like I'm going to make a profit off the thing. But it's really weird to sit there and think, "so, if I buy this, how much do I get when he dies?" It's even weirder to ask that question. But you have to ask it. Maybe this is morbid, but at this point, I've buried two parents, and I know this isn't enough to cover a funeral. Luckily, Paul will have six more "guaranteed purchase options" between now and when he turns 40. God, I hope he turns 40.

Another level of strangeness: it turns out my policy will be up for a guaranteed purchase option in a couple of months, but the agent got the okay to do the paperwork early. I thought about it a little and decided to go for it. It didn't feel quite as weird to buy insurance on myself. It felt all responsible. Whoever buries me will have a little less to worry about. But you also think about that: who will bury me? Who will sort through my finances when I'm gone? Weird.

Last level of strangeness. Did I mention that all this insurance is Knights of Columbus insurance? So this is this Catholic fraternal organization that my dad was a part of. The agent talked about "brother knights" and all this stuff. We're 1500 miles away from my hometown, but this guy is talking about taking care of me and my brother and our life insurance needs like taking care of the needs of his brother's kids. It was really sweet. And he could have been one of the guys that always said hello to my dad at Mass and were always doing the parish barbeques and raffle tickets, and who showed up in droves for his funeral. And it really made me miss my dad. It also really made me appreciate my dad and how far-sighted he was about certain things: life insurance and wills and pre-planning his own funeral expenses. It's funny how many forms love can take.

Most of the time, my mom is my model for how I should try to love my brother Paul. But this week, I followed my dad.

Baptizing David Thomas

Although I’m not generally a fan of liturgical innovations, my parish has made one of the best innovations to a liturgical rite that I’ve ever seen. The rite of Baptism of an infant has the priest sign the child with the cross and invite parents and godparents to do the same. Then, the congregation, together with parents and godparents, recites the Creed or renews their baptismal promises. But here’s what this church has done. After the parents and godparents sign the child, the priest invites all the children forward to sign the child with the cross as the community “teaches him the faith that we share.”

For five years I’ve been a part of this parish and I’ve thought “good way to get kids involved, that’s nice.” But this Sunday (July 23), I got to watch it up close, because my godson DT was baptized there. His dad squatted down with him and held him there, as his mom, his godfather, the priest and I looked on from right there above the swarm of children with their reaching hands, and the congregation watched from afar, reciting the faith that unites us.

Many of the children carefully, reverently traced a cross on his forehead. Or, rather, they would have had DT not been squirming so much. If he got any actual crosses, they were made of rather squiggly lines. Some of the kids didn’t really seem to try; they basically patted him on the head. One even seemed to more or less swat him in the face, though thankfully not very hard. Several—partly due to their having, understandably, the fine motor skills of toddlers, and partly again due to his movement—pretty much poked him in the eye, or seemed like they were coming close.

Up close, I decided, the swarm is a little scary. I really thought he might lose an eye. I thought his dad might start blocking a few of the shots, or that maybe his mom would intervene. But they didn’t. They surrendered their son to the swarm, as they would moments later surrender him to the waters of baptism, and to Christ and his church. Not a bad metaphor, as it turns out. Because baptism isn’t just about being claimed as Christ’s own, it’s also about becoming part of the Church, the people of God with all of their warbles and imperfections. Even the ones who seem to be trying to poke you in the eye.

Baptism is an amazing thing. “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Pet 2:10). What a wondrous thing that the Christian community, through God’s grace, has the power to claim someone as a disciple of Christ with nothing but water and the name of the Triune God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Once it did not, but now the people of God includes DT. DT, Christ and his church have claimed you as their own. You are ours, and we are yours. Welcome to the family.

Ingredients

So, Paul has gone from suicidal to being completely content with life in the psych ward. I expressed some concern about this, encouraged him to think about life outside. He was concerned about “ingredients.”

Me: Ingredients?
Him: Yeah, ingredients for life.
Me: What do you mean?
Him: You know, everything that you need to make life worth living: a fast car, a girlfriend, a nice apartment, a job, clubs and parties to go to. It would be great to be out, if I had the ingredients.

Sigh.

