the way he was

I am thinking about keeping this in my foyer with Rev. Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" in constant play. An eternal flame for the old Barry.

2008: Months of Lessons Learned

January: A rapid detox from Ethics class can be achieved with immediate lunch with the guys.

February: Sometimes you can feel very small while standing by the ocean, or anywhere in Dubai.

March: If a guy you are interested tells you that he knows all the words to Les Miserables, take it as a red flashing light.

April: A Masters Thesis is an invitation, not a bookend.

May: Never presume you are locked out when a door shuts unexpectedly; but if you drive over the river to get your key, enjoy the sunset on the bridge.

June: Haitians live by the hand of grace, at the mercy of a few individuals and a system with only gleans of redemption and hope.

July: Hoosiers love basketball. And for street signs? Not so much.

August: There’s nothing that can’t be cared for while sitting in an Adirondack chair on the porch.

September: Like life, the cholla cactus may at first appear to be one animal, but it is really another.

October: Even while dressed in Notre Dame gear, it is ok to start cheering for UW half way through the game: loyalty always surfaces.

November: The wealthiest county in the US, Fairfax County, can still be capable of great things - - such as being responsible for the first use of the words “President-Elect Obama!”

December: Unlike intestinal parasites, the gesture of hospitality can make you a victim of the host’s pathology, but in loving friendship all things can be conqured.

30

In many cultures, I have already turned 30. And for the past year or so, I have gotten used to (although preemptive) referring to myself as “a thirty year old.” I remember after 2004 when my friend Bolla flashed a badge to me from her work in Ohio on the Presidential Campaign. She said casually to me as an Ohio Kerry alum- “here’s my street cred.” I think turning 30 this Tuesday is a bit of street cred for me. Maybe I should print myself a badge. And put it around my neck.

I think that I have I’ve survived a lot. So I am proud of turning 30. On the other hand, I do feel a death of a certain life. By no means do I expect my 30’s to be tired or without travel. Ethiopia and El Salvador are next on my list, and as spiritual pilgrimages. I do not expect to have less sex or become more conservative politically, I simply imagine that in this next age, I shall be better. I want to be kinder, and more empathetic. I want to wear lipstick regularly, and go by my nicknames more frequently. I want to find a good PhD program, and pour my heart into my research. I want to commit to a life partner whom I admire beyond words. I want to visit my parents more, because I miss them. And I want to love Luke in ways that I never imagined.

This is all I want.

Because I am so lucky, I have so very little to want.

my little green

Happy 6th Birthday to Luke on Wednesday.

metamelomai

Last summer over a Prestige at the beach, my pal Alex who works for the United Nations spoke of his family back home in Ethiopia. We got to talking about the most famous singer from Ethiopia,Gigi Shibabaw. He rambled on about how many concerts Gigi had coming up because of “the millennium.” After all, in Ethiopia it was only 1999. Now, my friend Angela lives in Ethiopia, where the millennium was just recently celebrated.

It is eight years ago in Ethiopia.

By the authority vested in me thanks to my participation in divinity school, I will now make the bold assertion (like the kind the Dean graciously warned about, and charged us with, at graduation): the eight year gap comes from use of the Julian calendar versus the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. Angela occasionally excuses the technological difficulties in our communications by saying things like, “Sorry, it is only the year 2000 here.”

It got me thinking. What if we could travel back to eight years ago, like Angela? All of us. Even George Bush. And Britney Spears.

Ahhh, an age-old question: “What would I do differently?” You know- I am naturally wary of people who say things like, “no regrets.” I kinda feel like things work out the way they should; but on the other hand, having regrets means learning, gaining information, and a willingness to take responsibility. In my life, in the situations in which profound beauty have come from great suffering, I still think, - - wow, I could have handled that a little bit better,- - or, - - I could have made some better choices during this or that, even though I accept that it is all over now. Over. Forever.

In the year 2000 I was nearly twenty-two years old, and it was my senior year of college. I don’t think that I would choose to go back, even to fix things with the information I have now. The thought of it exhausts me. I look forward to saying things like “back when I was in my twenties.”

So maybe this means I can say that I have “no regrets.” But I don’t think so.

my covenant with you, as i head to haiti

A long time ago, Senator Kennedy made a covenant with the world: he promised to arduously dedicate his life to righting wrongs, replacing injustice with justice, and fighting-on for the voiceless; and this was all despite the dangers, with a lot of suffering along the way. - - Most notably, both of his brothers had been assassinated for some of their humanitarian and egalitarian positions on subjects such as war, race, and poverty. The news of the Senator's health condition is troubling for me as an American living in dreary times but also as a person who has had the privilege of meeting Senator Kennedy several times, as I am close with members of his immediate family as well as others in the "Kennedy clan." For them, I remain devastated. For our country, I am even more convinced of the necessity of the Obama Administration. Also, I will always remember how Senator Kennedy personally helped double the USAID food allotment for an orphanage in Haiti I am connected to. He went above and beyond for children in Haiti, and even sent the head of USAID -Latin America to the orphanage to meet with the director.

