Thanksgiving(marginally a holy day, but certainly a holiday) is upon us, then Chanukah is right after, then Christmas.
My son is Jewish, or rather, my wife asserts his Jewishness. I am nominally Christian, though I haven't been to church or made any outward signs of my faith in a while. The holidays are always difficult for a variety of reasons. In some ways Christmas means a lot more to me than it does to others in my family, though my sister may say that is untrue. My faith is tied up in feelings about my Dad, in what I think it means to be a good person, my thoughts about God, and about the whole story that we call Christianity. I feel very sentimental about Judaism, but I am not Jewish, and it is hard for me to assent to calling my son Jewish, at least exclusively.
I had a talk with him the other night when he was asking who was Jewish in our family. He would ask "Is Uncle G. Jewish" and I would say yes, then "Is Nana Jewish", and I would say "No, she is Jewish". We got through all the relatives that he has met in person and I think he got the idea that my side of the family is Christian and mommy's side is Jewish. He then asked if Bashful Lamb was Jewish or Christian, so I asked if he was from Mommy's side or Daddy's side. We decided that Bashful was Jewish and Hans Bear was Christian.
I don't want him to choose sides, but I want him to appreciate what each religion and each heritage has to give.
I know this post isn't really a revelation or an answer to any question, but I felt like letting it out.
Happy Holidays, or Holy Days if you prefer.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
A warm day
I was inside most of the day, but when I had a chance to go out I recalled many of the beautiful moments I have experienced on campus. I remembered girls I had had crushes on, and some I had the fortune of dating and fun times with friends. It was a perfect day for nostalgia.
The sun was warm and you could feel the golden hue it cast on every face, every leaf, every smile, every step. When I was young we had HBO and I remember an intro where a camera descended into a model town. Every individual thing was in its place, the colors were surreal and carefully planned. On a day like today when the breeze and the colors seem so perfect I am reminded of that model town perfectly arranged, cars moving exactly on cue, a single bicycle riding down a suburban street, and every shadow cast at the same angle. That nostalgic feeling of comfort mixed with the disconcerting calm of an overly planned existence both pleased and panicked me as I walked through a perfect fall day.
The sun was warm and you could feel the golden hue it cast on every face, every leaf, every smile, every step. When I was young we had HBO and I remember an intro where a camera descended into a model town. Every individual thing was in its place, the colors were surreal and carefully planned. On a day like today when the breeze and the colors seem so perfect I am reminded of that model town perfectly arranged, cars moving exactly on cue, a single bicycle riding down a suburban street, and every shadow cast at the same angle. That nostalgic feeling of comfort mixed with the disconcerting calm of an overly planned existence both pleased and panicked me as I walked through a perfect fall day.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
when I leave this place
When I go, waste no time in putting me in the ground, don't put any chemicals in me, but leave me for the earth. Plant a tree on my grave, something I would remember from my youth, maybe a pecan tree. If someone needs a marker to remember where I lay, then wait until the tree is grown and mark the tree.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
my semi-annual post.
It is a new year, and about 5 months since I posted last. I am not particularly diligent about finding topics to discuss here, but today I have two. They both regard frustrations I have run into in the last week, but the first is less academic than the second. Happy new year everyone. Enjoy.
Firstly, fatherhood is a difficult road to travel. I don't really understand those men that do not find it challenging. It seems to me that there one suddenly has to be ultraconscious of how their actions are interpreted by a growing, learning little child that doesn't have the perspective to understand personal fallibility, task prioritization, or depressive lethargy. I end up doing things I do not desire or wish to do, because I care about my son. I cannot let loose with my emotions because I know he would not understand that sometimes a person just needs to let go. This last weekend I really didn't feel like being a dad. I didn't want to answer all the questions or play or deal with little toys on the floor or any of the other things that go along with fatherhood to a toddler. At the same time, he doesn't understand that I was not in the "mood" for such things. I had to put myself in a time out so I could let my frustration dissipate and then continue with the day. Fortunately, I was able to get over my momentary pissyness and the next day was much better.
