When I grow up...

Finally I think I have come to a solid vision for the future. For the next two years... for this week...

Not really (I mean the above indecision).

Actually, while it might seem like a very quick self knowledge, it has been brewing for many years, and different theories have been tested, always in the end having to go back to the lab (or my room) and start over working out the contradictions revised from incongruent theory and practice.

If you don't have time to read through the next few paragraphs of thought, here is the point: I am going to Scotland to study landscaping and gardening. A "career" that will afford me time to pursue a deep internal life as well as a practical life with my hands in the ground and my mind in clear air.

The last time I sat in tears in my professor's office I was given a very helpful piece of advice. Forget what you are good at, or what you want to do, go for what you do best that is sorely missing people. This is a very good piece of advice for these reasons:

No pressure on having to find one thing that you are the best
(this involves pretending that there is one thing that interest you more than all the others. It is like trying to choose of all the great guys you know which one you would marry)

In the end you do not choose. It is up to the gap.
(or rather your perception of the gap, and confidence that you can fill it. Which, in the end, is better than having to play favorites. Does this mean that arranged marriage is better? I must remind my reader that eventually logic fails)

So I have been giving thought to gaps.
I have been giving thought to what does not exist?
And what talents I might poses to help.

Here are some gaps I perceive:

There are far too many paved roads: we need some more dirt roads to slow people down.

There are not enough leather bound books

There is too much time, so people are abusing it

There are not enough gray haired models



Here are some of my core talents

I think

I like people

I don't like 9-5 jobs

I like driving, but I don't like its monopoly on middle class Western civilians.

I am not a capitalist


If you read these things carefully, I am sure you will reach the same conclusion I have. I should:

Finish school
Go to Scotland
Study Landscape management and gardening
And pursue a life as a gardener and deep thinker.

Obviously, I am not supposed to add to the already escalating numbers of time abusive, capitalistic 9-5 middle class rush. I would make too much money and be largely unhappy.

My time at the cabin was lovely. (This does tie into what I was saying). I learned something very significant about myself. I need to be outside, near mountains, and have lots of time to exist. I do not want a life full of schedules, meetings and florescent lights. Time to time I have thought I am perfect material for a nun. But I have tired that. no.

I am convinced (intuition rather than apodictic certainty) that one can effect macro level change in society without paper work and international meetings. These things no doubt are necessary, but I am relieved to say that there is no gap here. Many want to study international policy and politics. So do I, but I also want to marry George MacDonald, but he is taken. (and dead) (or alive?)

I need less time than the average person. Where many use it up not knowing what else to do with it, I sit for hours thinking about what the clouds in the sky mean, knowing that my next appointment is two weeks in advance. This would drive some people mad, I realize, and more power to them. At the cabin, I have come to accept that I can only be one person. And that is not someone who works well under tight schedules.

I think there is a huge need for quietness. I am going to be quiet, and fill in a box with space rather than stuff.

I plan to achieve this not by sitting in front of a tv and existing in a alternate and virtual reality, but by sticking my hands in the ground and not amassing lots of money. With the little I have I will buy books, and a small house. I will be a gardener and research sustainable development. In the mean time I will read Jung, Lewis, MacDonald, Merton, and Heschel. (To begin with).

All of this will be in Scotland. Need I say more? I don't know what else to say about that except to announce its existence.

My home is open to the public, the busy and the poor. Yes, that is my conscience wondering where I am going to work for social justice. There are two contributions. One is in actively practicing, researching and trying (not in that order necessarily) "sustainable development". This is my very logistical contribution. But I think primarily by merely existing as an alternative of living, a new paradigm, this provides a community with a model for change.

So until further notice, this is my future.

Freedom Writers

Freedom writers is one of those inspiring movies where one person serves as a catalyst to a great amount of change. It provokes one to place self in the movie and ask which person represents you. Everyone wants to identify with the teacher. I certainly do. (I assume no one wants to identify with the principle...) As I watched I wondered what it takes to be a person like that. For one thing, opposition from the authorities who do not like their boxes broken.

Boxes. In the end it seems that a good teacher breaks social boxes and invites the mind to either participate or threatens it to hide. I want to be a good teacher--one who many hate because I expose what boxes need to be broken. By implication this seems to threaten whatever security is put in the boxes. I understand why Paul wants to die, and why one should rejoice if people persecute you when you are doing good. It means you are on the right track. I also see now that our life is not really our own. Who we are is not an isolated person gaining substance like capitalistic selves. (it can become that). Watching this "Freedom Writers" movie and seeing how much life this teacher sacrifices (as well as having the life example of my professors at Prov (hello if you are reading)) it is beginning to dawn on me that what is done in life is done for others. Who we are is made significant by our interaction with people, and each expertise in life is an agent for transformation. Hard work has merit for self, but that should never eclipse what is also given to others. A dancer can dance a new world in their movement and open the mind of the body to new ineffable and kinesthetic ideas. Good scholarship is not a waste only for good grades and the power of approval, but takes the demands of the mind seriously and gives respect by its careful research. And each of these, each paper, each dance, each interaction, shapes self which touches other.

