preferential option for the poor?

Numerous friends of mine have been struggling with finances recently—actually, almost everyone I know in my age category. I too have pinched pennies almost all my life and can be very severe in my frugalness if I decide to be. My goal has been to train myself to be as Paul says in Philippians, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” So when I decided to go the Annual Meetings this year, I knew I would have to experiment with accommodations, even if only to respect the financial distress of those I live with.

My heritage taught me to do vacation differently than most—as a child my family never stayed at hotels or had vacation packages to go somewhere warm and on the ocean. Instead, we went where there were friends or family to visit. Otherwise, there was no reason to go. Realizing now, how others do vacation accommodations, I have taken the opportunity to experiment. Americans often do the hotel with a swimming pool thing. Occasionally, I’ve done that. Amish Mennonites give and receive hospitality from other Amish Mennonites. There is even this Mennonite directory out there called Mennonite Your Way which is a hospitality house list of people all across the country. In Mexico, if you are vacationing and you have a car, you sleep in your car or stay with friends. I once lived out of a VW bug with 4 other people for 3 days, as we toured Jalisco and a went to the festival of San Juan Martin, Caballero. We mingled with other travelers. And I discovered that if you don’t have a car you ride the bus and if you don’t have fare for the bus you walk. For bus riders and walkers, there are accommodations aplenty under every tree along the road or in the town square, often in the courtyard of the church. Some day, I hope to travel like this.

All this is to say that I have been considering how best and how functionally to live, when traveling and when at home. With the threat of poverty is hanging over the heads of many folks in my generational category, forcing us to rethink money expenditure and living patterns, I’ve seen many of my peers attracted to living in community, either out of need to survive financially or for expressed faith convictions. Hospitality has also become a bigger deal for them. Hospitality is a virtue amongst the poor. Hospitality is also an essential pillar in community building. (Conversely, entertainment, privacy and independence are virtues of the rich—contributing to loneliness and isolation.) Yet, one has to look at the circumstances and wonder, if we would have the financial means necessary to live alone and travel alone, would we then somehow loose the conviction to live interdependently in a community of believers. My observation has been that, largely, once one comes into a bit of financial means—enough to live alone—one then lives alone or in a circumstance of his/her individual choice. In that case, may God grant me the means to offer hospitality but also the blessing of poverty.

better than ever

So, I threw my cell phone in the washer two weeks ago. Then my computer developed internet connection difficulties which still have not been resolved. Then I was out of the state for a week. My only available land line and internet connection is at work and I have not been there for over a week. During that week, I’ve lived out of a car, the pack on my back and the hospitality of old and new friends and family. Loosing connection hasn’t necessarily stressed me out—in fact, it has had the opposite effect. Necessary communication with my professors and others about pending projects and important life events, etc, have been possible through narrow windows of grace. There’s been a sort of peace and calm that has settled over me as I’ve received this as a Sabbath that the Lord has sovereignely provided for me. I’ve had a lot of time to pray. I feel full and satisfied. My spirit feels tangible to me again. I feel like I can rely on it again to guide me without the interference of over processed noise coming from my head and my feelings. Even though my weeks have been jam-packed with going here and there and doing things and I caught a nasty cold, I feel calm and content and a peace that hugs me only as the creator of harmony could.

