Thank you for your service...

The timing on this is somewhat of a coincidence. I’ve been mulling these ideas, even the title of this post for a while now. I do that a lot. Sometimes the ramblings of my mind make it onto paper. Many times they do not. Even fewer get let out…

So yes, this remembrance day, I want to thank you for your service…

Mrs. Hancock – 1^st grade teacher and lover of reading and gardening

Mr. Murray – 4^th grade teacher – first time to have a male teacher but more importantly perhaps plant the seed that I needed to be stretched further than was likely in a small one class per year level rural school

Mrs. Summers – 5^th grade teacher who challenged me to read classics and to speak in public

Brother Darryl – who in 6^th and 7^thgrades opened the door to drama

Mrs. Delaforce – who in 6^th and 7^thgrades opened the windows to singing

Ms. McLaughlin – who may have been a little crazy, but whose passion for English made it interesting again in senior years of high school, and also explored creativity through school musicals

Mr. Duffy – whose clarity and precision in math brought me close to perfection semester after semester

Mr. Kaplick – who got past an mind grounded in absolutes to enable me to grasp the more abstract concepts of physics

Mrs. O’Donnell – who freed me to discover music was about passion, not just precision (although a little precision never hurt)

Ms. Graham – who survived having me in senior chemistry and taught me to see the forest instead of the trees

Professor Vuckovich who managed not to give us lung cancer in his lectures or nicotine stained office, and while I cannot remember much of his petroleum engineering classes, will never forget his pearls of wisdom such as “You boys, you must remember this one thing. You will be mining engineers. You will marry nurses or school teachers – that is all”

And so I did, in fact, so many of our class did.

So yes – I may have a little bias here. Probably in interests of full disclosure, my mother was a teacher. My father also. One of my sisters still does. And but for a summer job that never ended during the mining slump of the mid 80s when I graduated with my mining engineering degree but no job prospects, I might have been. I didn’t go back to school to get my Dip. Ed. that next year…

I am not begrudging the honor shown our veterans or those in active service. Theirs is not an easy job. A good number of my close friends and family serve here too. Perhaps more so here in the USA, we hold these people in a special place, we feel it important to thank them for their service. But how often do we think to do the same for a teacher. Would they be worthy for example of being granted the comforts of an airport lounge while travelling. Or generous discounts on many goods and services. And I could go on – and to those whose business does acknowledge teachers and give them some sort of recognition, thank you!

I mean it is not like teachers are well paid. An officer (a degreed professional so similar in that respect to a teacher) in the US Army with regular promotions after the minimum time at each level makes close to three times what my wife makes some 20 or so years out of college. So to the past and present members of the armed services, indeed – thank you for your service. You most certainly earned and deserve what you have, and maybe more. Nothing can repay the ultimate sacrifice some have made – or the permanent scars both physical and mental that some live with as a sacrifice every day. So to be a teacher, while generally not putting yourself in harms way (far from a certainty in US schools sad to say), you are not doing it for the money - it is most definitely a gift of service.

So to those who taught us how to be anything we could be, to those who were both firm and patient, to those who inspired and cajoled, to those without whom my life would be one more ordinary…

From the depths of my heart, THANK YOU for your service

What Teachers Make

Injustice is not a moment in time

I wrote recently about a book I had just finished, Shadows at Dawn by Karl Jacoby.

Many sides to every story

I mentioned in this post a desire to visit the site of the tragedy outlined in this book – Aravaipa Canyon.  And so on this trip to Tucson, I did just that.  This morning I headed up to the canyon to just be there at dawn – to listen for the silence.

There is no memorial to this tragedy, no marker identifying the site of the massacre of more than 100 Apache, mostly women and children by a posse made up of Papago Indian, Americans and Mexican Americans (noting this part of the USA had only recently been part of Mexico).  So I wandered a few miles up the road that more or less follows Aravaipa Creek from its confluence with the San Pedro river, the site of Camp Grant, the US army base after which the massacre is most commonly named. 

And stopped – and listened to the silence…

I guess I don’t really know what I expected to see… or feel…  or think...

Some words from the gospels came back to me

“What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind?”

Didn’t really help – but it got me thinking.

