Coming Home

Everyone comes home again, but at the risk of sounding exceptionalist, my last trip home is pretty unique.

I took the train from a small Wisconsin town nearby the other small Wisconsin town where I live to Union Station in Chicago, where I grew up.  Strictly speaking, I didn't grow up in Chicago, but rather a western suburb.  There are a lot of us, those who claim the city as our own though it was never ours to begin with....forgive us our fascination with it.

It is this fascination that first begat my affection for Chicago.  On a clear day, I could see the mighty skyscrapers, jagged fingers thrusting up from the horizon, from the main drag in my hometown, or from the backseat on the way to my grandmother's house.  It drew and repulsed me at the same time; there was a den of vipers that we suburbanites dreaded; there we could get mugged or shot or worse.  There was a labyrinth of the fascinating and the frightening.  And yet at the same time, looking at the city was like looking at The Land of Oz.

My father and I drove down to the museums, zoos, and stadiums on a regularly basis during my childhood summers, and it never got old.  For a few short hours, I was counted among the city dwellers.  During my senior years of high school, a teacher of mine invited a number of us to her apartment in Lincoln Park, a hip neighborhood near the campus of DePaul University.  As my friends and I walked past this brownstone and that cafe on our way to Ms. Olsen's Bohemian flat, I vowed that I would one day live there.

Fast forward to now.  My trip into the city is a cocktail of nostalgia and familiarity.  As the train rolls through the city's northwest side, I see the CTA stop where froze my toes waiting for a train home, and the delapidated storefront that my wife and I ducked into one night, only to find what had to be the best Indian cuisine this side of Mumbai.  I see the Church steps where I proposed, and the hospital where I first met my son, who is my travel companion today.  I see an apartment like any other, like the one where my wife and I sat when we decided it was time to leave the city.

Chicago is, for me, the place of dreams imagined and dreams fulfilled.  I lived my childhood dream and took up residence in the city, and yet I still find myself longing for it.

Royal Baby give-a-shit Guilt

Oh, how my cynical side went bananas this past week….

A baby?

Thousands are born every day, and yet, seemingly, the entire Western World held its breath as the birth of one particular baby neared.  A baby which will lead a remarkably charmed life, a baby while will cost a nation millions of dollars of over its life so that it might hold a ceremonial role in its government and look nice in fancy clothes.

“There are wars going on,” I thought. “A major American city has declared bankruptcy…Our government’s spying on people….the Sox are in dead last!”

And I wasn’t alone.  All over the Twitter-sphere and Facebook-sphere and other spheres were lamentations from my like-minded friends.  “For shame, for shame.” Said We. “This is silly, this is opulent.  This is the Kardashians with funny accents.”  The Kardashians are, of course, metonymy for our obsession with beautiful disasters.

It's hard to argue with the aforementioned sentiment...we really SHOULD be focused on more important things.  But perhaps, well....it's not all bad to occasionally indulge in the frivolous.  And as frivolous things go, this one isn't too bad.  It's like a whole wheat, organic oatmeal raisin cookie...it's the healthiest kind of crap.

After all, The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are, or are really good at pretending to be, pretty decent people, and unlike children born unto other celebrities, we don't have an over-under set on when the child will first enter rehab.

But moreover, perhaps we need the frivolity more than we'd like to admit. Those of who devote a fair amount of our time to the "important" news sometimes see the task of informing ourselves as one of great important, but the fact is that we aren't REALLY hurting anyone if we take time off from scouring Reuters or the BBC to enjoy our fellow human beings traversing one of life's great events.  


 

In Defense of 'Murica

Last week, I went to the Fourth of July Parade in Columbus, Wisconsin, a small town just northwest of Madison.

I'd never been to Columbus's parade before...which is to say I hadn't sat on those streets in that town...but I knew exactly how it would go and what to expect.  Fourth of July Parades are characterized by an mix of National and Local Pride.  American Legion members, proudly in uniform, walk in lock step just as they likely did during their days of service.  The crowd, clad in red, white, and blue, cheers with hesitation; there is pride in these men because they are American and because they are from the same pocket of America as most of the spectators.

Next comes the long line of fire trucks and other emergency vehicles, blaring their sirens and flashing their lights to the delight of my five-year-old son and most of the other children gathered.  The trucks are washed and polished in a manner seemingly unfitting the work that they do each day, but it is the Fourth, after all.

If I wanted to begin a diatribe about how such parades symbolize all that is wrong with our country, I would probably start here.  I could talk about the hero worship which we partake in; how cheering for our service men and women equates to cheering for an Imperialist foreign policy.  Or how a event like this, which marches military and police vehicles down the main drag of a small town, is just a few warheads short of a Soviet Missile Parade.  And finally, I could write about how standing and saluting a flag of a nation during the playing of its national anthem necessarily means approving of every action that nation has ever taken, and that everyone standing and singing and saluting is either an advocate for American exceptionalism, or willingfully ignorant.

I could go there...

But if I think back to how I felt as I sat at the curb, amongst my neighbors...that's not where my mind goes.

