Update From Awkward-Land

When it comes to form, I like to switch things up.  I’m sure you’ve noticed (whoever you are anyways, it seems no one reads this anymore, and that is fine with me.  It’s like being in the woods.  You can cuss or say whatever you want in the woods because no one is there to hear you.)  I am switching things up once again, quitting all of this spiritual talk, and giving you (yes you) a purely journalistic entry on middle school.

This last week was very fun.  Here are some of the crazy things that happened:

•    I had to babysit an 8 foot black rat snake in class on friday

•    I sent three kids to in school suspension last week

•    I totally fooled my kids with a really mean pop quiz.  Since they did so poorly meeting the deadline for finishing their projects, I told them all to put away their books, get out a piece of scrap paper, and get ready to take a replacement quiz.  On the quiz, the directions clearly said: “Read all the way through the questions before you begin to answer any of them.”  I told the students to read the directions and then begin.  But within 30 seconds, nearly all of the students had begun scribbling on their blank sheets.  None of them had followed directions.  On question 13, it tells students: “Now that you have read this far without beginning any of the work, you have followed the directions carefully.  Disregard the next two questions and go back to number three.  Complete number three and complete no others.”  The students who wrote their name and the month on the top of their papers got 100s.  Everyone else failed.

•    I invited my friend Andrew Simmons to have lunch with me at middle school.  Simmons is a cadet in the ROTC program here at UVA, and is also a brother of mine in phi delt.  He sounded very excited when I invited him to middle school, so I asked him if he would like to be a guest speaker in my class.  Actually, I told him that he would be giving a speech regardless of his answer.  He accepted the offer and told me he would come to school dressed in his full camouflage uniform.

That morning, I got an email from AH which read: “Harrison, be advised that today is a faculty costume day.  We are all wearing camo.  Bring some if you got it.”

The odds were too small.  Simmons fit like a glove when he arrived on the scene.  We had a lovely lunch at the losers table, eating our brown corn, mystery pizza and fruit cup from the lunch line, and then we stood at the hall and took away students’ recess if they were talking as they walked by.  Simmons gave an award winning speech on loving poetry despite being in the military.  He is, after all, a man who can kill from over 300 yards away yet still writes poems.  He touched on Achilles, William Wallace, and other famous war heroes who loved epic poetry.  He taught the kids the greek word for “create” and told them that in 30 years the clothes and shoes they are wearing won’t matter, but what they spent their time creating would.  He concluded by saying “you have been waiting your whole life to do this – BIG!” and then left them to their craft.  I was floored.

•    After we wrote poetry with a prompt I gave them, this is a poem a student came up with.  I told him that it was extremely good, but I completely disagreed with him.  Anyways, here it is:

Poetry Stinks, by CM

“Poetry is the worst thing in the world
It is very boring, you don’t learn
All you have to do is rhyme rhyme rhyme rhyme rhyme!
Poetry is for really smart people
It is something that doesn’t take you anywhere in life
It has no points, it’s like briers – it hurts!
It is very dry, it has no signal in life
It doesn’t have any shine, it never rises
You can’t write a poem on a cloth
A poem is very frosty, you can’t coil up in a poem
I wish a baby would crawl over and poop on a poem
It should also fall into a fire
You should remember that poetry stinks”

My reaction:  Dear CM.  I don’t know what to say.  This is the best poem in the class.  It is also the worst poem in the class.  You should submit it to “Awake and Dreaming.”  But it stinks.  Poetry stinks, remember?

Rain

It’s been raining for the last three days here in Charlottesville.  This is great news to many of us on the east coast because we have been in severe drought since August.  I think this rain tells us a couple of things.  As always, feel free to disagree with me.

• Rain is necessary.  If it never rained, you would see so much sun and so much blue sky that you would never care that it was around.  You would see so much beauty for such a prolonged period of time that you wouldn’t be able to appreciate it anymore.  Desensitization is a real danger.  Let’s thank God for the way he protects us from his glory, because we could not handle it if we saw how beautiful his creation really was all the time.
• Rain is necessary in life.  If things were great all the time, could you handle it?  Or would heaven really be that great if it wasn’t desperately needed as the cure for a lifetime of rain?  Does Christ mean anything to you?  He probably won’t if you aren’t admitting the rain in your life.
• God brings rain in his timing.  We just went through a big drought.  I had to sweep up a lot of dirt here around the study center when our water main burst.  It got mud all over the place, but since it was so dry for weeks, it all turned into dirt.  When I was sweeping it, I couldn’t really get it to go anywhere because it just turned into dust and floated back down to the ground.  I was frustrated.  What I really needed was a hose… or some rain.  Three days ago the rain came and washed all of the dirt away.  He took care of the problem.
• God brings life-rain in his timing.  I imagine there will be many times in my life when I won’t have the money I need for some sort of endeavor or expense, and God might withhold his financial blessings (from my jobs or from friends or other random places) for a long time.  He might let my family go through some significant drought.  But eventually, when we are at the end of ourselves, he will bring the life-rain.  He will always take care of us, won’t he? (Matt 6:25).  I’m not sure we can say why he does things this way.  One reason I imagine he withholds good things from his kids is to teach us something: money is not the issue you need to be concerned with.  Often, we tend to think money is what determines everything positive or negative in our family lives.  Scenario: Are we financially secure right now?  Doesn’t that mean we don’t have anything to worry about?  Hey, if we are financially secure then we can go on vacations and buy new bikes and you know what, why don’t we give away some of it too, since we have a little cushion here.  Yeah, we can tithe a little bit more than usual because God has given us extra this year.