Of course, it’s tempting to say what you would say to most people, here in the land of the American dream: “Well, get out there and work hard, make something of yourself, and get the ingredients and assemble the life that you want.” It’s not so easy with Paul. Here’s a man who wants to work, but can’t manage to keep showing up, even when he has a job. His mind just won’t let him. He hears voices, sees things that aren’t there. I wonder if I could do half as well as Paul does under those circumstances. I wonder if any of us could.

Another visit, another sister

One of the best things about spending time visiting someone in a facility for the mentally ill is that, sometimes, you're not the only visitor. Sometimes, you come across someone else who is visiting a loved one. It's a strange thing, because when you have a family member in a psych ward, it's never a good time. But it's a strange grace in the midst of that to run into someone else in similar circumstances.

Twice now, I have run into these two sisters eating together as I've visited Paul. One is a patient, one a visitor. This sister has, twice now, brought her sister a plate of home-cooked food. Both times, I had brought Paul cheeseburgers. I don't feel at all guilty about this, especially not since I received about 12 calls the first day begging for a cheeseburger. The second day, he gave me a choice between bringing a cheeseburger and bringing him a new pair of camouflage shorts. Drive-through is easier.

Anyway, we've chatted a bit with the sisters about movies and food and things. Today we got into family, and how we each have two other siblings who aren't around and willing or able to help out. It's amazing how good it is to connect with folks like this. I'm grateful for my friends and for the support that I get, but it's nice to chat a bit with someone who stands so close to the same place.

Calling the Psych Ward

My brother isn't doing very well. He's had a couple of setbacks--no one's sure exactly why--and he's still in the hospital. He's not very stable, and he has moments when he's very affectionate, very angry, and very sad. Tonight, I talked to him, and he was very sad. "Sadder than sad," he said. Sometimes, I think, it strikes him how much he's lost. And he's lost quite a bit. He's lost about 12 years of his life to this illness, which is a rough thing to begin to feel and to tally. I think that he was doing some tallying today. And the sadness was pretty overwhelming.

I'm about to tell a story that I think is sort of funny. But I don't mean to make light of my brother or his condition. I certainly don't mean to make light of suicide. And, absolutely, if a friend or family member shares thoughts of suicide with you, get them help. And suicide hotlines are a great place to start. Understand, though, that my brother is currently in the psychiatric ward of a hospital, getting help. Also know that I had already reported to the professionals his comments about feeling suicidal twice today. I take it seriously. But sometimes you have to laugh, too.

I called him up to check in, and we were talking on the phone, and he told me he really wanted to kill himself and he asked me if I knew the number for the suicide hotline.
Me: Paul, you’re in the hospital, you don’t need a suicide hotline.
Him: But I’m feeling very suicidal.
Me: Then go tell the nurse.
Him: Can you look up the number?
Me: Paul, just go tell the nurse.
Him: I really need to talk to someone NOW. PLEASE find me a phone number.
Me: Paul, it’s the job of the people at the suicide hotline to send you to the hospital if you’re really suicidal. I don’t think they’d know what to do if you’re calling from the psych ward.
Him: Oh... But I’m just so sad.

What a strange moment. Of course, his sadness and the thought that he might actually try to end things sometimes is very saddening and disturbing to me. But sometimes you have to just laugh a little bit, and, for me at least, someone in a psych ward begging me for the number to a suicide hotline was one of those moments.

(By the way, for a suicide hotline, call (800) 273-TALK.)

Dinner on the psych ward

In the spirit of documenting my journeys to a variety of places, I figure this one counts. Yesterday, I ended up having dinner at the psych ward at the Duke Hospital. Well, strictly speaking, I didn't HAVE dinner, but I sat there with the patients while they ate. I was visiting my brother, who seems to be spending the week there. Now, since my bro was first diagnosed with mental illness (he has schizo-affective disorder, bipolar type) in 1994, I've visited a lot of these facilities. But, apparently, never at mealtime. Most of the times I've visited him it's just me and him in a little room. Occasionally, I'll see someone else in passing, but I've never sat down to dinner with, well, a bunch of psych patients.