I think the more I break through the old boxes of Christianity the more I see that I am not ashamed of what it is saying. It seems to be saying that there is more, and that Jesus is the ultimate "unboxer." I am just fed up with the tidy box we have given him that last for two hours every Sunday.

The very pleasant feeling this afternoon of awaking from a dream. As I awoke the quote from the last book MacDonald wrote came into mind:

“Our life is no dream, but may perhaps one day become one.”

I had been going through some old writings from Costa Rica and had been thinking very hard about my life there and the journey I have been on and where it is that I am going. There seem to be two givens now in my life: Scotland and a just life. Are names of no consequence? Alexandra Ross. I have inherited the Scottish name and my first name means “defender of humans.” Who knows, but the name Smith my yet denote a third aspect of creativity? As the consciousness of these thoughts slipped away I began to dream about a house and those people that I know from Providence, until I again awoke to the colours in my window having changed to late afternoon.

Do we really know that this life will end, like a dream? But we will not wake to something less real, but something more real. Just as waking from the second dimension of dreams into the third of consciousness. As I looked out the window I had a faint sensation of loving the trees outside it. I was caught off guard because I have not consciously developed any special love for trees since Costa Rica. There are trees in Manitoba, but they are largely practical lines of wind block or they are untamed in the forest. These are tended as the ones were in Costa Rica. As soon as I found myself loving them I was checked by my mind thinking that I was only here for a short time and never long enough for the love to be constructive.

I don’t know where such a silly notion has come from.

When was love ever not constructive? Even those people that I will only meet for one week, and I am thinking in particular of L’Abri, should I withhold a deep appreciation (as deep as a week can give) because I can count the limited time to the relationship? Should the knowledge of this world’s end produce an arms length engagement with it?

I am still thinking about the idea that death was and is a very natural part of life, and not an evil thing. Are all ends a good thing, but our grasping the distortion? When people see me as advantaged for all the different places I have lived all I can think of is all the ends I have had. But in the many ends perhaps that is actually the many re-births. And for those who do not know the many, perhaps a profound life, death and rebirth.

Afternoon tea

I had the pleasure this afternoon of having tea with Grammy Alice. I am still a bit in awe of how much I enjoyed it. It was not a presumptuous "I will pretend this is meaningful and fun," but I found that I was talking to her about things very close to my heart and she was not only interested but we exchanged thoughts. This was only surprising because of the topics. One could of course exchange thoughts about tea, or weather, or cats. But how many can sit down dialog about God, death, life, injustice, questions... and other odd topics like talking to flowers.

It has reiterated the question constantly in me "What is God?" She is quite determined to walk again, even dance. I said I would love to see her. I meant it. She refuses to get an operation on her hip because she is terrified of surgery, but she believes that the answer is within her and lays in her mind. Had I not understood a bit about the social construction of reality I would not really have been serious when she proposed that she would dance. But I think, I suspect, I believe?, I hope... that she is right. If our interpretations, paradigms and actions have the power to determine what is real, it is perfectly understandable that she would heal. I think back to Jesus who would tell people to walk, or who spoke of mountains moving with a small bit of faith. Taking him at his authoritative word, they would pick up their mat and dance. The sea would adhere to the reality Christ proclaimed.

My question, "what is God?" runs around this concept. What. Essence, quality, being. Often thought of as a "person." Schaeffer locates personhood in feeling, thought and action. I am not convinced that these are the deepest seat. Who can say what is, but I wonder if it is not found somewhat in the meaning making faculty that humans have within their own being. Creativity. Meaning as understood as a social construction then fits with the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. God in dialog. The ultimate transcendent inter subjective objectivity. Add to that the incarnation and the creation of humans in God's likeness and there is the riddle of nature/nurture and the illusive boundaries between God and humans. Then throw in the fall, and arrive at a knot more confusing that any in the book of Kells.

What then is G-o-d? Is it more than the inherent mind's power and interpretation, meaning making? Is it the first cause that socialized the first human and they have left a decent of patterns of behavior and thought? Is it more than something intimate, even beyond ourselves and out creation? but so intimate that it is also the air, thoughts, nature--all created matter, including our own thoughts? Is God a human construction? Or can God be both human construction as well as fully outside of us, whole in person? Is this incarnation? Is the self in fact fully created and fully inherent?