Scene: (the kitchen)

He wanted to hit her. They were both standing in the kitchen, Marilyn stood two feet back from him, her eyes growing wide as they looked just past his shoulder. John turned his head, following her line of sight to his own right fist, cocked back by his ear.

It had happened so fast. He had never thought he could bring himself to this moment. He had thought about hitting his stepmom, had wanted to, but when the moment actually came it had happened as if he were standing outside his body, and something else had automatically pulled the strings. In physics, there was potential energy, energy not yet released but pregnant with ability, and kinetic energy, energy in motion. He was more than these laws, more than a machine, and in this moment he had a choice: potential or actual energy?

Marilyn stepped back, then ran across the room, standing behind John’s father, and continued to glare at John with those large, saucer eyes. John lowered his fist; his breathing came rapidly.

“Do you have a problem?” John’s dad said.
“You ate Andrew’s hotdog!” Marilyn squeaked, from over Harold’s shoulder.“What? What are you talking about?” John said, shaking his head and taking a step forward.
Marilyn moved out from behind the wall of John’s dad. “You took Andrew’s hotdog,” she continued. “You knew we were saving it for him and you deliberately ate it.”
“I didn’t,” John said. “If I’d have known it was his I wouldn’t have eaten it. I was hungry. I didn’t know it belonged to anyone.”
“You did it out of spite,” his father said.
“This is ridiculous,” John said, walking away.
“Do you have a problem?” his dad said again.
John turned again to face them both. “No. No, I don’t.” He turned away, looking over his shoulder so Marilyn wouldn’t take a running leap again at the back of his legs, and left the house.



Before Andrew had been born, John and his parents had gotten in an argument over a trip they would be taking the next day. John had forgotten they were going on a trip and asked where they were heading. "You already know," his dad had said, but no, John told him he didn't.
"You're being smart," Marilyn said. "You do too know."
"I Do NOT," John said, exasperated that he should know something that he didn't.
"Don't get fresh," his dad joined in, and John was asked again where they were going. When he claimed he didn't have any idea, they told him to think, but nothing came to mind, so they marched him upstairs, lathered his tongue with soap, and forced him to swallow it. They next day they drove to Joplin, Missouri, and John promised he would know the answers to more questions.


John walked around to the back of the house, opened the door, fumbled for the light switch, and pulled the leash off the nail where it usually hung next to the door. Closing the door behind him, he walked across the yard, past the kitchen, out near the garden to a small kennel with four posts surrounded by chicken wire.

Pebbles began wagging her tail wildly before John had even reached the gate of her pen.
"What are you so happy about?" he mumbled, leaning down to lift the latch and catch Pebble's collar as she made a mad scramble for the opening. She licked his hand, and he couldn't help but smile softly. "You're a stupid dog," he said, rubbing her head behind the ears. He slipped the leash onto her collar and they were away, walking down the street to the end where it would meet the country road, and from there wherever it took them.

They were walking, Pebbles on a mission to sniff every hydrant and tree along the way, John settling into the swishing silence and warmth of walking. It always made him feel better, every step taking him farther from the house, the road opening up as they passed houses on the right and left, and then open fields. He imagined what it would be like to keep following the road, heading west, with fields of corn and soybeans on his left and his right, following where the sun led, and the clouds. He could go anywhere. He could leave this town and the life he knew, his family and the kids at school and start over. Someday, he promised, it would be different. He would find his mother, he would be somebody different.

Quick Note

I have two IDS lectures coming up this week, and played ultimate frisbee this afternoon at the park. On Friday I went to Chicago on a field trip to the Oriental Institute, and got to swing by Powell's. It sounds boring, but I always love a trip to Chicago and the chance to see things from Egypt, the Assyrians, Hittites, Sumerians, and more.

I'm reading a series by Susan Cooper. She's an incredible writer.

I'm struck by how lonely of a place Lincoln can be. When I was here as a student, it was a constant struggle. Now, as a professor, it seems to be a constant companion as well, but I see other people around me struggling with it too. It's in the air, maybe in the cornfields and soybean fields. I haven't seen it many other places where I've been, but it's all pervasive sometimes.

Loneliness we can learn to live with. It's what we often do to medicate loneliness that can be death. Could there be such a thing as a spirit of loneliness, a force that hovers over certain places, derailing community and peace and feelings of belonging? Regardless, a lot of students have talked about the struggle, and wrestling with suicide, pornography, alcohol and drug abuse, an almost unhealthy fascination with sex and relationships, and it makes me realize it's not just an individual feeling. What is it about this place that breeds loneliness? Is it the size of the town (it IS small)? Is it being away at college? Is it a distraction that takes place on a larger than life, spiritual level? Or is it the sense that here people are supposed to have it all together, there shouldn't be any mistakes or flaws, and so we feel isolated in our brokenness, in our struggles, in our desire to be more than who we are today, or in our apathy and hopelessness that things will ever be other than they are right now.

The Calling

From the four winds they came. Many of them had been outcasts in their own clans and families. There was a thief, a number of orphans, vagabonds, pirates, slaves, fishermen, and a few murderers. But they had come, this motley crew, to the gathering. No one could quite explain it, they'd felt compelled, a voice like a whisper on the wind, and then a sudden longing to head to the center of the Four Lands. Some had traveled days, weeks, even months, but they all arrived on Midsummer's Day. Like a flock of ravens, they had come together as a band of warriors.

Elwin Ravenblack was among them. She had stolen away from onboard the ship, killed the guard with a knife she'd tucked in her boot for weeks, slit his throat from behind as he'd entered her cell to rape her. She stuffed his body in an empty feedbag, lowered it down in the water by a rope, then cut it free. May the waters take it where they would, she would soon be free. She slipped undetected from shadow to shadow onboard the ship, catlike, then lowered herself overboard, hand under hand down the anchor until she slipped quietly into the water, and swam across the bay to mainland. Her arms and legs ached from their lack of use, and her lungs burned from the exertion and salt water, but she continued on. It was a death quest, but a death she preferred to the living, waking death she had experienced the last six years.

She made it. Gasping and sobbing freely for the first time in years, Elwin Ravenblack kneeled on the shore as the tide washed over her shaking arms and legs. She would have to keep moving soon, but for now she gave herself over to the rising swell of emotions that had been captivated for years. Anger, joy, relief, and sadness and loss flooded through her body, gripping and shaking her until she felt like she would explode. She wept for her family, her childhood, the abuse the shipmates had taken out on her body, and she wept for her freedom. She could begin again, and in this place where sand and sea, air and water met, she could be whole.

The following weeks she had made her way further inland, an unspoken sense leading her to the next town, and then beyond. She'd stowed away in barns, raided pantries, and kept to the shadows, daring herself to travel only at night. The pursuit had lasted for two weeks, as she knew it would, and then had been called off. The men would return to the ships to fish, trade, or pirate other vessels. She no longer cared.

On Midsummer's morning she came to the valley, surrounded by mountains and tall pine trees, and in the center of the valley, a lake. She had traveled through the night, compelled to move faster, to not let her body rest, and as the sun rose and cast beams across the water, she found a shelter underneath the pines, and slept.

Strange

This morning I left the chapel to go teach my 8am class (yes, my office is in a chapel), and as I was heading to the door I saw something on top of it; I thought it was a wreath. As I got closer I saw a dead bird hanging, its feet against the glass, its neck hanging down, broken, its eyes a dull blue and lifeless. I wondered if someone had put it there, but then figured the bird had probably flown into the glass door, broken its neck, and died. No portents, I hope, only a murder most fowl.

The Word and the Wind

There were words in the wind.

For those who could hear them, they spoke compellingly, softly, insistently; sometimes clear, sometimes just beyond reach, they were always there. They rustled through the leaves in autumn, blew across prairie grasses, howled over desert sands. They rattled and sighed as they left the bodies and bones of the old ones, or sparked life into the wails of newborn babies. The words were active, creative, breathing life still into the world, guided by the thought and will of the Word speaker.

The darkness was also present. It cast its clawing, fearful shadow across the lands. In it was the utter silence of the crypt, the hollow, empty places buried far below the ground in caverns where the air is stale and cold, and mountains of granite press down from above. It was the lonely, suffocating silence in the middle of the night when all one's fears come to life.

Words. Breath. Life. Silence and darkness. Death.

Few had the power to hear the words on the wind; even fewer had the power to breathe it in, focus it, comprehend it, and breathe it out again as the language of power, of growth, of life. But the words were calling Will. They had a purpose for him, and others from different places and times, but he didn't know it yet.

Will Oakman (A Ravenblack story)

Will Oakman had always dreamed of adventure.

As an orphan, he imagined what his parents must be like, maybe a king and queen of a distant country, or perhaps his father had been a proud warrior. It made the hours mucking the stable go faster, as his sweat mixed in with the straw and dung below him. After the barn there would be feeding the chickens, pigeons and sheep, the washing inside, of laundry and dishes, and sweeping the front porch. The days seemed endless, and the nights too short. A family had taken him in when he was four, so he had not spent much time in the orphanage, but there at least he had been surrounded by others like him, boys and girls whose parentage lay shrouded in as much mystery as his own.

Late at night, as his muscles ached heavily and he found his head buzzing between this world and the world of sleep, he saw images, heard voices, and wondered again where he'd come from. The bigger question: Why had he been left behind? If his parents had been nobility, had he been kidnapped, stolen away from his crib in the dead of night and held for ransom, or had his parents died of grief when they'd found he was gone? Or if his father had been a warrior, perhaps he had been cut down in battle, intending to come back one day for his son, but never getting the chance.