I wandered around a little in the crisp morning air.  Heard what might have been 3 different types of bird chirping from somewhere in the peculiar foliage that adorns the desert.  Listened carefully for rattle snakes.  Watched a rabbit scurrying about, probably annoyed I had disturbed his morning.  And finally it sunk in…

Injustice is not an event, something you can pin down with at marker or a memorial.  Injustice is not a moment in time that can be frozen.  Something you can look at and say, yeah – glad we put that behind us.  Although often I think that is exactly what we hope to do. 

Very few are truly willing to listen to the other side(s), before or after major events that erupt due to injustice, to truly understand what the injustice represents, why it exists, and .  The passage I quoted in the aforementioned post still stands well in this regard, particularly from that sense that we are so eager to point out how we have been wronged, we find it impossible to listen well to other parties.

“Given the obstacles to merging these fragile and diverse forms of storytelling into a single tale, it is, paradoxically, by venturing in the opposite direction -- by listening for the silences between accounts; by discovering what each genre of recordkeeping cannot tell us -- that we can capture most fully the human struggle to understand our elusive past. What this past asks of us in return is a willingness to recount all our stories -- our darkest tales as well as our most inspiring ones -- and to ponder those stories that violence has silenced forever. For until we recognize our shared capacity for inhumanity, how can we ever hope to tell stories of our mutual humanity?”

Karl Jacoby, Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History

The injustices, in this particular instance suffered by all the involved parties in one way of another at the hands of one of the others led to this shameful massacre as the milestone event recorded in history.  And they also did not end there.  The legacy of the event  for some was very clear and tangible, for others less so.  The underlying causes of these injustices were not resolved by this event, they continued for many years, decades even, some not fully resolved today.

This is not a deep discussion on injustice – just a note on my growing understanding of it…

 

 

 

Beware the quiet one…

A little something I shared at out family celebration honouring our Jillian who turned 16 today!

Jilly is our baby – and so it is a little hard reaching this point.  In a couple of days she will most likely get her drivers license and will become even more independent.  That is of course assume she passes the test – it took her two attempts on the written!

But she will always be our baby – she was after all – and always will be, little. 

Maybe really we should say, beware the little one, because although to the larger population, many make the mistake of thinking she is quiet, really when you get to know her – she is anything but.

 

 

 

We have so many fond memories of Jilly. She has always been a bit of a mischief. Like watching carefully for her big sister to get all her dolls perfectly arranged – and then“accidentally” walking through the middle of them. 

Or colluding with her big sister after bed time in “You play, I play”.And there is also the doting little sister, who used to wait by the door for Mallory to come home from school – and then be a little disappointed when her sister needed some alone time to recharge her batteries.

 

But just because she was little – and appearing to be quiet, did not mean she did not have a great depth of strength and determination.  This has sometimes resulted in rather impressive standoffs – like the time in grade school when her space was interfered with and a substitute teacher refused to listen to her pleas resulting in a standoff to where the assistant principal was called in and phone calls were made to her mother, or the altercation over something at one of her birthday parties where again she refused to back down and spent time in her room. 

 

There was a meltdown with a coach in under 9’s hockey that led to her spending the rest of the game on the bench, a feat repeated in the 10^th grade in JV soccer where she felt the coach was picking on her and a friend and benched them.  The coach held out an olive branch – but of course Jilly outlasted her and sat in silence (well that part is probably debatable) on the bench for the entire game!  Given this game was in Kansas (well not literally – but close) and we had no idea what was going on, needless to say, we were not completely amused.  There was one time I remember I made the mistake of offering her a choice – between a nap or a spanking.  She without a moment’s hesitation asked for the spanking.  It is so hard not to laugh at Jillian at the most inappropriate moment in terms of parenting!  One thing is for sure – she has a mind of her own and just like her big sister – she will make her own decisions.

The great depth of strength and determination also shows up in some great ways.  She excels in school and really – most anything she puts her hand to.  This is a little different to Mallory, who also always does well, but has little time for things she does not find interesting.  Hockey of course outside of academics is clearly one of her passions – from the very earliest of days.  She was so disappointed when she went to the local club with a friend from across the street only to be told she was too young and needed to wait a year.  That young boy now plays for Australian age teams – so clearly the advantage of that year was significant!  But start the next year she did and they were oh so cute!  Her second year was of course the worst year of her life – I was her coach and Joy was her teacher in school.  Now of course she plays on arguably the strongest team Colorado has seen in high school completion for some years and is pondering options to keep playing even in college.