  Another scenario:  I need to raise money for this nonprofit job I am working for.  I need to write my letters just the right way so that my words will convince people I am not greedy or not trying to steal their money.  If I do this, then maybe they will want to give more?  Or maybe I need to make at least ten phone calls a day.  Maybe I should try to make my fund raising signs really catchy.  Or maybe I just need to pray a lot.  If I pray enough and ask God enough, then I’ll be taken care of.  Then I won’t have to worry, because I’ll know I prayed enough.

  Do you know what I think?  I think we are worrying about the wrong thing.  I think we need a new currency.  Do you know what it is should be.  Your turn: what really matters most?  This is of course a personal question: what matters most to you?  And do you believe that you are really responsible for the ways that your life is sustained, be it financially or otherwise?

  I don’t.  I believe in rain.  (1 Tim 6:10)

Turiya

Who are you, older me?

(twenty two or forty five,
it seems the same “alive”)

Walking under some lamp
in some orange fall
in an orange leaves camp

blue-black cat night
when all begins its call;
whispered away, no, pulled
from this memory train fall

Again!

I will jump in, and I will roar
(but who flies?  It might make me soar)

Life melts and slides down walls
no was, no will be
only is, while every glow stalls

Wild, it passes over the eyes
and all objects will sing “read”
like the call of a book or the call of the sea;
the same sea kills the ship it feeds

Touch the line:

When did it pass?  Where did it go?
Wrong wrong question, I know you know

And now, truth wind begins to blow
Blow – I hear what I know!
What I knew, what I will know!

Wrestle with wind, wind will burn
with windless fire and fireless flame
Fire chose you, not you the fire
Never ask “how to tame?”

I know.

A step in my boat, you know,
I’ll sing you this “know” while I row:

Know: The writer writes me
The singer sings me
The prayer prays me to go

This is what I know I know
And I know without the steps to know
I know because and only because
my eyes have the scars to show

The Dream Plane

Who are you, little me?

Five or six years old
folding under the warm

feet never over edge
eyes on green stars

and wondering: if awake
has to become asleep
can we catch it?

Reaching to touch the line
finger twirl red and blue

Pointing at sleep:
“Now I’ve got you.”

Rest

Rest is so important.  I know this now that I have experienced at full capacity about as much as any human could pack into a 3 day weekend.  That was two weeks ago, when I went to Canada.  Oh maybe I didn’t mention that – I went to Quebec City for 3 days.  It was overwhelming.

Rest doesn’t refer to getting enough sleep.  It means being in one place long enough to stop and slow down and let your life catch its breath.  This is what I need, because it keeps me sane.  I found it this week at Jimmie’s farmhouse in Goochland.

Alan Miller and I drove down to the farm listening to Jimmy Eat World’s new cd, which is very good.  We had a nice drive, and at occasional points knew that the songs we were listening to were written at that moment for us.  We watched the leaves being kicked up behind the car in front of us, and then we spent the evening looking at the moon and stars through a telescope  – then watching Sylvester Stalone in Cliffhanger.  Good movie.

The next morning Jimmie and I had a idyllic game of hitting moonballs to each other in the large field outside of his house.  After that, I took a shower and felt little need to dry off before I went back outside, joined the group, hoisted a shotgun and shot my first clay pigeon out of the sky.  Tired of this, I read “The Dangerous Book For Boys” on Jimmie’s porch until more brothers arrived.  We took a long walk through the farm and shot things with shotguns as we went.  The afternoon was perfect.  We walked along the train tracks without shirts on, and I tried to catch a small garter snake.  We visited the river, which is only three feet deep at the moment.  We met his grandparents and kicked around the farm for a while.  I got to revist the same horse, “Blue,” who nearly bit my toe off three years ago.  We patched things up.  I scared up some partridges in their coop, then left the animals behind.  We met Mrs. Massie and she told me my cell phone had been found in North Carolina.  Hooray.  Later I took Dante on in a one-on-one soccer match.  Exercise is great mental health.  We cooked burgers and brats as usual, then watched teh UVA football game.  This was testosterone city, since nearly 20 of us were packed into a living room staring at a tiny screen.  When UVA came back to score in the last minute of the game, we nearly ripped our shirts in passion.  We bounded around the house singing the good old song.  We passed the gavel around the camp fire, and after everyone had shared their thoughts, heart to heart, the spirit of brotherhood found its way back down from the heavens and surrounded us.  All of us knew what we had in each other was priceless, and that being together as brothers truly is better than alcohol.  We linked arms and sang (not kidding) as we turned our heads towards the sky to watch God fling shooting stars through our atmosphere.  All of this, just for us.

