The Love in Your Day

Last week I wrote this thought on my white board in my office:

What is it that you most love in life,
and how do you express it in your
day to day routine?

Thinking about the aunts and uncles who’ll be at this year’s Christmas gathering, and realizing that the list is getting shorter. My dear sister-in-law, Connie, passed last Spring. And a life-long friend whom I haven’t had the best communication with, has had incredible health difficulties since taking a fall a few months ago. For my part, I’ve been so busy, with an almost around-the-clock sense of urgency tending to my job. Because of the freedom I’ve been given I feel the need to work all the harder to deliver the best possible learning experience for my students. That’s a blessing, but I still need to pause a moment and consider bringing the bigger vision into the daily routine.

I shouldn’t let a day go by without picking up my guitar. I shouldn’t let a day go by when I don’t write in this blog. I should let a day go by when I don’t call up a friend just to say, “hi.” I’ve done these important things too infrequently this past year and that needs to change. After my uncle Joe passed, whenever I found myself relaxing for a moment, especially if the moment included a good IPA, I raised my glass in his honor. I didn’t do this because I thought that he might be haunting me or aware of my gesture, but because I wanted to honor the memory of his work ethic, what he contributed to in the life of his six daughters and dozen of grandchildren and just the man’s man who he was.

So, there needs to be more room for the meditation that I find in my guitar. Thus, last night when I should have been trying to get some sleep because I had an early morning video shoot (I was doing the behind the scene stills), I found myself listening to some Sarah McLachlan and then strumming along, then looking up the lyrics and chords for the song on the Internet, then learning the song and playing until my finger, that have long lost their callouses, forced me to quit. I’ve long felt a strong emotional connection to McLachlan, but when I listened to the lyric last night, something in the careful twist of words really connected it to the journey I’ve been on. I decided that this would be a good place to start getting back to the things/people I love in my life.

“Fallen“
Heaven bend to take my hand
And lead me through the fire
Be the long awaited answer
To a long and painful fight
Truth be told I tried my best
But somewhere long the way
I got caught up in all there was to offer
But the cost was so much more than I could bear

Though I’ve tried I’ve fallen
I have sunk so low
I messed up
Better I should know
So don’t come round here and
Tell me I told you so

We all begin with good intent
Love was raw and young
We believed that we could change ourselves
The past can be undone
But we carry on our back, the burden
Time always reveals
In the lonely light of morning
In the wound that would not heal
It’s the bitter taste of losing everything
that I’ve held so dear…

I’ve fallen
I have sunk so low
I messed up
Better I should know
So don’t come round here and
Tell me I told you so

Heaven bend to take my hand
I’ve nowhere left to turn
I’m lost to those I thought were friends
To everyone I know
Oh they turn their heads embarrassed
Pretend that they don’t see
But it’s one missed step you’ll slip before you know it
And there doesn’t seem a way to be redeemed

Though I’ve tried I’ve fallen
I have sunk so low
I messed up
Better I should know
So don’t come round here and
Tell me I told you so
I messed up
Better I should know
So don’t come round here and
Tell me I told you so

Sources:
* “Fallen” by Sarah McLachlan from her Afterglow CD

* youtube video: Sarah McLachlan Fallen Live – Macworld 2003 Keynote posted by cryotekk. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEKqFw9x_IM retrieved 12/11/2009

p.s., I used to catch hell for my affinity and attraction to artist’s like McLachlan. This person would tease me, saying that I needed to quit listening to the “lesbians” because the music was making me too moody. I’m glad that I didn’t stop listening. The music didn’t make me moody, it spoke to the shitty situation and my frustration with it. Making this song a part of my emotional vocabulary is a far better way to move past those trouble times than to pretend that they didn’t happen or wall off whole sections of ones life. There, I said it.

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Is the “Texting While Driving” PSA Too Graphic?

CNET’s Technically Incorrect blog, asked the question about whether makers of the following public service announcement (PSA) went too far depicting the dangers of texting while driving. If one views the video on a “surface” level, there’s nothing here that hasn’t been shown on most American televisions. My guess is that the uproar is this video presents its brief horrific narrative with no villain to blame and no happy ending. The video is disturbing. My fear is that it’s intended audience has already been desensitized to the message and those of us past our middle years, who recognize the preciousness of life, are the ones most likely to get rattled.

Sources:
blog: Is PSA on texting and driving too shocking? Technically Incorrect blog by Chris Matyszczyk. http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10318015-71.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 retrieved on 9/9/2009

YouTube video: Graphic Crash, UK, Dangers of texting while driving PSA by Peter Watkins-Hughes and the Gwent, Wales police department, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdvFh95Yg6M retrieved on 9/9/2009

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Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty

This item crossed my consciousness via Twitter, thanks to the EdTech blog “willisays.” I love the serendipity of the web. Visiting the site, I see links to Publish, Donate & Promote. I’m not going to wait until October 15th to begin the conversation…

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

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With One Voice Reflections

Saturday Afternoon, The Theater at Avalon Island, Downtown Orlando. The speaker shared his insights into what he called the seven concentric circles of spirituality or mysticism. I’m usually leery of anything that looks like a kind of spiritual “system.” But then as I listened I was reminded of my first year of university, at LMU, taking a class on Christian mysticism, and how surprised I was to discover that my conversion experience as a teenage could be understood as a mystic or mystical experience. And all these 30-years later I’m left with the term, Das Heilige, which encapsulated the idea of an encounter with The Holy that is both internal and Other.