And so while she is about to turn 16 and become all grown up, we are glad that she like her big sister has grown into a beautiful young lady.  She is passionate, graceful – when she chooses to be, full of life, and always enjoys doing things with family and friends.  She loves for example babysitting her youngest cousins  - who of course adore her.  She also loves hanging out with friends and has really found her own voice.

Jillian, you have made the first 16 years of your life so memorable – we can’t wait to see what lies in store.  You may be little in stature, but you live life so much larger!

Reagan Was Right

Yes, you heard me – Ronald Reagan was right…

“We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the law-breaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”
Ronald Reagan; July 31, 1968
 

At some point we either take actions that make sense and stop this carnage – or our actions are to continue to stick hour heads in the sand and pretend that wholesale and rapidly increasing ownership of handguns and so called “assault style” weapons, instruments with no purpose other than killing other people is OK.  Pretend that there is no connection to the gun violence inflicted in this country at a much higher rate than any other modern industrialized nation.
 
But here’s the thing.  YOU are responsible for your actions – one way or the other, YOU are also accountable.

And so in a week where a young Australian was shot in the back and killed because his murderers were bored, where tragedy was averted by a brave (unarmed) woman talking a heavily armed gunman who invaded an Atlanta school, now there is this.  A toddler was killed by his own grandfather claiming he was acting in self-defense (from the toddlers father, not the toddler – obviously).  Of course I am glossing over the 200 or so (based on average of 10,000 deaths a year) other lives that will be lost this week in this senseless and largely preventable carnage.

Another Needless Tragedy - Toddler killed by grandfather near Lilburn

The caption on this image from the Atlanta shool incident published by CNN read:
A child peers out the window of a school bus as the children are returned to their parents at a nearby shopping center Tuesday afternoon.
 

Thankfully this little girl and all the other teachers and children survived this incident.  But can their lives ever be the same?  Will their families lives ever be the same.  Perhaps for some, some sense of normalcy will return, but for some, perhaps many, I wonder...

Reagan also said:

“There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us.”

So if a child here or there, has to die as collateral damage while the “rest of us” maintain our so called "freedoms" (often also referred to as "rights", and unfathomably to me by some who profess the same faith I hold dear, "God given"), I think it is fair to say, there is no peace.  One thing for sure is that there is no justice.

Epilogue.

I’m sorry if you feel this is a theme that dominates what I've had to say lately.  I really would rather I was finishing up some other things I’ve been writing of late.  Probably half of what I write I never share publicly.  The writing itself is the catharsis I need.  I wrote a lot on this yesterday and that was enough, I was spent.  But these stories sadly  keep coming…

One thought as I sat on my deck last night enjoying the glow of the almost full moon was how lucky I am to live here with my peace and quiet, and then a conversation with someone on the shooting of the young Australian led me to realize I live in a fools paradise.  Columbine High School is less than three miles from my door.  And although in some ways it seems on the other side of the country, the site of the tragedy at the cinema in Aurora last year is just over twenty miles away.

 

Many sides to every story

Vacations are great!  I find time to read, an old familiar pastime too often elusive these recent years.

I just finished a fascinating book providing a history of an Apache massacre.  Before you misread that, this was a massacre of approximately 150 Apache people - many women and children.  The massacre is known as the Camp Grant Massacre (or “affair” depending on who was describing it).  The book was written as a history of 4 different people groups involved so explored the incident from the different perspectives.  It was not an easy read, but it was a different presentation in terms of structure and well written, consequently, it was not hard to read either.

But the actual story I was reading notwithstanding - think about how many conflicts involve a number of points of view.  Especially those that go on for many years, decades, even generations.  And then let this closing paragraph from the book soak in to your consciousness.  Let is wash over your soul.  Think about how this might fit in the conflicts in your life and relationships.

“Given the obstacles to merging these fragile and diverse forms of storytelling into a single tale, it is, paradoxically, by venturing in the opposite direction -- by listening for the silences between accounts; by discovering what each genre of recordkeeping cannot tell us -- that we can capture most fully the human struggle to understand our elusive past. What this past asks of us in return is a willingness to recount all our stories -- our darkest tales as well as our most inspiring ones -- and to ponder those stories that violence has silenced forever. For until we recognize our shared capacity for inhumanity, how can we ever hope to tell stories of our mutual humanity?”