Secondly, why are discussions of faith taboo? I saw an article about Brit Hume's comment about suggesting Tiger Woods consider Christianity since it has a framework for forgiveness that he could use to move past his transgressions and try to figure out his life. Apparently Brit was lambasted over the advice, but why? Is religion just a market place where things are supposed to be neatly packaged and we just choose the one that is prettier or cheaper? Can we not get recommendations or discuss the differences between religions? Supposedly Tiger is a buddhist, which means he should have recognized his actions as a source of suffering for both himself and his family and used that knowledge to avoid those actions or else endure the karmic repercussions. Okay, but what is wrong with acknowledging that people have personal failures, introducing a concept of forgiveness and then allowing them to use that experience to change future actions, is that not the idea behind Christian forgiveness? I know that the supermarket Christianity would profess that forgiveness is so abundant and flowing that it seems like one need not even think about personal effort as a part of forgiveness, but that is naive. In reality, Chrisitanity recognizes that change is hard, and extends divine forgiveness as a way to recognize that one has committed an act that is wrong, but also that one can recover from such failings. It is not easy to recover, and it may require more forgiveness down the line. However, that Grace is not cheap, one should not use it like a disposable kleenex. Self-reflection and self-determination are required so that one might change their character over time, indeed over a lifetime. I present this concept of Christian forgiveness with out the list of what is regarded as sin, since I personally believe that sin and what is wrong is circumstantial.(brief, potentially heretical diatribe about sin to follow) Sure there are things that are almost always wrong, but somehow we find ways to justify almost everything in someway, so when evaluating what is wrong and right I claim no special authority there. I mean really, in the Judeo-Christian holy books we have plenty of instances where God condones and/or requests acts that are in conflict with the big Ten that Moses brought down to the people. What that tells me is that God is more elusive and flexible than a set of commandments etched in stone, and more permanent. Jesus, in an effort to summarize the commandments said that there are only two commandments, to love God with your heart, soul and mind and then to love your neighbor as much as yourself. He said the entire Judaic Law hinged on those two commandments. In presenting the commandments in this way he reveals the spirit behind the Ten Commandments and at the same time gives a way of trying to understand why God would ask someone like Abraham to sacrifice their son. Anyway, my point was originally, that I find it a little annoying that in America, it is considered low-brow and inappropriate to truly discuss the merits and differences of religions. The dialogue almost always devolves into a discussion about the actions of adherents to particular faiths, which in some ways is irrelevant to the concept of religion, since religion is meant to transcend human failings and present an ideal to strive for, not to embody the failings of those who follow that religion. If anything those human failings serve to show how well the adherents of a particular religion pay attention to the tenets of their faith.
Firstly, fatherhood is a difficult road to travel. I don't really understand those men that do not find it challenging. It seems to me that there one suddenly has to be ultraconscious of how their actions are interpreted by a growing, learning little child that doesn't have the perspective to understand personal fallibility, task prioritization, or depressive lethargy. I end up doing things I do not desire or wish to do, because I care about my son. I cannot let loose with my emotions because I know he would not understand that sometimes a person just needs to let go. This last weekend I really didn't feel like being a dad. I didn't want to answer all the questions or play or deal with little toys on the floor or any of the other things that go along with fatherhood to a toddler. At the same time, he doesn't understand that I was not in the "mood" for such things. I had to put myself in a time out so I could let my frustration dissipate and then continue with the day. Fortunately, I was able to get over my momentary pissyness and the next day was much better.
