Saturday, November 3, 2012

2 more poems

My longing to be known dwarfs my longing to be great. It is for this reason that I share my meager attempts at poetry.


























Sunday, September 30, 2012

School Reform

The strike is over, but I'm still thinking about school reform. A post with my thoughts on the matter is coming. For now, as a primer, give a listen to the This American LIfe episode entitled, "Back to School." I bet it will knock your socks off.



Monday, September 17, 2012

From Inside the Strike


I wrote this piece as two separate mini-essays, but they are too closely linked to post separately. The first part explains the importance of Unions in general. The second explains the opportunity that presents itself right now, on Monday afternoon, the eighth day of our strike.

Part One: Why Unions Matter

A world in which the scale of our interpersonal connection is small enough that love would guide us and keep us from exploiting one another is a thing of the past.  When life was harder, and people were nobler, we had this. The days of small communities, interdependence, and first-hand knowledge of our neighbors' pain are no longer. Today's world is built upon industry and upon the concept of large scale, so that success requires and stems from benefitting from, and using others whom one does not and cannot know.

Since the onset of industrial society, we have seen two sorts of power emerge; one is automatic and the other is created. The automatic power comes from capital. Those with land, money, connections or other resources automatically control those who don't. They do so without concern for the people they control; for they do not know them and thus cannot love them. It's nothing personal. The large scale that precludes love creates a buffer between owner and worker that allows the owner to get as much as they can from their worker without guilt. It is to the owner's clear advantage to pay and treat his worker as poorly as he can, to the point that the very human dignity of the workers is a neglected. (For poignant demonstrations of how this process works systematically, spend some time with John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.)

The created power in the industrial society is that of the people, joined together. When the people refuse to heed the bidding of the powerful unless all of their members and paid and treated well, a great equalization occurs. And somehow, interdependence replaces exploitation as the creative force. Skipping over love entirely, the system of collective bargaining makes the powerful treat their workers well, without even knowing them. So unions are important because they create the possibility for industrial society to go on producing on a large scale, allowing for the participation of the powerless, while protecting their dignity.

The Chicago Teachers' Union's fight against Chicago Public Schools has been a classic struggle between powerful employer and its labor force, with an important twist. The powerful in this case are the mayor, and his wealthy appointees of the school board, many of whom are tied to charter schools. The labor force, though, is not primarily interested in protecting itself.

The Talk on the Picket Lines

From the inside of this contract dispute, I have noticed a shift from normal, self-serving, contract negotiations to something that I think is truly significant. In the case of this strike, the teachers are fired up not about how they are being treated, but about how their students have been treated over the years. The media talk is about pay and evaluation. But on the picket lines and at the rallies, these issues are perfunctory.

From deep inside the union, conversations like this e-mail exchange between two teachers after yesterday's union meeting are common.


Teacher 1: This contract is more of the same old thing that (union) leadership has brought to us for years. I believe there are many of us who are willing to sacrifice wages for improved working/learning conditions. We need to make sure the union leadership and other factions of the union hear our voice. I'm curious what your take is on what is going on (i.e. how did the other representatives present feel about where we are at right now and why do you feel it wasn't resolved today?).

Teacher 2: One thing i can say is that the union body, many at least, seemed that they don't want something unless it truly starts to address many of our concerns.  There was a strong calling to not end the strike.


So what does Teacher 1 mean about working/ learning conditions? Why did Teacher 2 hear a strong call to not end the strike when we've already been promised a decent pay raise and scored some sizable wins already?

Among teachers, this strike has become a lever for true education reform. We are convinced that Charter schools are a terrible solution to our education problems, and that investing in struggling schools instead of starving them of resources is what our city's kids deserve. The school board's agenda to close, restaff and charter off our most needy schools on the South and West sides is clearly self-serving and short-sighted. Anyone who has worked at an all black school in Chicago can tell you that the veteran black teachers who work in these schools are some of our city's most valuable resources. They are heroes, and our school board's intention is to systematically replace them with a cheap and poor imitation. There is a buzz among the teachers to stay on strike until we have assurance that our brothers and sisters on the South and West side will keep jobs when their schools are closed down later this year.

The other issues that truly impassion us,  manageable class sizes and adequate social work and nurse services, are related directly to our kids. As CPS shows consistently, the appointed board is either misinformed of what true education reform should look like in Chicago, or they are corrupt. And right now, in the middle of September in Chicago, we have leverage to fight for the kids of this city against the powerful and ignorant/corrupt. There's no telling when we'll have this sort of power again. With the city's current plan to chartering off neighborhood schools to corporations, we may never have it again.