As for my extended week off...Why? What for? Scoping out the future. Adventure. Surveying the scholarly world. Picking at and testing connectivity points with my faith/heritage against my growth/education. And as always stretching the dichotomies between the two worlds I hold within myself to an eeking, screeching, tensile stretch, just to test and toughen myself. I’ve been in Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., Virginia and drove through every state on the way back with my sister—all in time for Thanksgiving Day. It all started on Thursday with no sleep the night before and a very nice nap on a flight out to Dulles where my sister picked me up and took me to Mt. View in Virginia. The next three days was a juggling match between the busy bustling DC belching out its scholars and philosophers in fancy hotels with plush carpet, chandeliers and evening parties, for higher society of course—and—the calm, natural beauty of the Virginian mountains and valleys seen from the bay windows of a quaint nursing home, staffed by young twenty-year-old Mennonites, tending to mostly mentally diminished elderly. I’ve been allowed...(gasp)...encouraged to delve into the metaphysical reaches of my mind but then in the next breath drawn into the simple, beautiful harmony of the songs and exuberant laughter at my sister’s farewell gathering. But that wasn’t yet enough. I had to make a few stops in PA to investigate and evaluate the theological education at SMBI our token school of higher Christian education and then off to Lancaster to hunt for a covering maker/seller and a visit with old and new friends. By then, I remembered that I had forgotten to take my vitamins or sleep much at all, as I sniffled and coughed the whole way home, taking turns sleeping and driving with my sister. I kept a log of my expenses. I think perhaps it would be interesting to post it...later though. My connectivity obligations have been challenged and I have submitted. Most people know that I’m still alive.

hey, sista!

Guess who stole your very cool hat?
Looking forward to seein ya very soon.

check it out!

My daisies decided to bloom in November.

stranger encounters: Mohammud

Today, I was exchanging Bloomington Avenue stories with a fellow young, urban, city dweller. I thought I would share one here too. But first—a bit of context. Bloomington Avenue is the “seedy” part of Minneapolis. All those with any “sense” stay away for fear of getting hustled, shot, robbed...whatever! Five years ago, I didn’t know that. I didn’t grow up learning to make the same sorts of distinctions about people and places.

I’m not naturally a very docile person but one has to choose into that manner of being when getting to know a new person or a completely new situation in a new context. One has to be open, comfortable, and keen on following the flow wherever it is going but then be quick and agile enough to shimmy out of exploitative situations. I like to go on these adventures, where I have to practice being as bendable as Gumby. The adventures are incredibly fun. One meets the most interesting sorts of people, goes to the most interesting sorts of places. It can get a bit addicting. It all started out quite unintentionally.

I worked as a night security guard at the Exel Energy building in downtown Minneapolis. The first night on the job was quite a shock to me, as all other male security guards drooled all over themselves because there was a woman working. But Mohammed was different. He was basically kind and very respectful to me. He gave half of his Subway sandwich to me and insisted that in his culture everyone shares. He was young. He was a devout Muslim. I felt an affinity to him because he was different and I was different. The other security guards would taunt him and say terrible atheistic things about God to him, just to see him respond as he always did. He would plead with them, terror and sorrow written all over his face, asking them to stop saying such things about Allah. Then he would kneel in the dirty grimy, city, alley and kiss the ground, pleading with Allah for forgiveness.

We would hang out, outside of work. I would occasionally help him navigate the city or go to the MCTC for an application. He would sometimes be fearful of odd things. For instance, he always paid for everything in cash. But when paying his bills at the bank one day, I suggested that I could simply write out a check and he could deposit his cash into my account. He refused because, he explained, they would be able to associate his name with me and my address. I would go over to the house in which he and his sister rented a room from an older Muslim couple, who lived on Bloomington Avenue. Both women wore the hijab. Mohammud and his sister’s room was plain and bare. They slept on the floor. But we would all eat together in the livingroom off of the most expensive, posh furniture I had ever seen, in front of a giant TV screen, where the American soap operas mesmerized everyone. They reminded me of Amish children newly exposed to the TV.

Sometimes he would take time out to pray in front of me. Kneeling and kissing the ground and reciting. He told me the story of their escape from their home in Somalia. His last name was the same name as a political leaders’ and one day the authorities came to their door. My Muslim missionary friends were terrified for me when they found out I was hanging out with a Muslim man. I didn’t know what the “rules” were for hanging out with a Muslim man but Mohammed seemed quite harmless to me. Once we went to the place in West Bank where he wired money to his family in Ethiopia. The man behind the desk spoke with Mohammed and there was much joking, laughing and knee slapping. Later, I asked Mohammed what they were joking about, and he wouldn’t tell me. Soon after that, I decided to be more open and descriptive with him about boundaries and what my present interpretation of what American boundaries were. He could never remember to call them boundaries—he always referred to them as crossing borders. He once read a personal letter I was writing a friend. I told him he had crossed my borders. When I told him I was moving to Wisconsin to finish my schooling, he insisted that he and his sister would come with and live with me. I told him we couldn’t do that because it would be crossing borders.

