The View From My Broken Mountain

I'm taking a class through EMMANUEL HOUSE SEMINARY called Cultural Literacy. I was asked to reflect upon seeing Brokeback Mountain and post my thoughts on our class message board. Below are the reflections I shared with my classmates:
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Yes. I've thought about it. I am a mixture of grateful, grieved, sobered, and hopeful to have walked through the story with the characters. A person's sexuality is perhaps her/his most sacred, holy dimension this side of heaven. Perhaps it is the delicate outer shell of the soul.

I am grateful someone (not surprisingly someone "outside" the faith community) was brave enough to place the story on the radar screen of life.

I, too, was grieved by the stories intertwined on the screen. The two men, the wives, the children, the parents. Broken people with some really beautiful hearts beneath the rubble. They all want the same things.

It would make life so much easier if we could compartmentalize our sexuality from every other aspect of our daily lives/interactions. It would be easier if we could just chalk this movie up to a radical, shocking, liberal stance pointing to an obvious agenda. Draw a line. Pick a side. It's not that simple. Instead, I thinkit is an opportunity to take a fictional look into real lives. I'm sobered.

Hopeful. Yes. Our Creator wrapped those souls in such a tender covering, on purpose. With Grace, He actually lives more intimately with the stark realities of all of our brokeness than even we do. He seems confident enough to continue to woo us back to him, day after day, regardless upon which broken mountain we live.

Trust

Read the following:

The Paradoxical Commandments
by Dr. Kent M. Keith


People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

© Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001

I don't know how to live like that without people to remind me that I have those things in me. How do you know when you need to be these things spoken of above, or when you need to "protect your heart"? It is really hard to live in mis-trust and still live from the center of your heart. I think it is impossible. I imagine (as my original hunch was all along) that when I am admonished to "protect your heart" it is so that I will eventually realize it is an impossible task. I cannot protect my heart to the measure that it needs protection.Only the one who created the heart knows how to protect it.

Are you eccentric?

Yep. I watched another documentary this weekend. It is called VERNON, FLORIDA.As usual, you get to meet real-life, eccentric people--a man who lives, almost solely, to hunt turkeys; the couple who travelled to a desert area of the USA and has been watching their self-made souvenir jar of sand "grow" over the years; the old man who has an opposum caged in his back yard; and my personal favorite, an old man who talks through his personal theology as he paddles us through a swamp. He shares a dialogue he had with his neighbor about the existence of God. He recounted that his neighbor kept explaining the meaning of life, our existence, etc. with the fall-back phrase "It just happens." This wise elderly man suggested that his neighbor needs to decide that definition of "Just Happens" is the word/concept "God." He actually said it much more eloquently than I have explained it here.

His eloquence, like every person we meet in Vernon, was seen in his refreshing simplicity.

Are you simple enough to be eccentric? I looked up the word "eccentric" to find that it means "out of the center." I think that is why I am so drawn to watching documentaries about people. They tend to be people who live out of the center. They step out of the expected pattern for life, step away from the mundane. Maybe the way we become unique and most completely who we are is when we are simple. When we find the simplicity of our own "center" (live from the center of your heart, for instance) we are finally free enough to live outside the box.

Here's a peek into how my mind works. From these thoughts above, I begin to think about the concept of abiding as seen in John 15. There is nothing more simple than thinking of the life of a piece of fruit on a vine. A life of remaining attached and growing from within. Fruit grows from its heart (seed within) and finds its existence outside of itself---out of the center. Simple enough to be just what you are so that you can find life outside yourself. How eccentric!

Academic Degrees, Money, and Things That Last

I got an email over Christmas break from a very kind person doing her job in the College of Education. She asked me if I knew that I was only 2 classes from completing my Master's Degree in Secondary Education. Only TWO classes away from completing a career goal. It is so close I can taste it! Actually taste it. Unfortunately, the classes I have to take are bland. Dry and bland.

Alright. The classes get a little more tasty when I think about the pay increase next fall. Tangible evidence of a degree, true.

But here's the thing. The benefits from a rich career goal are not best seen in a Master's Degree or pay increase. Here's how I measure the richness of my career...meet Nicole, Jessica, and Katie.