The politically neutral comment we always get as teachers is, "I hope the two sides work this out soon." And we do too; we can't wait to get back to our students. But we can't help but wonder if there's a chance to be truly heard and make some real inroads for our parents and students who have no political voice. We can't help but wonder if the media attention we could gain from holding out and sacrificing our raises for our students would show the world our true priorities and spin our mayor's agenda on its head.

In a large city where we all benefit and suffer from systems beyond our comprehension, it's easy to shake our heads and say injustice has to be this way. But really, it is fun, and maybe even healthy to hope. And this strike ain't over yet.

Let's keep watching.















Wednesday, September 5, 2012

A Sabbath Poem



I've taken to getting away to a quiet place on Sundays, and being still for about an hour. Poems, or seeds of poems, have often emerged from these times. This is one that came last month as I sat at Northerly Island by the lake, just south of downtown Chicago.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Eli as Froggy

This happened last Spring and I never got around to posting it.


That's my boy!

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

read this blog post

I think this blog post is really good.

-brian

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Betsy


Posted: 13 May 2012 06:41 AM PDT

As our fifth child crowned early Friday morning, the uniquely beautiful lives and faces of our other four kids flashed before me: Suzy's rambling mind and empathetic heart;  Eli's fierce anger and hilarious one-liners; Isaac's quick wit and scheming bent; Leeli's grunting hugs and stubborn stares. What joy in studying them, teaching them, laughing with them, and training them.The blessedness; the givenness of life itself came to me dressed as these 4 kids.


Next thing you know, there's a head emerging. Then a neck with a cord wrapped round, choking as the tiny baby came further. 


And just as quickly had come the weight of life's blessedness came the truth of its fragility. I feared for the baby's death and I knew from my other kids all that stood to be lost. 


In my fear I looked up at my Beth's exhausted, sweating face. She had once more given more than she has for her family. Thanks for her, beyond what I can express, filled me and broke me. 


And while I looked at Beth and cried, Dr. Kara's hands untangled the umbilical cord, and her voice cried out, "and it is a girl!," Then came Beatriz Ann Stipp's first breath. Then her piercing cry. She was alive. 


Alive!

Monday, April 30, 2012

more from Wendell Berry

Last week, Wendell Berry delivered a speech to the National Endowment for the Humanities. All who have ears can give it a listen by watching the video here.

I'm cautiously heartened that Wendell Berry's work is lately getting attention. The fact that he gave this speech at an event put on by our federal government, and the fact that he was chosen to write the forward to Prince Charles's book about feeding the planet sustainably means that more people will hear his thoughts.  And we need to hear what Mr. Berry's been prescribing for the last 40 years; from the way we eat, to the way we pattern our weeks, to the way we raise our kids, to how we think about where we live. It is ancient wisdom, wearing (semi-)modern lenses, and spoken in a Kentucky accent.

I was struck in listening to the speech, how consistent Mr. Berry's message has been throughout his career. The book that put him on the map, and the one that first captured my thoughts, is a collection of essays called The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. Much of what he said in his speech last week is a reworking of the same themes he developed in that book, which was publishing in 1977.

Below are some excerpts from the book that grabbed my attention right away; they struck me as both startlingly different from anything I'd heard before, and startlingly true.

Here is his first paragraph:
One of the peculiarities of the white race’s presence in America is how little intention has been applied to it. As a people, wherever we have been, we have never really intended to be. The continent is said to have been discovered by an Italian who was on his way to India. The earliest explorers were looking for gold, which was, after an early streak of luck in Mexico, always somewhere farther on. Conquests and foundings were incidental to this search – which did not, and could not, end until the continent was finally laid open in an orgy of goldseeking in the middle of the last century. Once the unknown of geography was mapped, the industrial marketplace became the new frontier, and we continued, with largely the same motives and with increasing haste and anxiety, to displace ourselves – no longer with unity of direction, like a migrant flock, but like the refugees from a broken anthill. In our own time we have invaded foreign lands and the moon with the high-toned patriotism of the conquistadors, and with the same mixture of fantasy and avarice.

A few paragraphs later, he goes on:
If there is any law that has been consistenly operative in American history, it is that the members of any established people or group or community sooner or later become "redskins" - that is, they become the designated victims of an utterly ruthless, officially sanctioned and subsidized exploitation. The colonists who drove off the Indians came to be intolerably exploited by their imperial governments. And that alien imperialism was thrown off only to be succeeded by a domestic version of the same thing; the class of independent small farmers who fought the war of independence has been exploited by, and recruited into, the industrial society until by now it is almost extinct. 