And crossing borders it was! It was an unusual friendship. It was completely platonic (at least from what I could tell) and entirely accidental.

strengthen your body’s tie to your spirit through fasting

We often live very compartmentalized lives. We go to church to do spiritual things. We go to school to learn. We work at work. We work out at the gym. We sit on the couch to watch TV. We sit at coffee to chat with a friend. Sometimes my body does it while my mind and my spirit are not engaged. Often my mind does stuff while my spirit and body do nothing. But perhaps the situation that happens least is when my spirit is engaged and my body and mind are either quiet or in compliance.

There are some hazards to living with one’s being all diced apart like that. The body does stuff the mind and spirit never gave it permission to do. The mind thinks things disconnected from the spirit etc. Yet when one fasts, there are ways of fasting that cause your body to listen to your spirit. And it’s not through fighting with the image of a cheeseburger in your head. Instead, as the hunger-pangs hit you, it is as though your body is a desert of dry bones longing, longing, longing... longing for the spirit to fill the wind and bring nourishment to your soul. The hungrier one gets the deeper your spirit longs—as though your entire being is buried in longing—longing for God. Being hungry is only a symptom of lack of sustainance. Perhaps we should all be hungry with longing until the sustenance arrives. Yet what sort of sustainance are we talking about.

I’ve been noticing the food and hunger themes in my life. In my dreams, I often find myself at banquets and church picnics where there is no food. I am hunting for food in dangerous places. I am often hungry for something but I can't discern what it is. I go to the grocery store and look at everything and I don’t want any of it. I planted a garden this summer but was too busy to harvest it. I am thirsty and I drink water but it never seems to satisfy completely. I come home to an empty house. I make dinner. I sit down to eat it at the kitchen table and I don’t feel like eating it because I am alone. Conversely, I go to my parents’ house and immediately head to the kitchen to talk to my mom as I open the refrigerator. There I eat at the kitchen table with my family and I am satisfied.

as we live dying

I have a friend who I enjoy very much. He’s quite a bit older than I. But that just means he’s like my grandfather or father or something like that. We’ve been friends for years. I’ve been to his family picnics and birthday parties and all of that. He is a gem in hiding. Everyone focused on his great compassion. Yet, he was incredibly intelligent and an astute thinker as well. He was full of energy and a dynamic conversation partner, when I first met him 6 years ago or so. We’ve talked about everything under the sun, with much expression and energy. His daughters are every bit as energetic as he is—rather, as he was. He developed some severe health problems and I watched as his energy was cut in half, then it was cut in half yet again. Now, it seems it has been cut in half again. He used to appear in public, looking vibrant and bright-eyed. Everyone thought he looked great. But I knew he went home and then collapsed for the next two days, to recover. I spoke with him briefly the other day—I knew if I spoke to him too long he would collapse for two days from our short conversation. I cried for him. His spirit, so full of desires and passion, lay trapped in a body which gives him only a drop of fulfillment. I still visit him. Next time I envision kissing his cheek, holding his hand and saying very little. Perhaps, I can ask him to greet my sister for me. He'll see her before I will. I'll tell him she can take my place as his conversation partner until I join them.

blood lines

Sometimes, I mean often, I am certain that I am more like a woman of centuries past masquerading as those roles mentioned in my profile. I go to a community meeting, in my black skirt and wool coat with the fur collar to “wax eloquent” about a neighborhood crime problem. Then I go home and secretly can tomatoes like a pioneer woman or swing a sledge hammer at a wall I don’t want there anymore.