― Karl Jacoby, Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History

 

Interestingly I was in Tucson just over a week ago. I looked at a map to see if I could perhaps find my way over to Aravaipa Canyon (site of the massacre) early in the morning before we had to set off to the meetings of the day. I realized quickly that it was a good hour from where I was staying, and that was not practical.  But I hope one day soon when I am back in Tucson, to be there at dawn and listen for the silence.

 
"To the Lakota, to the Indian,

        when you listen, you're praying.

                That's a form of prayer, when you listen."

- Russell Means

Related theme in a fashion... 

Listening to a Different Voice - Russell Means

Jubilee

Joy and I enjoyed a little road trip this past week.  By little, I’m talking just under 1,800 miles.  We slogged our way through something close to a blizzard the first morning but nothing was going to stop us from making it to Albuquerque to spend some time with our oldest who has almost finished her first year of university studies there (that can’t be right can it???).  We enjoyed a few days with her and her fabulous friends and then on Tuesday headed across to the eastern border of the state to where Joy’s brother John lives in Clovis.  

As fortune would have it, when Joy changed out the CD’s, one that was stuffed in the door of the car was Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “Stones In The Road” album.  I think Chapin Carpenter is a fantastic artist, that rare combination of musician, poet and storyteller that appeals perfectly to me on almost any day.  One of my favorite Chapin Carpenter songs, Jubilee, is on this album.  Halfway into an 1,800 mile drive leaves you a little time to meditate on certain themes.  And so this little post in the nexus of those musings and the celebration today of Easter.  I posted fragments on FaceBook, but perhaps this will be more coherent – perhaps not – and that’s OK too.

The day draws to a close... and soon Easter overwhelms us.  The words of a poem from Mary Chapin Carpenter are ringing Easter in for me this year.

I can tell by the way you're walking

That you don't want company

I'll let you alone and I'll let you walk on

And in your own good time you'll be

Back where the sun can find you

Under the wise wishing tree

And with all of them made we'll lie under the shade

And call it a jubilee

…

The idea of jubilee is to me an important element of the Easter mystery. Something that makes no sense certainly in our culture, and probably made no more sense thousands of years ago... NO ONE should permanently lose their inheritance. 

For those not familiar with the Judeo-Christian notion of jubilee it was originally a year at the end (or beginning perhaps) of a 50 year cycle – the year of jubilee.  In this year of jubilee all Israelites who had sold themselves into slavery were set free, and all land that had been sold reverted to its original owners. In practical terms then, this ensured that no Israelite could ever be in permanent slavery; nor could any Israelite permanently lose his inheritance.   If you’ve never heard of this concept before, it probably seems rather odd, and likely it is.  It may in fact be quite a stretch to refer to it as a Judeo-Christian idea as we see little evidence of it in the modern church or societies that have strong Judeo-Christian roots.  It is certainly fair to say that then as now, this practice was RADICAL!

The poem continues...

And I can tell by the way you're talking

That the past isn't letting you go

But there's only so long you can take it all on

And then the wrong's gotta be on its own

And when you're ready to leave it behind you

You'll look back, and all that you'll see

Is the wreckage and rust that you left in the dust

On your way to the jubilee

...

 

Jubilee to me is more that the big picture. We like the idea that there are big solutions, that government in particular can tackle the big problems, and indeed as we have seen just this week, take on large social issues of our time and provide a sweeping solution – a “New Deal”, a “Grand Bargain”.  And to some extent this may be true, yet I’ve always struggled a little with it.  For redemption is and always has been, personal - something we need to figure out one with another as much as with our creator.  When someone else provides a sweeping one size fits all solution, we lose the intimacy, we lose the personal connection.  

As an example, a few years ago, the government of my homeland Australia issued an apology to the “Stolen Generations” of our Aboriginal people.  I’m not going to go into detail of what all that means - most of you unfamiliar, probably get the gist of it and by all means look it up.  But part of me struggled with this.  And not because I did not think the apology was warranted, for indeed it was, but also for what it was, in reality as little more than words, it was largely symbolic.  It was too little, too late.  My discord was that for too many, this sweeping gesture took care of the issue; put it behind “us”, in an impersonal and distant way.  It conveniently avoids the requirement for personal responsibility.

Each of us needs to be able to come to terms with our own life, its past and our present.  Then and only then can we begin the process of moving forward into something new, something radically different from that past.