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External Hard Drive Hell

Out’a nowhere my 320GB External HD decided to die. Watch the little LEDs go back and forth, but the drive doesn’t want to mount. Argh! jbb

My twitter moment-by-moment assessment of the situation follows:
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Pondering the Meaningless of It All

Not me, you silly goof…

BTW, just in case you are not familiar with the Onion News Network, this is a parody/comedy website. But that doesn’t dismiss the actual thoughts presented in this “dramatization” of a football team falling apart because one member of the team and then eventually the whole team succumbs to despair following an existential epiphany. The comment in the piece that the only choice they have left is suicide reminded me of a comment made by Bart Erhman in his book “God’s Problem.” …
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One Final Message from Randy Pausch

Diane Sawyer announced this morning on Good Morning America that CMU professor, Randy Pausch passed away last night. I heard about Professor Pausch last April when I heard about and watched his presentation, “Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” recorded at Carnegie Mellon on September 18, 2007. Just before the lecture Pausch was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and told in August 2007 that he had three to six months of good health left. He joked during the lecture that he’d finally nailed the venue.

Following the lecture Pausch garnered national and international attention with appearances on Oprah, Good Morning America, and before a Congressional committee in support of cancer research. Much more than having his fifteen minutes of fame, Pausch continued to “teach” through the example he set: bravely doing what he could to fight his cancer and seeing to the future needs of his children and wife. Even as the effectiveness of his treatments diminished Pausch made a surprise appearance at Carnegie Mellon’s May 18th 2008 commencement ceremony:

“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other people!” – from The Last Lecture

Professor Pausch will be missed but his message and even more importantly, his spirit, will live on in the students and colleagues he has inspired. I know that I have been touched and inspired by my brief exposure to this incredible man’s life. jbb

Click the “Read more” link to view additional Pausch videos.

Technorati Tags: cancer, community, heroes, media, death, teaching, video, work, writing, youtube

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What Yet Do I Lack

Whenever I’ve heard someone talk about why they don’t go to church anymore or what changed for them, it often seems to hinge on some personal slight between the person not going to church and some representative of the church. For others the reasons dig much deeper and are far more personal. Dr. Bidlack, a member of the James Randi Educational Foundation, said on a recent Skepticality podcast that he believes in God but has a hard time seeing how a personal God would have caused or allowed the suffering that his beloved wife endured as she died of cancer. So he calls himself a theist who believes in God, but not one who is responsible for every little thing. Dave Slusher, from the Evil Genius Chronicles podcast and IT Conversations network, shared candidly his journey from Fundamentalist Christian Faith to Atheism via the suicide of his father. Powerful stuff, that most of us probably ignore and just shuffle on in our day-to-day existence. Obviously I’m not that way, these blog “pages” being filled with my rants and questions. I certainly cannot bring myself to judge the experiences or choices of others, but at the same time I stumble at the thought that I’m continually assessing the validity of my own spiritual path based on my own personal disappointments, frustrations and failures (though they are far less dramatic and on the surface much more mundane). I mean, it’s not about me. What right do I have to question God because things aren’t the way I think that they should be? But the nagging questions persist and I find myself back in that place where I walked away from it all twenty-years ago.

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Mt 25 31-46 The Parable of the Final Judgment & Being "Good Enough"

Matt. 25:31-46 The Parable of the Final Judgment

This image of Jesus separating the good people from the bad people, like a shepherd separating sheep from goats, is something that I remember as a Catholic kid growing up. It expressed the kind of relationship that I thought we had with God, him being the judge and we the helpless animals awaiting judgment. There was so much fear about not being good enough, of going to that bad place because I hadn’t done or wasn’t doing the right things. It probably didn’t help that the words, “Can’t you do anything right?!” spoken by my father rang in my childish ears.
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Mt 24 – Questions about the End of the Age & the End of Me

I have taken far too long before addressing these passages of scripture and spending time listening to Jesus’ Olivet Discourse. A lot of my own difficulties over the past months could have been less difficult had I stayed closer to the Word. A speaker this past week at the “In His Presence” conference referred to the Bible as his means of sifting through all the noise that comes to us in our lives. I needed to hear that. Besides, Dr. McGee’s “Thru the Bible Radio” is now beginning the book of Matthew and if he laps me, that’d be bad.

So the apostles were gawking at the impressive structures that made up the Temple complex and Jesus responded by telling them that the whole thing was going to be leveled in a judgment from God. Okay, that got their interest. They asked three questions: (1) when will this happen (the destruction of the temple, (2) what will be the sign of your coming, and (3) what will be the sign of the end of the age? (Matt. 24: 3) My first thought is whether these three questions are referring to one event (end of the age/destruction of the temple/Jesus’ return) or to three events. The second question, putting the question back into the context of the last weeks of Jesus’ ministry, why would the disciples be asking about when he would be coming back? I mean, he’s standing right there teaching them.
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