Reflecting on the life (personal and professional) commitments of Senator Kennedy, I am led to become more decisive about my own covenants with the world, god, and myself. What is my covenant? What will it be?

In about ten days, I will fly to Haiti to begin my job as a hospital administrator. As you are aware, the conditions of life in Haiti are inexcusable. I am going back to Haiti because I ordinarily carry with me an insurmountable burden from not being there. There are also plenty of material, spiritual, pedagogical, intellectual, and sociological "reasons" for this next phase. Haiti, although a close neighbor, retains the mystery of the unknown, and that can be scary. The instability of the country and its lack of resources cause great concern for those who love me, who know about my sporadic health problems, and who are aware that my risk-taking occasionally gets me into trouble.

While I continue to sort out my covenant with the world, I would like to make a covenant with you: I am going to do my best to take care of myself. Haiti is my new home; Haitians are my new neighbors; and a small hospital with a BIG vision is my new life, - - but none of this happens apart from your spiritual solidarity, or without the assurance that I have so many beautiful, and giving people to return to. I love you in the deep, deep, places in my heart. In quiet moments by the ocean, when I am alone with my thoughts from the day, of the world, and with tears, I will think of you, and of your love, for it brings me so much strength. When I am doing something like driving through a river in the back of a truck full of melons wondering how this instance of this is going to turn out, it is you who I will think of, and of the moments in which you each uniquely showed me that you loved me. Because of you, I am the luckiest woman alive.

I am going to have a great life in Haiti. Sometimes we essentialize the poor. We end up talking about the pain, and the struggles, the illness, and the strife with disregard for the other aspects of what it means to be human. I am going to live with people who give and love of themselves in the ways you do; and they will care for me too. Haitians are just as dynamic, committed, deep, giving, loving, suffering, cheering, dancing, laughing, crying, yearning, apathetic, bored, and questioning as any other group of persons I have ever encountered. For Americans - the accident of birth has caused us to live on a piece of land during a short period of time in which its inhabitants have more-or-less enjoyed extreme prosperity, and a powerful government. How this happened to us - - we will never know. But for me, I pray for the "best of both worlds." Please visit me. I promise to take very, very good care of you when you do.

Onward with affection and longing,
Kate

One of my favorite Rilke sonnets, translated from the German:

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter
that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice - - more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.
Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.

Be-- and yet know the great void where all things begin,
the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,
so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.

To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb
creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.

Before the grace of you, go I.

As I race to the finish of my two year Masters program, I have not been very good about blogging, but will hopefully get back to it soon, as there are several stories causing a stir in my mind! In the meantime, I would like to share a song I seem to turn to a lot during times of change, and when the things that are beginning don't seem to have a chance to grow, and the things ending don't really want to die.

it's hard to let go, isn't it?

two longings

Today, I found a hand-written note inside a used book that I recently purchased. I can’t stop thinking about it:

Monday. Packing.

Dear Michael,Wow. I’ve never known a real pilgrim-missionary-journeyman before. You are doing something amazing. Something I could not do right now in my life. I am incredibly proud of you, do you know that?

Yet, I wish I were going – mainly because I will miss you SO much. I can’t imagine how I’ll survive without communicating with you for days and days. I know I’ll think of a thousand things to tell you. You whom I tell everything to – whether you are listening or not.

I wonder what God has in store for you on this pilgrimage. Why have you been chosen to go? What is your lesson? How will it change your life? It does not matter much to me I guess, as long as I am still included in that changed life. Feels like a new era in our story together somehow. Life with you is always an adventure – incredible, and fascinating.

So have fun. Enjoy the adventure that you are undertaking. Remember to journal a lot – for both of us. I know we’ll be connected in spirit as we always are. I know you will be fine and I will be fine and the kids will be fine and your Mom will survive somehow. We have lots more adventures ahead of us. I will be waiting patiently for your safe return so we can continue on together.