My former roommates called me crazy. My current roommate calls me wonder woman. Sometimes I don’t know who to believe. Occasionally, I develop a bit of a complex about my dual identity and I find myself hiding certain innate habits.

I like Dorcas’ little stories because they remind me of why I am who I am—like this one about canning. http://dorcassmucker.blogspot.com/2006/10/canning.html . I also find refuge in Hajar’s stories http://neo-gioconda.blogspot.com/ . And then there are the relief workers I run into now and again, who talk about them sturdy Mennonites, who would do things no one else would do, and go places no other group of people would go. Then last night at a party, I ran into someone who has a friend who lives here in the Twin Cities, who used to be Amish before he had a conversion experience. I’m certain I made a fool of myself as my eyes turned into saucers and the blood rushed to my face as I nearly leaped out of my chair in my eagerness to get a phone number and meet this person. What is this thing called tradition that runs in ones bones, which is as thick as life itself?

dreams fulfilled

Last week I realized that a long ago dream of mine has been fulfilled. I was standing in the front of my parents’ church talking to the pastor about learning the Biblical languages, Seminary and such things. I had just finished another conversation with an elder who owns the only local java joint and WiFi hub. (I’m in touch with that place!) He likes talking with me about the rapture, Revelation (the book) and America’s military exploits done in the name of the Lord. Suddenly it dawned on me as I stood there in that little country church. My dream has been fulfilled. A couple Sunday’s before that, I had gone to church at the Amish-Mennonite church of my childhood with my English friend. (Wow, did we get looked over!) They had a guest speaker there that day, who is a part of a higher education initiative amongst the conservative Mennonites called FaithBuilders. I was surprised, when after the service, the speaker pointedly came over to greet my friend and I. Somehow, I ended up telling him that I had just recently received my MATS and that I work at a Seminary. With numerous onlookers, we discussed higher education, how to navigate the myriad of information in the various disciplines. He dutifully broke off our conversation each time his host shuttled him off to meet this or that person or talk about this or that engagement. But somehow we kept bumping back into each other to continue shop talk.

When I was young, I used to long to be able to converse with the pastors who seemed at that time to know so much about faith and the scriptures and the church. Usually, no women I knew would ever be involved in those conversations but it didn’t matter to me, I wanted to talk about faith and the Spirit and God and Jesus’ sacrifice. I think I made myself an annoyance in Sunday School asking probing questions and bringing up complicated ethical scenarios. But I longed to participate in the circle of pastors and teachers. I used to read, from Luke, the story of Jesus getting lost in the temple at the yearly Passover his parents took him to. Jesus’ parents then find him in the temple courts sitting among the teachers listening to them and asking them questions. I was like 13-15. I used to read this story and cry, having no idea why it drew me, nor how one could go about getting such a thing. I just knew I wanted it.

dust to dust ashes to ashes

I crashed a funeral soon after the vision of my own death. I crashed a funeral soon after her death. Somehow it felt appropriate to join the throng of mourners wearing black. It was November then. It was November when she died. It will soon be November again.

the best of both worlds

I am grateful for the position the Lord has put me in. I would call it the best of both worlds. The platform of my childhood provided me with a strong frame of dedication and discipline for my faith. The current evangelical circles I run in provided for me a more emotional, expressive and also an intellectual influence. I’ve found pieces of the contemplative in both circles. And as I allow the two influences to speak to each other and embrace the other, my life becomes much more interesting and dynamic. The best way I know to demonstrate the best of both is through songs that express each culture’s sentiments.

Did You Think to Pray

Ere’ you left your room this morning
Did you think to pray?
In the name of Christ our Savior
Did you sooth for loving favour
As a shield today

When you’ve met with great temptation
Did you think to pray?
By his dying love and merit
Did you claim the Holy Spirit
As your guide today?