Then there was his education. The family he stayed with saw it as their duty that he be educated, though often with the harsh rigor that felt little better than cleaning the barn. On these days his body didn't ache, but his mind felt sodden with memorization drills and grammar. On warm days the schoolmasters would let the students have a break to stretch their legs, to play outside, to practice sports. While the break from his studies was a welcome relief, Will soon found that the other kids saw him differently, kept him apart, and so his breaks were spent wandering the fields behind the schoolhouse until the bell clamored that it was time for more drills to begin. He dreamed of one day being free.

And then strange things began happening. He had grown used to the solitude of his thoughts and long stretches wandering across fields and through woods. The company of these lonely haunts were preferable to the sounds of jeering schoolmates or the crying, squabbling children at the farmhouse. The quiet in the lanes and woods was welcome. He began to move with as much stealth as a blowing leaf, and found he could mask his footsteps to a soft pad, quiet enough to not even disturb the old and brittle branches that lay strewn across the paths. In the distance he saw a deer, a young buck no older than a couple summers, its antlers not yet to their full maturity. It stopped, lifted its head, and stared at Will. Will stood still, then sat down, folding his legs close to him, and waited.

High overhead birds flew in a V-formation, then broke in two, one group branching from south to east. The second group changed course, fell in line, and soon they were in V-formation again. The wind blew gently through branches around him, whispering, words bubbling to the surface of Will's consciousness, then bursting before he could catch them. And still he waited. Will began to hear his breathing, and slowed it to match the sound of the wind in the branches. Behind him, out of sight, Will could hear the deer's hooves, moving hesitantly, pausing, edging closer. Will closed his eyes. He sensed a presence, peace, as if a giant were standing close to him, about to speak, yet there was no one there. He stayed still a moment longer, before opening his eyes again, and heard the quiet, its subtlety and nuances as tangibly as if it were speech. And this was only the beginning.

Tolkien, Lewis, and more

When I was in second grade I began reading the Chronicles of Narnia. The way it happened, I had helped my stepmom clean the house and when I came home from school the next Monday, Mom had bought me a book as "payment." It was a pretty nifty strategy on her part, associating books with rewards, otherwise it might have been chocolate, and I'd be diabetic, or money and I'd be a penny pinching stockbroker on Wall Street. Instead, I'm poorer and a little thinner, but have an office lined with books . . . and fell in love with Lewis's work and fantasy literature in general.

Through second grade I worked my way through the Chronicles of Narnia, getting bogged down in the Dawn Treader (Voyage of the Dawn Plodder?), but then finding that Silver Chair was my favorite book of the series (though some critics say this one has the most disjointed plot and moves the slowest.) While I was going through the Chronicles, a professor came to our house to visit and found out I'd been reading the Chronicles of Narnia. "Really?" he said. "Well, you should read the Hobbit." Soon after I'd finished the Last Battle, and Narnia and the wardrobe were behind me (though not without a sadness and a longing for more), a copy of The Hobbit showed up in my room one Monday after my parents had gone shopping.

I remember staying up late to read The Hobbit after it was long past time to go to bed. My folks was leave the door to my room cracked, with a light on in the hallway, and light would spill across my pillow. The steps to the bedrooms in our house creaked, so I usually had ample warning when my dad was coming to see if I had fallen asleep yet. One night I had gotten so engrossed reading about Bilbo taking on the spiders in Mirkwood forest that I looked up to see my dad looking at me through the crack in the door, clearing his throat. I tried to shove the book under my pillow like I had done other times, but it was too late--I was caught.

Dad came in and sat by the bed, and tried to cough so he could suppress a laugh. "We encouraged you to read," Dad said, "and we're glad that you do, but you also need to get some sleep. Reading in the dark like this will hurt your eyes." Dad was angry, but not too angry, and I think he was also a little pleased that I was breaking the rules by reading and not doing drugs like other third graders.

Seeing how much I was getting into fantasy literature, my stepmom took another tack. "We like that you're reading," she said, "but you need to read more than just fantasy." The next week she bought me a book on Paracelsus (I think), and then later one on Erasmus, and encouraged me to read histories, biographies, whatever I could get my hands on. My dad had also encouraged me in first grade to start reading the Bible. I also got hooked reading about ancient cultures, especially the Egyptians and "lost cultures."

At the public school we had a librarian named Mrs. West who would read to us once a week when we'd come to the library to check out books. Usually it was just a time when the boys would kick each other in the groin to see if we'd flinch. Mrs. West had short, white hair, was tall and fairly thin, but had sharp eyes and an even sharper wit, and could read stories better than most people I knew. She was attractive in a lean, sharp way, like a tree or a bird.

She seemed to take a liking to me. I told her I'd read Lewis and Tolkien, and asked conspiratorially if she had any other books like that, and she said, "I have just the thing." She introduced me to Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles (a fantasy set in a Welsh-like world) and Madeleine L'Engle's Time trilogy (now a quintet), and I also read about black-and-white horror movies and became fascinated with monsters. When I asked to borrow a copy of Shakespeare's plays when I was in seventh grade, I think she beamed and teared up at the same time. I looked into it because I'd met another professor, John, who thought I should beging reading Shakespeare. (honestly I started the Merchant of Venice, and couldn't understand the play script, so put it down after a few pages. It wouldn't be until my sophomore year that I'd be reintroduced to Shakespeare when we'd go to Purdue to see Romeo and Juliet, and I'd be talking with the girl I had a crush on all through high school, Tracy.)

John had recommended other fantasy books to me, and I'd read Piers Anthony's Xanth novels, then went to the town library to read David Eddings' Mallorean and Belgariad, and began reading Celtic, Greek and Norse mythology, Arthurian legends, Robin Hood, and Nathaniel Hawthorne (The House of the Seven Gables, though since I hadn't read The Scarlet Letter yet, I was lost.) I also discovered Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and Frank Herbert's Dune.

My hunger for books and stories was insatiable. We lived in a town of 800, and my parents let very few friends from school come over to the house, or vice versa. One time my friend Jay was going to come stay at my house when my stepmom said, "He can't. I'm doing laundry today." She'd put me off the whole week on the decision, then backed out at the last minute. We also traveled a lot during the summer, and on the long roadtrips I would read a book, since I didn't have any brothers yet to share the backseat with. Fantasy literature was a way to escape the town, escape my parents, and escape my lack of close friendships with other kids my age. I longed for an adventure, a quest, to go rescue some beautiful girl so she could see how brave, and not how shy, I was.

The original Chronicles and Lord of the Rings still sit on my shelves, now in my office next to hundreds, if not 1000+ other books. They're worn, discolored, and well used (I've read them over 7-8 times each, of those copies alone) but I still have them with me. I've read a lot in general, have written papers and will soon teach a class on these books, but still come back to them, reminders of an early love and a desire to experience the world, and they sit on my shelf, carrying hints of rainy fall nights, or winters with a blanket and a book and something hot to drink, or lazy summer days either outside or in my room, dreaming of being a hero, of adventure, of danger, and of a quest big enough to drop everything else just to pursue it.

Frank

I never blogged about Frank; or Boston.

In April our campus closed down for a week and students, faculty and staff scattered in different directions. It wasn't Spring Break, but a working week, a week we call E-3 around here. Sort of an "in the field" or practical experience. Some went to England, Romania, Montana, Colorado, and others stayed right in our own backyard of Lincoln. My group went to New England.

Since it was my first year teaching, I was going to co-lead our group and it was going to be small. I was actually following the lead of another guy, who had to back out the week before we left because of a family emergency. It was the right thing for him to do, and none of us begrudged him staying, we only grieved for him and his family and missed the expertise he would have been bringing on the trip. So a couple days before we were to leave, I was moved from co-leader with little responsibility to leader of the group (four other students) heading to work with a campus ministry in Boston. I'd never done this before, but felt a lot of peace about it. I've traveled a lot, often by myself, and feel like a "leaf on the wind" in these moments. It's a surreal experience, you have to expect the unexpected because you don't know what will happen or who you'll meet, and yet these seem to be some incredible times of growth for me.

We flew into New Hampshire, had one of the roughest landings I've experienced, battling wind shear the whole way (I could feel the plane being rocked side to side. It felt like we were driving fast down an old, hilly country road with no shocks), but landed safely.

I need to back up for a minute. In Dorchester, a suburb of Boston, there had been a shooting a week before. It had happened in broad daylight and was the news all over Boston and beyond. It had been bad enough that the guardian angels had been sent in the day before we came to add extra protection in the area. When we arrived in Boston that night, our liaison from the college said, "Whatever you do, don't go to Dorchester." The next day we met with our project leader who said, "Tomorrow we're going to Dorchester."

What happened in Dorchester will be maybe another story, but not the one I want to tell today, other than to say there was another shooting the day before we went to Dorchester a couple blocks from where we ended up working. But what I really want to talk about is Frank.

We went to Park Street Church in Boston on a Sunday night. We had already been in Boston a few days, and were exhausted from a variety of events. I even had to struggle with whether we would go or not, but we did.

A little background about Park Street Church. Founded in 1809, Park Street Church is close to the Boston Commons, is a conservative congregational church, and has been involved in social issues since its inception (including a speech against slavery by William Lloyd Garrison in 1829. A balcony facing the corner of the street allows for public speaking). It's a hot spot for 20 somethings and college students in Boston, and we had gone that night to see what they were all about and see how Park Street connected with the larger college and campus life of Boston. After the service I spoke with a guy from the Middle east who was going to grad school (at Harvard?). We left after most of the rest of the people had cleared out, and made our way out into the Boston night, on our way to Mike's, a popular pastry shop on the north side.