Maybe not everyone at the parade reads The Economist on a regular basis, or knows the skinny on Sino-American relations.  But I still felt that I was in the presence of sincere, decent people.

Now, I'm not going to go too far the other way and embrace full-on jingosim.  I do not own any shirts which read "These Colors Don't Run," or "Freedom isn't Free", and I don't plan on buying any.

But I also don't want to view outspoken patriotism as a symptom of ignorance, as is too often done.

A Love Letter to Grand Marais

I found Grand Marais, MN on accident; it was a stop on a fishing trip to Canada.  On first glance, it was just another small town along highway 61.  But two glances, one out to the lakeshore and another between my father-in-law and me, and I knew I'd be back.



"This place is awesome," he said, sliding back into the truck. "We should come up here with the wives."



Grand Marais has an identity crisis....it doesn't know quite who it is....and that's a good thing.



On first glance, Grand Marais is hard and cold.  Built on a bedrock of iron ore and cargo ship steel, it sits abreast to might Lake Superior, its shores the anvil of her winter fury.  Even today, even in the warm summer months, there is little place for the meek.



And yet this harshness beget a beauty that is uniquely Northern.  Towering evergreens, uniquely suited to America's Northern Frontier, coat the land in emerald, while a tapestry of rivers and streams, themselves the descendants of bygone glaciers, carve and whittle the hard land into gently rolling hills.



What is true of the land can also be said of the people.  The tales of the native Ojibwe and the earliest European settlers are as much a part of Grand Marais as the land itself, and their hardiness still gleams in the eyes of those who call the area home today.  And though it makes them strong, it does not make them hard.  Wool socks and Teva sanders are their uniform, but it is the warmth of hospitality is what truly characterizes the residents of this place.  It seems that here, as much as anywhere in the state, the meaning of "Minnesota Nice" is shown true.



These days, we long for the comfortable and the easy. We want places and people and ideas that we know.  Places like Grand Marais defy this sort of ease and comfort.

Becoming a cat owner....the self-interview

Were you excited about getting cats? 
I've seen enough weird Facebook pictures to be wary of putting "excited" and "cat" in the same sentence....so...yeah.

You'd rather a dog?
Cats have the audacity to eat your food, live in your house, and treat you like the help.  I'm determined to find away to remind my cats that their presence in my house is purely optional....as is are those treads they like so much.  Dogs know what's up; if I shovel your shit, you'd better be happy to see me when I get home.

Is your son excited?
He's five years old and they're furry and breathing....you do the math.

Anything surprising so far?
They're awfully violent...when they're not practicing Cat-jitsu on each other, they seem to spend a awful lot of time practicing murdering smaller animals.  They're like furry little hitmen who clean themselves.

A Trip up North...the self-interview

How did the trip start out?  Awesome!  If by awesome you mean my Father in law's truck engine blowing out.  Their camper/rock star tour bus was out of commission.  Unless you know people from the Upper Midwest in their sixties, you really can't comprehend the trauma.

Where were you trying to go? Grand Marais(mar-ray) MN.  Apparently, the Minnesotans handle French better than we do in  Wisconsin(prairie du sheeeen)...maybe because their governor isn't a douche.

Did you make it up there?  Of course, this isn't Lawrence of Arabia; we just waited a day.

What's there to do on Grand Marais?  Hiking, sailing, fishing, or if you're my family, driving around aimlessly in search of some schtooping El Dorado of the North Woods.

Is it pretty up there?  No, generally I hate lakes, trees, bluffs, and nice weather. 

How did your son like it?  He liked starting fires by our cabin...should I be worried?  Also, he liked skipping stones. 

He's basically become a caveman.

Ya can't beat fun at the old ballpark

Miller Park loomed large as we approached it.  To me, it was an edifice of comparable mass and reflective of the mania that is sports fandom in Wisconsin.  It was a sight to be admired, but in context; it was like other ballparks, but different in this way or better in that. My appreciation of its retractable roof and red-brick exterior could only exist in comparison with other such places.

To my son, whose mouth gaped as he clasped my hand and beheld the structure, it was something else entirely.  It was, quite literally, the biggest thing he'd ever seen.  Outside, it was a monument to the big world outside the existence he knew; inside, it was a sensory kaleidoscope.  The cavernous spaces and masses of humanity were seasoned with merchants selling hot dogs, caps, and programs, and the green steel girders were ornamented with banners to the present-day gods of baseball.

He took great joy in matching the number of his ticket to the number on his seat.  Neither one was unique, twenty thousand others just like them existed, but they were his and his alone.  To me, tickets were something not to forget.  To my son, they were remembered.  For a boy of his age, life is about growing up and becoming part of the great big world.  His ticket, the one just like mine and the man beside me whom he didn't know, was proof of a small place that only he could occupy.

As the game went on, I tried to explain baseball to my son. I told him what a strike was, why the outfielders stood where they did, and what each crack of the bat meant.  He was having none of it.  For Liam, the wonders of the being at the game were much more meaningful than the game itself.

Winter Chapel Talk

Golly Gee, isn't it a great time to be in Wisconsin?