It was lovely. Actually, it was quite ordinary. Various complaints about the chicken, which, let's face it, was hospital food and didn't look too lovely. Banter about who had visitors today, who expected them later. Questions about marriages and kids. A woman who had had both of her knees replaced noticed the scar on mine from my ACL and we traded stories about knee surgery and rehab. She also shared that she had been a nurse for more than 30 years before she retired. The folks around that table were ordinary folks, with spouses, kids, and jobs.

My brother was the exception. My brother hasn't really worked since he was diagnosed more than 10 years ago. He's always on the border of homelessness, substance abuse, etc. His life is, for the most part, just trying to get through: to stay sober, to stay on meds, to keep his apartment. And right now, the prospect of his sister moving to Rhode Island (whether she takes him with her or not!) is rocking the boat.

Sigh.

Amsterdam #2

Well, I’ve been having many adventures here in Amsterdam. I started to write some of it up the other day, but there’s been so much going on, I haven’t gotten back to it. So this is obnoxiously long. Sorry. You don’t really have to read it. But here it is if you want to check it out.

Wednesday (14 June) marked my first solo adventure into Amsterdam. Not long after my niece went to school, I walked over to the metro stop, and headed in. But I had already encountered my first problem before I got out the door: the little tourist map I’ve been living off of was gone. No clue where. Well, the internet is my friend, so I spent a few moments and I mapped out my basic plan, with a couple of notes about what tram I needed, etc, and I set out. I listed a few of the things in the order I thought I should go, with basic (not very specific) directions. Leave A heading north; B is 2 blocks up and 1 block east, etc.

I got off the tram toward the southwest of the center of the city, sometimes called “the old center,” but as I don’t know what the “new” center is if it’s not this, I’m going with center, unqualified. So I had decided that my first stop—real close to this tram stop because I’d seen it the other day when my bro and I went to church—would be the Beginhof, a church and cloister that used to house Beguines and now houses old ladies, though there is still a church--two , actually. The original was taken over by the English Reformed, so the the Catholics had to build another (a recurring theme here, as you’ll see).

Anyway, I charged right off, since I knew exactly where I was going. Skirted around a little construction that hadn’t been going on on Sunday, turned the corner ...and it wasn’t there. Crud. I think the first thing I decided was that it was a little further up. The second thing I decided—having of course continued to walk in the wrong direction while I figured it out—was that I had walked long enough that I was probably coming up on my second stop, so I should just start looking for that. The right answer—that I had clearly gone the wrong direction, which meant I was also walking away from stop #2—came next. Finally, I paused, considering my options. I should probably let you know, in case you don’t, that I’m the sort of person who really doesn’t mind at all being a bit lost, as long as I’m not late for something. In fact, being lost can be a great way to explore a city. And that was the main point of today anyway. So I decided that I’d wander around a bit, vaguely try to find either one of my intended destinations or this bookstore that I knew was in the area so that I could buy a guidebook with a map. I didn’t wander too long before I found just what I was looking for and reoriented myself. And not long after that that I found my way to what I had intended to be stop #2. I’ll have to save the Beginhof for another day.

The Amsterdam Historical Museum. I spent about 3 hours here, but could have probably spent twice as long and not gotten bored. It’s what the name implies: the history of Amsterdam in museum form. You learn about the digging of canals and the building of “the dam” to drain the land and reclaim it from the bog. The key date there is about 1270 for the building of the dam. You see the strengthening of their textile industry, smith skills, and shipbuilding. Which will lead to world exploration and trade....