At the bottom of the stairs was a man wearing layers of clothes, wraps around his arms, a thick beard and deeply leathered face with his hand out. Others were filing past, the rest of our group had walked ahead down the street, and I turned to go as well, but then stopped. I couldn't do it. I often get uncomfortable when seeing a stereotypical "homeless" person on the street. I wonder what he wants, whether he'll ask me for money, if he really needs something or is trying to scam me. Most of the time I feel angry.

This night, I was torn. I felt the irony of a man standing outside a church, a place that is well known for reaching out to the needs of the community, and walking by and doing nothing. I stopped. "Can I help you?" I asked, expecting him to ask for money.

"They won't let me in," he said.

"Who won't?"

"They won't." He pointed to ushers who were now closing the doors of the church. "I just wanted a Bible and they won't let me in," he said. I was stunned. I also didn't have a Bible with me. It was the last thing I expected him to say.

By this time, the students I was with had stopped, and were walking back toward me. The man and I continued to talk. David stepped up, "I have a Bible. You can have this one." He handed the man a small, leather bound pocket Bible. The man took it.

"Will you bless it?" he said.

"We can pray for you," I said, and we closed in. "What's your name?"

"Frank." And then Frank began to pray one of the most profound prayers I've ever heard in my life. He prayed for himself, for warmth, for protection, for forgiveness, and he prayed for us, for Boston, for the people walking by us, and then he began singing the song "We Shall Overcome" as tears came to his eyes and he rocked back and forth. When he was done we were left speechless, not sure what to do or say. I asked him again if he needed anything else, and he said no, so we said our goodbyes and quietly shuffled off into the night, absorbed in our thoughts, wondering what had just happened.

Beginning of school, Greeks and more

Today started with a 30 mile bike ride around 6am. I met Jonathan and Roger, led the way to Elkhart, and then we took Route 66 headed for Lincoln. Roger got a flat tire, but Jonathan (I think he's always prepared) had the gear needed to fix the flat. Roger had called his wife to pick him up, so we waited about 25 minutes, then Jonathan and I kept riding and Roger passed us about ten minutes later in a truck with his wife. I guess she found him. :)

Freshmen moved into the dorms today, and I realize it's finally official--school has begun (at least it will next Tuesday). There's a morbid game on campus to see what kind of serial killer professors would be if they were in fact serial killers, and I was told that I would probably write things in my journal. Not true, but Bethany likes telling this story (Colonol Mustard, in the Conservatory, with a revolver. For me, it's a journal because I teach writing and English. Not a game I hope to continue.)

So the last year I've been reading and lecturing on the Greeks for one of my classes, and have gone to knowing very little about the Greeks to developing a growing interest and fascination with anything I can find out about them, especially when it comes to the mythology, Greek religion, and their literature, art, and architecture. I'm especially interested to know more about the Minoans (lived in modern day Crete) and the Mycenaeans. Since this is mostly what I lecture on, the interest follows necessity. I even got to go to Greece this summer and visit Corinth, Mycenae, Epidaurus, Delphi, and Athens (and we passed Thebes, but there was no sphinx, and no incestual relationships that I know of.)

Before I go further talking about the Greeks, I want to give some work background. I hate spending too much time alone, so when I'm reading in my office and have sat too long without seeing another person, I head down the hall to visit Brian. Brian's the history prof, and we lecture in two classes together, and he's been my mentor the last year. I tell him something I just found out about the Greeks, or ask him a question about whether their could have been giants, or why snakes are depicted so much in Greek art, or if there could be a connection between the Nephilim referred to in Genesis and the Greek gods. Brian generally likes more alone time than I do, but he puts up with my questions and general rambling patiently (most of the time), then approaches the question from a historical perspective, which means a more skeptical one.*

*(In Corinth we looked at sculptures of the Amazons (tribes of female warriors) together and he said they couldn't have possibly existed. I actually got angry and walked away for a while, feeling like he was always shooting down the possibilities and questions. Later I addressed him and he said, "the Amazons were known for cutting off a breast so they could shoot arrows better. In the ancient world, without sterilization and our knowledge of medicine, they would have gotten an infection and died." My mind jumped to wondering about the possibility of cauterization with a hot poker or fire, but my hurt ego was soothed by the fact that he had explained his theory, rather than just saying I was wrong.)

So here's the big difference between Brian's perspective and mine. Brian is a well trained historian, so he looks for facts, checks accounts, looks at holes. I grew up reading fantasy literature and became an English major. When I look at a situation, I ask "what if?" I like to think of possibilities and a story, which sometimes takes me far away from reality. Brian often helps ground me, and me, maybe I expand his possibilities in small ways, or just force him to develop greater capacities of patience with people who ask dumb questions.

For example, what if the Red Sea crossing actually happened, or, say, there actually WERE giants at one time? How would that change the way we look at our history, and by extension, our own lives? A number of people look at the Red Sea and say, I've never seen it happen, it couldn't have happened. But there are grooves on the west and east sides of the Red Sea where a million people could have passed and left their imprint in the desert, there are stone boundary markers around a mountain in modern day Saudi Arabia that fit more accurately the Sinai site than the one people go visit today, and there are images of bulls on those boundary stones.

It's still hard to imagine how the Greeks living in the 8th century BC or even 5th century BC would have seen their world or envisioned it, especially coming from a 21st century perspective. In the 8th century, the Greeks were coming out of a 400 year Dark Age, where writing had ceased and there had been a gap in what they knew about their history. They saw the walls of Mycenae (the stone above the Lion's Gate alone weighs 120 tons and sits over ten feet from the ground) and believed that only giants could have built these "Cyclopean walls." How exactly they did get this massive stone (lintel) up to rest on equally massive posts is still unknown (there is no evidence of gears, pulleys, or tackle) but one possibility is they used a long earth ramp built up level to the top of the posts, used animals and human labor to drag it (much like the building projects in Egypt), and then dug away the dirt ramp.

The question is, how do we reconstruct the past, especially when all we have are the stories, fragments and shards that cover only small slices of life? Could there have been giants constructing the walls? Maybe, though the gold death masks reveal faces that are just as human as you and I, if not a little stylized.

I'd like to write more about concepts of heroes (Greek and present), and may wrestle with other lecture questions online. It actually may save Brian from my frequent visits, so he will probably be grateful if I keep the conversation here.

Waves or particles?

My last post froze up on me when I was trying to upload some pictures, and I lost everything. Needless to say, I haven't blogged much. Grrr, technology.

Ever see What the Bleep Do We Know? It's more documentary than film about quantum physics and the way the world is so much different than we picture it to be. Our paradigms (ways we see the world. Assumptions we make) are ways of constructing what we know about reality so we can live and operate in a world and have it make sense to us. The world is flat. The world is round. Obviously, some of these paradigms change as we realize the old model we used isn't big enough. It doesn't mean it's wrong, it just means that it doesn't hold or explain everything that we come to experience in real life, so we have to change it.

Some of my paradigms are changing, and when they're in process, it's hard to figure things out. It's fluid. Only when things start to settle and we have some distance to look back do we begin to see where things have shaken out and what the landscape now looks like.

So here are some updates for those who read (and I hope to become better at responding):
1. Grief
I went through three months of pretty intense grief. I was bitter; I was angry, and this time it was mostly at God. It was good I didn't write publicly. Most of it wasn't stuff I'd like to share, and so I didn't. I needed to work through it alone, mostly, though there were key people and conversations at key times that really helped me out (some of you know who you are). I read Job. I read Psalms. I read C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed and found fellow commiserators as well as a common journey: the journey is often made alone, there are some common feelings, but then there's movement toward either acceptance or renewed hope, joy, or something along the lines of renewed faith and a greater realization.

2. Taekwondo
I started back to taekwondo in June after a 14 year absence, and packing on 30 pounds. Most people think the things we do are either nuts or dangerous, or at the very least extreme. We train in 92-94 degree heat for an hour and a half. I've passed out three times, thrown up once (hurled shamelessly at the back of the class), and yesterday we had a training where we had to block a knife attack (a real knife). One of the girls missed and cut her wrist (and was immediately sent to the back to wash and bandage it). I have much less sympathy for excuses. I ended up losing 10+ pounds, have gotten leaner and more muscular, and move differently. I like being in my own skin. Students often complain about making it to 8am classes, or turning in late papers. There's something to be said for discipline and doing the things that are hard. If you can breathe enough to say you can't, you can keep going. It's a matter of changing mindset. No excuses.

3. House
I'm looking at buying my first house. Not ready to write about it yet. More to come later, maybe.

4. Relationships
A big experimental testing ground right now. Everything I thought should work, doesn't. Most things that shouldn't seem to work, do. Rather than complaining about it, now I'm observing it in the real world, learning about it, using it.

5. Faith
I still believe, but like C.S. Lewis says in A Grief Observed, "My house of cards came crashing down and I saw what was left. Will I rebuild another house of cards, or will it be something different?" Not a verbatim quote, so don't quote me, but that's the gist. All I can say is I started reading the Bible again, though that didn't come easily, started praying again, even harder, and took communion after a month long absence. I don't imagine this means much to those who don't believe, but for someone who grew up with faith, has had seasons of doubt, but has come back, this feels significant. Every thinking Christian seems to admit that they doubt. Does it make faith less reliable, or just allow a place for some honest wrestling? For me, I think it's the latter.

Waves or particles? Depends on what you're looking for as to what you'll end up seeing.

John

I got up this morning to do a project helping John hang drywall. I would be driving and John didn't have a license, so I'd need to pick him up. I picked up some sandwiches and Gatorade at the IGA a couple blocks from my house, then drove across town and made it to John's at a couple minutes after 7.