Who doesn’t love waking up in the morning wondering if you’ll be able to feel your toes or not…and we get to enjoy those amazing winter sunsets…right after lunch.

And if you like clothes, you’re especially in luck…you get to wear all of your different outfits on the same day…because you need six layers just to make it to class.

We all know that January and February are not easy months to reside in a climate like ours.  They are a time that Mr. Lennertz once called, accurately I think, the "long slog." 

There are the cold, the early nights and the long weekends indoors, which lead to a palpable  a sense of lethargy and claustrophobia.

Like many of you, I grew upper Midwest, and as a kid I would often think that the only way to get through our winters would be for all of us to throw in the towel and embrace hibernation. 

But, since we can’t do that, most of us just try to get through the days. We wake, we study, we endure, and we patiently mark each day off of our calendars as we inch closer to Spring Break...that blessed time when we can begin to put away our stocking caps and mittens.  Indeed, it’s hard to deny that we often find ourselves surviving winter, rather than thriving, during these winter months.

But the truth is that a Wisconsin winter is not the sole cause of this sort of malaise… even if we were to pick up our school and move it to a tropical climate, we would not be precluded from enduring difficult times. 

We have all had other kinds of struggle...in our friendships, with our families, in the classroom, and elsewhere.  Like a cold, Wisconsin winter, they are inevitable… And just as we do with a cold winter’s day....when we’re having a rough go of it, most of us do our best to endure and get through. 

But what if enduring is not what we ought to do?  What if we are called to do more than just “get through?” What if there is a higher purpose to the inevitable valleys of life? 

There is a myth, which originally comes to us from the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Scripture, of Jacob.  Jacob is revered as a patriarch of three of the world's great religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  His story is of great spiritual significance to believers of those three faiths....but I also think that there is a lesson here for all of us which transcends any one tradition and perhaps even religion itself. 

As the story goes, Jacob was in the midst of a long and treacherous journey, and one evening he sent his family and servants ahead so that he could be alone in prayer. As he was alone in the wilderness, a man appeared to him, and in a turn of events that could only really happen in a myth, the two began to wrestle, and continued to do so throughout the night.

As dawn broke, the man said to Jacob "Let me go, for it is daybreak."  To which Jacob responded "No, I will not let you go until you bless me."  And the man, who reveals himself to be God, obliged…He blessed Jacob, changed his name to Israel, which means “to wrestle with God,” and Jacob’s twelve sons became the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel, and Israel became a great nation.  Jacob’s good fortune is remarkable, but not for the reasons that we might expect.  What is profoundly important in this story is not that Jacob was blessed, but that his blessing was born out of his struggle.   

I was reminded of this story a few years ago when I had the opportunity to hear an Interfaith Discussion of Religious Leaders, one of whom was Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who is the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, the largest Synagogue body in the United Kingdom. Shortly before the talk, Rabbi Sacks had finished sitting Shiva, which is a Jewish mourning rite, for his mother.  As he mourned his loss, Rabbi Sachs took not only comfort, but also inspiration, from the story of Jacob. 

He said." And this I feel about suffering: When something bad happens, I will not let go of that bad thing until I have discovered the blessing that lies within it...sometimes all the pain and the tears lift you to a much higher and deeper joy when you say to the bad times, "I will not let you go until you bless me."

I have not lost an immediate family member, but I can relate to Rabbi Sach’s story on some level.  As many of you know, I did not come to teaching as my first career.  I spent several years working in business.  Superficially, it was a great experience.  The work was, at times, quite interesting, and I was fortunate to work with some remarkable individuals. 

But internally, I was deeply unhappy.  While my job seemed important, I took no personal satisfaction from the work that I did. I was young, new to the workplace, and was already deeply cynical about my career, and even my place in the world. 

As I look back upon this experience, it is easy for me to look at this period of time in my life as nothing more than a waste of time, and to write it as a great mistake.  But the truth is, that if I hadn’t been there….I would never have ended up HERE.

If I had not known such deep dissatisfaction, I would not have left my job, and found my way to teaching.  And if I were not a teacher, I would have not gotten to be a part of this remarkable community, and anything that helped me to get to Wayland Academy is a blessing indeed.

So,   this is what I wish to offer today...not an easy solution for how to make the winter, or any hardship for that matter, easier, but instead a different prism through which to life's inevitable difficulties.  I propose to you that we should see our struggles, seasonal or otherwise, not as trials to be endured, but as rare opportunities for personal growth and discovery.

What that growth or discovery ends up becoming is going to be different for each of us; we are all at different places in our lives.  Perhaps, for you, winter is a time for introspection; for an honest examination of yourself, your goals, and your place within this community.  Maybe the hours we spend seemingly “cooped up” in our rooms is an opportunity to spend more reaching out to our distant families and friends. Or, now could be the time to seek out someone in the community with whom you have not yet connected.

Just as Jacob refused to let go of his opponent until he was blessed, we should not just endure our own hardships, but instead learn to embrace them.  And as we embrace them, to seek, with open minds and with willing hearts, the blessings that they bring. 

I leave you with this quote from his Holiness the Dalai Lama.” “It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.”