The Slave Trade. You learn all about the beginnings of the Dutch East India Company (first multi-national corporation), incorporated in Amsterdam in 1602. A couple of their warehouses and office buildings are still around. Also, I saw a very interesting short film on the much more troubled history of the Dutch West India Company, which was incorporated in Amsterdam in 1621. The film was particularly interesting because of the way it attended to the role of the company in the slave trade. It drew a picture of a troubled triangle of trade. Ships would leave Holland with goods destined for sale in Africa; they would unload goods there and take on a cargo of slaves. Then they would go to American colonies, mostly Surinam, where the Dutch remained strong, and sell their slaves and take on goods bound for Holland, mostly sugar and timber. Then, the cycle would continue. So, the most interesting thing about this for me was where the narrative went next. Giving the gist from memory: It was a shameful thing for us to be a part of. And to our even greater shame, for a couple of hundred years, what seemed to trouble shareholders most was that this company was never as profitable as the East India Company. We were bothered by a lack of profit when we clearly should have been bothered by trading human beings, forcibly tearing them from their homes, and changing the destinies of them and their descendents for ever. It is estimated that the WIC was responsible for approximately 5% of the Africans transported to the Americas. So it’s not like we were the only ones doing it. But still, it’s too much. We are ashamed that this is part of our history, and we know that we should be even more ashamed than we are. It was interesting to see that kind of ownership. I found myself wondering if you’d every see it in the states.

Religious tension. Well, now that’s an understatement, of course. Apparently, though, the Dutch were among the more tolerant of the European countries. At least the way they tell the story here, very few people ever got killed, on either side. But, some of the major landmarks are churches. And they can’t tell the story of these places without saying “it was built as a Catholic church in the 14th century, but then in the Alteration of 1578, it was changed over....” I went to 3 churches in the afternoon, so we’ll come back to this theme, but it started in the “churches and synagogues” room at this museum. By the way, two of the biggest synagogues in Europe were built in Amsterdam at a time when Catholics were not allowed to practice their faith openly. An interesting twist of tolerance. The rabbi on that particular video proposed that that was a result of how well the Jewish community understood and respected the very limited freedoms that were offered to them....

WWII. The museum had a permanent display which attended to different Amsterdammers and their role in the war. A guy who was the major cooperator with the Nazi occupation, several young reporters and photographers who kept working and have, through their writing and photographs, shaped Amsterdam’s collective memory of the war. There was a video on a constant loop that had been made by a 14 year old Jewish boy who was hiding with his family (like Anne Frank). This kid (unsurprisingly) got bored and got all the folks (mostly adults) hiding with him to help him make this film showing their life in hiding. Somehow, both the kid and the film survived. There were so many tributes to so many people, clearly famous among the locals at the time, who died in the war. So many of them were Jewish of course.

Anne Frank. In addition to the WWII permanent stuff, there is a temporary exhibition “Anne Frank: Her Life in Letters.” You may or may not have read the diary. If you’re like me, you’re almost positive you read it at some point, you know the basic story, especially how it ends, but you’re a little vague on some of the details. You probably forgot, then, that the diary was something of a substitute for the fact that Anne was quite the correspondent. Most of the letters were things she had written before they went into hiding. Things she wrote back to her parents when she was at camp or visiting relatives. Things that she wrote to her relatives back in Germany and Switzerland (the family were German Jews, who had left thinking—rightly, for a time—that Holland would be a safer alternative). There are letters from early in the war where she speculates upon the fates of those who are being shipped off (she had heard rumors they were being gassed). There are even letters that she wrote to the other occupants of the hiding place, including a rather nasty one to her father, basically telling him to mind his own business and let her live her own life. (Remember? She was falling in love with the boy who was staying with them and her father disapproved.)

Anyway, I’ve had this feeling before, when the murder of 6 million people—the reality of it, the enormity of it—just sort of sweeps over me. This was one of those times. I walked away from the AHM with my head swimming with the place and its history. I’m not only an American, I’m a Texan. That means I have a vague sense that history MIGHT have started before 1836. Then again, probably not. Old buildings are a hundred years old. Maybe. 50 is pretty old! They have a sense of themselves as a city since 1270, and as a country since at least 1578. The story of the building of their town hall, the re-building of it after a fire. Centuries worth of painters having painted that town hall etc. Just so much history.

I spent the rest of that afternoon wandering around the city whose history I had just learned. I wandered to Dam Square, where the Town Hall I mentioned has been since the 1600s. Right next to that is the Nieuw Kerk (New Church), which was built near the beginning of the 15th century. And several blocks north into the Red Light District is the Oude Kerk (you guessed it: Old Church), the current structure of which was begun in the 13th century (but there have been many add-ons!). Both of these structures were originally built as Catholic churches, but in 1578, they had “The Alteration,” where Protestants took over power, came into these buildings with an “iconoclastic fury,” and took over these worship spaces. The inscription in the Oude Kerk reads: “The false practices gradually introduced into God’s church, were here undone again in the year seventy-eight (XVc).”

