Nearness is My Desire

I have been faced with addiction of late, a serious, almost debilitating addiction.  It could ruin my health, my family’s health, and even shorten my life significantly.  The thing is, you might have the same problem, and not even know it.  My poison of choice: carbohydrates.

I know.  What’s the big deal, right? We need carbohydrates for energy.  What could be wrong with carbs?  And honestly, it’s not carbs that are the problem.  It’s our society’s addiction that is the problem, and the way we keep creating new and delicious ways to make them more addictive.  I wrote in my last post about the need for consciousness.  I have striven to cultivate more of it in many ways.  I pay much closer attention to sensation.  I take time to see details, to breathe in the smells that surround me, to listen and to seek silence, and to really feel what I am feeling.  Another important aspect of consciousness is tasting the food I’m eating.  I’ve changed my diet a lot, in seeking to wean myself from this nasty habit of high-glycemic foods.  (Food that are high on the glycemic index are the ones that increase the glucose in your blood more quickly than those that are low. To read more about how I’m doing that visit Dr. Wayne Andersen’s website on developing habits of health.)  I’ve gained a lot of energy and lost 12 pounds since I made this switch a month ago.  But my goal isn’t weight loss, it’s optimal health.  And ridding myself of addiction is a pretty important part of that.

Fear Addiction

In that last post, I talked about my ability to see since I’ve returned to America. And what I see is so sad.  People are addicted to fear.  And they are addicted to things that numb them from the fear.  The media pumps fear into our bodies with both real and imagined drama and trauma.

While living in China, I restricted my news media intake to scanning headlines to see if there was anything new or important happening.  In six years of living there, I think I opened less than a dozen news stories a year to learn more.   That doesn’t mean I was uninformed of what was happening, it means that I was more deeply informed of only those things that I felt really had an important impact in the world.  But America has multiple cable channels devoted to news, plus newscasts at every hour, for both local and national news.  Sadly, international news is generally covered very poorly with a very ethnocentric bias.  Compare any national news cast with coverage from BBC or Univision, and you’ll begin to see what I mean.  But what that means is that the “non-fiction” that we feed on daily is intended to feed an addiction to fear.  Broadcasters and publishers know that if they want to sell it, then “if it bleeds it leads.”  That’s what people want.  Is it their fault?  Who knows where the cycle begins…in the consumer that just wants to know “what’s going on” and “how to protect themselves” or in the media that gives the public what it wants. Add to that reality TV (which fosters a fear of humiliation) and most television drama, serving up a steady stream of violence and trauma, and you have a constant source to feed our addiction.

Regardless of where it begins, there is a common biological response to stress: we eat.  And we don’t choose lean chicken, fish or spinach, we choose chips and donuts and cookies.  We choose the highest glycemic index foods around.  And that makes a lot of sense, instinctively.  When you’re afraid, you need a good rush of sugar to make sure you can get to safety.  Much of our eating patterns are very biologically based.  It makes a lot of sense biologically to eat as much as you can and seek to rest as much as you can.  It makes sense if you have to chase down your food and gather roots and nuts and berries all day.

We are Cavemen

Well, my friends, I know it’s hard to believe with all the technology and industry surrounding us, but we are still cavemen.  Our bodies have changed very little over the last ten thousand years.  And they are just asking that we continue to treat them they way they are accustomed to being treated.  The problem is, our activity levels have changed…well, a bit…since we were required to spend energy in equal amounts to our consumption.  Man, if you could eat a thousand calories a day while lying around doing nothin’ back then, you were the king or queen of the cave.  Today, we don’t bat an eyelash to eating 1000 calories in one sitting, and then we keep on sitting and sitting and sitting.  So it’s not wonder there is an epidemic of obesity.  We feed our need for adrenaline by watching scary stuff, instead of living it.

But it is scary out there…

Everywhere we look we see the evidences of addiction:  addiction to sex, to alcohol, to any kind of drug you can ingest, to video games and social networking sites and entertainment.  We see families falling apart, or just struggling to stay afloat.  We see crimes that horrify and wars that make no sense.  We see an economy oriented towards protecting against our fears instead of educating to prevent our fears from becoming reality.  We see political, social and economic polarization so intense that it is without a doubt shattering our unity.

Ahhh…Unity

What I’ve noticed while I’ve been striving to stay conscious is that unity is really the only cure for our addictions.  When we see that we are one, not one family, not one people, but really one with everything (I know, takes you to that old Buddhist joke about the monk that goes to the hot dog stand and asks for one with everything, right?)…anyway, when we start paying attention, we see our connectedness, not just within our families and neighbors, but within the world.  What we eat affects the air we breathe, the water, the land.  And what happens to those things affects what we eat.  Where there is war, there is famine.  Where there is peace, there is excess.  And because there is such an imbalance in the world, we don’t even notice when a child starves to death.

So, once again, I’m advocating consciousness.  Try it for 30 days, or your money back.  Pay attention to what your body is telling you it needs to be healthy.  Pay attention to your community because it will also tell you the same thing.  And in doing so, maybe we can cure ourselves of our fear addiction and come closer to what we all want…a sense of nearness…to God, to our Source (or whatever you call that which centers you), to each other and to lasting security and peace.

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Parking Miracles: Act As Though Your Prayer Has Been Answered

Well, maybe He's not too busy...

So I’ve got this weird issue.  I love prayer.  I know it works.  I experienced plenty of confirmations that Someone out there cares about what happens to me.  But somehow, I’ve slipped into this attitude of, “I’m not talking to You right now!”  I can’t really pin point any reason to be angry at God.  With very few exceptions, my life is pretty great.  So what’s it all about?  Frankly, it feels petulant.  That’s embarrassing.  I mean, really.  This is God we’re talking about, that Unknowable Creator Who knows me better than I know my own self, the One Who made the whole universe just so we could learn how to be closer to Him.

Well, I’ve got some major life-decisions to make, so it’s about time I got over it.  To help me, I dug up a useful process for using prayer in decision making, attributed to Shoghi Effendi.  I thought I’d share it here:

“Step 1: Pray and meditate about it. Use the prayers of the Manifestations of God as they have the greatest power. Then remain in the silence of contemplation for a few minutes.

Step 2: Arrive at a decision and hold this. This decision is usually born during the contemplation. It may seem almost impossible of accomplishment but if it seems to be as answer to a prayer or a way of solving the problem, then immediately take the next step.

Step 3: Have determination to carry the decision through. Many fail here. The decision, budding into determination, is blighted and instead becomes a wish or a vague longing. When determination is born, immediately take the next step.