John has a small house. A camper is parked in the back and there was a bike laying in the front lawn. The door was open but the screen door was closed, so I got out of the car, walked up the sidewalk, and knocked. I heard voices inside. John came to the door and told me to come in for a few minutes.

"Are you ready to go?" I asked. "Do you need to load up some tools?"
"Are we taking the van?"
"No. My car." John's eyes were glazed and I could tell he'd already been drinking or had started the night before.
"What tools do I need?"
"I don't know. Mark said you'd know what tools you'd need."
"Okay, give me five minutes. We'll pick up a 12-pack on the way."
I looked at him, registering his body movements, the unsteady shuffle and sway and thought about our drywall project ahead, standing on ladders, handing up 30+ pound sheets of drywall, and just shook my head.
"Don't tell me what to do," he said, then paused. "Well, I'm taking at least one anyway."

I then noticed John's friend who was sitting on a couch to my left. "John's an alcoholic," he said. "So am I. You okay with that?"
"Okay," I said. I turned back to John. "I'll go out to my car and give you some time to get things together,"
"My name's Rick," the other guy said, and shook my hand. "Can you feel that?" he asked.
"No," I said, not sure what he meant.
"Energy. A strong grip." I didn't feel either, but pulled my hand out of his.

I called Mark. "John's drunk. What do you think?"
"I'll be over in just a minute." In the meantime John had grabbed a pitcher of tea and toolbelt, and gotten in the passenger side of the car. "Let's do this," he said. Rick followed closely behind.
"Let's wait here for a minute till Mark comes I said."
"I'm not going to go to work today, Rick."
"What do you mean?" he said. "Sure you will."
"No. No, he's called the cops because of my heroin."

Mark arrived soon after, John was taken off the job, and went into the house and began playing his electric guitar, badly. He had once been one of the best drywallers in the business, and had been sober for a six month stretch recently, and some of the old skills had come back. I felt guilty and angry. I didn't want John working drunk, but hated to see him lose the job. I felt angry that John blamed me.

I haven't seen much of John's world, and have only experienced it around me, not directly lived in it. I lived above a couple bars in Lincoln when I was in college, heard the songs sung on the street at 2am after closing time. I lived next door to a prostitute in Springfield, and saw her men come and go or was awakened in the middle of the night when the windows were open. I was awakened one night to knocks on my door and two kids were standing outside, asking me to call the cops because their dad was upstairs with a cord around his neck on the balcony, and they were afraid he'd jump.

No conclusions, just thinking out loud for now.

Committees (grrr!)

School starts in a month, but I've already been having dreams about heading back. Last night I dreamed that I was stuck in a committee to decide our writing textbook for the next year, which isn't too much of a stretch. The dream was full of elements of real committee meetings. The main question up for debate was whether we should use the current text or whether it was too offensive because of the language. In real life, this question comes up all the time. I'm not one to usually get on the censorship bandwagon, in fact I was making the argument that we gain by hearing the perspectives of those we don't agree with (or who don't agree with us) as much, or more, than hearing from the perspectives we already buy into.

"Cliff, what's the definition of madness?" the retired prof asked whom I was now replacing.

"Um, doing the same things yet expecting different results." I thought this was the right answer, but she turned to someone else, who rattled off a definition that was verbatim something she had said and she nodded. I thought, Socratic questions are good teaching tools, but they also feel like a setup.

"Lunchtime!" someone said, while plates of sandwiches and desserts were wheeled in. The meeting fell into a state of chaos for a few minutes as everyone grabbed sandwiches, some eyeing them with piggy eyes, and I thought we'd have some reprieve from the endless debate over textbooks. Instead, it was going to be a "working lunch" where we would eat AND talk at the same time. Whoever thought that a working lunch was a good idea needs to be shot. Just when you think, "Good, a break. I don't have to listen to Donnegal drone on, at least for the next thirty minutes," think again.

During the lunch, other colleagues were pulling out papers and surveys, questionnaires and research statistics over why we should adopt one book over another. I slid down further in my seat, feeling unprepared other than the feeling that the meeting was pointless in the first place.
As someone read a paper I was actually interested in, people around the room began sliding their seats back, squeaking them across the floor to signal they were done eating, but the chorus that sounded like a cross between whining, out of tune violins and nose whistles drowned out what the presenter was trying to say, and he was sitting at my table. I held up my hands, "Wait, wait a minute," I said. "Can you stop and then reread that again? I had a hard time hearing you." Others in the room stared at me, aghast that I could be so rude and ask him to stop. No one was really listening to his paper anyway, were they? Thankfully, the dream ended.

At this point, I feel underprepared. I dislike committee meetings and retreats, especially when the retreats don't usually ever leave campus, and any "free time" or mealtime is filled with more talking, or pointless "teambuilding" exercises. I don't feel like I have a cause, while others seem ready to fight and die for their textbook or idea. Sometimes I wonder if I'm in the wrong area, and feel the death of a thousand cuts.

Trouble writing

I've had a hard time writing this summer, or wanting to spend time in the office. At the same time, I've been struggling with my faith and also an overall sense of purpose. The two, for me anyway, have always seemed to go hand in hand. When I'm in tune spiritually, I also tend to write a lot, there's an overflow of ideas and a sense of purpose and that what goes on in my life and in the world matters. In the last year there have been a number of transitions and a few relationship blows that have impacted me more than I knew. For some, they would right more in these situations. For me, it was just the opposite.

First, blogging. When I began blogging it was in the midst of a community of guys who mostly knew each other, but as we began writing we came to realize how little we had actually known each other, and it was eye opening, cleansing, and refreshing to see the things the others were thinking about, dreaming about, or struggling with. Sometimes narcissism crept in (and I'm not sure it's ever totally absent from public writing), but mostly it was a good thing. Others came to the site and we began to realize there's a whole blogging world out there, and we were reading others and being read, and the community was beyond us.

But there's something about writing your thoughts down and having friends and anonymous strangers commenting and dialogging with what you've written. My friend Enemy has talked through this as well: on the one hand there's the affirmation and the strokes of someone noticing what you've written (we want this), and at the same time there's pressure, the voice that says "Now you have to have someone's approval. What if they don't like where you're going with the story? What if they don't like what you've written? What if they STOP reading?" It's no longer personal, but public, and unlike books, the reviews come right away.

In the midst of it, I've wondered if I have anything to say. I've felt paralyzed, sick of the narcissism in my own writing and in the blogging world in general, though I've also experienced the healing and community of hearing from others and sharing with them (a positive aspect of blogging). You come to realize that in a world of 6 billion people (and thousands of bloggers) one voice is small in the crowd.

So I've wanted to begin to tell a story that's not just my story, but our story. The thing about Tolkien, Lewis, Rowling, Brooks, Herbert and others is that they create an entire world and invite readers into that world. In the midst they find the author's world, but find so much more. They find bits and pieces of themselves, how people are, how they should be, comments on politics and social structures and the epic questions of good and evil and ethics and the struggles of growing up, making good choices, or facing our fears. And they do this in ways that no lecture or sermon could: they show rather than tell. They comment on the world around us by having us look at a reflection, a mirror, doppelganger, or through the back door.

I've gone from living in a small town to big cities, to a small town once again, yet there are stories here if one knows how to look for them. There's a friend of mine who has a growing brain tumor. He had surgery a couple weeks ago, but the growth has come back, fast. I saw him yesterday, realizing it may be one of the last times I see him. He was a friend of my parents, and has since become a good friend to me, and it hurt talking with him, seeing his weakness, seeing that we both knew the time may be short.

There are the 14-year old guys I take taekwondo with. I went to one of the guy's birthday parties on Saturday, took him some pellets for his air soft gun, and was glad I went. There's going to church and seeing a girl I care about, yet not being able to talk with her since we broke up. There's going to the park to watch people and deer and birds in the woods, or, on a creepy note, to have been stalked/checked out by a guy (doubly creepy since I'm not gay and his interest made me feel uncomfortable). There's the guy who mows lawns and rides through town on his bike, the men and women who hang out at the Arcade (restaurant) on Saturday mornings to drink coffee and catch up on gossip, there's spreading mulch in a garden with friends, there's the demolition derby and Nascar racing on Saturday nights that the people in town go crazy over. There's the nursing home in town that has become a multi-state operation, the prison just outside of town, two private colleges, hundreds of bars and churches. There are good cops and corrupt cops in town, good politicians and corrupt ones.

I don't know what this next year will be like, but I'd like to start writing again.

Physical summer

When I was three and living with my aunt and uncle, my cousin and I got to stay up to watch the Incredible Hulk. My aunt and uncle banned Star Trek and Scooby Doo, but the Incredible Hulk was okay. I'd watch the transformation from Bill Bixby's David Banner to Lou Ferrigno's Hulk, cheesy green wig and body paint included, and I was hooked. I wanted to be like Lou Ferrigno when I grew up, not Bill Bixby. The power in David Banner was this bigger, darker, more mysterious side of him: "Mr. Mcgee, don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry." A mysterious threat. Anyone would take one look at Bill and say, "What's there to be afraid of?" but then the eyes would turn green and pain and anger would trigger the transformation.

During the school year I spend a lot of time in the office, with books, teaching classes, going to meetings, and after a while there's this dry, dustiness that blows through my insides. I begin to feel old. One of the things that made me nervous about an academic profession was all the professors who looked cynical, tired, and incredibly bored, living more in their heads than anywhere else.

So when I feel like this I dream about working in the North Pacific on a fishing vessel, or out on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, or building a cabin in the remote areas of Canada, complete with ropes and obstacle training course. There are two sides, like Indiana Jones, the intellectual, academic side (that sometimes is fascinated, sometimes bored), and the physical side that wants to go on an adventure, be it traveling or testing my physical limits (have bullwhip, will travel).