When your heart was filled with anger
Did you think to pray?
Did you plead for grace my brother
That you might forgive another
Who had crossed your way.

Oh how praying rests the weary
Prayer will change the night to day
So when life seems dark and dreary
Don’t forget to pray

The song turns one's mind to devotional regularity in response to life, as it happens. It prods one to maintain a relationship with God which bears on interpersonal relationships with others and those stray feelings that crop up. It’s very practical. And if the lyrics float through your mind during the day—one is instructed by its words.

How Great is Our God

The splendor of the King,
Clothed in majesty
Let all the earth rejoice,
All the earth rejoice
He wraps himself in light,
And darkness tries to hide
And trembles at his voice,
And trembles at his voice

How great is our God,
Sing with me
How great is our God,
and all will see
How great, How great
Is our God

Age to age he stands
And time is in His Hands
Beginning and the End,
Beginning and the End
The Godhead, Three in one
Father, Spirit, Son
The Lion and the Lamb,
The Lion and the Lamb

Name above all names
Worthy of our praise
My heart will sing how great
Is our God

This song is more along the line of romance language. It’s like those cute little nothings one would whisper to their spouse or a proclamation to one’s friends about someone that grabs your fancy in a gossip session over coffee—“He’s so amazing.” “My Heart will sing.” “Clothed in majesty.” What does that mean? Well, mostly it means you’re in love.

But like any marriage, one becomes cynical about the words spoken when all one hears is sweet little nothings. Likewise, if the everyday practical and routine relationship duties elbow out the sweet little nothings, life in relationship is a bore.

the power of prophetic declarations

Remember back in kindergarten when chubby faced Molly came up to you with wide-eyed inquisitiveness, asking, will you play on the merry-go-round with me. Everyone always responded in the affirmative, yes, even me. She would then, with confidence say, “You are now my friend.”

A while back my brother and sister-in-law invited me onto my space or that other one like it. After a few clicks, it said, “My brother’s name is now friends with My name.” Wow, how cool is that! The last time I heard that was at my brother’s wedding when the minister said, “I now pronounce you husband and wife.” And the time before that it was Molly pronouncing me to be her friend. And the time before that it was the creator saying, “Let there be light.”

Thanks, my space. You are this generation’s prophetic voice. You serve us well in bringing us back to a child-like simplicity.

the emergent child

The emerging church movement now days is quite a movement. It has all the ambition of youth and new ideas and an exciting new start. It doesn’t carry with it the depressive element of, like, rehabbing an old building, where one has to get rid of asbestos, mold, dry rot and such things. You start everything fresh. Right! Yeah, right. There are certain anticipations and an element of excitement that come with all pregnancies. However, a certain sadness hits when one discovers their child has special needs.

While Emergent, the child, was still in the womb, she was coddled by her parents at home for a few hours in the evening. She slept well and her every physical need was provided for. During the day she was bussed off to school to perform elaborate rituals in unison with a long line of homogenous peers. She went to church on Sunday and maybe a Wednesday to develop her spirit. At church she was shuttled off to another homogenous class designed specifically to meet the spiritual needs of numerous little people just like her. She lived in a neighbor hood of family units just like her. The neighbor’s toys were just like her own. Twice a year or so her family disrupted their cycle of homogenous type activities in homogenous style interactives, to visit grandma and grandpa who lived in a building of people who were old just like them. The whole family hated going there and wished they could be doing anything but that.

So then the emergent child emerged from its cocoon and sought out something different from all the homogeneity. She hungrily sought out the “dangerous” the “innovative” the “new” and the “unusual.” She found herself in the inner city. She found herself wearing black. She found herself angry and smoking something that would alter that. She wanted everything, anything that wasn’t that. She settled for a whole lot of all of that along with everyone else who was like that. She was named Emergent, for that was what she was. A product of the former—a child of homogeneity. Nothing new here—so says Ecclesiastes.

