Wilderness Wonderings...

  “Where are you from?” Few questions illicit as much anxiety as this one. At times, I even avoid meeting new people just to side-step this question. “Where are you from?”—seems like such an easy question that should have such an easy answer. For me and others like me, not so. I am a part of that anomalous group of people called “Third Culture Kids”—those who are born in one culture, raised in another, and never completely ‘at home’ anywhere—and often multilingual in some sense or another. Here is my journey…. [In a rich southern drawl] I was born in south Alabama…way down south where the peanut and cotton fields fill the landscape. I came into that world in the mid-60’s…long before cable TV, central a/c, cell phones, and anything akin to ‘urban sprawl.’ My daddy was the Baptist preacher at a small and growin’ church outside of Dothan, Alabama…that’s ‘Dothan’ – “DOOOE-thun.” My momma, a school teacher, and daddy raised my two older brothers and me in a good Southern home. My f...

Many times I consider my life completely ordinary--I imagine we all do. Then, there are moments like this morning.... Sitting, having a coffee at the Texas Cafe, I look out the window to see the palm trees rustling in the winds that make their way from the coast some 100 miles to the east; I overhear some 'old timers,' speaking in slurred Spanish, trading stories about rattlesnakes; at another table, a 'gringito,' architect, pours over drawings of some local project; the coffee I drink--beans from Colombia, sugar from Mexico--is hot, smooth, enlivening...and I realize that life is anything but ordinary. Life is amazing....

After way too long, I’m back. In the last three years, I pretty much exchanged the world of words, ideas and thoughts for a world of pictures, memes, pithy sayings and ‘likes.’ No more. There is no less. The world in which I wish to live is a world of words and ideas, of thoughts and musings. I want to live in a more meaningful world, a thoughtful world, a purposefully expressed world. If there are pictures, I want to share pictures that have meaning, that capture more than breakfast omelets, that will have meaning and purpose and arouse feelings and thoughts long after I am gone. I want what I write to be accessible again and again…and to have meaning, to invite people to think, to capture moments, ideas and events that merit remembrance. May I find myself a part of a growing community of like-minded, mindful, mind-enriching men and women who want their lives to matter, who want their thoughts to be heard and remembered, who live beyond ‘8hrs ago.’ So, I return to t...

I feel it all around me.  When I’m at the college, I feel it.  When I’m at the grocery store, I feel it.  When I’m at church, I feel it.  I speak of that underlying sense of urgency that seems to permeate so many parts of our lives, that subsonic, subliminal message of “hurry, hurry; do it now; let’s get it done….”  Perhaps I show my West Indian hand here.  But, if that is the case, then we here in North America have something to learn from the West Indies…and much of Latin America, Africa and Asia.  Okay…we have something to learn from most of the rest of the world! Why the urgency?  Perhaps it has something to do with our American perception that we must be “first” in the world.  Biggest, best, fastest, strongest…pick the superlative adjective, and we want to apply it to ourselves here in the US.  On a local level, apply these same superlatives to individual companies, schools, etc.  And, if we’re going to be the best, first...

An empty cup sits before me, a gift from friends…given to me when I was in Prague, Czech Republic, in October 2008, a small token of remembrance on my birthday while I was away from home. That cup is now my espresso cup, filled and drained daily…much to my mind’s content. I keep learning that the greatest joy and contentment usually comes from the simple things in life. I think back to the really expensive gifts I’ve received or even the expensive things I’ve bought…and I struggle to bring them to mind; they’re all but forgotten. But those simple things that brought and bring such joy? They are there at the mere thought: My espresso cup. A small fire on a cool, Fall evening. Sitting on a beach, shore or rocky edge overlooking a bay or the sea. The smell of cookies in the oven. Reading through “The Sermon on the Mount”…again. My old copies of Orthodoxy (G.K. Chesterton) and Mere Christianity (C.S.Lewis). My children laughing together as they tell a tale from days past....

Good Friday…. Darkness covers the land. Despair covers the disciples. We see the walk to Golgotha, that place of death, of crucifixion. We see Jesus and others whipped, beaten…and finally nailed to rough wooden beams. They are lifted, exposed to the crowds…jeered at, laughed, wept for. Jesus...King of the Jews? Son of God? He asks His Father to forgive them…offers some words of consolation to those around…and breathes His last. It is finished. …Or is it? Viernes Santo... La oscuridad cubre la tierra. Desesperación cubre a los discípulos. Vemos el camino al Gólgota, el lugar de la muerte, de la crucifixión. Vemos a Jesús y otros azotado, golpeado... y finalmente clavados a las vigas de madera duros. Ellos se levantan, expuestos a las multitudes... burlas, risas, lágrimas. ¿Jesús, rey de los judíos? ¿Hijo de Dios? Pide a su padre a perdonarlos... ofrece algunas palabras de consuelo a quienes lo rodean... y respira su última.  Se acabó. ¿O no?