The summer started with a two week trip to Greece and Italy, then, when I came back, taekwondo, construction work, and hitting the gym, bike or tennis court.

When taekwondo first started I'd find myself hunched over the trash can, wondering if I'd throw up. This last Monday I actually did. I signed on with a house construction company to get some experience, fill some time, and hopefully have the skills to fix projects in my own house someday. I learned how to clean insulation out of attics, hang siding, caulk seams in the basement, and the other day held a saw over my head for hours as I cut holes in boards for heating vents to pass through. My hands are torn up and blistered, my triceps cramped to the point that I had to hold an arm cradled to my chest until the cramps passed, and by the end of the day I'm plastered in sawdust and shredded newspaper.

I started taking supplements (not steroids) and have been going to the gym. My body feels like it's transforming, like I'm waking up inside the body of someone else. My birth mom was a bodybuilder for a while, and I inherited her genes, so I've given up the dreams of ever looking like an elf and realize I'll probably look more like a dwarf (though the beard has been shaved off).

It's been hardcore, complete with egg whites (cartons of liquid egg rather than all those yolks to throw away), turkey, fish, chicken, sweet potatoes, potatoes, greens, gallons of water, fruit and nuts, meals six times a day. Chuck Palahniuk, in his book Stranger Than Fiction, talks about his brief stint using anabolic steroids. It's addicting, psychologically more than physically. A transformation is taking place, you can see tangible results for your efforts, and your body feels more like that of a titan or superhuman, rather than human. It's power, and power feels good. No wonder hardcore athletes continue to use even though they know the internal damage they're doing to their heart, their testicles, and other parts of them. It's hard to walk away from.

In high school I worked out because I wanted to be noticed, to date women, because I had a lot of anger and needed somewhere to channel it. Now, there's something else going on. I wanted to not have to think for a while. At the same time the semester ended, so did my relationship with a girl I'd been seeing. We weren't together long, but it impacted me a lot. Working to exhaustion, feeling pain in my back, legs, and arms felt cleansing, a way to put school and the voices in my head behind me for a while. It's worked, for the most part.

Palahniuk's steroid prescription ran out, and he stopped using. School's going to start again (at least office hours) in a few weeks, and my desire for a full-time career in construction has been satisfied (I'm more grateful for my education and job teaching), but I learned that I love both working with my body and my mind. In another life, or in Morrowind or Oblivion, I might have chosen the warrior poet, or the warrior monk. For now, the adventures are coming to an end, perhaps, at least until my restless spirit stirs up again.

The abduction of Elwin Ravenblack

When she was a girl, Elwin Ravenblack had run through green fields, heard the birds and gulls cry out high above as they circled her coastal home or flew out to sea. She felt the sun warm her face and bronze her arms and legs, and smelled the salty tang on her lips as the breeze blew in. At night, sometimes she would sneak away from her home to lie in the grass on her back and look at the stars, listening as the waves crashed against sharp rocks at the bottom of the cliff. On warm nights like this, she would count the stars, imagining that the sky was a great sea, and the points of light were islands, waiting to be explored, and she was captain of her own ship, sailing far out into the night. She imagined she could feel the swell and sway of the water beneath her strong, fast ship, like she were riding some great animal, and with these thoughts she would fall asleep, content.

This was before the oars of the black ships scraped against the shores of her home, the wind unfurling the flag that smelled of death.

The ships had made landing a few miles further north, in a sandy cove, and men with silent steps and sheathed weapons crept into the town. The screams of women and children in the night and the clash of iron drowned out the grating of gulls, and the town of Lorlinden was set ablaze, sparks ascending into the sky before winking out. Elwin was not in town this night, but had gone out to the field near the sea. She awoke to the sound of the screams and blazing light, and an image of her mother came to her mind, and she panicked.

With feline grace, she crouched and ran to the edge of Lorlinden, back to her home to see if her mother, father, and two brothers had escaped. She ran from room to room of her house, but there was no one there, until she ran into her own room. She stepped to the windowsill--it was still unlatched from before--and had stuck one leg out the window when a man stepped from the shadows, grabbed her by the hair and pulled her back. She fell to the ground with a thud, and then all went black.

She awoke to taste copper in her mouth and a pain in the back of her head. She was hanging upside down, being carried like a sack over the back of a giant of a man who smelled like sweat and sour beer. Her head pounded and pain shot like knives and glass up her spine, and then she was in darkness again.

She woke again, this time overwhelmingly thirsty, as a cup was roughly brought to her lips and something foul and bitter was poured down her throat that made her stomach turn to fire. She coughed and spat it up, but was merely laughed at by her captor, slapped, and then the cup came to her lips again. This time she held it down. She lay on rough boards in the dark, opening and closing her eyes to see if she were blind, and felt the swell and sway below her and knew she was at sea. She lay there for a moment, exhausted, trying to catch her breath and pray that the burning in her stomach would go away. It did, but its heat spread through her body, to her arms and legs, and up to her neck, until she felt warm and fuzzy headed, and closed her eyes, dreaming of green fields and the days she had been a princess.

* * *

Ten years went by, and the world had changed. She had grown into womanhood, her body had hardened under hours of hard labor, her hands had grown calloused, and her mouth ran like a scar across her face to match the lines that crisscrossed her back from countless beatings. The ocean spread out before her, rising and falling, with little distinction between the gray surf, and the gray sky overhead. The world indeed had changed, and trouble was brewing at land and on the seas. She had looked once for green fields, but over time had stopped. They now seemed like a dream from long ago.

Still, there was a change coming. She could feel it in her soul, see it in the fearful glances of the crewmen as they tried to mask it with sneers and bravado and sharp cuffs across her jaw she no longer felt. She would bide her time for a little longer; she had become a master of waiting. But make no mistake, the day was coming, and it would arrive soon.

The Epitome of Cool

There's a dance, it's a rhythm, and you have to know the music.
If you don't, baby, you end up lying on your back, or your face. Somewhere in the prone position, anyway.

Don't be too needy, too clingy, too desperate to be with someone. If you are, it'll never happen.
Play it cool, be uninterested, and sometimes even a little cocky/jerky/bitchy/whatever. Don't always say the right thing. When you walk away they'll be fuming, but they'll be thinking about you, and maybe what you said. Then come back, laugh, tease them a little, and you'll have them in your hand. You'll have taken them through the deepest lows to the highest highs. You're their new king of the world.

If they're having a bad day, don't console them. See who they can be and take them there. No one wants to be miserable, so don't enable them. When you're excited to see someone, hang back. You don't want them to know you're excited. Yeah, they're special, but not THAT special.

Walk into the store, the club, the social center like you own the place. Know the owner's first name. Buy the bartender/bouncer a drink. Ask the waitress about her day as if you already know the answer, you're just challenging her a little to come alive.

Find the next adventure. Wear chainmail, around your body or around your heart. Go find yourself in the forest or jumping out of a plane or from a bungee cord. Whatever it is, do something, something you're afraid of, something you've never done before, just because you're alive today and tomorrow . . . well, we won't talk about that.

Eros

The Story of Cupid and Psyche

Psyche was a mortal of incredible beauty, and Aphrodite, goddess of love, was jealous. No one, least of all a mortal, should be as beautiful as she (Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest? Not you). So she sent her son Cupid (Eros) to kill her, but he fell in love with her instead. He visited her every night and made her promise not to look on him. Their affair went on for a while and Psyche became pregnant, but her sisters warned her that her lover was a snake who would devour the child. Psyche hid a knife to kill him, but instead pricked herself on Cupid's arrows and fell madly in love with him, but also discovered who he was. Angry, Cupid left, with Psyche grasping onto his heel. Aphrodite came up with a series of tests for Psyche to achieve immortality, but not until she'd gone into the world of the dead and come back again. In the end, Psyche regains Cupid's love, gains herself immortality, and earns the begrudging respect of Aphrodite.

Though it ends well, the are moments of pleasure, but also incredible pain in this love story.

The day we visited the Coliseum in Rome it rained, so we spent more time there than we'd originally planned while we waited for the rain to stop. There was a temporary art exhibit on Eros upstairs, and different depictions of the Greeks in relationships. Part of their understanding of Eros was the love can sometimes be pleasurable, sometimes painful, and often both at the same time.

Many of the stories we're told as kids end, "And they lived happily ever after," and we imagine that's what life should be when we meet the right person. Maybe there's something wrong when pain is mixed in.

Someone told me recently, "We usually hurt the ones we love most." It's not always intentional, though sometimes it is, but living close to someone, risking vulnerability with them, being with them day in and day out, we're going to hurt each other. He said something at the wrong time that hurt her deeply. She didn't come home until late and his mind wondered where she'd been. He accuses her. She accuses back, and soon something that had been safe and beautiful is broken between them. Life would be easier without relationships because we wouldn't hurt each other.

She wishes he were more. She has a hard time respecting him some days when he yells at the kids, or seems too soft with them. He wishes she wouldn't sound so shrill when she's reminding him again to take out the garbage.

We long for the good moments, the joy, the enjoyment and beauty of relationships, but forget it's often intertwined with pain. The things we're most afraid of, the things we want to hide from others, become apparent, at least if we're being honest with each other. Over time, it's inevitable.

So sometimes we run from relationship to relationship, because it only makes us invest so far and no farther. If we're gone tomorrow, or in a month, they won't see the insecurities; they'll think we're a good person. Intimacy comes through the doorway of conflict, but conflict is hard and some wounds run too deep.