The emergent church would like to describe themselves and characterize themselves and their activities as organic. But allow me to point out—a farmer has to raise crops in his field organically for 5 years before the 5th year of crops can be truly called organic. It takes five generations of crops to cleanse the field of its non-organic element.

This is basically the same message as my post called, “the artist.

a bouquet is not a football

There is a true story about my sisters that I love to tell, because it is so funny. Now, I fear the story has become a parable of my own life and the joke is on me.

The first of my brothers got married in 1998. We all went to the wedding out in North Dakota. My family was quite a bit younger back then. Most of my sisters were still in the boys have cooties stage of life. Now, half of them have boyfriends. But back then they somewhat scorned the wedding merrymaking and made every attempt possible to insert boisterous competitive activity. We all still wore the traditional Beachy dresses back then, with basketball shorts underneath in preparation for the highly probable upset in a scuffle with our cousins. For the last time ever, did we all wear matching pink dresses together. It was the consensus among us that this was cruel and unusual torture—and it was for a family of tomboys. Everywhere we went during that weekend necessitated a football or a soccer ball or a basketball—the groom’s dinner, the rehearsal, the wedding itself. After much prank playing during the reception lunch and the opening of gifts, came the bouquet toss. I didn’t understand it but my sisters, competitively and boisterously positioned themselves like football players for the catch. Don’t they know what this means—I thought to myself. The bride tossed the bouquet over her shoulder and sure enough my sisters are diving and jumping and grabbing for it. One of them catches it and carries it like a trophy, whooping and hollering. Then my uncles and cousins chime in, “Do you know what that means?” la la la laa la. Suddenly, the bouquet becomes a despised object and a weapon to bat at the offensive messengers.

Recently, I too have been caught fighting to catch the bouquet and I had no idea, as to the symbolic meaning of it. Suffice it to say that there are certain flying projectiles one does not attempt to catch no matter what the internal competitive urge demands.

transformations that matter

Jacques Derrida, a philosopher I have studied, writes on forgiveness within the context of politics and international relations, or perhaps misrelation. All the switches in my brain turn off the second he mentions “politics” but what he says about forgiveness is noteworthy and applicable universally.

Whenever and wherever there is a wrong done, a period of mourning is necessary. Derrida calls it the work of mourning. Calling it the “work of mourning” indicates that it has a purpose and an appropriate end to which it works toward. Additionally, the memory continues. The memory then can inspire a prophetic freedom or a doom filled bondage. The memory of wrongs done to my person yesterday can cripple me for life if I nurse them forever—this is not true mourning. However, prophetically speaking life into the darkness of yesterday, transforms the memory, taking the worst of evils, turning it into a victorious expression of love and life.

...yet returning to forgiveness. Forgiveness is not possible—pardon cannot be granted unless the unpardonable is committed and the unforgivable act is wielded upon a soul. Derrida calls anything pardonable given pardon a mere transaction, thus not true forgiveness. Forgiveness can only be performed on the unforgivable. “It is not and should not be normal, normative, normalizing. It should remain exceptional and extraordinary, in the face of the impossible: as if it interrupted the ordinary course of historical temporality.” This is the paradox that transforms the world from a space of a bazzilion wrongs passed on into a measure of wrongs turning all wrongs into their prophetic victorious destiny.

the true service of innocence

The symbolic action of the Amish in their most recent splash across the media is mostly sensational to those who watch from the outside. It is a shock to almost everyone—particularly the image of innocence which these young girls represent, meeting such a violent outburst of revenge—to the death. Everything within a person cries out—this is unjust! For innocent young lives that were intended to suffer only as told by the perpetrator’s own story and by another story in Colorado. For the most vulnerable of professing non-violent people to be the subject of such brutal bloodshed. It comes as a slap in the face to a nation that prides itself on a particular standard of justice. Our standards insist that innocence should be protected and punishment measured out in accordance with crime committed. No one should ever suffer for another’s wrong. Each should suffer for their own crimes. Right?