Secondly, why are discussions of faith taboo? I saw an article about Brit Hume's comment about suggesting Tiger Woods consider Christianity since it has a framework for forgiveness that he could use to move past his transgressions and try to figure out his life. Apparently Brit was lambasted over the advice, but why? Is religion just a market place where things are supposed to be neatly packaged and we just choose the one that is prettier or cheaper? Can we not get recommendations or discuss the differences between religions? Supposedly Tiger is a buddhist, which means he should have recognized his actions as a source of suffering for both himself and his family and used that knowledge to avoid those actions or else endure the karmic repercussions. Okay, but what is wrong with acknowledging that people have personal failures, introducing a concept of forgiveness and then allowing them to use that experience to change future actions, is that not the idea behind Christian forgiveness? I know that the supermarket Christianity would profess that forgiveness is so abundant and flowing that it seems like one need not even think about personal effort as a part of forgiveness, but that is naive. In reality, Chrisitanity recognizes that change is hard, and extends divine forgiveness as a way to recognize that one has committed an act that is wrong, but also that one can recover from such failings. It is not easy to recover, and it may require more forgiveness down the line. However, that Grace is not cheap, one should not use it like a disposable kleenex. Self-reflection and self-determination are required so that one might change their character over time, indeed over a lifetime. I present this concept of Christian forgiveness with out the list of what is regarded as sin, since I personally believe that sin and what is wrong is circumstantial.(brief, potentially heretical diatribe about sin to follow) Sure there are things that are almost always wrong, but somehow we find ways to justify almost everything in someway, so when evaluating what is wrong and right I claim no special authority there. I mean really, in the Judeo-Christian holy books we have plenty of instances where God condones and/or requests acts that are in conflict with the big Ten that Moses brought down to the people. What that tells me is that God is more elusive and flexible than a set of commandments etched in stone, and more permanent. Jesus, in an effort to summarize the commandments said that there are only two commandments, to love God with your heart, soul and mind and then to love your neighbor as much as yourself. He said the entire Judaic Law hinged on those two commandments. In presenting the commandments in this way he reveals the spirit behind the Ten Commandments and at the same time gives a way of trying to understand why God would ask someone like Abraham to sacrifice their son. Anyway, my point was originally, that I find it a little annoying that in America, it is considered low-brow and inappropriate to truly discuss the merits and differences of religions. The dialogue almost always devolves into a discussion about the actions of adherents to particular faiths, which in some ways is irrelevant to the concept of religion, since religion is meant to transcend human failings and present an ideal to strive for, not to embody the failings of those who follow that religion. If anything those human failings serve to show how well the adherents of a particular religion pay attention to the tenets of their faith.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
looking up
It is almost the end of my birthday. My 32nd celebration of my inauguration into this world.
I just came in from a few minutes of staring at the stars from my mom's back porch. It has been a while since I have seen so many stars. You can only see the brightest ones from the city so it seems that your focus in drawn downward, rather than upward.
It is easy to loose hold of oneself in a place where you feel rushed, and pressured and torn in many different ways. Looking up sometimes gives one some perspective, a realization that there is so much more in the universe than waking up, working, coming home and sleeping.
Judaism, Christianity, Islam all tell us that there is something flawed about humanity. That we tend to "sin" or in more familiar language, make mistakes. For some of us, that is our character, we constantly make the same mistakes over and over, these are the black sheep, the family members we don't talk about, the guy that everyone knows as a living example of how not to be. Then there are some of us who are generally on the straight and narrow, but they make a mistake, and it is not something you would expect. Those people react in different ways, usually based on how they view themselves.
They can either hide their mistakes or make them known. Hiding is a function of not acknowledging that one has made a mistake. It is the action of trying to erase the mistake by making it fade with time. But that mistake will always live with whoever committed it and it will shape their future actions. Owning up to one's mistakes allows them to be put to rest however, acknowledging that one has erred allows that person to call on help from others to help prevent that error in the future.
Since I don't profess to know a significant amount about Judaism or Islam, I can't say I know how they deal with the idea of sin. In Christianity(at least in Orthodoxy), sin is dealt with as a disease, something that infects a healthy organism and that organism tries to fight it off. One characteristic of Orthodoxy is that sin is not transmitted at birth, meaning that a baby is sinless and has the possibility of staying sinless. What is transmitted is the potential, even the propensity toward sin. Think of this as analogous to someone that is very fair being born in the desert. They have the possibility of avoiding sunburn and eventually sun cancer, but they are far more likely to get a sunburn and eventually a complication because of it. The tools of the church are supposed to be like sunscreen, in a way. You confess to prevent yourself from hiding and letting your mistakes and errors fester in secrecy, you pray for forgiveness to attempt to unburden yourself so that you can have the strength to avoid those mistakes in the future. This is a long, and arduous process of self-perfection that tries to account for the fact that humans aren't perfect.
