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.