Step 4: Have faith and confidence that the power will flow through you, the right way will appear, the door will open, the right thought, the right message, the right principle or the right book will be given you. Have confidence, and the right thing will come to your need. Then, as you rise from prayer, take at once the fifth step.

Step 5: Then, he said, lastly, ACT; act as though it had all been answered. Then act with tireless, ceaseless energy. And as you act, you, yourself, will become a magnet, which will attract more power to your being, until you become an unobstructed channel for the Divine power to flow through you. Many pray but do not remain for the last half of the first step. Some who meditate arrive at a decision, but fail to hold it. Few have the determination to carry the decision through, still fewer have the confidence that the right thing will come to their need. But how many remember to act as though it had all been answered?

How true are those words – ‘Greater than the prayer is the spirit in which it is uttered’ and greater than the way it is uttered is the spirit in which it is carried out.”

When I first came across this passage, I was in a pretty bad state, post-divorce.  I thought, what the heck.  I’ll try out this prayer thing, see how it works.  I decided to practice with small but non-trivial stuff.  I lived in a sketchy neighborhood at the time, and would sometimes come home past mid-night.  My prayer experiment was simple.  Every time I came home after midnight, I said a short prayer that I would find a parking place on my block.  It wasn’t trivial.  I needed to be safe.  Once I said the prayer, I acted as though it had been answered.  Every time I found a spot near my apartment on my block.  This happened many times over the course of two years. On the north side of Chicago, that’s practically a miracle. And that “act as though” part was critical.  It wasn’t hope.  I projected confidence.  It was a fairly small thing, so I felt like I could manage that kind of confidence.  But I tell you, every other time I have used this process, for much larger things than parking, it also worked.  I’m not saying I got what I wanted when I asked for a car.  I’m saying that when I wanted clarity, I got it.  When I made a decision, and acted as though it had already been accomplished, doors did open, the right person or book or thought did appear.  So I’m going to give it a try again.  What have I got to loose?

I think one key to it all is that I try not be selfish in my prayer.  For example, before I write, I ask God to make me ready to serve Him.  “If it be Thy pleasure, make me to grow as a tender herb in the meadows of Thy grace, that the gentle winds of Thy will may stir me up and bend me into conformity with Thy pleasure, in such wise that my movement and my stillness may be wholly directed by Thee.”  If I’m asking God to inspire me so that both the movement and stillness of my pen are directed by Him, then at least I’m starting out with good intentions.  Writing can be such an act of ego.  Writing selflessly is like walking on the edge of a sword.  I have to keep my service to the reader and the story at the forefront of my mind, or I’ll be shredded to bits.

How do you use prayer in your decision-making or in your creative process?

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“The Vast Horizon That Guaruntees Nothing”

Giving children a bow in their lives, a vast horizon that guarantees nothing

I just watched a Ted Talk by Tan Le, a technologist who spoke about her immigration from Vietnam as a young child.  She speaks of being on a boat disguised as a fishing vessel, of the adults keeping poison available for all of them to escape from the rape and torture of pirates if they were captured.  She tells the harrowing tale of their escape, and the courage of her mother and grandmother, and by extension shows her own bravery, as they establish a new life in Australia.  She speaks at the end about her desire for children.  She says, “I wonder about the boat.  Who could ever wish it on their own?  Yet I am afraid of privilege, of ease, of entitlement.  Can I give them a bow in their lives, dipping bravely into each wave?  The unperturbed and steady beat of the engine?  The vast horizon that guarantees nothing?”  The confident assurance of her mother and grandmother that failure was not an option carried Tan through her childhood, through law school and international recognition, through greater achievements after that.

Now I turn my thoughts to my own children.  We live in a strange paradox, our family.  To the western observer, we have given up a life of privilege, cut our income to a tenth of what it once was, immersed ourselves in a foreign language and culture, different not only in appearances but also in its deep philosophical roots.  We live in an apartment a fraction of the size of the house we left behind.  We depend on public transportation after being a two-car family.  We have to go to great lengths to make macaroni and cheese. But to our Chinese friends, we are the privileged class.  We take taxis often.  We have coffee at Starbucks occasionally.  Our income is more than three times the local average. We make this expensive food called macaroni and cheese.

Our children are treated like rock stars when we go out, with their blond hair and big blue eyes.  Everyone wants a picture with them.  If we charged a small fee we would be millionaires. They are given candy without even batting a eye in our direction to ask for permission.  My children have to be sternly reminded that they are not to ask for things from strangers because, no matter what it is, the stranger is likely to hand it over…an iPhone with a cool game, ice cream, the lot.

In this limbo land, I have decided to remove my son from public school.  Though I’m fairly certain his sister will do well in the school, he has special needs that the school can’t address.  The decision was difficult, because I have often felt I don’t have the patience or the organizational skills to home-school effectively.  My husband and I struggled with how to address our son’s growing sense of isolation and frustration by hoping the problem would go away.  It didn’t.  By the end of last term, he had stopped doing any kind of work in class, and he was, without a doubt the loneliest child I knew.  His self-talk was (and still is) very negative and even frightening, with occasional suicidal statements. This is terrifying to hear from an eight-year-old.   Sometimes, he had upswings that would give us hope.  But those had recently all but gone the way of the dodo.  Finally, I purchased an ebook that discussed how to home-school a child with his needs.  The first section of the book records anecdotes from other parents who also decided to home-school their child.  There was such a resonance.  I realized that my fears and inadequacies are not enough to keep torturing this poor kid, and torture is what his school had become – a mixture of bullying, and being alternately ignored and belittled by a teacher who doesn’t understand him.

So he is now at home with me every morning.  And we are trying to figure out this homeschooling business.  We’ve hired a tutor to continue his Chinese studies in language and math, plus provide child care during the afternoons while I work.  So far so good.  This is day two.

I keep coming back to that image of Tan Le on the boat.  She went the other way, from the East to the West, from a difficult life to a life of increasing ease.  And she fears privilege, ease and entitlement.   Are our children benefiting from our challenges?  Who knows?  They speak fluent Chinese, and will be fully literate in the language much sooner than I will be.  Does that increase their ease? They will grow up as third culture kids, and that brings its own challenges and blessings.

This world is changing so quickly.  One thing I am certain of is that China has an important place in the future of our planet.  Our children’s bilingual/multiculturalism  will probably benefit them.  But it is a vast horizon, and there are no guarantees.  I have friends whose children, though they grew up in China, have rejected their language and experience here as useless.  How can I help my children avoid that rejection?