Well, I sat there for a moment, right there in the middle of the Oude Kerk—now being used as a museum where the World Press Photo ‘06 exhibit was on display—and I cried. You know, you walk through these places and you feel the history. You’re standing on top of Catholic graves, and then you take a few steps and you’re standing on top of Protestants. And you know that on both sides there were people who insisted upon their way because they really believed they were being faithful to the Gospel and those who were motivated by power and wealth and status. And it just feels like if maybe the gospel-driven folks on both sides could just get together and have a good heart-to-heart and hash it all out, well, maybe we could be one. But the way these buildings had changed hands, and the way so much of the art (and stained-glass windows!) had been destroyed, it just made me so sad. It was this moment where I thought “God, we really have torn your Church apart” and I meant not just these buildings but the community. It saddens me so.

And, one of the amazing things for me to think about is that the Dutch were actually an astoundingly tolerant people in terms of religion, for the most part. There were a couple of royals on each side (Protestant/Catholic) who were enthusiastic in the suppression of the other side. But, for instance, during the time when it was forbidden for Catholics to practice their faith, the ordinary interpretation of that law was that Catholic places of worship could not be publicly visible. It’s a little unclear to me—the story seems to be told in 2 slightly different ways. One version seems to indicate that there was never any need for fear at all; that the laws against practicing Catholicism were never enforced, were never intended to be enforced, and so the “hidden churches” that developed were not really ever hidden, but just designed not to be recognizable from the outside. I don’t entirely buy this, largely because of my next stop.

The Amstelkring Museum isn’t far at all from the Oude Kerk. It’s also known as “Our Dear Lord in the Attic.” In 1661 a wealthy merchant bought a house on the canal, and two buildings immediately adjacent to it. Over the course of the next two years, he transformed the place into quite a little worship space, connecting the attic of the house with lofts in the other two buildings so that there was significant space (and multiple exits, if needed). Anyway, I think that the Catholics, at least, lived in some real fear that the laws might be enforced. Anyway, you see the house, living quarters and all, much as it was, and the church nearly perfectly preserved.

Then, on Friday night (16 June), my bro and I went down to Leidseplein to watch the World Cup amongst the Dutch. It was an experience. As we took the metro in, increasing numbers of orange-clad fans climbed aboard. When we got to Leidseplein, every bar with a TV in it was standing room only. We found one where we actually were seated but could barely see the TV. We had a couple beers (Amstel tastes better here!) and watched the Dutch score a goal. We stayed through the first half, then walked around a while and found a restaurant with a TV to catch the second half. The Dutch won and everything was crazy.

Sunday (18 June) resulted in my long-planned trip to the Beginhof. My niece went with me for Mass in French. This was a wonderfully different experience from the Dutch/Latin Mass the week before. This was a community very much alive, though not without its liturgical problems. There was a man who was baptized (baptism on the feast of Corpus Christi?) who had also served as a lector and altar server (both before and after the baptism). But clearly, he was already a part of the community and there was much joy welcoming him in. The community gathered was a lot of tourist-types, but then the folks who were regulars were clearly largely from French-speaking Africa. There were two choirs (one all-African, and the other mostly) and the music was part in French and part in another language whose name I never learned. But there was so much joy and life in this community. I needed to see that after the week before, which made me feel a bit like faith was something to keep in a museum.

The Beginhof chapel was of course the “new” Catholic chapel, built after the original had been taken over by the Protestants. The English Reformed church was therefore worshipping right across the way. The chapel retains some relics of a church that was destroyed but that had commemorated the 1345 “miracle of Amsterdam” which involved the Blessed Sacrament staying remarkably preserved when it was vomited up by a sick man and then thrown into the fire. There is a lot of artwork commemorating this.