Today I talked to my Dad about transcendence in our backyard and spent some time with their new cat.  Later, I was slated to sing and speak at a Camp Fund Raiser.  I had to rely on God alone to get me through playing music and sharing a testimony in front of 100 people.  I tried an experiment today: not really planning what I was going to say.  I sat there in the moment and after my introduction, I just knew what I had to say.  It went well.  But at the same time, I totally needed God.  Without him, I would not have been able to make it through this evening.  Why?  Because in the middle of the dinner, right as I was about to go on stage, I received some very unsettling news from a friend of mine that brought a major fear of mine to real life.

Just remember: if people are ever jerks to you, try to remember that you were once a jerk to someone else first.

“I could never be the one that you want, don’t ask.
Well, here’s to living in the moment
‘Cause it passed, it passed.

I’m still carrying a little hope that
Maybe things could get different now
Is that so wrong, is that so wrong, is that so wrong?”

Yes, it is so wrong.

Ashamed of the Gospel

Tonight I had an opportunity to share the gospel, and I failed.

But before that, I went to class tonight thinking that I was being filled with a little bit of discernment.  We had a discussion about what to do when a student comes to you at school and tells you their friend has dipped into depression and is physically harming herself.  I thought I immediately knew what I would do, and that that was the right answer.  I would keep talking to the depressed student on my own instead of sending her to the inefficient programs the school had.  I would eventually recommend her to guidance and clinical help, including her parents if necessary.  But I did not say any of this out loud, because it seemed to me that the discussion was more of a knowledge-fest than something legitimately helpful.  To me, it seemed like everyone just had to chime in with their ten cents worth and offer some more suggestions to the pot.  The conversation was vivacious and passionate, but I said nothing because to me it appeared that I did not need to say anything.  These colleagues of mine would have their opinions and I would have mine, but I knew what I would do and so what point would there be in joining the discussion of people who wanted to look like they really cared about students with abuse problems.  Some of them genuinely do care, if not all, yet why do we have to go around trying so hard to appear that way?  If we dp care, then why do we need to advertise it?

Analyzing all of this in my head, I stayed quiet.  But somewhere deeper in my mind was the unconscious thought that yes, I was better than these people because of my humility.  I was the humble one, not adding to the collection of do-gooders, because I knew what I would truly do in that situation.  But eventually, for the sake of community involvedness, I made a small comment about calling the parents into the situation if worst came to worst.  And then one of the experienced teachers in our group pointed out, slightly sharp, that I was mistaken:

“Actually, you could get in a lot of trouble for doing that.  There will be so much red tape, its best not to get involved in all of the heat.  Your move should be to ask guidance to make the phonecall, and for you to stay out of it.”

Ah, the sting of pride.  I was softly set back in my place, and everyone else seemed to agree with this person, nodding their heads and chiming in how awful red tape can be.  This was the true lesson in humilty.  Perhaps I was so focused on being wise and a true use to the others in the group that I neglected to remember the gospel: God died for me, an imperfect man.

And then yet, maybe he did use me in the group.  Maybe he was using me to show others what it is like to take the small sting of public correction and to not be humiliated.  Granted, this wasn’t that big of a deal.  But oftentimes I am guilty of thinking that I am of use to God based on what he has taught me in the past.  Its true that I am, but I often get this confused with the work that I have put into it all.  None of my effort makes me of any use to God.  Only his redemptive work and ability to pick us up when we are falling down makes us of use to him. 

This was a good reminder.

Then later, a girl in my class asked me what the bracelet on my hand meant and where it came from.  This is my gospel bracelet, which I started wearing for this exact sort of situation.  She took the bracelet in her hands and rolled it around.  It has bible verses printed all over it.  So I  sort of gently snatched my wrist away from her hand, and hid my braclet behind my back.  Ten minutes after that, we were talking out in the field near our cars.  She mentioned something about 1. the necessity of being plugged in to a community of like minded individuals (she was speaking of an art conference she went to recently) and 2. how after the typcial long day at school, she feels very empty and needs someone (a friend/ lover) or something (yoga/alcohol) to refresh her and to fill her back up.

…!  Argh, it makes me so angry that I said nothing.  What my friend was describing was the emptiness of sin.  What she was describing was the hole in our hearts that we all long to be filled.  I knew, even in the moment, that she needed the Lord and that no other method would satisfy her longing.  I am very happy that she was being as honest as she was and admitting weakness in front of me (perhaps there is some truth in vulnerability), but she was needing to be poured into by something or someone.  I’m not sure what she went home to choose, but I’m sure it wasn’t the LORD.

How do we become unashamed of the gospel?  How do we become so bold as to lose self-awareness and then take huge social risks in sharing something very personal yet very universal: Christ.

Oh wait, I do know the answer:  Prayer.

Acrostic

Many times I dive in, mind high,
Youth filled lakes of lava,
Not knowing to whom or,
And/or, where I roar.
Men have sought, now I,
Eternal fish from the skies.
Instead, I scubadive my shore, O
Softly touch: these fish are torn.