That boat.  I keep wondering about that boat, too.  “Can I give them a bow in their lives, dipping bravely into each wave?  The unperturbed and steady beat of the engine?  The vast horizon that guarantees nothing?” This is such powerful image.  It implies something under the surface, invisible and guiding, moving into an unknown future, driven by a profound purpose.  Maybe the best I can do is provide a consistent message to my children about the purpose of life, and then provide them with skills to follow their own path of service.  That’s really what this blog is about.  As an exploration of purpose, it is a constant reminder that I am here to be of service to the world.  My immediate concern is the part of the world that is closest at hand: my family.  Let’s hope I don’t sink that boat.

How do you help ensure that your children don’t become accustomed to privilege and ease?  How do you cultivate gratitude in your children?  Or perseverance in the face of difficulty?   What’s your perspective on these issues?

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Tulsa Buried No More

My husband recently reminded me of an experience he had while doing some consulting work in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  He had some free time, and decided to explore the town.  He came across a neighborhood that was razed to the ground. Dozens and dozens of foundations laid exposed, with grass growing around and in between the cracks of the cement.  He realized that it must be the site of the 1921 race riot, and shortly afterwards found a marker that said something about it.  He said it was so eerie, standing in the middle of the desolate and abandoned area decades after the atrocities of that riot, and only blocks away from the bustling, dynamic center of this small city.  I asked him what started that riot, and he said he couldn’t remember, but that it had something to do with a black boy and a white girl.

The novel I’m working on features a young interracial couple in a small fictional town that is facing racial tensions in the present. I knew almost nothing about this event in Tulsa, so I decided to do some research about it.   First, I went to the website of the Tulsa public library, and scanned the Oklahoma history timeline that local history page features, the history from 1541-1940.  I had to scan it several times before I realized that this riot wasn’t on the timeline at all.  I couldn’t believe that an entire neighborhood being burned out didn’t show up on the State’s historical timeline.  I dug a little deeper and then found some pages on the riot in the African-American Resource Center’s section. What I learned stunned me.

In the early part of the 20th century, Tulsa had developed a vigorous economy, especially among the black and native American residents of the city, in an district called Greenwood.  It was known as “Black Wall Street”.  Perhaps because of this, though I am only speculating, there was also a significant presence of the Ku Klux Klan in Tulsa.  Race relations were not what one would call harmonious.  Here is a fairly in-depth look at that history.

It all started the morning of May 31, 1921, in an elevator of the Drexel Building.  Something happened between a black 19-year-old boy and a 17-year-old girl.  Some say she was assaulted, others say it was a lovers’ quarrel.  It could have been just an accidental foot-stepping.  In any case, the boy was arrested, and plans were made to lynch him. At one point, there were up to 10,000 people gathered at the court-house where he was being held, trying to get to the boy to lynch him, with a small number of Sheriff’s deputies and some black men trying to protect him.   You can read a quite thorough and compelling timeline of the riot, with maps, here.  The facts that I find so astonishing are that over the course of the night and the following day, over 1200 black-owed homes and businesses were destroyed, and over 300 people died.  It was the first time airplanes were used in combat, EVER, and they were used by white people to shoot at and bomb black people.  State and national authorities were brought in to control the violence, but they actually just helped in the massacre and destruction, which were systematic and thorough.  There are many sources of photographs and video available on the web, as well as the visual history I have posted above.  Please take the time to view at least some of it.

What overwhelms and disgusts me most is that I think I may have heard about this before, but I’m not sure.  How can that be?  How can the largest race riot in the history of America be so buried?  Tulsa’s own public library has a timeline of state history that doesn’t even list the tragedy.  I can think of three events that even the most ignorant of American’s should know about Oklahoma’s history, and they are: the facts surrounding the Trail of Tears, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, and this riot, the most costly one in the history of the United States.  Why is it buried?  I learned about the Trail of Tears.  It is a mark of horrendous racism, just as this riot is.  Is it too embarrassing?  Is it still too close to home?  Is it because racism is still the most challenging issue facing the country, even though we have been able to change our language to be more politically correct, and to elect a president based on the content of his character rather than on the color of his skin?

What I mean to say is that I don’t see the coverage of this event by mainstream…anybody – media, academia, civil society.  Websites that document the event are mostly amateurish in production, though they contain well-written and researched content.  Even Tulsa’s Public Library’s website buries the more polished site created by the AARC .  Why aren’t we remembering this atrocity as a nation?

I think it is important, but not because we need to place blame.  This thing is festering, as all the other hidden “embarrassments” of our country’s past are.  I watch from afar, from across the ocean, and I see our country no longer just fragmenting, but rather shattering into a million pieces, and part of me weeps to see it.  Our diversity as a nation is its greatest strength.  But we seem to have not gotten that fact yet.  We let these notions of difference cause conflict and strife, and then act as if they don’t exist. There is another way.  We could begin to recognize that we can only reach real understanding and progress when we appreciate, but also value, our differences.

I hope to contribute to that dawning awareness, one that signals our maturity as a nation.  What do you think we can do to help bring about healing, rather than blaming, as these negative aspects of our history come more to light?

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The Sticking Power of Sacrifice: How it can help you keep your resolutions

The seed sacrifices itself for the tree

Such a lofty title – and all I’m doing is trying to find some sticking power to keep my own resolutions.  Like making writing my first professional priority.  It’s already January 8 and I spent most of last week grading papers and exams instead of writing.  I did, however, “procrastinate” on the grading by writing a 19-page short story that just sucked me right in and wouldn’t let me go until I finished it.  Two days later, I had a first draft.

But the title of this post wrote itself too.  I have been thinking about sacrifice a lot lately.  The word has a bad rap in our culture.  It implies deprivation.  It sounds like “I gotta give up something, and it’s gotta hurt.”  We hear it used in expressions like, “I’ve got to sacrifice my lunch hour to finish this report,” or “He had to sacrifice some golf time to volunteer at the school.”  To many, the word is distasteful.  For me it was too, especially when I discovered that sacrifice should hurt.

But I read something recently and it kind of blew my mind and shook my world.  It was essentially that sacrifice means letting go of that which is lower for that which is higher.  For example, the seed sacrifices itself for the tree.  OK, so I’m attributing will to an inanimate object, but just stay with me here…The seed lets go of its form — even cracks itself open — to allow the tree to grow.  Another example I read helped me get this.