The best relationships last for years, but at the end of these, she's dying of cancer and he is having his heart ripped out as he holds her hand. She watches him, once strong of body and mind, forget his own name and drool at the dinner table. They go to the cemetery gravesides of the friends that used to have over for dinner, played cards with, served in wars with, fought or loved, knowing that soon they'll be parted from each other as well.

What do we do with the painful aspects as well as the pleasurable aspects of love? Is it too much? Do we sacrifice one because the other is too much? Is there value or wisdom that comes from both? Can we have one without the other, or are they two sides of the same coin?

Story Fragment 12 June 2007

The witch woman comes.

The house is empty except for an impending doom. The hallway, the living room, the stairs that lead up and the stairs that lead down, and the view through the bay window to the outside world carry the weight of quiet anticipation. Disembodied voices float up from the basement: "Stop worrying out loud. We can hear you, we're trying to watch TV." Grandpa sleeps upstairs, the rustling beneath the covers an inaudible whisper.

There are no wise men left. His friends have gone into town, and out in the field, still some way off near the treeline, he sees her making her own path, picking her way closer, wrapped tightly in a blanket or dark cloak, and there's a creature padding behind her. Somehow he's been expecting her, but he doesn't know how he knows this, only that her coming is a portent. Of what? He doesn't know.

The sun has set; it's not quite dark, but the half light between day and night casts shadows on reality. It's the time-between-times when the worlds are thin, and anything--real or fantastical--may happen. It's been raining outside, and the smell of clay, grass, and ozone still linger in the air. Should he lock the door, look for a weapon, or simply wait for the inevitable? She is seeking him, he knows this, as much as he knows that running would be useless. She is bound to him and he to her. She would find him no matter where he went, and so he waits, drumming his fingers impatiently against his leg, and tries to slow his breathing. She brings the snake, a voice echoes again from below, the test of Pythias.

When she comes up the steps to the house, she opens the door as if it were her own home, matter of factly, and reaches a slender hand up to the hood of her mist covered cloak, pulls it back, and underneath is a much younger face than he expected, and thick jet black hair spills down over her shoulders and around her face. Although she is pale, she is incredibly beautiful, and her green eyes are piercingly unflinching, full of wisdom and secrets.

No introduction is needed, or expected. They step into the kitchen and pull up chairs around a table. A large gray moor cat has followed her in from outside and pads softly to her side, wraps itself around her feet, and immediately falls asleep. He doesn't see a snake, and looks at her questioningly.

"You know about the snake," she demurs in a voice that reminds him of dark earth and bells. "It's inside the cat. Stick your hand inside its throat and the snake will swallow your arm. If your conscience is clean you will have nothing to fear and can remove your arm unharmed."

"And if not?" he asks, his eyebrows arching mildly.

"Then you will die."

"What choice do I have?"

"You always have a choice." She looks down at her hands, inspecting her nails, and the moor cat awakens briefly, yawns, and closes its eyes once again.

"Okay, I'll do it," he says. There were no wise men left. He now realized the choice that stood before him. If he took the test and passed, he would have the knowledge of Ancients, his path would be lonely, but there may once again be hope to rekindle the fire needed for the coming storm. It was a dangerous gamble, but he had been waiting for this.

"Do you have any questions?"

"Yes. My conscience is clean in this world, but in the other one, I don't know. There's something still troubling me."

"Agreement first, and then questions?" A smile plays across her lips, but she doesn't say what she's thinking. "You have to let go of your guilt in both worlds, this world and the world you left behind. There is no difference between dream and reality. They're both the same. Forgive yourself. Seek forgiveness if possible, and then you will be ready for the trial."

He still carried guilt. He didn't know how it ended with her, but it had ended, and now he carried a painful reminder with him, tucked away from all but himself, an image of her to be mulled over when he had time to think about such things.

"Okay," he said. "I'm ready." He rolled up his sleeve. The moorcat, as if on signal, woke instantly, yellow eyes gleaming and turning to slits as it opened its mouth to reveal long, sharp fangs. He closed his eys and pushed his arm deep down its throat. There were no wise men left . . .

Italy and Greece: Second installment

Okay, here's where we left off . . .

Monday 28 May. We were still in Florence, ate a quick breakfast of rolls, butter, nutella (good stuff), coffee and some hot chocolate that most people said tasted like warm milk with chocolate added for color. I liked it, but it wasn't very sweet. We got on the bus, said goodbye to our driver Sylvanus (gold medallion man), and had a new driver named Johnnie (possibly part of the mafia. Good thing we didn't speak Italian or we would have been nervous. The cars passing and yelling at us seemed to speak perfect Italian, to which Johnnie responded, also yelling out the window while driving around breakneck curves in the mountains or the Autostrada. Enough about Johnnie). We drove through Tuscany, which was absolutely beautiful, and saw cream colored houses set on hills with terra cotta tile roofs, vineyards, and olive groves. Honestly, I think I was deeply involved in a conversation with the person I was sitting next to, and only saw the scenery in passing. We took an obligatory stop at a gift shop (they'd paid our way to Rome or Assisi), and I bought some things for friends and saw a couple dogs. The bus climbed a hill and we found ourselves in Assisi, the home of St. Francis (of Assisi). We took a short tour of the town, saw the church of St. Clare, followed a road through town to Francis' church, where he's buried, and watched the clouds roll in from the surrounding hillside. We went inside the church, and when we came out, we got pelted with rain. I had left my poncho in the car.

The neatest thing here was seeing Francis' tomb underneath the main church, and the tomb of Martin of Tours, the guy who brought Eastern monasticism to the rest of Europe and might have been a link for the Irish monks, Patrick included. We were on our own for lunch, so Chris and I left the group and found a nice restaurant tucked away up a hill in the heart of town, away from the main street, got out of the rain and sat down to the best meal we would have the whole trip (bread with olive oil and a salad, pasta noodles with mushrooms, ravioli, spinach, more mushrooms, thinly sliced beef, sausage, and fruit with ice cream). We then headed back into the rain and found shelter in the Roman temple of Minerva that had been converted into a church. It still had high Ionic or Corinthian columns holding up a porch, and this is where we stood. I told Chris about the time I nearly ran away from home but got stuck in a rainstorm instead, and he told me about how he became a Christian. All while waiting for the rain to stop.

Then we were off for Rome. It stopped raining after we got on the bus.

Tuesday, 29 May: Rome.
The hotel in Rome had a balcony, and ivy climbing up the walls. It was a busier city than I envisioned, and there were more Smart cars than I'd seen anywhere else. By appearances, a car could park wherever there was space, though this wasn't totally true because we saw a car being towed one of the mornings we were there. We couldn't figure out why, but I guess there are some places even in Rome where you can't park. We also saw a car scrape against the shoulder guard rail, right itself, and keep on going. Even though there were four lanes to the road, about six cars could--and did--ride side by side, especially if there were some motorcycles in the mix.

We started out at the church of St. Peter in chains, and saw more "authentic" chains of when Peter was in prison (we'd seen other "authentic" chains earlier). Michelangelo's Moses was also there.

We walked to the Coliseum, and it started to rain. Luckily, I'd remembered to bring my poncho (also dubbed a tent) and we walked around the Coliseum, took pictures of the stands and the labyrinth of walkways, holding pens, and passageways below the floor, and decided to wait out the rain. Fortunately, there was a gift shop and a sculpture exhibit on Eros, so we made our way past Greek vases and Roman statues, and waited for the rain to stop. Bethany and Stasi and I spent a lot of time together that week, and the two ladies thought it would be a great idea if we actually had a battle in the Coliseum, since that's what people did in the Coliseum, they fought . . . and died. We wondered how short careers would be as a gladiator would be (probably not very many commercial offers, or the opportunity to open up restaurant chains or car washes). Stasi and I fought, I died, and Bethany caught the whole thing on video. So the gladiatorial games are still alive and well in the Coliseum, though not as bloody or violent.

We made our way up Palatine hill in the rain, saw the remains of Emperor Domitians palace, saw the Arch of Titus (?), Trajan's Column, the Circus Maximus, and the Pantheon. The Pantheon was bigger than I imagined, and truly awe inspiring.

In Florence we had seen the statue of David (Michelangelo's). It stood at the end of a hall, was fourteen feet tall, and the minute we saw it we saw nothing else. Even now it's hard to describe. It was perfect, flawless, the ideal human body, and a thing of beauty. Stasi said, "I wonder what Michelangelo must have felt, stepping back from this when it was done. I think he know he'd created a masterpiece. It would have been strange to see the two together, the statue and Michelangelo: Michelangelo small and human, David larger than life, a giant, a work of art."

The Pantheon was awe inspiring as well, though not in the same way. The Romans had built the dome by pouring concrete, and there were five rows of box-like panels that moved up the dome to the open oculus in the center. On days when it rains, the center of the room is slightly sloped so rain collects in the center, then drains down five holes that were part of the original design. Even now it's a mystery how they were able to pour so much concrete perfectly to create the dome. It's seamless, a modern day engineering marvel.

After lunch we stopped at the church of (I don't know) and saw a painting on the ceiling that gave the appearance of a dome, though it was mostly a flat, or slightly arched, roof. The artist had used optical illusions, so that as you stood in the center of the church it looked like the ceiling went up and up, and depicted the Ascension of St. Ignatius. I don't remember who the painting was by.