And so continuing on the theme with this beautiful poem

And I can tell by the way you're listening

That you're still expecting to hear

Your name being called like a summons to all

Who have failed to account for their doubts and their fears

They can't add up to much without you

And so if it were just up to me

I'd take hold of your hand, saying come hear the band

Play your song at the jubilee

...

But here’s the amazing thing about moving on.  To some degree, we can do it on our own.  But there is almost always a better way.  We are communal in nature – it is part of our DNA.  As afraid as we are that our shortcomings will be apparent to others, we have within us, most of us anyway, an innate compassion that would extend a hand to help someone just like us – if they only were willing to reach out for help in the first place.  Being able to reach out though, to take that first step is hard.  And sometimes, that helping hand can only come from our creator God, whose desire for communion with us was so great it collided with human history culminating with Easter.

Continuing with the poem…

And I can tell by the way you're searching

For something you can't even name

That you haven't been able to come to the table

Simply glad that you came

And when you feel like this try to imagine

That we're all like frail boats on the sea

Just scanning the night for that great guiding light

Announcing the jubilee

...

 

Grace to me is also key to jubilee, and something else we struggle with, that idea that we can receive from someone else something we don't deserve.  To me this builds on the previous verse.  We struggle so much sometimes to see ourselves as worthy.  I think this often begins with ourselves, the messed up idea that we are not worth the effort.  Something has got messed up to where we can’t even value or love ourselves.  This for sure precludes going beyond that, but for sure it just gets harder sometimes even if we feel OK about ourselves, to see ourselves as of value to others, worthy of love from others, and certainly of value or deserving of the love of the God who created us – and yet we are.  So much more than we could ever imagine.

And the poem closes

And I can tell by the way you're standing

With your eyes filling with tears

That it's habit alone keeps you turning for home

Even though your home is right here

Where the people who love you are gathered

Under the wise wishing tree

May we all be considered then straight on delivered

Down to the jubilee

'Cause the people who love you are waiting

And they'll wait just as long as need be

When we look back and say those were halcyon days

We're talking 'bout jubilee

Love always...

And so for some, you will have received this in hard-copy already - well with one minor modification - Joy felt the reference to "annus horribilis" was out of place.  I'm OK with that - it's a part of my colonial heritage I suppose.  But this is my blog so the original version gets a run - for good or ill.  And being a blog, I get to toss in a few extra pictures.

Seems late the day before Christmas Eve to begin writing our family Christmas letter, but our fabulous family photographer and friend will be home from Oman right after Christmas and so we decided to send out New Years greetings.  If you are not used to the Christensen family doing things differently, then why the heck are you receiving this – you obviously are not that familiar with us.

 I’ve been mulling what to say for a few days, and to be honest, it’s been hard.  The many tragic events in the US and wider world this year, especially with one so close to Christmas have torn at me.  I’ve written about them elsewhere so won’t dwell on them or my feelings about them here – a Christmas/New Years epistle seems after all not the place – unless of course you are the Queen.  But that notwithstanding, this year I go a different way…

For this year has not been “annus horribilis”.  From the prologue of Love Actually, one of our favorite Christmas movies:

Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspicion... love actually is all around.

In the times we’ve spent with family and friends there has been a lot of love AND a lot to love for us this year.  These things give us hope and joy.  Our girls have had continued to amaze us as they have grown. 

Mallory graduated after an amazing four years of high school and has not missed a beat in the transition to university.  Overnight, a year of lasts turned into a year of firsts.  As always her life is full of great people and so while she is sorely missed around the house she is making her way in the world as we have always wish for and known she would.  Nonetheless, there are days we will always remember; senior prom, graduation ceremony and backyard party, and that sad/happy day she walked off through security on her way to university.

Jillian also continues to grow and find her voice.  She loves life and somehow finds time to balance hanging out with friends, sport and schoolwork.  Being Jillian, she still enjoys a little down time in the quiet coziness of her own room also, although that space has expanded some having commandeered most of Mallory’s room and closet space.  Sport remains one of her passions with the thrill we all got to share in as she and her very young hockey teammates made a statement going undefeated and taking the Colorado high school state 

championship in the fall.         

Joy and I continue to marvel at all the events in our lives and the great friends we get to share them with.  Of course we miss the dear friends we have made in other places we have lived, but are enjoying life and this season here in Colorado.  I think we both can relate to Mary in the Christmas narrative by Luke:

But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.

Our love to you, and lifes blessings also for 2013.