I suppose in some ways I find that process beautiful and simple and incredibly hard to put into practice for myself. I come from a family and background, where emotions are bottled up and one tried to fix stuff on their own. My heart is full of misdirected pride and the tendency to hide my mistakes because I don't want others to know that I make mistakes. But, trust me, I do, in spades. Whenever I do something that is really out of character for me, I hide that more. I convince myself that it will be better off if I hide it and just focus on avoiding that behavior in the future. This routine never works and I end up disclosing my mistakes at a time when the consequences of those errors in action and judgement have been compounded by the secrecy and hiding. In general, I am not very good at being a Christian. Thankfully, I am not asked to be good at it, but rather to not give up and be honest with myself.
This last year has been hard, and I have to work on being better about acknowledging that I make mistakes. I have made more mistakes than there are stars in the sky. Perhaps my vision of myself has just been blurred the way the light of the city obscures the billions of little stars shining above me. Sometimes I just have to be in a dark place to see things more clearly.
I just came in from a few minutes of staring at the stars from my mom's back porch. It has been a while since I have seen so many stars. You can only see the brightest ones from the city so it seems that your focus in drawn downward, rather than upward.
It is easy to loose hold of oneself in a place where you feel rushed, and pressured and torn in many different ways. Looking up sometimes gives one some perspective, a realization that there is so much more in the universe than waking up, working, coming home and sleeping.
Judaism, Christianity, Islam all tell us that there is something flawed about humanity. That we tend to "sin" or in more familiar language, make mistakes. For some of us, that is our character, we constantly make the same mistakes over and over, these are the black sheep, the family members we don't talk about, the guy that everyone knows as a living example of how not to be. Then there are some of us who are generally on the straight and narrow, but they make a mistake, and it is not something you would expect. Those people react in different ways, usually based on how they view themselves.
They can either hide their mistakes or make them known. Hiding is a function of not acknowledging that one has made a mistake. It is the action of trying to erase the mistake by making it fade with time. But that mistake will always live with whoever committed it and it will shape their future actions. Owning up to one's mistakes allows them to be put to rest however, acknowledging that one has erred allows that person to call on help from others to help prevent that error in the future.
Since I don't profess to know a significant amount about Judaism or Islam, I can't say I know how they deal with the idea of sin. In Christianity(at least in Orthodoxy), sin is dealt with as a disease, something that infects a healthy organism and that organism tries to fight it off. One characteristic of Orthodoxy is that sin is not transmitted at birth, meaning that a baby is sinless and has the possibility of staying sinless. What is transmitted is the potential, even the propensity toward sin. Think of this as analogous to someone that is very fair being born in the desert. They have the possibility of avoiding sunburn and eventually sun cancer, but they are far more likely to get a sunburn and eventually a complication because of it. The tools of the church are supposed to be like sunscreen, in a way. You confess to prevent yourself from hiding and letting your mistakes and errors fester in secrecy, you pray for forgiveness to attempt to unburden yourself so that you can have the strength to avoid those mistakes in the future. This is a long, and arduous process of self-perfection that tries to account for the fact that humans aren't perfect.
I suppose in some ways I find that process beautiful and simple and incredibly hard to put into practice for myself. I come from a family and background, where emotions are bottled up and one tried to fix stuff on their own. My heart is full of misdirected pride and the tendency to hide my mistakes because I don't want others to know that I make mistakes. But, trust me, I do, in spades. Whenever I do something that is really out of character for me, I hide that more. I convince myself that it will be better off if I hide it and just focus on avoiding that behavior in the future. This routine never works and I end up disclosing my mistakes at a time when the consequences of those errors in action and judgement have been compounded by the secrecy and hiding. In general, I am not very good at being a Christian. Thankfully, I am not asked to be good at it, but rather to not give up and be honest with myself.
This last year has been hard, and I have to work on being better about acknowledging that I make mistakes. I have made more mistakes than there are stars in the sky. Perhaps my vision of myself has just been blurred the way the light of the city obscures the billions of little stars shining above me. Sometimes I just have to be in a dark place to see things more clearly.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Lost time
I haven't posted in a while, but that doesn't mean my mind hasn't been active and processing the relationship between day to day life and the eternal. Eternity is an interested word, many people conflate the idea of eternity with time unending, or a continuation of time with out end. I prefer to think of eternity as an alternative to temporality, living outside of time and its constant forward motion. Some religions believe that there is an immutable soul that passes from the temporal to the atemporal, or from this world to eternity at the time of death. There are lots of wonderful ways to express this poetically, but for the most part our knowledge of life after death is either divinely inspired, raw/cold observation or comforting suppositions. I do not claim to be divinely inspired, and I have a hard time saying there is nothing after this life, so I usually grasp at ways to comfort myself when a loved one passes.