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Immanuel Approach continued

Much of my thinking about God and man lately has stemmed from using the Immanuel Approach to Healing Prayer. I learned about this approach at a conference held by Dr. Karl Lehman  back in November, and have been testing it out on my (daring) friends since then. I knew some things about healing prayer going into the conference, but the new stuff I learned there excited me. I hoped as I left the conference that this slightly different approach to helping people pray through pain and trauma was easier to use and  more effective than the approach I had used before (something similar to Theophostic prayer).

I have not been disappointed. For all the sessions I've done (barring those where the pray-er had to hurry and catch a train or something) the people have heard from Jesus directly to their hearts in really powerful ways. In some cases, people who haven't felt the presence of Jesus in years have been able to receive breakthroughs.  Before you think in your mind that I'm doing something altruistic here, I have to say that watching Jesus show people what He has to show them is fascinating for me personally.  It's like watching a true movie about the truest thing there is, but told in a different way, and to a different person with every session. All of this goes a long way in enriching my own faith walk.

Dr. Lehman wrote up a brief description of the Immanuel Approach, that I think is clear and succinct.  I haven't found it online anywhere, so 'm typing up and posting it below for people who want information about Immanuel prayer. Also, if you life near Illinois, Tennessee or Kansas here is a list of people (all of whom are more qualified than I) who you can contact for help in removing the barriers between you and Jesus.

So here it is in a nutshell

The Immanuel Approach:

  • Immanuel means "God with us" in Hebrew, and the Immanuel approach takes the reality of God's ongoing presence as its primary foundation.
  • Thousands of professionals and lay people around the world are applying the Immanuel approach to resolve past pain, deepen intimacy with God, and discern God's ongoing guidance. 

The Immanuel Approach to Emotional Healing:
  • Shifts the primary objective from "resolve trauma and relieve symptoms"to "help the person connect more intimately with Jesus by removing barriers between her heart and Him." We gratefully accept the resolution of psychological trauma and the associated symptom-relief as side benefits, but the more important priority is to remove blockages that stand between our hearts and Jesus. 
  • Starts with recall of positive memories and deliberate appreciation, to prepare our brain-mind-spirit systems for connecting with the Lord; and then establishes a living, interactive connection with Jesus as the foundation for the session.
  • Is organized around turning to Jesus, focusing on Jesus, and engaging directly with Jesus at every point in the session.
The Immanuel Approach to Life:
  • Includes healing for psychological trauma, but clearly recognizes that this is only one part of God's agenda for working in our lives. For example, the Lord also wants to build our capacity, grow our maturity, and spend time "just" being with us as a friend.
  • Takes the tools for helping us connect with the Lord outside our special "sessions," with the ultimate goal of helping us get to the place where we perceive the Lords' presence, and abide in an interactive connection with Jesus, as our usual, normal, baseline condition as we walk through life each day.
  • Again, identifies the primary objective, the most important priority, as intimacy with God. 

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Bluegrass Anniversary

This last weekend Beth and I went to a cabin in the Smokey Mountains for an early 10th Anniversary getaway. It was a really great time to recalibrate our hearts with one another, and to be completely agenda-less.

The lowlight was that we somehow ended up at a mall.

The highlight started with a drive through rural Kentucky, looking for a place we'd read about that serves up live Bluegrass music every Saturday night. We had to call the place twice before we finally wound around the hilly countryside and found the rows of cars parked outside what looked to us like your basic barn. When we got inside, the man at the ticket booth asked if we were the ones who'd called. After we confirmed, he invited us to come in for free.

The inside of the barn had been converted to a countrified concert hall. The front of the hall held the stage with a few rows of seats in front. Behind the stage a sign read, "Bluegrass Music, made in Kentucky, USA, NOTt in China." At the back and sides of the hall, built-in stadium seating reached almost to the ceiling. The music and the crowd was good and enjoyable.

When one of the band members introduced a student of his, Colonel Andy Hunt, things started to get awesome. Colonel Andy is an unpolished banjo picker, a flat-foot tap dancer, and an all-around country entertainer. After Colonel Andy finished his first song on banjo, he announced to the crowd that he wanted to do some flat-footin for 'em on this next song. He  was hopin' a feller named Brother Long Legs would come and join him, if he was here. (The crowd applauded in approval of the idea).

From behind us, near the ceiling, a voice shouted out. "I'm rot here. I been listenin' the whole tom." And from in front, "Well come on down here and dance with Colonel Andy, wouldja Brother Long Legs?"

And here, my friends, is the rest...