“The relation between food and the eater is usually considered from the standpoint of the eater alone.  But surely if the food could be consulted, its attitude would be quite other.  It has two possibilities for a standard of judgment.  It could be either that of resentment at the loss of its station of animal or vegetable, or it could be one of exultation over its change from the station of animal and vegetable matter to the station of the human organism, and the possibility offered it of becoming a working part of the muscle, nerve and brain of man.  We look upon the world of Nature and see it as the battleground between the weak and the strong.  But it is just as possible to view it as the field of sacrifice wherein lower or weaker forms of life become transformed into higher and stronger ones through self-sacrifice.  In fact, it is quite possible that one of the causes behind the slow evolution of species is this very principle of sacrifice.”

Now, Howard Colby Ives was writing this back in 1912.  But it applies in so many ways to my life today.  It puts things into perspective.  I’m not depriving myself of that cream puff, I’m giving myself better health.  I’m not depriving myself of the ability to speak my thoughts freely, I am gaining the virtue of tact.  I’m not giving up my “paid” work, I’m developing my calling, which in the long run, will make me more prosperous.

This was most profoundly applied to my perception of motherhood recently.  I was thinking about my children from my first marriage who haven’t spoken to me in over five years, though I have made every effort I know to reach them to let them know I love them no matter what.  I thought, “Do I need to sacrifice my relationship with my children for something higher?”

Ugh.  That thought kicked me in the stomach.

I walked into my husband’s office and sat in the chair next to his desk, and asked him the same question.

He looked at me for a while.  Then he asked me, “If you had to choose between your children becoming closer to you or closer to God, which would you choose?”

Well, that’s not a fair question, I thought.  My children should be close to both.

Then he made a triangle with his index fingers and thumbs, and said, “If your children are getting closer to God, and so are you, aren’t you getting closer to each other?”

God is at the apex of the triangle.  In any relationship we have, if we are constantly demanding, “Hey, I’m over here!  Pay attention to me!” so that the other person will face us, then we are asking her to turn her attention away from God.  I am certain that I have been emotionally jumping up and down, shouting, “Hey, I’m your mom!  I’m over here!  I demand acknowledgment! I miss you!”  But if I let go of that, and simply desire with all my heart that they become closer to God, and I continue to write to them and pray for them, as they progress in their spiritual development they will naturally grow closer to me.  But I let go not because I want that outcome, but because I want to be closer to God. I want to be more patient and forgiving and kind and truthful and…and…and.

So what does this have to do with New Year’s resolutions?  Resolutions are typically things that we choose to become better people, more prosperous, happier, healthier, etc.  I don’t know about you, but I find it easier to stick to something if I feel the gain immediately.  And I feel it immediately if I connect my response to what I am gaining rather that to what I am loosing.  For example, I have already lost my children in terms of communication and physical relationship.  When I try to get those things, it only causes me, and probably them, pain.  But if I let go of those and seek with all my heart a stronger relationship with God for all of us, I have attached my heart to a purpose that can only bring all of us joy.

Try it out.  Instead of “Loose 10 pounds,” how about “Become physically fit by running three times a week.” Do your resolutions feel more sustainable if you think and feel in terms of what you are gaining?  What are your resolutions, and how would you state them in terms of the nature of sacrifice – giving up “that which is lower for that which is higher”?

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Phoenix in the Ashes of 9/11

What beauty can rise from the ashes?

I am working on the re-write of my second novel.  Yes.  The first novel sits on the floor of my closet, waiting for its re-write.  But for now, let’s focus on the second one.  The main character, Suzanne, is an attorney.  She has worked in publishing for about three years, since she finished her law degree from NYU.  She took a job in Chicago so she could get away from the reminders that lingered in New York.   She was there during 9/11,  and lost her fiance, Evan, who was a consultant working for a small subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan, on the 95th floor of the North Tower.  She was in lower Manhattan when it collapsed.  A portion of the novel deals with the issues Suzanne has surrounding that experience, including post-traumatic stress disorder.

At least 10,000 people have met the criteria for treatment for 9/11-related PTSD.  Estimates for the number of people who may actually suffer from the disorder are as high as the hundreds of thousands.  Whether or not it the phenomenon is that wide-spread, it is, without a doubt, one of the most traumatic experiences our nation has had as a whole.  But it is only so because each of us has some kind of relationship to the events of that Tuesday morning ten years ago, whether it is watching the television in horror, being an eye-witness or first responder, or having a personal relationship with those who lost their lives.

I have a friend.  I’ll call her Sally.  When I met her, this tough woman truck-driver with bright hazel eyes and curly hair was suffering from a number physical ailments, but the thing she struggled with most was anger and guilt.  She came to my house with her fiance and a friend of hers.  They wanted to investigate having a Baha’i wedding, which consists of a simple vow, with no clergy required.  She and her fiance wanted to avoid the inevitable conflicts that came from the various religious options available from their families’ backgrounds, which included Lutheran, Catholic and Mormon.  But they wanted a spiritual, rather than secular, service.  I told them about the basics of the ceremony, but I wanted them to have  brief overview of the Faith,  so they could understand the wedding’s basic context.  I started with some of the basic teachings, and then moved into a brief history of the life of Baha’u'llah, the Faith’s Founder.  During the explanation of the teachings, she was very interested, and eagerly asked questions.  But when I started talking about the history, she became reticent and agitated. Finally, she said, “Wait a minute.  Are you telling me all these beautiful teachings of peace and justice are from over there?”  I asked what she meant, and she indicated, with some difficulty and emotion, the Middle East.  I told her that, yes, the Baha’i Faith originated in Iran. She then told me this story:

Several years before, she got involved in an online community with a friend.  In this community, a group of 20 to 30 people became very close to each other.  They even planned several gatherings in real space, and had a great time, both in small groups, and all together.  Then one of them had a great idea, to see both coasts of this great country of ours.  The plan was simple.  They would all meet in LA to see the sights, then fly to New York the next day for a night on the town.  Sally was psyched.  She coordinated the plan.  She helped people make their travel arrangements.

The day she was to leave on the trip, all hell broke loose with a soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend.  He had become extremely possessive and jealous, and told her that she couldn’t go on the trip.  She, being the tigress she is, told him where he could go.  He then proceeded to take her keys, drivers license and credit cards, and vanished.  Though she did go to the authorities to report the problem, there was no way she could meet the group in time.  She had planned to drive up the coast and meet a group of them traveling from Boston to LA to start the party.  She missed that flight.  Her friends did not.  They got on the plane, American Airlines Flight 11, that Tuesday morning.   A friend they were going to meet in LA called Sally that morning, panicked because she had just seen the news, and woke Sally from a sound sleep.  The friend couldn’t believe she had reached her.  Sally didn’t understand. She hadn’t seen the news.  When she found out what happened, something broke deep inside her.

