Writing, Parenting, and Working in the Mess: Authentic Spirituality and Social Justice

Dear students, I have been trying to write you a letter for almost a month, and have discarded every draft so far. But tomorrow I’ll be busy grading your final projects, and I’ll be out of time! So, here is the letter I’ve been trying to write. Read it whenever you need a study break or have some time. It's long, and maybe a little convoluted! Sorry/not sorry! I want to thank you, first of all, for your work this semester. I hope you know it matters. You did 20-30 hours of volunteer work, showed up to class, read some essays and a pretty boring/dense textbook, wrote some stuff. It may not feel like much, but even if you can’t see it now, some of what you did mattered or will matter in ways you can’t see yet. Please know that I want to be a part of your support system as you continue to dedicate your lives to making the world a better place. (Am I being presumptuous? Maybe. But I believe you signed up for this class for some reason, and I’m hoping you have even more...

I let class out 40 minutes early on Wednesday after the election and told my students they could stay if they wanted to talk about campus climate, about the election, about anything that was on their minds. About 1/3 of them stayed. Here are just some of the things my students told me today in that conversation, or privately before or after, as close to their words as I can get with my less-than-stellar memory (with some minor changes to respect privacy--this is tough, because I feel I need to share this, but also want to hold sacred what they said): "My family had a meeting. We've figured out we're not welcome here anymore. We're going back to Mexico as soon as the semester is over." "We're all conservative where I come from. But then I see what the College Republicans are doing on campus, I hear some of the things Trump says. But if I say that I don't agree with everything the liberal students do, then I'm the bad one, the stupid ...

There is a rhythm to loving a person with dementia. One has to learn to be present again and again in the same moment, to relive it as if it is always new. One has to stop arguing—to stop finding fault with the details of the story, and to listen deeply to its rhythm, its shape. In the midst of trying to figure out how to make a long-term difference for the residents and volunteers running the gerokomeio in Ikaria—in the midst of the anguish of feeling as if there was too little we could do—we learned also to be present.  We learned to listen even when we didn’t understand the words, to pay attention to the shape a resident’s eyebrow made, to the way she leaned in or leaned back, the tone of her voice. When I was with the residents and students, I did my best to translate, though my Greek is far from fluent—but I couldn’t be everywhere at once. After awhile, though, the students began to recognize which story they were hearing, which narrative they were entering, by the wa...

Note to reader:  I am starting a new series. My aim is to reflect on my recent trip to Ikaria, Greece to teach a study abroad course called Aging in Greece. I taught the course with my spouse, T. Seventeen students with a range of majors and backgrounds came with us, as did our daughter and her godmother/my dear friend J. This was my fourth time teaching the course, which includes an intensive service-learning project at a gerokomeio (old people's home) in Ikaria, Greece--and T's first time. The trip was intense, and it was difficult while I was there to reflect deeply on what was happening while I was there. This feels like the right time to look backwards--and forward--and to share a bit of what I experienced there, from my perspective. While my primary goal is to write about this trip, in particular, I can already tell this series will be, also, a reflection on my decade-long connection to the gerokomeio, as well as my life-long connection to island where my father an...

When I was little, I was fascinated by clouds. I liked to lie down in the grass and stare up at the sky. Sometimes I closed my eyes and imagined I was lying down on a cloud. The cloud formed around my body, cradling me, and I would forget that I was actually on a hard surface. At other times I imagined eating the white substance—mashed potatoes or cotton candy, depending on what I was craving.  At some point in the second grade, I learned what clouds actually were. I was so fascinated by the fact that the science did not match up to my imagination that I got a book from the library with photos of the different types of clouds and (a simplified version) of the scientific reasons they looked the way they did. I learned all of their names, learned to identify them while lying on the grass. But I missed my old imaginary cloud-world. I wanted it back. Knowing what I knew about clouds, I was suspicious about the Ascension story as a child. If Jesus ascended into a cloud and ...