Today, I went to a completely different part of the city: the Jewish Quarter. The two major stops I had planned were the Jewish Historical Museum and the Verzetmuseum (Dutch Resistance Museum). But I got down there before either was open and walked around a while. I ended up going into the Zuiderkerk (Southern Church), the first church in A’dam built explicitly for the use of Protestants. It has become sort of a municipal planning building. Hasn’t been used as a church since 1929. Nice, though. Beautiful steeple. I also went by the Rembranthuis, a house near the Jewish quarter (and very close to the Zuiderkerk) where Rembrandt lived for a while. I also walked along the canals a bit and checked out the biggest flea market in town at Waterlooplein. Then I headed over to the Jewish Historical Museum.

The Jewish Historical Museum was good. It is housed in four synagogues. It had a lot of information about what Judaism is. There were stations where you could learn about keeping shabbat or a feast like Purim or see a video of a modern Jewish wedding, bris, bar/bat mitzvah etc. Then they told the history of Jews in A’dam. The earliest Jews in A’dam were wealthy merchants who fled the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal. Many had converted to Catholicism under duress and/or had hidden their Judaism pretty deep, so being in A’dam was also like a rediscovery of their identity. It was a vibrant community. Great little piece on Spinoza, who was said to be the first Jew (in A’dam? Europe? History of the world? I don’t think it was qualified) to have died “outside” of the Jewish community without having converted to another religion. And some touching stuff about the problems in the Jewish community during the 18th/19th century. As with the rest of the Dutch (and the rest of the industrializing world), the rich were getting richer and the poor poorer. The community tried to deal with it by sending many of the poorer Jews to Dutch colonies to make their own fortune there. Suriname, New Amsterdam (later NY, of course) etc. And, then, of course, all the horrible statistics about WWII. 78% of the Jews of A’dam were killed: displays of broken dishes, baby shoes, random things left behind in the wake of the destruction. And the difficulty of returning for survivors. More on this below.

I had picked up a little brochure on my way in called “Persecution and resistance in Amsterdam: Memories of WWII.” It describes a walking route from the Anne Frank House to the Dutch Resistance Museum. Well, I’m still hoping to get to AFH eventually, but I was intrigued anyway, and was walking to the DRM anyway, so I skipped ahead to #25 on the #33 stop tour and followed it from where I was. So, along the way, I saw the statue “de Dokwerker,” which commemorates a strike, apparently joined in by most of A’dam, but begun by dockworkers, reacting against the first large round-up and ship-off of Jews by the occupying Germans. It was the only mass demonstration against the persecution of the Jews in Europe. Nine people were killed during the protest and an additional 15 or so leaders executed three weeks later. No more big protests on behalf of the Jews....

I was really moved (found myself in tears again) by the Auschwitz Monument. Apparently, each of the countries whose residents were killed there received some ashes. So, Holland received ashes and had the task of establishing some sort of appropriate resting place. The plaque beside the monument explained it sort of like this (I’m paraphrasing): “How can you set up a monument to remember this thing that is so horrible that it will continue to cry to heaven when the world has passed away? The only way is to try to show that the heavens themselves have been shattered.” And then the memorial is simply this: 9 square panels, together forming a larger square, flat on the ground, of broken mirrors. So it reflects the sky above it, but broken. And the ashes are underneath. Amazing.

Then some minor, but interesting places. (1) A store where Jews could buy their yellow stars. Did you realize that they had to pay for them? Four cents AND a textile coupon. Talk about adding insult to injury! (2) The theatre where Jews were gathered prior to deportation, now a place of commemoration. (3) A day care center where Jewish babies were kept prior to deportation. Around 4500-5000 kids came through there. About 500 were saved by workers who basically ran beside the tram (which temporarily hid the center from view of the German guards stationed across the street at the theatre) and got on it at the next stop. (4) A plaque commemorates resistance workers who blew up a municipal records building, but were betrayed, caught, and executed. It became clear to the Dutch resistance that records helped the Germans and hurt the resistance, so, all over Holland, this became common practice. (5) A zoo where a lot of Jews and resistance workers lived in hiding. Germans would come and visit the monkeys and the tigers, etc, not realizing that just “backstage” of the animals were all sorts of people they were looking for.