Wednesday, January 4, 2012

music of 2011

I've been looking for a good excuse to write about some of the music I've been listening to lately. I still haven't found one, but I've decided that the end of the year is occasion enough. So what you've got here is a list of the top 6 albums that have impacted me over the course of this year. I limited it to 6 because that's the exact number of albums that I've engaged in over the year. Before I get into the specific albums, I just want to comment that a few years back I decided to stop listening to isolated songs and instead listen to whole albums. I've found that in listening this way I start  to know the artist's heart, and can find themes of thinking running across albums and even across artists' careers that bring much more meaning to the music.


#6 Sara Groves, Invisible Empires.

Sara Groves is one of those artists whose albums I've listened to over time.  Some of her work over the years has been brilliant. I wouldn't put Invisible Empires in that category, but I respect her as a poet, and as one who is thinking seriously about God and society, and so I keep listening.  She ends the ablum with a song called "Finite" about being a woman in this world of ours, and it's a good'n.




#5 Randall Goodgame, Slugs and Bugs: Under where?

This kids album is about 8 parts goofy, and 2 parts serious. I am thankful for the messages it sends through my home, and hope that they seep into and form my kids understanding of the character of God. The goofiness is about holes in socks, making oneself dizzy, and going pee in the potty - communicating that silliness goes with being a kid, and celebrating that fact. The seriousness is no joke: its about the fact that kids are loved specially by God, and it teaches kids what to do with their own sin. The song "God made you Special" has choked me up more than once. And even though its an album for kids, the instrumentation and production of the album makes it enjoyable for me, too.

#4 Paul Simon, Surprise

This album took me about three hearings to like, and about ten to love. And the more I listen, the better it gets. Each song deserves to be studied for meaning, and enjoyed for it's ambitious production. The album makes me think of a letter that Paul Simon has written to America. He  asks the big questions with these songs, and ventures to answer them, too.   This review, I think, gives a good picture of the album, if you're interested in reading more. 



#3 Josh Garrels, Love and War and the Sea in Between

Like all of Josh Garrels's albums, this mostly sounds like hip-hop, with occasional meanderings into ballads or waltzes. You read that right. Josh's lyrics are truly mind-blowing. What intrigues me most about him is just how deeply Christian he is. He isn't boiling Christianity down to some take-home truths to apply to life. He is clear about the fact that Christ Himself, and not self-denial, or beauty or justice,  is the center of our hope and the source of our being and joy.

Give the song below a listen. Notice how in the first verse, he casts a vision of resistance to society like someone who knows that we have to fight the systems that oppress in order to pursue justice, but in the second verse it becomes clear just how Christ-centered his vision is.


The album is free. Go get it.

#2 Mumford and Sons, Sigh no More

I've already written quite enough about this album. I still can't help popping it in when I've got a long trip by myself. The album always reminds me what I care about and inspires me to be who I am.

#1 Ben Shive, The Cymbal Crashing Clouds

Ben Shive plays piano and produces music for Andrew Peterson and several other artists around Nashville. His best work, though, is what he's done with the songs he, himself has written. I met Ben last February and I told him that his first album, The Ill-Tempered Klavier, was my favorite. This is his second work, and it has been no disappointment. This is music like none you've ever heard before. He is producing Christian music that is not a spin-off of any sound a secular artist has made. His music wont gain popularity for just that reason, but I bet he's okay with that. His albums will be most appreciated by people who have ventured to make music or make poetry.

In this album, he's dug every instrument out of the closet. It's clear that beauty and the "right sound" trumped timeliness in every decision.  He may use a choir of violins and an electric guitar for just a bridge, and a horns and woodwinds only for a second verse. There are times in the album where it's hard to pick apart how many sounds are coming at you at once, and he still somehow maintains unified themes and variations. Stylistically, he's all over the board. He jumps from sounding like Ben Folds to the Beach Boys, from folk to pop. Lyrically, the songs are about everyday life on their surface, with deep theological meaning underneath. In short, Ben Shive music stretches me in all sorts of ways, and I love it.  Maybe you will, too?

Below is a youtube video you can play to hear the song he starts the album with, "Listen!" It's about waiting for a train to come in the middle of the night in a small town. And it's about the second coming of Christ. I suggest you throw some headphones on before you hit play so you can hear all sounds he strings together, and all the biblical allusions, too.





Honorable Mention: I'd also like to add an honorable mention category for the music of Eminem. My students adore him because he seems real to them and because he sings about their lives and their pain. They might not now what life is like outside of their neighborhood, but they know the pain they feel inside, and Eminem's eloquent acknowledgment of his pain somehow validates them.  The kids have encouraged me to watch some of his videos, and I have been impressed. Eminem is clearly a deeply unhealthy man, but that is not stopping him from shepherding some of our nation's most needy, lonely and fatherless youth, who are growing up like he did.