In the afternoon, Brandon, Austin and I went to the Capitoline Museum and saw Marcus Aurelius on a horse, a large image of Constantine (at least his head), and the statue of the Etruscan she wolf nursing Romulus and Remus, the brothers who, according to legend, founded the city of Rome. The highlight though was that I got to see the statue of the Dying Gaul, a Roman sculpture of a Galatian Celt that I have seen in several books on Celtic monasticism. The man is resting, leaning heavily on one arm, his torc around his collar his only clothing. A gash is open in his right side and the horn behind him is broken in two. His sword lies on the ground. His tousled, wild hair sticks out like spikes, and his traditional moustache would make any NASCAR driver proud, but even in death, the Dying Gaul has a look of proud nobility, enough to capture the admiration and respect of the artists and soldiers who conquered him in battle.

We ate dinner in Rome, somewhere, but I don't remember where, and we got back to the hotel late, passing the garrison walls that surround much of the city. There would be more Rome the next day at the Vatican, but again, for another time . . .

Poem: First draft

I know a girl who doesn't like to dust
Her voice speaks rain and hidden lust.
The landscape of her mind: gray and green,
She has a knowledge of things unseen.

Beauty and sadness, long dark hair.
She smiles softly as I stop to stare
into her face, as I study it intently
and wonder if I'll be able to hold onto it when she's gone.

This girl I know, she haunts my dreams
with silent cries and guilt-ridden schemes.

Italy and Greece: A Narnian Adventure

We came back from Athens yesterday. It was one of the longest days of my life, and while I was glad to get home after fifteen days out of the country, coming back to Lincoln was also depressing. I chalked it up to being exhausted. The two weeks we were gone felt like we'd been gone forever, and at the same time had barely left. It felt like stepping into Narnia through the wardrobe, and then coming back again to find that we had changed but nothing else around us had.

So here's a quick snapshot of the journey. I hope to expand it, maybe in my journal, maybe in more blogs, but here's the short version for now.

Thursday 24 May. Milan, Italy. We flew to Milan by way of Munich, Germany, and were going to head to the Church of St. Ambrose, but didn't have time, so we went on to Verona, saw Juliet's balcony (Romeo and Juliet), were greeted by hot temperatures and Italian gelatto (smooth Italian ice cream made with milk), and then made our way to the hotel
outside of Venice in a town called Caorle that sat just off the Adriatic Sea. I stood that night in the sea, letting the water lap over my feet as I watched the sun set and darkness descend.

Friday 25 May. Venice. We drove to Venice on a bus, passing through towns and seeing Italian homes with tiled roofs and small vineyards and olive groves. Some of the homes looked like little Roman villas, but were definitely different from the American homes we've grown used to seeing. We caught a ferry across the Po River (?) into Venice, and visited the doge's palace, St. Mark's basilica, rode on gondolas and saw the campo (village square) that Giacomo Casanova frequented (to keep the virgin nuns company). My friend Chris decided he could easily live in Venice, though I was happy to move on, mostly because of the heat. We also saw the Basilica of the Friars, and I saw a pyramid sculpted by Antonio Canova (Cupid and Psyche is my favorite).

Saturday 26 May. We left Caorle and headed to Florence, Italy. We took a walking tour near the Piazza del Signoria, and I saw a copy of Michelangelo's David (we'd see the original at the Academie the next day). We passed the the Uffizi with sculptures of a number of Florentine Renaissance figures (Dante, Boccacio, Galileo, da Vinci) and climbed 400+ steps of the duomo and saw images of Hell and Paradise, and then saw a beautiful view of Florence (Firenze) from the top. At first I disliked Florence, but quickly came to love it, even more than Venice. It rained hard that afternoon, which brought cooler weather, and we watched the sunset off the Old Bridge (Ponte Vecchio). I saw architecture here all the way from Roman times to the Renaissance, to present day.

Sunday 27 May. I spent four hours in the Uffizi looking at paintings with Emma and her aunt Cathy. I saw Botticelli's Birth of Venus, work by Giotto and Cimabue (Madonna and Child), and a number of other sculptures and works of art. We also saw copies of Laocoon and Sons, and of Silenus and Bacchus (Bacchus/Dionysius, the god of wine, and usually attributed to festivals, Greek satyr plays, and drunken orgies). That night we had a service in the hotel, and then I watched Shrek in Italian.

To be continued soon . . .

Another Journey Begins

I leave for Europe tomorrow for two weeks. I'm going with a group of students and adults, and we'll be in Milan, Florence, Rome, Assisi, Venice, Athens Mycenae, Pompeii, and other places as well. I'm excited, though the trip has crept up on me and doesn't feel real yet. I haven't even packed, though I have many of the supplies I need.

I'm leaving, the only regret that someone I've come to care about won't be there to see me off, so it's a mixed departure.

I'm taking my camera and journal, hopefully with many stories yet to come.

Be back in a couple weeks, God willing.

A Question of Value: Struggling

Sometimes we're so afraid of being hurt that we'll do anything we can to prevent it, whether it's healthy or not.

A man or woman buries themselves in work. One more meeting, one more project, one more promotion will make us feel validated. It's a rush to be recognized, to have an employer or fellow employee or student tell us "good job. You made a difference."But what happens when we go to work to get our validation rather than find it in a marriage of thirty years? Or we've just started a relationship and we can't let go of those Saturdays at the office, or an extra hour or two rather than spending time with the person we care about? It's fear of being hurt, fear of losing ourselves, or that the person we're with won't see us as wonderful, or we won't be enough. At work, why do people fight and backbite and gossip and try to take projects or complain about someone else getting a raise if it's not getting at this idea of value and the fear of losing it?

Our value doesn't come from our jobs.

A man is married to a beautiful woman and has children who love him, a great job, a wonderful home. Yet he masturbates rather than has sex with his wife, or sleeps with other women to feel like he still "has it," that he's still potent, that his value comes in his conquests, his virility, his sexual appeal. It's scarier to be vulnerable with the woman who's known him for years. She knows his flaws better, he can't hide them as well, and there's the risk that she'll criticize him for them, that he won't be enough. She's not always in the mood, and if he's honest, he isn't either. He doesn't always take the time to notice the things she does for him, or tell her he loves her, and when he's honest, she's more a mystery to him now than ever, or he feels like they've gotten in a rut and there's nothing new. He wonders if there's something else, somewhere else, if this is the life he was supposed to live, or if his value lies elsewhere.

She wonders if they need a bigger house, or more furniture, or new curtains on the window and new carpet in the living room. There's a new dress on sale, and shoes to match. Yet she wonders why the dress doesn't make her feel prettier after it's been washed a few times.

A poor man wonders what it would be like to be rich; a rich man wonders what it would be like to be richer; a single person wonders what it would be like to be married; a married couple wonders what it would be like to have kids; a teenager wonders what it would be like to have a car; a kid wonders what it would be like to have an amazing toy; a workingman or woman wonders what it would be like to be retired or on vacation in the Caribbean; a person in the nursing home wonders what it would be like to be young again or to have family once again around them. A dog wonders . . . who knows what dogs wonder, they seem pretty content as long as they have food, a place to run, and people to sniff.

We all long for something, and finding our value seems to be ever elusive, this hole in us, and sometimes we either close ourselves off from our dreams to keep from being hurt, to keep them from being snatched away, or we fight tooth and nail to hold onto the things we hold to be important, the things that make us feel validated.

In the day to day of that we make mistakes, we break things and hurt each other and enter families and workplaces and love and sports teams and social settings with these hurts and fears fighting within us. It's hard to lay down our armor and our swords. It's hard to say I'm sorry. It's hard to trust and become vulnerable with our greatest hopes and deepest fears, to be honest with the things that make us feel guilty, and it's hard to find our value, not in our jobs, or successes, or even relationships, but in something else entirely, more permanent.

Michigan

Tonight I'm grading writing finals and am watching the stack of papers in the manila folder get smaller. My least favorite part of teaching is the grading, mainly because it's something I do alone, and no one else is there to share it. I've spent hours in coffee shops, at my kitchen table, in an office, sometimes reading papers about the benefits of thinking critically, or about someone's life experiences at work, or their childhood, or their divorce, or swimming in the ocean and almost drowning, or the birth of their first baby, or the time they had to shoot someone.

I think a lot. Sometimes I wish I didn't. Married friends say they don't think, or have shifted to autopilot, and sometimes assume I have no idea what's that like.

I did. In Michigan. Sometimes I was in a different city every night, four nights out of the week. My house was in one city, my office in another, and on average I drove two hours a day. For six months I drove four hours a day, plus had two teaching gigs. I stopped counting how many hours I worked. If I was awake, I was working, or at the gym to try to clear my mind. They were 80 hour weeks, easily. I slipped into autopilot then. I kept moving, wondering how long I could keep up this pace, begging for it to end, feeling more lonely and more emotionally bare than I'd ever felt before in my life. Only twice before had I been so sick of working; I felt like a machine, stripped down to whatever was needed for the job. I couldn't remember who I'd been before, only what was needed of me at the moment. What had happened to dreams? What had I thought life would be like? Not this. Hope was erased and in its place was dogged pushing until it was finished. Some days I wondered if that day would ever come. I prayed that I wouldn't lose my soul. I was glad to not have close friendships or a relationship in my life, I'd have nothing to give. I was dead inside from pouring too many places and having too many one-sided relationships where my value came from what I could give, not in the fact that I just was.

But on nights like tonight people and places start to resurface, images, and I get a little homesick for this time in my life. I wanted to share it. In Jackson there's a street with brownstone houses on the righthand side of the street once you turn off the main road (127) and are heading toward downtown toward the center. I wondered what it would be like to live there; it would feel like a castle. Nearby there's a restaurant on top of one of the hills called Steve's Ranch that has decent codfish, beer battered onion rings, and lowlit ambiance and a salad bar that looks like all the color has been sucked out of it by a vampire. The downtown has cobblestone streets, a few highrise skyscrapers, and buildings with theatrical masks set in concrete of men and women smiling (comedy) or frowning (tragedy). There are boys and young men who drive through empty alleyways and parking lots at night on bikes, coming and going from a drug deal. There's a police station a few blocks beyond that. The city center gets quiet at night, and hooded men and homeless wanderers hide out in bushes or under overpasses. I saw a couple students making out in a car one night as I was walking across the parking lot, then she got in her car and he drove away in his.