Then, the Dutch Resistance Museum. I think that they did a great job with this. I found myself thinking “Wow. They did so much, they tried so hard.” And then I’d see something else and I’d think “They didn’t do nearly enough.” I suspect that those who put the museum together were of both those minds themselves. There’s a point early on where they are talking about the civil servants who remained in their posts and those who resigned right away, and what a difficult choice it was. If you resigned, they would put an NSB guy in your job (the Dutch Nazi Party). So you tried to stay on and serve the people without cooperating with something too evil. But what a hard line to maintain, right? And the Nazis came in and sort of led with “Hey, we’re part of a larger Germanic brotherhood.” And so cooperation seemed possible and reasonable at first. But then, as the Nazi program became clearer, the need to resist became clearer, but many opportunities had been lost. It was so interesting to see some of the reflection of opportunities missed: the civil servants who filled out the personal information cards and realized weeks later that they had given the Nazis all the information they needed to register Jews etc. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time.

They celebrated the underground papers, the underground radios, the whole system that tried to keep people in hiding fed and safe, the system for smuggling children out, the system for forging the identification papers, for taking the “J” off that marked the Jews. They had a powerful display where you rang a doorbell and you got different versions of “I’m really sorry. I hope you survive. But we can’t hide you here. We must keep our own children safe. (or) We barely have enough food for us. No. Sorry. Not even one night.” Very disturbing, but oddly understandable.

And perhaps one of the most difficult thing: the return from concentration camps. Now, these stories were told both by Jews and by others who were sent to work camps or something, e.g. resistance workers who were arrested. Part of the problem was that the whole experience of the war was pretty bad no matter where you lived it. So, these returning people would come back with these horrendous stories and they would get almost nowhere telling them before their neighbors busted in with the horrors endured right here in town. And, I mean, it was true. 20,000 people starved to death in what they call “hunger winter” (1944-5) in A’dam. The Germans were brutal. And what must it have been like, to carry survivor’s guilt out of the death camps and come home to this sort of “We pretty much had it worse than you did, or at least as bad.” And, on the one hand, you can’t really blame the folks back home: they did have it hard. And they had lost a lot too. It’s hard in the midst of your own loss to really hear somebody else’s pain.

After that, I wandered down to the docks, and swung through the old compound of the Dutch East India Company, mostly just because it was in the neighborhood and I thought, loving corporate America as I do, a stroll through the compound of the first multinational corporation was appropriate. It was nice to be down by the docks and to feel the history rushing by.

OK. So that’s what I’ve been up to. Not much progress on the dissertation. But hey, here’s a promise that I’m going to have 5 more pages written on that by the time the Dutch play tomorrow (that’s World Cup soccer for those of you not paying attention).

Amsterdam report #1

A brief report on my first several days in Amsterdam.

The first couple of days/nights I spent sleeping, trying not to sleep at the wrong time, wishing I were sleeping at the right times, adjusting to new patterns of sleeping, and continuing to try to deal with getting an offer on a house and a mortgage application together. I think that part’s mostly behind me now! :)

Four major highlights since then:

Van Gogh Museum: my niece and I went together to check this out on Friday afternoon/early evening. I don’t think I’ve ever been to an art museum at that time of day. It was busy, but not too crowded. There was a live band playing. In addition to the restaurant, there were a couple of little bar islands where you could buy drinks. It was festive. There were a couple of displays that showed paintings by people other than Van Gogh, either his contemporaries, or folks who influenced him, or a couple that he influenced. But, mostly, it was Van Gogh’s stuff, of course. It was a lovely tribute to his life and work, and also striking throughout was the influence of the care and support that his brother Theo offered him throughout his life.

Zaanse Schans. This is a traditional windmill village not far outside of Amsterdam. I went with my bro and niece on Saturday. We saw the windmills, I tried on a pair of wooden clogs, we ate samples at the cheese farm, and we got a lesson in the production of pewter. All this in addition to simply enjoying the day together!

The next two sort of go together. Sort of not. You’ll see. It was one trip into the city, but....