These three girls are Freshmen in college. They are why I love my career being a teacher. I was Nicole's (l) 7th grade English Teacher. There was a group of girls (anywhere from 3--10) back in the 1999--2001 school years (7th and 8th graders) who used to come into my classroom after school just to hang out and chat about life and laugh. They named themselves the "After School Club." When they were leaving for the high school at the end of 8th grade, one of these girls (Nicole??) asked if they could have a slumber party over at my house to celebrate the end of middle school.

The slumber party was great! We ate pizza, played Balderdash, tie-dyed t-shirts, pillow cases, etc, watched movies, etc. I let the girls use markers and draw pictures and write messages on the walls of a spare room in my basement. It was crazy fun! I found out that they even slid down the stairs on my couch cushions after I had gone to bed. Crazy kids!

These girls went on to grow close and experience life together. They've had amazing ups and downs in the last five years. They have come to be known as leaders--so well respected by the adults in their lives and well loved by their peers. They are every bit playful, fun-loving teenagers and mature, tender-hearted people. I love that they have begun to develop the habit of living life to the fullest--living it well.

Gratefully, most of them have made efforts to remain connected to me in some way. Last year I led a Bible Study with six of them (the 3 pictured above included). It was their senior year in high school. What an honor to share that weekly time together last year. It was a "full circle" moment for me.

So, to top it off, this past weekend we had a "reunion sleepover" at my house. Could
I be any more blessed? How many people are able to watch people grow and change over the long haul?

This weekend the girls added new pictures and messages to those basement walls. There's no space left, even if wanted to hang a picture...or say, a framed Master's Degree! What great honor has been bestowed on me by these girls. How rich I am!

What's up with HILLS and MOUNTAINS???

Well, so, I watched two movies today. One was Brokeback Mountain. The other movie was The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

I need some time to process BBM. So check back with me in a few days, or chat with me over coffee about that one. I'm not sure where I am on that mountain of a story.

BUT...regarding the hill. I think I must have docu-fever. I can't get enough of them right now. This documentary is about a flock of wild parrots that routinely fly to a neighborhood of San Francisco called Telegraph Hill. Mark Bittner entered into the lives of this flock simply as a curious observer. He soon became a dependable friend to the flock. The documentary captures the individual stories of these birds, their personalities and interactions. Can you believe that I actually loved learning about the birds? I even have my favorite stories!!

Connor is one of the favorites. He's a Blue Crowned Conure. The only one in this flock of Cherry Headed Conures. He had been in the flock long enough to have outlived all the other original parrots. He was not accepted as a full member of the flock because he was a different species, but he still remained with the flock. He would step up his involvement with the other individuals whenever there was an injured bird or some other random bird not accepted by the flock (a random budgie that travelled for a few days with the flock for example).

Mingus is an injured parrot that Mark cared for in his home. Mark described Mingus as "the only wild bird that didn't want to be wild." He would never take the opportunity to leave Mark's home. Part of his injury was that he had a permanently broken leg. When in good spirits, Mingus would "dance" while Mark played the guitar. The next moment, Mingus would be attacking Mark's shoes, sqwaking and arguing. Dr. Jeckyl/Mr. Hyde--ish. Mark indicated that to discipline Mingus for acting agressively, he would put him outside as opposed to placing him in a cage for "time-out." For this hurt, disabled parrot, being placed outside on the porch, in his original state of freedom, was the ulitmate punishment. He wanted the security of Mark's home.

I also loved the story of Olive and Pushkin. Simply put, Pushkin took care of the babies while Olive was recuperating. What a father! It really is a love story.

The movie is in-fact based on Mark's book by the same name. Please note the sub-title though..."a love story....with wings."

A nice story set on a hill.

Breaking Loose

I think I am Babs the butterfly (see my previous post). I get the stuff of life more than ever before. Relationship, community, authenticity, trusting, holding my intense desires and even sharing them, asking others for help, giving from my heart, dreaming, and believing truth. It is the stuff of Jesus. If you are reading this, you are participating. Thank you! I'm breaking loose!!

The Heart of a Happy New Year 2006!

Happy New Year! Can you believe that it's 2006??!!!

I will share this really intense poem I re-read recently. It was one of the most memorable and impacting poems I read while in college many years ago. I re-read it for the first time a couple of days ago. May God have entrance into this heart in need of mending, so that He may regain control of the overthrown parts. Ravish Your love and grace upon my heart!

Ponder this poem:

BATTER MY HEART
Holy Sonnet XIV
John Donne

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.