Home of the Wanderer

Apple sponge cake casserole, molasses whipped sweet potatoes, and cherry chutney.  Eaten while on a skype conference with the Home Ecovillage Project Organizing Committee.  See previous post for photo. 

As you may have noticed, I’ve restored the category data for my website. Now that’s done, I’ll convert many of my categories to tags, and put up a tag cloud.

And apparently I need to reinitialize my iPhone wordpress app, so that it recognizes all my prettily restored categories.

I’ve been reading through some old posts just now, among both published and unpublished writings from months and years ago, and thinking about what I chose (and choose) to post or not post.

I keep thinking, while I sit in Meeting for Worship or walk around on Mount Tabor, that the most essential thing to encounter is what is here and now. I consider my sense of abandonment - my deep sadness following my parents’ divorce, because I needed (and still need) to know that I was (and am) important to them, that they care(d) about me, and because I believed, in some way, that their divorce meant they cared more about their own emotional experiences than about those of their sons, or that the experiences I had indicated that one or the other of them valued me less in some way - I think about this and I wonder, is that what I’m really supposed to be dealing with in the world? Ending this multi-generational experience of abandonment? I think of stories I’ve heard about my parents’ and grandparents’ childhoods, and I wonder if the real work of my life might not be simply in being present.

It’s a challenge, you see, because I am also deeply drawn to the work that I’ve been calling, tongue-in-cheek of course, “saving the world”. The work of building whatever organizational structures I can to outlast myself and end the use of violence as a means of resolving conflicts. To answer the question, “how can we transform a more powerful force that is either malicious towards us or disinterested in our survival, such that it becomes a partner in a culture that thrives by enriching all life?”

This dilemma is one about which I don’t think I’ve written here before, not because it’s too private to share with you, but because I am protective of my potential futures. But I wonder, sometimes: is it wise to remain silent, when silence is driven by an expectation of retribution for speaking out? If I do that, haven’t I already lost?

So again, I think about how I spend my time. Why don’t I spend more time reading, memorizing and reciting poetry, and walking in the woods? Why don’t I write more, and play with children? Why don’t I focus on home-making, settle down, raise a family, and put all my time and attention toward them? Why do I chase the addictive phantoms of success, when I know what other things fulfill me in the here-and-now?

I think it has to do with seeing that this other work needs to be done, and believing that I’m better at it than anyone else who has stepped forward. I know I’m an imperfect tool to do this work. I know I’m built for crunching numbers and reciting lines, and uniquely suited to healing the experience of abandonment, rather than for organizing a Party. But Party-organizing work is what’s in front of me, and I haven’t yet shaken the belief that I owe it to the world, past and future, to solve big problems by gathering like-minded groups of people around common goals and values. Perhaps, when I have passed this milepost, crested that next rise, or rounded that distant bend, I’ll find a different here in front of me, and face a new set of challenges in their turn.

And in the meantime, perhaps I can find ways to weave fulfillment in along the path, and ways to share the journey here while honoring all my potential futures.

It has occurred to me, as I have gone about answering all sorts of interesting questions about myself for the purpose of online dating, that it might be worthwhile to share some of my answers with the rest of you.

Thus it is that I may soon begin to post here my answers to a wide variety of questions.  Hopefully, this will help you get to know me better as a person.

Well, I guess it’s official now.  I’m a late-night office-worker.  I’m sitting here listening to Faure’s Requiem and finishing up the text for the invitations to this year’s Celsi Dinner, and wondering if there’s any good jazz playing down on Burnside.

This is a post from my dashboard widget.  The question is – does it work?

Listen here. It’s really funny. If I were the sort to spam my friends with funny things, you’d have gotten an email about this already.

The opening is useful, but the sample outgoing message is irresistible hilarity.

I discover, at times like this, the truth inherent in the saying, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”

Buxton has once again taken in a new set of students. As always, they have changed the culture of the school. As always, some of those who love this place are, as a result, concerned for its future. Others, whose concerns (if any) about Buxton’s future stem from other sources, have seen this happen time and again.

I have come to visit one of my Alma Maters, Buxton School, in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Arriving just in time for the lunch hour, I have spent the afternoon wandering campus, refamiliarizing myself with some of my old haunts, visiting with old friends among the faculty, and catching up on some work in the library. Having finished with dinner, I’ve now returned to the library with the apparent purpose of writing this blog post.

I can’t possibly enumerate the ways in which Buxton is still the same. Brad still gives the same paper topics. Students still gather in the library to study and work alongside each other, frequently on the same assignments. What is different is that they now use their laptops to write their papers and do their research, they do research online, and they use their cell-phones (cell-phones! at Buxton!) to coordinate their activities with each other (and probably to stay in touch with the outside world, truly a no-no in days gone by).

It must be harder now, to draw the attention of these young and lively people from their lives at home to this country manor of education and community. There are so many more ways for them to distract themselves, to stay in contact with people back home, and to maintain their individuality. But is that a bad thing? And is it really true?

I mean, if these students are more resilient to the persuasive abilities of their peers, that helps them to discover who they are, right? But what if they came here to get away from there? I know I did, in part. I imagine others did too, and still do — though they might not know it — and that they would benefit more from this community setting if they were somehow forced to participate in it. Monastic life. I never thought I’d be arguing in favor of cutting the ethernet cables and disabling the cell-phones (both of which could be done, by the way — it would just take the cost of some jamming equipment, most of which is illegal). So maybe it is a bad thing for these kids to have access to all this connectivity (and maybe not), but I actually think this question is somewhat irrelevant. Read on.

Buxtonites have always had ways to check out from campus life. They’ve always had their activists who were concerned that the Buxton Community™ was falling apart. Maybe I’ve always been among them. But the fact is that there’s only so much time in a day for a student to fritter away with calling home, that they’ll do it whether they have cell-phones or not, that they will still sneak off campus or into the woods for illicit purposes either way, and that the only way to get them to do otherwise is to make participation in the community appear to them to be more valuable than non-participation.

And that brings me to the people who are Buxton. The new old Buxtonites. The kids who will, hopefully, return in ten years to have this experience, capped with a couple of grinning kids weilding yearbooks, and saying “you were so cool! Buxton isn’t nearly as cool as it was when you were here!” The old old Buxtonites, who will sit with them and tell them that it’s the same thing they’ve seen here for decades. And that, my friends, gives me hope — for the future of Buxton, and of all good things in the world.

I am an item that sits, and is sat upon.

It’s interesting, really, this first week as Chair of the Multnomah County Democrats. Jenny Greenleaf asked me today, with a smile and a laugh — as if to suggest that she knew the answer must be yes, and that she understood I’d have to say no — if I had any regrets. (She and I have commisserated over the past several years about intra-party politics.) I answered no, of course.

And then I thought about it more. The one thing I think I should have done differently — the thing I wish I’d done — is to have addressed my fellow candidates directly and specifically in my acceptance speech. I don’t know if I have managed to convey to them in the past week exactly how much I appreciate the nature of the campaigns that they ran. I am particularly dubious that I have managed to express to the team I have just joined the degree to which I am excited to work with them. These are experienced and skilled political minds (& hearts) for whom I have a great deal of respect, and it is a privilege to have this opportunity to work together.

So, on the off chance that one of them somehow finds this post, I’ll say it now: I deeply value the opportunity to work with you on making people’s lives better. Having you as my compatriot in this endeavor, I have already learned more than I could have otherwise hoped.