Mass at De Papegaai (“the parrot”) in central Amsterdam. This church, built in 1848, was built on the site of an older hidden church (original built around 1660). The Protestants took control of Amsterdam in the 1570s, at which point it became illegal to practice Catholicism. Most of the older Catholic church buildings were either taken over or destroyed (or in some cases, more or less both). So this is made mostly to look like a storefront on the midst of this very busy downtown shopping street, but inside it’s Gothic (neo-Gothic?), with all these beautiful 19th century versions of the stations of the cross etc. Anyway, the original structure was known by a shingle of a parrot outside the storefront. Now, there is a parrot sort of built into the stone archway. But they aren’t underground anymore. A sandwich board sign, like so many others on this street, tries to draw them in. This one invites folks to come in, rest, and take “15 minutes with God.”

Mass, by the way, was in Latin, Gregorian chant, and beautiful. The readings and homily were in Dutch. (No, I didn’t follow it at all!) They distributed copies of the readings in Dutch, English, French, German, and Spanish. As I told my brother (who went with me!), that worship experience was a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. The choir and the priest sang the Mass beautifully and I really enjoyed it. But I felt more as though I had been to a concert than to Mass. Perhaps I would get used to it. (Side note to those attending to my communion habits: You’ll be happy to know that I received on my tongue, while kneeling at the communion rail. I felt very old-school reverent!)

Walking around Dam Square and (gulp!) the Red-Light District. OK. Perhaps this shouldn’t have been combined with Mass. But we were trying to catch the 10:30 and missed it, so we had time to walk around before Mass. Dam Square includes the palace and the New Church, both built (I think) in the 16th century. I’m actually going back there, so perhaps I’ll have more to say on that soon. But we were standing there with another 20 minutes or so to spend, and my brother pointed out that we were a couple of blocks from the edge of the Red Light District. His point: it’s a cultural experience, part of the Amsterdam “thing,” and, I mean, come on, it’s like 11:15 on a Sunday morning, how wild can it be? So we walk through a bit. Most of you probably know all about this. So we start passing these windows that look like windows where things for sale could/should be on display (“window shopping,” right?), but they are just curtained—nothing on display. And my brother is explaining to me that the women, the prostitutes, are on display in these windows and, when they are available, a red light is on to indicate this (and thus the name....). My brother is explaining this, and somehow we had paused in front of one of these windows, and, with a sudden whoosh, the curtain moved, and suddenly, standing 2 feet in front of me with nothing between us but glass was a lovely woman in lacey lavender lingerie, brushing her hair. It’s only occurred to me now that she likely heard us there and thought—whether to shock us or whether to help my brother in his attempts to explain—that she would give us a visual.

Actually, above and beyond the mere concept of putting human beings in window displays, she was far from the most shocking thing that I saw in the Red Light District. The advertisements for live pornography shows—listing out promises to would-be customers about what they might see and experience—were more so, for me at least. And it definitely wasn’t wild, really, but I could see that I didn’t want be there after nightfall. :)

We fought through the crowds of orange-clad Dutch about to watch their beloved “football” team play their first World Cup game (“Hup Holland!). The bars were full at 11 in the morning to watch a game that didn’t start until like 3pm. Orange wigs, orange body paint, orange underwear (seriously!). Harry Potter fans, I understand the section on the Quidditch World Cup in a whole new way now. I thought the point was that wizards are a little crazy when so many of them get together. Turns out, no. It’s just that they’re European and the World Cup brings out their craziness. The air horns and drumming went on for about an hour after the victory (by then we were out of the city and back at my bro’s place in Amstelveen, i.e. the suburbs). It was worst during and after the Dutch game, but you can always tell when there’s a game on, by the air horns.

Ten Thousand Places: A Beginning

Well, I've decided it's time for me to start blogging.

I've been tempted to this for a while, especially because of some friends of mine, including the Coolclan and Clattercote. But I've also been doing a few "mass emails" to keep people up-to-date on my travels. And, I expect, I'll do more as I'm about to move. And it seems like blogging might be a better way to keep in touch en masse than emails which are too long and boring for most.

And, after much debate, I decided to call this little blog "Ten Thousand Places." Unsurprising to those who know me, this name comes from a line in a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name ;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces ;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

I hope that somehow, as I describe moments, people, travels, etc, that Christ playing in each of these places shines through.