“I used to not care who you were, black, white, purple, green.  You were a human being.  But after 9/11, everything from over there,” she said, choked up, “everything, became evil to me.  I can’t believe that something as beautiful as what you’re telling me is from there.”

She sat on my couch and cried, this gentle soul, so completely and personally hurt by what some mad men did to make their mark on the world.

But Sally couldn’t let go of those beautiful teachings.  Over the next few months, she asked question after question. There were times when she would rage, not understanding why people do such horrible things to each other.  Then she would watch her child show compassion to my three-year-old son, reading a book to him, or showing him how to be gentle with a kitty, and she would say, “We learn it, don’t we?”

I watched this angry and hurt woman transform into a beacon of tolerance.  Two months after I met her, we went to an inter-faith prayer gathering for peace organized by the local university.  Several priests and ministers from various congregations prayed.  A Baha’i prayer for peace was read. The mullah from the local mosque said a moving prayer for peace and inter-faith cooperation and healing.  Afterwards, Sally approached the man.  With tears in her eyes, she said, “Two months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to face you without a gun in my hand.  Today, you showed me how powerful love is.  Thank you for your prayer.”  Those were not just words to this woman.  It was absolute truth.  I don’t know if that mullah realized the miracle he had participated in, but I know what I witnessed.

There is a so much hatred in the world.  It is darkness, and it causes terrible injuries to our hearts and souls.  But there is also healing, and greater love, and light.  If you have story that shows the kind of transformation I saw in Sally, share it.  I’d love to hear it.  I also want to help my character, Suzanne, learn from your wisdom, so don’t hold back.  Show us how the phoenix rises from the ashes that still smolder in the hearts of so many broken hearts.

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Why I’m Not Dead

I discovered something today.  I want to die.

In fact, I think most of us do at some point in our lives.  There is a part of us all that knows that what comes after this must be better than the suffering we have to endure in this physical plane of existence.  Whether you believe we are worm food or that there is an afterlife, getting off this spinning cesspool of agony doesn’t sound like such a bad idea sometimes.

To me heaven and hell are states of being along a continuum of nearness to or distance from God.  Our intended destination is His presence.  That’s where He wants us, not for His sake, but for ours.  He doesn’t need us there.  He created the universe, and everything in and beyond it.  So it isn’t an ego trip that He created us to know Him and to love Him.  He did it because He loves us and wants us to know the joy of that love.  So even if I haven’t gone as far as He intends me to in this life, it just seems like it would be such a relief to put my movement on that continuum completely in His hand, rid myself of this free will business once and for all.

I was sitting on the steps outside our apartment this afternoon, still upset from an argument I had with my husband about nothing that important.  I was smoking a cigarette and thinking, “Why is it that I do this?  I know it’s not good for me?  Why don’t I start running, and taking care of my body?  Why don’t I care about my health that much?”  And the answer came with such clarity and truth that I was struck by its simplicity.  I want to die, the sooner the better.

So why don’t I hasten the process even more?  Why don’t I find a nice bottle of sleeping pills, or some other such painless form of calling it quits?  These were real questions in my mind.  I wanted an answer.  Why aren’t I suicidal?  What stops me from really going there?  My initial thoughts about my children weren’t really satisfying enough.  I wasn’t really thinking about them, but rather the idea of my children being without a mother.  The older two have chosen that for themselves, and seem to be…well, they are at least alive, though I don’t know if they are well.  So, life goes on without mother.  I am fairly certain that my husband would get over it.  My parents and sister wouldn’t understand.  It would be a tremendous shock to them.  They would be deeply saddened.  But they, too, would get over it.  Those answers weren’t deep enough.

Then I thought about my ex-husband and his family.  I got angry.  I began to scratch the surface of the truth.  “See,” they would say to my children, “she wasn’t any good for you.  She was a suicidal mess.  You needed better than that.”  I will NOT give them the satisfaction, the excuse.  While I was angry, I realized that a big reason I am not suicidal is that I find suicide to be the height of selfishness.  You take yourself out of the physical plane, removing all potential for good, for service, for simply being there when you are needed, because you are tired of the grind.

Oh, my God, I am tired of the grind.  I want my heart to stop being crushed under the foot of my grief.  I want someone, anyone, to take up my cause, and stop hiding behind the veil of non-interference.  My children are surrounded by people who claim to be my friends (at least on Facebook).  They are people who espouse the principles of unity and the importance of letting our hearts “burn with loving kindness for all who may cross your path.”  But they do not call my children to account, lovingly, kindly, but frankly, damn it.  They are old enough to face the fact that I am their mother.  Why can no one remind them that I love them, that I have not for a moment stopped wanting them in my life?  My letters do not get through.  I am blocked at every turn, with every slight move I make to let them know myself.  What would happen if every single person who knows me and knows them passed the message along? Yes, they may shun you as they have shunned others.  But then another valiant soul would be right behind you, repeating the same message of love.  Do we not believe it is powerful enough to build unity, and wear down the walls of estrangement that have been allowed to grow and calcify through inaction?

Ok. That rant is over.  The point is, suicide is selfish.  I would be taking myself out of that grind because it is hard.  It is excruciating.  But then there are my monklets.  My eight-year-old son would not only not understand, he would completely and thoroughly blame himself.  My three-year-old daughter would feel utterly abandoned by the one she adores most in the world, the one who plays Barbies with her, and lets her twist her fingers through my hair while she falls asleep. These reasons are not about motherhood so much as they are about kindness.

If you watch or read enough about near-death experiences, you know that the frequent message that comes from them is that the only thing that really matters about what we do in the world is kindness.  Our accomplishments and accolades account for squat, zippo, nada.  To quote Jewel, “In the end, only kindness matters.”  And kindness isn’t just the smile we give to our neighbors.  It’s selflessly giving our all to our studies so we can learn how we can best be of service.  It’s putting our all into our work so that it can truly be a service.  It’s letting the children given to our care know how precious they are as human beings.  It’s helping them prepare for a life of kindness.  Suicide is a completely unkind act because it is entirely selfish.