Finally, a voice of reason: “The idea that Christians “stole” [Halloween] from pagans, therefore, seems pretty far-fetched. In fact the evidence seems to point the other way: the neopagans seem to have unintentionally “stolen” it from the Christians….” http://khanya.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/halloween-synchroblog/#!

I’ve started taking my lunch in Retama Park on Maple Avenue.  It’s a three minute walk from my office…and few people are ever there in the middle of day.  This park has become a delightful escape from the technology, air-conditioning, and straight lines of the office. Today, as in other days, I sit on a bench towards the center of the park, the only bench that’s actually in the shade.   A large water-oak spreads it limbs to block the harsh south Texas sun.  In the shade, the constant breezes making their way from the Gulf make the spot perfect for reading, thinking…or dozing. I’m reading a novel—Tony Hillerman ( The Walking Wind ).  Out of the corner of my eye, a person comes into view…a boy…a young boy…a BIG boy…maybe 10-years-old?  He has his basketball.  He makes his way onto the concrete courts where the netting is half torn away from the baskets.  He begins to dribble and shoot—duip, duip, duip, duip….plunk!...duip, duip...

A really good read for our days and times: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arthur-rosenfeld/simplify_b_1253917.html?ref=tw Cheers!

Often times in my classes, we begin to discuss those questions that deal with ‘worldview’ and ‘ultimate reality.’  The questions usually begin to surface when I suggest that our perspectives and understandings of the world are built on the foundation of our ‘presuppositions’—those underlying beliefs that we bring to every situation or question.  For instance, we have all have presuppositions about humanity.  I ask my students, “Are people, humans, basically good or basically bad?” How we answer this question will inform how we deal with others, what we expect of people, how we raise our children, etc.  If I presume humanity to be basically good, then I’m horrified at the Columbines, Auroras, Newtowns and city buses of New Delhi; if I presume humanity to be basically bad, then I’m not terribly surprised by the horrors of humanity (or at least I shouldn’t be!) But, is there another option?  After we have debated and fleshed out the good or bad perspecti...

Youth is not a time of life—it is a state of mind; it is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a predominance of courage over timidity…. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old only by deserting their ideals.  Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.  Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair—these are long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust. Whether 70 or 16, there is in every being’s heart the unfailing childlike appetite for…the joy of the game of life.  You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope; as old as your despair.  So long as your heart receives messages of beauty, cheer, courage, grandeur and power from the earth, from man and from the Infinite, so long are you young. -copied-

The decisions we make today will define the stories that get told about us… we are all writing a story with our lives.  ~ Josh Becker That’s a sobering thought.  And, I might add, it’s a thought we should have from time to time…just to remind us that we do not live unto ourselves, that people around us are watching us and listening to us.  They tell our story and will tell our story, whether we want them to or not. Near our home in Lance aux Epines, Grenada, when I was growing up, two old women lived together in a small house.  We really never knew them.  In fact, we couldn't get to know them because every time we got close to their home, they would come out and threaten us—“Get away from here or we’ll call the police!”  We didn't even have malicious intentions…well, not in the beginning anyway.  They continued to over-react and threaten us for seemingly no reasons at all.  So, we began to push back.  And, then Halloween came aro...

For me, it’s a well-worn theme related to the great “who-am-I?” quest.  Where is home?  What serves at that anchor for me when I need to know that I have a past?  The older I get, the more important it is to me to have a place called home.  And, while there have been shifts and so forth through the years, “home” really has not ever changed for me.  Some of you will have read my various “Third Culture Kid” ( Pt.1 , Pt.2 , Pt.2.5 )entries in the past—the story of my moving and traveling around as a child/teenager…and the sense of homeless that has often accompanied that.  Even with all the travels and culture ‘basket-turn-over,’ the real place that is home for me is Grenada in the southern Caribbean.  I lived seven years of my life there (1975-1982).  You may be thinking, “Just seven years??”  Well, consider this:  Seven years in Grenada is almost twice as long as I have lived anywhere else…ever!  Add to that the fact that I...

