It all turns on affection

Wendell Berry’s 2012 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities earlier this week was titled: “It All Turns on Affection.” 

You can find it here, and while it is long, it is worth the time it will take to read:

http://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/wendell-e-berry-lecture

In it he tells stories and offers some explanation for the times we live in – stories of his family’s land, an explanation of what an economy really is, and stories of what happens when people, over time, disconnect their “light within” from their practices, their business, their learning and their economies.  These are tragic stories, difficult explanations, and they only leave a very thin thread of hope for humanity.  But Berry very intentionally and very clearly leaves room for hope.  And for that I am grateful.

The hope that Wendell Berry offers and imagines comes from people he calls “stickers.”  For Berry, borrowing from his mentor and teacher Wallace Stegner, stickers are people who settle in and “love the life they have made and the place they have made it in.”  He paints a picture of his family over the past several generations, and its relationship with a particular local landscape and its challenges and beauty.

My sense is that what this “poet, essayist, novelist, farmer and conservationist” is saying to me in my daily work and life is that things are connected, and it matters that we learn to love the world and all that is in it.  When we have forgotten affection, or how to care for the whole, we have brought tragedy and destruction, violence and poverty on ourselves and our world.  I think he is right here.  And I think I am to keep working on helping people figure out how to care – to plant seeds of affection in my own heart and in the lives of others.

Thanks Wendell Berry and all of my co-laborers in this field of affection.

Indeed, as Berry concludes, “this has not been inevitable.  And we do not have to live as if we are alone.”

Two eyes - one crying, one smiling

As our family was  leaving Budapest last month, my friend Zoltan Monos shared this Hungarian saying with me: "Egyik szemem sír, a másik nevet" (~My one eye is crying, the other is smiling).  This is an apt description of our readjustment to life in Grand Rapids.  Many thanks to Zoltan, and to other generous and hospitable Hungarians (and some Americans, Kenyans, and others as well!) for making our five months abroad life-altering and positive.  Here Zoltan and I are outside a favorite cafe, Morricone's, last August.

My days lately have been spent reading and reflecting in a beautiful new spot, here at the headquarters of the Inner City Christian Federation, a top-notch housing organization working to provide beautiful and affordable quality housing in Grand Rapids.

I don't think there are any easy answers to the question "How was your semester in Hungary?" but we are grateful for all the interest, and for the time to ponder.  We are also grateful for the on-going involvement we have with the students from our semester.  Last night at our home, in addition to sixteen of our Hungary students,  we welcomed also Akos Molnar,  a Hungarian student who has spent January as a transfer student at Calvin. 

Moving forward, my sabbatical time from January through May is, and will be occupied with questions about how learning takes place, particularly in college and university settings, and what connections there are between co-curricular activities like community service-learning and students' intellectual and faith development.  I've just finished re-reading my 2004 doctoral dissertation, and am excited to return to the quest linking movements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with today's reality in higher education.  Recent experiences in Europe make the task more complicated, but more interesting as well.

One of the poems we read in class during the fall semester, Healing, by Wendell Berry, concludes with these two stanzas, and I find them intriguingly relevant to my current project:

VIII

There is finally the pride of thinking oneself without teachers.

The teachers are everywhere. What is wanted is a learner.

In ignorance is hope. If we had known the difficulty, we would not have learned even so little.

Rely on ignorance. It is ignorance that teachers will come to.

They are waiting, as they always have, beyond the edge of the light.

IX

The teachings of unsuspected teachers belong to the task, and are its hope.

The love and the work of friends and lovers belong to the task, and are its health.

Rest and rejoicing belong to the task, and are its grace.

Let tomorrow come tomorrow. Not by your will is the house carried through the night.

Order is the only possibility of rest.

–from Wendell Berry’s Healing, in What Are People For?

A poem for the new year

Thanks to my students, I recently discovered Denise Levertov's poetry, and for Christmas I received a used copy of her 1982 volume, Candles in Babylon. This poem, "Beginners," speaks to a hope that endures in the face of sin and much hopelessness. It seems apt for another year's beginning.

'From too much love of living, hope and desire set free,
Even the weariest river, winds somewhere to the sea -'

But we have only begun
to love the earth.

We have only begun
to imagine the fulness of life.

How could we tire of hope?
- so much is in bud.

How can desire fail?
- we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision

how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.

Surely our river
cannot already be hastening
into the sea of nonbeing?

Surely it cannot
drag, in the silt,
all that is innocent?

Not yet, not yet -
there is too much broken
that must be mended,

too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.

We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,

so much is in bud.

2010 in Michigan

This is a photo of the Michigan wall map inside the Michigan Historical Museum in Lansing. Free, full of interesting Michigan history, and easy, cheap parking right outside. I couldn't help but wonder as I was "designing my own" really cool concept car, what the Michigan Historical Museum will have on hand in 30 years to demonstrate the radical changes in the state's identity during this apparently post-industrial shift. My way has been paid for by GM because of my dad's 40 years on the payroll there - will my children find meaningful work in sustainable energy? Without the jobs and income for families from the auto industry and its spin-offs, how long can schools and colleges stay viable to keep people like me at work? Here's hoping for a turn for this fair state sometime soon.