So I am alive.  Then why, dear friends, do I act like I am just waiting to die?  Why do I sit on this fence, eating whatever the hell I want, smoking when I want, not exercising?  Why do I break commitments to myself?  Why do I choose to forget the discipline of prayer and meditation as the source, the well-spring of kindness?  It is time to choose.  What do I want for my life, possibly forty more years of existence on this physical plane?  Do I want to continue as I have been, living in mediocrity so that I can possibly make it 35 more, instead of 40?  Or even less, if I’m lucky?  Tears stream down my face as I ponder this very real question.  I get the kindness thing.  It’s why I exist, why any of us do.  It’s the way we really learn about God’s love.  Kindness requires compassion and truthfulness.   True justice is an expression of kindness.  Excellence and generosity are the beginning and end of kindness.  So what’s it gonna be for me?  I’ll be kind to everyone but myself, so I can get rid of this shell as soon as possible?  How is that not suicide, slow and painful?  It’s a question I will not answer here.  You will just have to watch me, watch my life, to find out.  Words, at this point are useless.  Let deeds, not words, be my adorning, in this one thing.

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Fostering racial unity through multicultural literature

Stories can bring us inside the Golden Rule

In ­­­­1912, Louis Gregory, an attorney with a well-established law firm in Washington, D.C, married Louisa Mathew, a British woman of refined character.  What is extraordinary is not that they had a fruitful and happy marriage of forty years, until his death in 1951.  This was not uncommon in those days.  It was not extraordinary that Mr. Gregory gave up that law practice to promote his ideals, though perhaps that was not as common.  What is extraordinary is that Mr. Gregory descended from slaves and slave owners, and his skin was a lovely shade of milk chocolate brown.  What made this extraordinary is the rarity of interracial marriages during that period in American history.  Intimate relationships between blacks and whites such as marriage were at an all-time low in early twentieth century (Gullickson 291).  Segregation had been firmly established across the country, and racism’s pernicious influence could be felt in every train station and diner, every school and hospital, every church and department store.  It could be felt by Mr. Gregory, that is, and by those whose skin did not reflect light the way privileged White skin did. 

Racism, or racial prejudice, is prejudging “on the basis of race – primarily skin color – and to maintain such a prejudgment even in the face of evidence that all human beings are equal” (Lepard 64).  This prejudgment generally manifests itself as a partiality towards people with lighter skin in most parts of the world.  This kind of prejudice can be seen throughout human history, but for brevity’s sake I want to focus on American history.  In America’s colonial beginnings, indentured servitude and slavery were the primary sources of labor.  As the idea spread that European-Americans had a duty and a right to expand westward, so did the notion that those with darker skin had no rights to the glorious destiny awaiting those pioneers.  According to Richard Thomas, a historian who chronicled racism in his book Racial Unity: An Imperative for Social Progress, “Between 1815 and 1855, ideas about liberty and the progress of human beings (derived from the Enlightenment and the American Revolution) were replaced by the concept of white supremacy which resulted in the removal of Indians from their native lands and in the perpetuation of slavery” (qtd. in Berjis para. 3).  Economic reasons essentially justified the idea that some were less human than others : free land and labor.  

Though slavery ended with the Emancipation Proclamation, racism did not.  Segregation and anti-miscegenation laws drove the races even further apart in almost all aspects of life.  As historian Aaron Gullickson rather clinically describes, “After emancipation, miscegenation threatened an emerging biracial order that demanded an end to interracial sex and its ambiguous product” (291).  To keep a biracial social order in which those with lighter skin maintained a privileged status the notions of superiority were perpetuated and became ingrained in the social fabric.  If people of different races coexisted, equality would have been required to keep social harmony.  Those in power could lose that privilege.  

But these injustices were and are not sustainable.    Racial violence and the non-violent civil rights movement swept through the nation from the mid-fifties to the early seventies, and established legal equality with regard to race, religion, gender and ability.  But the country is still far from the ideal of racial unity that Louis Gregory was promoting in 1912 when he married his white British wife, an ideal which “demolishes all superstitions, all prejudices.  Here racial boundaries disappear as men gaze upon the souls and characters of their fellows … Here men and women have the same rights and neither tries to enslave the other” (Gregory qtd. in Buck 21).  

Exploring several examples of efforts towards racial unity can help increase our awareness of the effort required to cure the disease of racism.  In American history, there are several well-known examples in the abolitionists of the antebellum period and the civil rights movement of the mid-20^th Century.  During these periods, people of both the Black and White races arose to defend the human and legal rights of the oppressed.  Here, though, I will focus on two more intimate human endeavors: friendship and marriage.  

Also in 1912, Louis Gregory, and other Baha’is in the Washington, D.C. area, hosted an “Interracial Unity Meeting.” The invitation reads, in part: “You are cordially invited to an interracial unity meeting. “All are welcome, regardless of race, color or creed” (viewed in Buck 8).  The meeting was held to promote and discuss a central principle of the Bahá’í Faith, that of the oneness of humanity, which calls the abolishment of all forms of prejudice.  Gregory and his wife continued to promote these ideas throughout the decade, and were often required to travel separately because of segregation, and at times were even in danger because of their marriage.    In 1921, along with Agnes Parsons, a wealthy White woman from Washington, D.C., and Martha Root, a White female journalist from Pittsburgh, Louis Gregory helped to organize the first in a series of “Race Amity” conventions.  These well-attended conferences featured other advocates of equality at the time, such Jane Addams, Harlem Renaissance philosopher Alain Locke, and anthropologist Franz Boas (Louis Gregory para. 5).  That these conferences and meetings were organized and attended by a diverse audience (the first had an estimated 1500 attendees) was nearly unheard of during the era of extreme segregation (Buck 25).  Their supporters coexisted, flying directly in the face of the idea that the races should be kept separate, and that a “biracial order” should be maintained.  Today, as a consequence of those early meetings,  the Bahá’í Faith does not follow the trend Martin Luther King described when he said, “the 11 o’clock hour on Sunday is the most segregated hour in American life” (qtd. in Freyer 1).  Across the country, Bahá’í spiritual gatherings, religious study and children’s classes will show a diverse, loving and unified community.  

Interracial marriage is another powerful, yet intimate means of destroying the root of enmity.  Sociologists often use interracial marriage statistics to measure racial attitudes (see both Gullickson and Freyer).  According to Freyer, “social intimacy is a way of measuring whether or not a majority group views a minority group on equal footing.  In most information-based theories of discrimination, stereotyping, stigma, and inequality, social intimacy leads to less discrimination and improved outcomes for racial minority groups.”  This bodes well for American society, as both Gullickson and Freyer show that interracial marriage as been on a steep incline since the early 1970s.  Though marriage partners are as likely to project their negative qualities on to their spouses as any other human grouping, marriage requires a continually heightening awareness of one’s foibles and follies, as well as an acceptance of one’s spouse’s, if the marriage is to succeed.  Louis and Louisa Gregory lived in the harmonious unity of marriage.  What better way to become aware of, and root out, prejudicial tendencies?   