In a perfect world, what we do and who we are fall into a beautiful alignment. Even in our imperfect world, there are those who find this alignment…some for a season and a few for a lifetime. My job title is “Institutional Effectiveness & Assessment Analyst.” Seeing my title, you might actually think that I am an analyst. But, you’d be mistaken. You see, in my heart, I am a teacher, an educator. A set of circumstances in the last year moved me into this position, but I’ll save that for another time. Suffice to say, what I do is not in line with who I really am. I don’t love that, but it is what it is. However, in my position as an analyst, I do have the freedom to teach a course each semester at our college. The Office of Institutional Effectiveness & Assessment ‘owns’ me for eight hours a day, but before or after those eight hours, I am free to do as I wish. And, thanks to a wonderful English department chair and a constant need for adjunct instructors, I get to teach an eve...

Yes, there is something rather contradictory about such a title, but I have come to find this seeming paradox quite true.  In our culture at large, we come to value the unchanging, the steady, the constant.  I have heard someone say of another, “Oh, Mr. So-in-So…he is as steady as they come; you count on him like you can the sunrise.”  That’s a pretty high complement…one I've often wished to overhear being said about me…but probably never will.  That’s because I’m not in the ‘steady’ or ‘constant’ crowd.  I’m more likely to hear something like, “Oh, Jon…there he goes again…so fickle...chasing another dream….” I am a human…alive...and that means change.  Yet, in the midst of change, there ARE some constants.  For example, one unchanging aspect of my life is the love I have for my wife.  But, how I EXPRESS that love is ever changing.  At times, this love is expressed in a very physical way, through a closeness that I experience...

Inside my office...sitting, working...;      Outside...walking, standing, stretching, breathing deeply. Inside...clear, clean air goes unnoticed;      Outside...a hundred smells--some good, some bad, all noticed-- tickle my nose           with smells of life. Inside...walls of light grey, ceiling of white, carpet of faded, speckled purple;      Outside...my eyes feast on the palette of God's creation--colours of the rainbow in           a thousand hues. Inside...a steady 75 degrees;      Outside...cold mornings give way to warm afternoons which fade into cool evenings. Inside...seemingly unmoving air hums overhead incessantly, unchanging;      Outside...winds from off the Gulf rise and fall whispering in different tones as they pass through           leaves of live-oak...palm trees...the rubbery stuff of banana trees. In...

Reading, reading, reading!   Can't stop...won't stop--got to keep learning and keep the mind active. My present intellectual diet: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast of the 21st Century - George Friedman Brother Roger of Taize: Essential Writings Experiences in Translation - Umberto Eco Under the Unpredictable Plant  - Eugene Peterson I hope that you are reading also.  If you've found a really good book, share the title with us in the comments below. Hoping you all are off to a good New Year! ~Jon~

Happy New Year to all!  I hope that you are as happy to see this year beginning as I am.  2012 was a pretty good year…but this year will be even better! I wish you and yours the very best in the days, weeks, and months to come.  May we live well, live to the full, and live lives that impact others. More to come…!

Technology and innovation seem like positive if not innocuous words. By advances in these areas, we've seen illnesses cured, wars thwarted, and standards of living rise. Yet, we've also seen entire cultures become 'couch-potatoes,' a rise in cancer and nutrition related diseases. For all of the so-called “labor-saving devices” that have been developed, we now see a host of health issues that arise in our increasingly sedentary life-styles—obesity, prostate cancer, heart disease, etc. What looked good in the beginning has turned out to be a growing threat to our very lives. The “Smart Phone” will be numbered among those great technological innovations that seemed like a good idea at the time. These phones seem helpful enough, but peel back the layers, and we find a device that should worry any thinking, smart person! The “smart phone” is making us dumber. Rather than actually having to know or remember things anymore, we can rely on our smart phone...

Back in April 2009, I was enjoying my morning walk around "la cancha de futbol" near our home in Santa Catarina, and the following thoughts began to come to me.  I had been thinking about how to avoid the mis-steps and stumbles of days, weeks, months and years past.  As I contemplated why I had made mistakes in the past, what I had been thinking...and NOT thinking, these 'guiding points' began to come to me.  While I've not been entirely faithful to them, I do return to them again and again...and when I have been faithful, I have been able to avoid a lot of pain, wasted energy, emotional/spiritual 'skinned knees'...and I've been able to make good decisions with positive results--even though others knew nothing of it.  Here goes: A life of love is the most important thing Live today - in today, for today Do not make quick decisions Only act rashly in love (agape) Take a walk...and talk with the Lord Big plans often grow from big egos An idea to...