Creative Eastown

Two things have conspired to prompt this post. First, I just finished re-reading "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott, in an attempt to inspire some writing this year. Get over the fear of bad writing by knowing that bad writing has to come to get to the good writing. Second, I just heard a short presentation on some of Grand Rapids' interesting neighborhoods, and I overheard a remark that "Eastown is sometimes compared to something like the East Village for Grand Rapids." This struck me as funny, but it also reminded me of this short writing project I did last spring. One of my student staff members at Calvin presented a short exercise for new staff members to get familiar with each other by spending 5 minutes writing, with no preparation, about a place from their lives that holds some importance. I decided to join the exercise, and I wrote about Eastown. This is what I wrote, as uncut as I can make myself leave it.

"Eastown is the place where I feel most like I'm in Grand Rapids. My memories of this place go back to about 1984, when I began mentoring my "little brother," Tierre Rogers. Our first meeting was at the McDonald's just west of Fuller, on Wealthy, one of the only McDonalds to ever close a few years later. Ironic that it was a McDonalds that first drew me to this neighborhood, since the real appeal has ever since been the many locally-owned businesses. My other memories of Eastown include bowling at the old bowling alley behind "Just Breakfast" which is now Wolfgangs, seeing the "Return of the Jedi" at the old Eastown Theater, which is now the Uptown Church, meeting friends at Just Breakfast, ice cream at the old Baskin Robbins, which is now the Chinese Restaurant, and of course many many trips to Yesterdog's over the years with friends, my wife, our kids, and even this week, with visitors from Mexico. The smells, sounds, rituals, taste, and general feel of Yesterdog's are a wild combination of about 30 years of memories, ranging from high school craziness to recent recent recent experiences bringing my kids there for birthdays and other occasions - our photos on the wall from the early 1990s become more and more interesting as time goes by. My other memories include running through Eastown on my morning runs, having my UM diploma framed at the Eastown Gallery, eating at the Pita House with SLC staffs, eating at Don Rafavs for Mexican in recent years, beginning new traditions at Brandywine, and taxes..."

Then I ran out of time.

Earth-careful hope

I recently finished reading Lionel Basney's little book, An Earth-Careful Way of Life: Christian Stewardship and the Environmental Crisis, and I moved immediately to N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. I love how the two connect. Wright's reason for writing Surprised by Hope is to counter ages-old misconceptions about what kind of a "place" heaven is. With a host of other observers, Wright observes that the less your idea of heaven connects with earth, the less you are likely to care for the earth. Why bother, if its all going to burn, and besides, what really matters are our spirits, right? Wrong, and shockingly so.

Basney offers a hopeful little commentary on the relationship between nature and culture that defies easy categorization. He covers a lot of important ground, explaining why our connection to the earth, not vaguely but in actually touching dirt in the growing of productive gardens, enables us to a fuller humanness. He has all kinds of potential to sound off prophetically about the wasteful ways most American Christians consume in blissful and self-centered ignorance. But for the most part, he contains his cynicism and stays hopeful. Hopeful for a world that turns upside down, mostly through local communities and their growing connections to earth. He also avoids any hint of pantheistic earth-worship that worries many Christians about their friends who are "into the environment."

Wright’s contribution to the conversation is primarily in reminding us that the weight of scripture points to a future in which earth and heaven are reunited. He spends quite a bit of energy countering the popular notion that heaven consists of an existence that is ethereal, or non-material, drawing on C.S. Lewis’s description of heaven as a place where our bodies are actually “more solid, more real” than they were on earth. Again, if this is so, and if this earth will be transformed rather than burned up, then Basney is right to encourage us to get to work on this transformation of the earth.

If you’ve paid attention to some of the work that Calvin students and faculty have been up to over the past few years, you will recognize in these projects (rain gardens, native plantings, invasive species reduction efforts, LEED certification programs, and re-forestation projects to name a few) you will recognize the influence of contemporary prophets like Lionel Basney and N.T. Wright.

A visit from the Chimals

Earlier this month our family had the unique privilege of hosting friends from Mexico, Reverend Andres Chimal and his wife Maria de la Luz Gonzalez (aka Paty Chimal) at our house during their first visit to the United States. The Chimals were our hosts for 6 months during the summer and fall of 1993, back when we were young, childless, and much more mobile. They were phenomenal hosts, turning their dining room into a bedroom for us for half a year, and patiently teaching us many many things, including how to really speak Spanish, and what Mexican food really tastes like. We have since made two trips to visit them with our children, in spring 2005, and winter 2007.

Fittingly enough, they arrived on Cinco de Mayo, and we promptly introduced them to Dutch Tulip Time festivities in Holland, Michigan nearby. The privilege for us was in seeing our lives, their joys, frustrations, opportunities and temptations, through new eyes. From the overwhelming abundance of opportunities to obtain more stuff, to the rapidly changing spring weather patterns, to the relatively very quiet urban neighborhood in which we live, the absence of any walls around any homes, and our inability to introduce any uniquely American food (with the exception of mom's good old fashioned beef-roast, mashed potatoes and green beans on Sunday...), we found ourselves ranging in emotion from gratitude to shame and back to surprise.