Racism is ultimately a spiritual issue, not a cultural or economic one.  Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, addressed both Black and White Americans about racism in 1939, saying:  

“Let neither think that anything short of genuine love, extreme patience, true humility, consummate tact, sound initiative, mature wisdom, and deliberate, persistent, and prayerful effort [i.e. means by which psychological defenses may be rooted out], can succeed in blotting out the stain which this patent evil has left on the fair name of their common country” (qtd. in Lepard 71).  

The process by which we unify recognize the unity of the races is gradual and organic, much in the way that human development is.  We crawl before we walk, we walk before we run.  As described in The Power of Unity: Beyond Prejudice and Racism, in the beginning of our efforts to establish a unified humanity, we can recognize the oneness of humanity according to our limited understanding, and we make tentative steps towards understanding through contact with and respect of others from different races.  These tentative steps lead to confirmations and we become excited about the potentials we see in unity in diversity, and we work more enthusiastically for it.  Finally, as Louis Gregory envisioned, “racial boundaries disappear as men gaze upon the souls and characters of their fellows” (qtd. in Buck 21).  

What role does multicultural literature play in this process?  It is the creative matrix for conveying deeper understanding and love.  As the character Sean says in the play Bee-luther-hatchee, by Thomas Gibbons, “Black marks on white paper.  Because of them – miraculously! – a world that exists in one mind is recreated in another.  Its sights, its sounds, its texture.  Something is communicated”.  Through literature we enter a world and begin to feel and understand it.  Multicultural literature offers us the experience of characters from one culture striving to live in and adjust to a different and often hostile culture.  

For example, in A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest Gains, we experience racism and segregation through the main character Grant’s eyes.  We see the signs marking the separate bathrooms for Blacks and Whites.  We watch as the young Black prisoner bows his head at the command of the deputy to clean the toilets for colored people.  We can imagine the stench of the toilet that Grant, and everyone he knew, avoided (69).  We are privy to his thoughts as he remembers how he should speak to white people, using  “sir” (81), and pondering “whether [he]should act like the teacher that [he] was, or like the nigger that [he] was supposed to be” (47).  We feel his self-loathing as he relates to his former mulatto teacher, Matthew Antoine, (63-66), and as he struggles to accept his role in helping an innocent boy on death row become a man before he dies, and we empathize.  In reading the book we not only understand Grant’s experience as a black man better, but we come to see ourselves in the other characters, projecting their insecurities on Black people as they ignore their presence, or condescend, or degrade, and we can feel the disgust as we recognize our own prejudice.  Though this can potentially engender denial, it can also potentially and powerfully engender the kind of love, patience and humility that Shoghi Effendi calls for.  

One challenge not yet met by examples I have encountered in multicultural literature is the fewness of examples like Louis Gregory.  We rarely see interracial intimacy in literature.    There are several examples of romantic and/or sexual intimacy: in A Gesture Life, by Chang-rae Lee, the main character, a Japanese immigrant to America has a brief relationship with a white woman; in House Made of Dawn, by N. Scot Momaday, Able, a Native-American man has a sexual relationship with a white woman; Sophia, the youngest of the Garcia girls in How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, marries a blond European. In Mona in the Promised Land, by Gish Jen, the main character, Mona, a Chinese-American girl, falls in love with and later marries a Jewish boy named Seth. But the only satisfyingly intimate exchanges of ideas and feelings we experience occur between Mona and Seth, and between Yolanda and her first husband, John.  Mona struggles with her Chinese identity.  She rejects it and is nearly rejected by her mother entirely.  She and Seth engage in meaningful conversation with Black and Hispanic friends.   Yolanda goes through a similar process as her marriage fails.   

Writers of multicultural fiction need to draw their readers in to more of these kinds of interactions.  We need not only to encounter the struggle and suffering of prejudice as we read and learn to relate to, and even love, the characters.  We need to watch as they build bonds of unity through “sound initiative, mature wisdom, and deliberate, persistent, and prayerful effort” (Effendi, qtd in Lepard).   

But we must keep reading, even while writers develop the language of those kinds of stories.  The stories that already exist unlock the doors to understanding, and the Golden Rule of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.   Writers must write what they know.  So let this be both a call to action to other writers to begin to know racial unity at a gut and bone level, and a promise from this writer to dig deeply into her own experience, her own prejudices, and her own soul to find those stories that will create unity and reflect the nobility of the human soul, regardless of the color of the skin associated with it.  

Works Cited   

Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. 1st ed. New York: PLUME, 1992.    

Berdjis, Nassim. Rev. of Racial Unity: An Imperative for Social Progress, by Richard W. Thomas. Baha’i Studies Review: 6 (1996). Print.    

Buck, Christopher. “Alain Locke: “Race Amity” and the Baha’i Faith.” Lecture. Alain Locke Centenary Program, American Association of Rhodes Scholars. Blackburn Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C. 27 Sept. 2007. Dr. Christopher Buck. Web. 28 June 2010.    

Freyer, Jr., Roland G. “Guess Who’s Been Coming to Dinner? Trends in Interracial Marriage over the 20th Century.” Department of Economics. Harvard University, 2007. Web. 22 June 2010. http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/interracial_marriage.pdf.     

Gains, Earnest J. A Lesson Before Dying. 1st ed. New York: Vintage Contemporaries, 1993.    

Gibbons, Thomas. Bee-luther-hatchee. New York: Playscripts, Inc., 2002.    

Gullickson, Aaron. “Black/white Interracial Marriage, 1850-2000.” Journal of Family History 31.3 (2006): 289-312. Department of Sociology. University of Oregon, 4 Oct. 2007. Web. 22 June 2010. http://www.uoregon.edu/~aarong/papers/gullick_intermarhist.pdf.    

Jen, Gish. Mona in the Promised Land. 1st ed. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knofp, Inc., 1996. 15,188-215.   Print.    

Lee, Chang-rae.  A Gesture Life. 1st Riverhead paperback ed.  New York, NY: Riverhead Books, 1999. Print    

Lepard, Jenina. “Obstacles to interracial unity: Some psychological and spiritual insights.” International Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies 4.1 (2007): 63-73. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 24 June 2010.    