Thanks for being such a beautiful, caring, and complex man of service to the world. The people of Haiti will be forever enriched by your presence. I guess it is the least I can do – to share you for a few months. I piece together the paradox – to make peace with the paradox, to find a balance in some larger sense, so that a life can feel whole. I love you forever, Peg

a vision for the future, not a sense of personal entitlement to it

Barack Obama won the South Carolina Primary by an astounding 28 points last night, and he gave a phenomenal speech. I have posted the second half of the speech at the bottom of this post. 28 points. As predicted, the Clintons are acting like South Carolina did not even happen. Despite their campaign's heated efforts in South Carolina, they have deemed that the voices of South Carolina not to matter. Among many efforts, Clinton had staffers there for a very long time working 18 hour days, (I know how this goes), and Hillary Clinton did not have the dignity to get on stage in South Carolina in order to say "thank you" to their faces, and to the faces of her campaign's volunteers. This hurt my heart, even as a big Obama supporter. It was just another cruel reminder of the Clintons' arrogance, attitude of entitlement, and lack of class.

Last night's vote was not just a counter-response to the weeks of negativity from the Clinton campaign; rather, last night was about giving life to a vision. Caroline Kennedy wrote about this vision in the New York Times, and I hope you will take time to read it.

In this election the Republicans have been put on notice that Clinton is beatable, and the American public does not look lightly upon unethical attacks on Obama. Furthermore, Democrats have noted that the party requires a candidate that will not alienate voters like me, and the African-Americans the party turns to and remembers once every four years. Despite how the Clintons will spin it, South Carolina is not a special case. If Obama is the national candidate for the Dems, turn out WILL be high. Let's vote for someone who is truthful about being against the war. Let's vote for someone who is still in conversation with the poor and working classes. Let's vote for someone with a vision for the future, not just a sense of entitlement to it. Let's take some risks, let's challenge ourselves to be better than what it is that we are told to believe about ourselves. Let's make this happen.

- - -

A President Like My Father

By CAROLINE KENNEDY

Published: January 27, 2008
New York Times OPEd

OVER the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.

My reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and the three are intertwined. All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.

Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.

We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Obama. It isn’t that the other candidates are not experienced or knowledgeable. But this year, that may not be enough. We need a change in the leadership of this country — just as we did in 1960.

Most of us would prefer to base our voting decision on policy differences. However, the candidates’ goals are similar. They have all laid out detailed plans on everything from strengthening our middle class to investing in early childhood education. So qualities of leadership, character and judgment play a larger role than usual.

Senator Obama has demonstrated these qualities throughout his more than two decades of public service, not just in the United States Senate but in Illinois, where he helped turn around struggling communities, taught constitutional law and was an elected state official for eight years. And Senator Obama is showing the same qualities today. He has built a movement that is changing the face of politics in this country, and he has demonstrated a special gift for inspiring young people — known for a willingness to volunteer, but an aversion to politics — to become engaged in the political process.

I have spent the past five years working in the New York City public schools and have three teenage children of my own. There is a generation coming of age that is hopeful, hard-working, innovative and imaginative. But too many of them are also hopeless, defeated and disengaged. As parents, we have a responsibility to help our children to believe in themselves and in their power to shape their future. Senator Obama is inspiring my children, my parents’ grandchildren, with that sense of possibility.

Senator Obama is running a dignified and honest campaign. He has spoken eloquently about the role of faith in his life, and opened a window into his character in two compelling books. And when it comes to judgment, Barack Obama made the right call on the most important issue of our time by opposing the war in Iraq from the beginning.

I want a president who understands that his responsibility is to articulate a vision and encourage others to achieve it; who holds himself, and those around him, to the highest ethical standards; who appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get involved.

I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.

---
And from Barack Obama's victory speech in South Carolina last night:

We are up against the idea that it’s acceptable to say anything and do anything to win an election. We know that this is exactly what’s wrong with our politics; this is why people don’t believe what their leaders say anymore; this is why they tune out. And this election is our chance to give the American people a reason to believe again.

And what we’ve seen in these last weeks is that we’re also up against forces that are not the fault of any one campaign, but feed the habits that prevent us from being who we want to be as a nation. It’s the politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon. A politics that tells us that we have to think, act, and even vote within the confines of the categories that supposedly define us. The assumption that young people are apathetic. The assumption that Republicans won’t cross over. The assumption that the wealthy care nothing for the poor, and that the poor don’t vote. The assumption that African-Americans can’t support the white candidate; whites can’t support the African-American candidate; blacks and Latinos can’t come together.

But we are here tonight to say that this is not the America we believe in. I did not travel around this state over the last year and see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina. I saw South Carolina. I saw crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children. I saw shuttered mills and homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from all walks of life, and men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. I saw what America is, and I believe in what this country can be.