Recently my mother-in-law, passed away. I used to call her Mama Ro. She was funny, and lively and as my wife and I come to find out she seems to have lived many lives. We took on the task of cleaning out her apartment and saw the types of things she collected, pictures of herself, family and friends, clothes, shoes, and lots of memories. As we continued this work over the last month or so, I had a chance to get to know more about Mama Ro before I met her. To see some of the back story in her life and to fix a picture of her in my mind. I have been trying to understand her more so that I have stories to tell my son about his grandmother. In this way, she has passed from this world to eternity for me. She has fixed herself, outside of the turbulences of the constant march of time and become a whole person, from start to finish.
One time I was describing to a friend the impact a person has on the world, and history and the future. I described each person as a stone thrown into the lake of human history. As the stone enters the lake, ripples vibrate outward, affecting firstly the immediate surroundings of that person, but eventually the entire lake is somehow affected by that one person, and the ripples, while they diminish, never actually end. This is another way that a person achieves eternity, as they affect others, even in the smallest way. Sometimes this affect is good, sometimes it is bad.
I will miss Mama Ro, I am glad I got to do the work of cleaning out her home and hope that I can help share her impact on the world with my son.
Recently my mother-in-law, passed away. I used to call her Mama Ro. She was funny, and lively and as my wife and I come to find out she seems to have lived many lives. We took on the task of cleaning out her apartment and saw the types of things she collected, pictures of herself, family and friends, clothes, shoes, and lots of memories. As we continued this work over the last month or so, I had a chance to get to know more about Mama Ro before I met her. To see some of the back story in her life and to fix a picture of her in my mind. I have been trying to understand her more so that I have stories to tell my son about his grandmother. In this way, she has passed from this world to eternity for me. She has fixed herself, outside of the turbulences of the constant march of time and become a whole person, from start to finish.
One time I was describing to a friend the impact a person has on the world, and history and the future. I described each person as a stone thrown into the lake of human history. As the stone enters the lake, ripples vibrate outward, affecting firstly the immediate surroundings of that person, but eventually the entire lake is somehow affected by that one person, and the ripples, while they diminish, never actually end. This is another way that a person achieves eternity, as they affect others, even in the smallest way. Sometimes this affect is good, sometimes it is bad.
I will miss Mama Ro, I am glad I got to do the work of cleaning out her home and hope that I can help share her impact on the world with my son.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Walking
In Boston, Spring is tantalizingly close. The plants look a little more perky, the sky promises warmth, the wind has a little less bite, and there is light out when I get home from work. I can feel my spirits rising. My desire to be outside is getting stronger. Soon the trees on Bay State Road will blossom and the street will be fragrant and colorful.
Boston in the Spring is like awakening from a black and white dream to be reminded that the world is in color. You can almost feel the pulse of the city quickening.
On Wednesday, I went to a client downtown before work. It was early and the T wasn't packed. The air still had a chill, but it wasn't the same as a month ago. I did my work and left, and walked toward BU through Boston Commons, and the Gardens. The pigeons weaved in and out of my path. There were people hustling to work, homeless people sleeping in tattered lumps, new flowers planted so they will bloom early in the spring, and a sense of relief that winter might just be over. But as any good Bostonian knows, saying winter is over in Mid-March is just madness. But maybe, the winter that clouds up our minds is lifting and we can start to dream in color again.
Boston in the Spring is like awakening from a black and white dream to be reminded that the world is in color. You can almost feel the pulse of the city quickening.
On Wednesday, I went to a client downtown before work. It was early and the T wasn't packed. The air still had a chill, but it wasn't the same as a month ago. I did my work and left, and walked toward BU through Boston Commons, and the Gardens. The pigeons weaved in and out of my path. There were people hustling to work, homeless people sleeping in tattered lumps, new flowers planted so they will bloom early in the spring, and a sense of relief that winter might just be over. But as any good Bostonian knows, saying winter is over in Mid-March is just madness. But maybe, the winter that clouds up our minds is lifting and we can start to dream in color again.
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