Louis Gregory Symposium On Race Unity. “Louis Gregory History.” Race Unity.net. Huston Tillotson University, 2010. Web. 28 June 2010.    

Momaday, N. Scott. House Made of Dawn. First Perennial Classics. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1999.    

National Race Unity Committee. The Power of Unity: Beyond Prejudice and Racism. Ed. Bonnie J. Taylor. Willmette: Baha’i Publishing Trust, 1986.

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When students discover they CAN do something

The Place where it all happens

I turned in my students’ grades yesterday.  I’ve seen all their presentations.  Nearly 90 PowerPoint Presentations from non-native English speakers could have been mind-numbing.  But, my goodness, how far from mind-numbing it was (with a few exceptions).

I have been gradually introducing the ideas of social responsiblity into my coversational English class with sophmore English majors at a Chinese university.  We started looking at social realities they were familiar with – friendships, parties, weddings, family.  Then we moved into subjects with which they are familiar, but not used to discussing in English - crime, social problems and philanthropy.  Their final project was to research one of the Millenium Development Goals’ targets, find an organization working to meet that target, and discuss their personal reasons for caring, their committments to action, and their call to action to their fellow students.

This was also an exercise in gradually increasing awareness of international standards of academic integrity – especially in the form of correct citation of sources used.  I knew none of them would know much about their chosen development goal, so it would require significant research, which would require citation.  I lectured several times about the importance of and the methods of correct citation.  I even provided them with detailed instructions of the use of a website that builds bibliographies called EasyBib.com.  I asked them three questions: Are Chinese students as intelligent as students in the rest of the world?  (The answer is, of course, YES!)  Are Chinese students as hard working as students in the rest of the world? (I told them my answer was, “You are harder working.”) And, finally, is there any reason Chinese students should not be held to the same level of academic integrity as the students in the rest of the world?

I got a lot of silence from the class after I asked the last question.  Some students shook their head vigorously, adamant that integrity is critical.  In one class, there was a bit of defensiveness.

“Are you saying Chinese students aren’t honest?” I was asked.  I had to be very careful to answer that.

“I am simply asking if there is any reason Chinese students should be exempt from this kind of integrity?  If there is no reason, then I’m sure you will all agree that Chinese students should be held to the same standard.”

I appreciated that one class more than the silent ones, because I felt they were at least speaking up.  In case you weren’t aware, Chinese students have always had a different persepective on academic integrity.  It is one of the most frustrating things Western English teachers face.  We want our students to speak for themselves, and we also want them to tell us when they are using someone else’s words.  Perhaps that seems basic to the Western intellectual.  It is not in China.

So my students’ presentations were somewhat of a coup on that front.  There were problems, yes.  Even the best student didn’t use quotation marks when quoting someone else’s words.  But most, at the very least, provided a web address to the source of the information they presented.  And almost every single student seemed to have gained a higher level of concern for and dedication to the betterment of the world.  The suffering of others become more concrete and tangible to them. Their discovery of people doing work in civil society opened some students’ eyes to new career possibilities.

This is the best student’s work.  Claire is passionate about animals and the environment, and her passion came through in both the slides and the verbal presenation of them.  She used correct citations and spoke eloquently.  Her analysis of the causes and effects of the loss of biodiversity, and her introduction of the organization that  address the issue were cogent and thorough.  She personalized throughout, and we could see that this issue was more than just an assignment for her.  Please enjoy, and post a comment here if you like it.  I’m going to share them with her.

Here are some of the other fine presentations my students presented.  They care about clean drinking water, the living conditions of slum dwellers, lack of access to the benefits of technology and maternal health.  They did more than just research the problem, they grew more passionate about it because of their research.  And they taught me a lot about the state of the world today.  Take a look  at some of the other fine Millenium Development Goal Presentations on SlideShare from English majors at Dalian University of Technology City Institute.

Next term I will be teaching sophmores again, and I will be using wikispaces instead of PowerPoint.  If you have any suggestion about how to use wikis in oral presenations, let me know!

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To wiki or not to wiki? That is the question

I was explaining an oral presentation assignment to my students today when it suddenly struck me that it could be done on a Wikispace instead of using PowerPoint.  Or at least maybe it could.  I was in the middle of my class, and I didn’t have the luxury of pondering and exploring at that very moment.  But the thought stopped me in my tracks.  Why?  Because it both excited me and freaked me out.  The last time I tried using technology, the students freaked out AND they didn’t have the bandwidth on campus to access VoiceThread.

Once again, these students are really being challenged by this assignment.  I want them to think about a Millenium Development Goal Target.  I want them to reasearch the essential issue’s causes and effects.  I want them to find an organization that is working to meet the target.  I want them to do something to help, and tell their classmates what they can do.   And before the Sichuan Earthquake many of them had never even considered that people could organize efforts to help people in other parts of the country, much less the world.  Philanthropy and activism are new concepts where I live.   But the ideas of sustainability and development are very much in my students’ minds.  I hope they will begin to get a vision of a future they can affect.

I got the idea for the final project from David Truss and a post he wrote called Caring Across the Curriculum.  It got me excited about the potential for affecting change in my classroom.  My students, as I have written before, often feel their options are limited because they are English majors.  They think they can only teach English and translate.  I am, once again, trying to pry their minds open to the reality that, as English speakers, their options are world-wide and as open as their minds are.

So today as I prepare for class, I still struggle with the question: wiki or PowerPoint?  Do I have time to learn about it and teach it?  I am also attempting to impose standards of reference citation, another hugely unfamiliar territory to these college students.  I am showing them how to use EasyBib, and reminding them to cite it if they use it, and don’t cite it if they don’t.  Sounds easy, but last time they did an oral report requiring the citation of sources, a girl doing a report on the hobby of cooking cited a book called Baking with Marijuana.  She didn’t know what it meant, she didn’t have the book, and thus, she didn’t actually use the source.  This was not an isolated incident of a student citing a source that wasn’t used.  I would estimate that 85 to 90%  of my students did the same thing with other books. 

So in  one class I have to give them specific instruction in citing sources.  Do I want to add another challenge?  They already know PowerPoint.  Maybe I should wait until next year.  But…maybe I could just…try it?  The power of having a live English web audience is almost irresistable.  Stay tuned for my final decision. 

But my students will still need to do the same research.  So if you are familiar with the Millenium Development Goals and their targets, and know of interesting organizations that are working towards them, send me a comment with a link.  I’m sure some students will need some direction.

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