I worked with a man named Glenn who stood 5'5", rail thin, a Japanese American who had grown up in Hawaii and was surprised that I knew about the conflicts between the Filipino immigrants and the Japanese immigrants over the pineapple farms. He had a daughter a few years younger than me who had moved back to California because she never felt like she fit in in Michigan, and another daughter who was in high school. Glenn liked to talk theology or missions.

There was the girl whose boyfriend did drugs and stole their color TV. She couldn't leave him and was more worried about her gambling problem and how thin he was getting because of his heroin addiction. There were the women who'd been molested as kids and were still grieving it in their sixties. There was Eric, the formal African American fire chief who sometimes missed class because he was called to a fire, was tending to his rental properties, or thinking about moving to Florida. There was Lenny, riding in to class on a crotch rocket, struggling to finish his thesis and justify to his wife the purchase of his bike.

There were R, J, and T, always cracking jokes in class and making me laugh, then talking about their posttraumatic stress disorder from getting shot at in the line of duty and shooting a man. I ended up going on a ridealong with them and got caught up in a drug bust, SWAT team and all.

There were the ex-military students who had done their tours of duty and now were working on business degrees. Some came to class in uniform. A couple were deployed in the middle of the course and couldn't finish. They left behind families, didn't tell where they were going, only nodded stiffly, shook my hand hard, and said it had been a pleasure.

All these people. They cross our paths for brief moments and then are on their way to something else, or we are, and we're left with some good experiences but also sadness. At first this was very hard. I connected with a number of students and had a few crushes and would have loved to have been friends with a number of others. After hearing pieces of their life stories, sitting across from them, sometimes weeping with them or laughing, it felt like we had shared something. We'd see each other sometimes in the halls of the centers, or at the grocery store or graduation, but things had changed. We had had our time, and now it was different.

Over time, it became harder to connect. I knew the students would be gone in six weeks and besides, the faces started to blur together. So did the roads. Some nights I wouldn't know if I was driving north or south, home to Lansing or away to Flint, Jackson, Bay City, or Battle Creek. It was disorienting, like blacking out and coming to only to find that you've lost all bearings, have no idea where you are. Your soul has come unglued.

A boy and his cat, a talking donkey, and a snake

The last day of class ended yesterday. Now what's left are piles of papers and projects to grade, finals next week, and then I leave for Greece and Italy. I don't know how I feel. It's been an intense year, and often I've felt like I can only see a few feet in front of me, but now it's ending, and there's a feeling of loss. I've always had a hard time saying goodbye, whether it was moving, the end of a schoolyear, the end of summer, of camp, the end of a play, or the loss of a family member or friend.

I've been dating someone. I'm smiling as I write this, and yet I also find myself hiding sometimes. It takes me to places I've rarely been in my life, memories I've tried to shut out or ran from. Sometimes the closer you get to someone, the more you realize that there are parts you can't know about them, and parts you can't share. I've felt this before, almost always with my closest friends. It's a lonely feeling. We're broken people.

And yet once, a donkey spoke and his rider wasn't surprised that he spoke, but was more surprised at what she had to say. "There was an angel in the path about to kill you, and I saved you. So why are you beating me?" The man had forgotten how to see and hear. His senses were dulled. He was out of tune with the world around him.

A snake spoke in a garden, and the woman (and man) weren't surprised, but what he had to say made all the difference. He promised they would see, but instead we've been groping in the dark ever since.

There was something more, and on some level, I think we all feel this. Maybe we were more connected once: to animals, to each other, to the grass beneath our feet and the trees that swayed in the wind, to God, to the universe around us, to the things that we can't see and no longer believe in. Maybe we could even feel the grass growing, the trees stretching up to the sky, from the depths of their roots to the tips of their branches, and their growth was good. The food from their branches didn't just give us nourishment, but also deep pleasure. The water sparkled on our tongues and sang in our throats, and made us laugh. The marching of ants and the building of webs could distract us for hours in deep fascination.

We feel this absence deeply, and yet try to drown it out at the same time: through music, images, words, media, coverings that remove us from the outside world, from nature, from the wild beauty of it . . . because the memory of what we lost is too painful. A deep part of us longs for it: we have commercials offering getaways into the mountains and outbacks of the world if we buy the right mountainbike or off road car; we have well toned and tanned men and women sitting by the side of a pool or on the beach, sipping margaritas and relaxing in a paradise of contentment. We have offers for products that will make us feel sexy, feel comfortable in our own skin and reconnect us, usually sexually or romantically, to each other. We still long to be connected.

For the moment, I'm caught between this absence, yet also aware that there are still glimpses of presence in the world. I've smiled more this month than I have in a long time. When I'm with people I care about there are long periods where I feel peace, connectedness, like I've come home.

There's a boy I know who has a special relationship with his cat. When the boy leaves for the weekend, the cat wanders around the house, looking for him, crying for him, wondering when he'll come home, and when he returns, the cat follows. The relationship we once had is broken, but glimpses of it remain. The cat doesn't talk, but almost.

There are words that heal, words that communicate value, words that once spoken can wipe away mounds of fear and doubt and bring grace to a situation. None of us moves through life without deep scars and wounds along the way, but the glimpses that remain of what once was give us hope that someday it will be restored again.

The Death of Trust and a Bottle of Wine

Seventh grade. The year before he hadn't even noticed women. There were girls he did homework with, sat in band class next to, or argued with about some stupid detail of class. But now, everywhere seemed to be teeming with them. Who were they, why did they smell so good, and why did he have a hard time talking when he was around them?

Third hour. Science. Amy sat across the aisle at another of the polished black tables with the metal spigots that allegedly spilled out gas when turned on. Allegedly. He'd never seen it. He'd been working up the courage to ask her out for weeks so, typical seventh grade style, he slid a note across to her. She read it, giggled, then said yes. They were officially "going out."

Fourth hour. Same day. History. Amy asks across the room, "So where are we gonna go out? Are you gonna pick me up on your bike?" He hadn't thought that far ahead. Seventh graders didn't have cars, so a bike would do he guessed, or they could just meet in between class to work out the details.

Ten minutes later. "Amy doesn't want to go out with you anymore. Sorry." He shrugs, gathers his books, and heads out of class as the bell rings. It was a stupid idea anyway.

* * *
He's the best man in the wedding. The bride is beautiful, the groom is nervous, and the best man? The best man feels like he's going to throw up, not from too much to drink, or because he's got a bad feeling about the marriage, just a bad feeling about the chili mac he'd had the night before. Oh yeah, it had been a bad one. Knocked him out on the floor of the bathroom in the movie theater after he'd emptied the contents of his stomach, chili mac and more, into the toilet.

Same best man, same best friend, years later. They're in business together, money starts disappearing from the account. The business ends. The beautiful bride is now bitter, the groom got groovy in other people's beds, and the only thing that bailed in time was the chili mac years earlier.

* * *
A parking garage, capitol city. Gotham sleeps, except for three friends, one of them hanging over the rails of the third floor of the garage, feeling fuzzy after the bottle of merlot and shots of rum, wondering how far of a fall to the floor below, and if he'd feel it. He guesses not. Same best man, stands at the edge of the railing, this side of the free fall into space, and a dam breaks. He hadn't even known it was there. Not again. Guard rails and dams and long falls to the rocks below. Losing more than he'd ever wanted to, he doesn't know if he can take another.

* * *
They're making out. She's breathing into him and he's breathing back. They're close, smiling, and he wonders if it's enough. He wonders if she's telling the truth when she says she's happy or if he is. His heart was left by the side of the road miles back and everyone's a potential suspect in its murder. Is she the seventh grade girl breaking his heart? The boy wander who spins tales until nothing seems real anymore? Is he free falling out over space, once again feeling fuzzy, waiting for the concrete to jar him back to reality? Nothing is as it seems. What's the motive? What is trust? Does it swim down deep in a bottle of wine to be dregged out slowly from the bottom? Innocence hitchhiked with Experience, and now they're miles away.

Semester ending

I haven't written in a while, though there's a lot to write about.

In the last month I spent a week in Boston, went to Cincinnati, started going out with someone who makes me smile a lot and goes on adventures with me, and have been scrambling to finish the semester. My first year at Lincoln.

A year ago I was in Michigan, waiting to hear whether I'd be teaching at Lincoln or would stay at Spring Arbor. I'd been there three years; I felt ready for change. If I had stayed, I probably would have applied again for the Ph.D. program at Michigan State, or moved to Pennsylvania or California.

It's hard to believe it's only been one year. I've been to Oregon, Idaho, Boston, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Florida, and am headed to Greece and Italy in this last year. I've lived in four places, have seen friends divorce, have seen relationships end . . . and new ones begin. I've learned more about the Greeks, Celts, Romans and Romantics than I'd thought possible a year ago, and I've ridden or run hundreds of miles and shot thousands of freethrows.

Soon I'll be writing about the trip to Boston, and about letting people eavesdrop on our lives. I'll probably wonder out loud about technology and blogging, and changing society and current events and comics and movies and childhood and relationships and spirituality, or will gush about how much I like Stargate, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, Rob Bell, a certain movie or book, or maybe even will talk about the people who mean the most to me.

It's been a long absence. Hopefully, I'll be writing again soon.