That is the country I see. That is the country you see. But now it is up to us to help the entire nation embrace this vision. Because in the end, we are not just up against the ingrained and destructive habits of Washington, we are also struggling against our own doubts, our own fears, and our own cynicism. The change we seek has always required great struggle and sacrifice. And so this is a battle in our own hearts and minds about what kind of country we want and how hard we’re willing to work for it.

So let me remind you tonight that change will not be easy. That change will take time. There will be setbacks, and false starts, and sometimes we will make mistakes. But as hard as it may seem, we cannot lose hope. Because there are people all across this country who are counting us; who can’t afford another four years without health care or good schools or decent wages because our leaders couldn’t come together and get it done.

Theirs are the stories and voices we carry on from South Carolina.

The mother who can’t get Medicaid to cover all the needs of her sick child - she needs us to pass a health care plan that cuts costs and makes health care available and affordable for every single American.

The teacher who works another shift at Dunkin Donuts after school just to make ends meet - she needs us to reform our education system so that she gets better pay, and more support, and her students get the resources they need to achieve their dreams.

The Maytag worker who is now competing with his own teenager for a $7-an-hour job at Wal-Mart because the factory he gave his life to shut its doors - he needs us to stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship our jobs overseas and start putting them in the pockets of working Americans who deserve it. And struggling homeowners. And seniors who should retire with dignity and respect.

The woman who told me that she hasn’t been able to breathe since the day her nephew left for Iraq, or the soldier who doesn’t know his child because he’s on his third or fourth tour of duty - they need us to come together and put an end to a war that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged.

The choice in this election is not between regions or religions or genders. It’s not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white.

It’s about the past versus the future.

It’s about whether we settle for the same divisions and distractions and drama that passes for politics today, or whether we reach for a politics of common sense, and innovation - a shared sacrifice and shared prosperity.

There are those who will continue to tell us we cannot do this. That we cannot have what we long for. That we are peddling false hopes.

But here’s what I know. I know that when people say we can’t overcome all the big money and influence in Washington, I think of the elderly woman who sent me a contribution the other day - an envelope that had a money order for $3.01 along with a verse of scripture tucked inside. So don’t tell us change isn’t possible.

When I hear the cynical talk that blacks and whites and Latinos can’t join together and work together, I’m reminded of the Latino brothers and sisters I organized with, and stood with, and fought with side by side for jobs and justice on the streets of Chicago. So don’t tell us change can’t happen.

When I hear that we’ll never overcome the racial divide in our politics, I think about that Republican woman who used to work for Strom Thurmond, who’s now devoted to educating inner-city children and who went out onto the streets of South Carolina and knocked on doors for this campaign. Don’t tell me we can’t change.

Yes we can change.

Yes we can heal this nation.

Yes we can seize our future.

And as we leave this state with a new wind at our backs, and take this journey across the country we love with the message we’ve carried from the plains of Iowa to the hills of New Hampshire; from the Nevada desert to the South Carolina coast; the same message we had when we were up and when we were down - that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope; and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people in three simple words:

Yes. We. Can.

crystallized in their present form

By definition of faith in eternal life, Christians are called to live in the future. St. Augustine asserted that there really is no “now.” Psalm 90 reveals that God views creation without a lens of time. In Hebraic and Christian sacred texts, time is often associated with the unchanging of the godhead. The Mayans were obsessed with time, and believed that the past was a clue to the future often as a means of anticipating things like war and drought. Ancient Babylonians thought similarly. In the 19th century physicist James Maxwell said time was a continuous running line with an ordered series of events. Eliade debunked this and said that time is a means for us to order things. He said that in all non-Western cultures, time is viewed as cyclical. In the case of Buddhist tradition- time is many layers of cycles and repetition. Newton thought that time was outside of us; whereas Einstein believed time was in relation to things.

Now we live in a scientific world with scientific examinations of time, but individuals still have the intimate experience and understandings of time as we sift through and sort out our own lived lives. While writing a paper last year surrounding Niebuhrian ethics and the notions of self, I came across this quote and it has continued to stir my imagination.

My past is with me now; it is in my present as conscious and unconscious memory; it is here now as habits of behavior, of speech and thought, as ways of cutting up and dividing into shapes and forms the great mass of impressions made on my senses by the energies assailing them from without. My interpersonal past also is with me in all my present meetings with other selves. It is there in all my love and guilt. The self does not leave its past behind as the moving hand of a clock does; its past is inscribed into it more deeply than the past of geologic formations is crystallized in their present form. As for the future, the not-yet, it is present in my now in expectations and anxieties, in anticipations and commitments, in hopes and fears. To be a self is to live toward the future. – H.R. Niebuhr