Actually, no! Only the innocent can exact justice by suffering for the sins of the other. And only the innocent can redeem the world in their enactment of forgiveness to those who do them wrong. This is the highest service of innocence and peaceful blessing and good will—to be exploited. For peacemakers to be slaughtered in the hands of the violent. In this crux of injustice…Herein is found our opportunity for redemption. The gospel never asserted anything else. Prophesied by Isaiah “led like a lamb to the slaughter…” and fulfilled by the innocent Christ as he was dieing, “Father, forgive them…”

Can we live with any cheaper version of Christianity? Can we satisfy ourselves with our own justice.

Those who wish to argue with me on the logic of this—forget it! There is no arguing for it. It’s not logical. It is pure insanity. But somehow…it is true.

I've kept this image in my files for years. Every once in a while I take it out and look at it. It has come to represent my life manifesto.

a lamb to the slaughter

A prayer for those who have seen the love of the Creator for his Christ, that they may be indwelt by the Spirit of Christ, who was glorified in his selfless love.

Vater, ich will, daß, wo ich bin, auch die bei mir seien, die du mir gegeben hast, damit sie meine Herrlichkeit sehen, die du mir gegeben hast; denn du hast mich geliebt, ehe der Grund der Welt gelegt war.

Gerechter Vater, die Welt kennt dich nicht; ich aber kenne dich, und diese haben erkannt, daß du mich gesandt hast.

Und ich habe ihnen deinen Namen kundgetan und werde ihn kundtun, damit die Liebe, mit der du mich liebst, in ihnen sei und ich in ihnen.

solitude sustenance and sleep

Last week I found myself in the back seat of my car in some parking lot near a bookstore I had gone to—to pick up my textbooks. It was late afternoon. I had just woken up from a power nap, was eating a cucumber feta cheese salad that tasted 3 times more fermented than it did the day before. I kept on eating it, even though it tasted terrible, because the thought of finding something else to eat was too burdensome. (I didn’t get sick from it either.) As I ate, I remembered the last time I had been reduced to a similar situation—eating, sleeping out of my rusty, red, Ford Ranger, while driving to places where I’m a stranger in order to find solitude. That was 4 years ago.

Getting in my car and driving to an unknown place to eat, sleep and reflect has since been my way of finding solitude. I’m running out of places to hide at work. At one job I used to crawl under my desk to find a moment of solitude. Think about it—it’s strange enough to hide under your desk but even stranger still for someone to get on their haunches to converse with a voice coming from under a desk. That idea backfired on me at a temp job I had, when the IT guy discovered me, as he came crawling under the desk I was under, to lay some cable.

Last week I was working constantly to meet deadlines on a project and keeping up with my day job and community service work. There was no time for anything besides eating, sleeping, calming my head and brief contact with friends—so that I still have them when the project is over. Thus, to preserve energy and time, I returned to habits I learned on my trip to the Mojave, 4 years ago. I have learned to sleep anywhere and often challenged myself grab some zzz’s in all sorts of awkward spaces. I eat anything (culturally different or of undesired, fermented or discarded status. And I look for opportunities for solitude and overcoming the fear of being a stranger in an unfamiliar place, doing something just a bit abnormal.

So, if there are those of you who haven’t heard from me in a while—now you know what I’ve been up to.

the new hire

There was a young company that had been doing quite well within its division of the world market. It had had been expanding its employee base for the past 30 years. Yet the interesting thing about this company was that its employee base was all relatives and lifetime friends of the CEO. Each employee had been grandfathered in and trained by someone in the family. Now this was actually a very good thing for the company. It had contributed to its rapid rise to success in the past 29 years. However, the company was becoming quite large and the complications of internal affairs were of a very ingrown nature. It was becoming more and more obvious to everyone in the company that the health of the company rested upon new hires from the outside.

Now, throughout the years, the company had made available new hire applications to the public, in case it wanted to hire on a dime. However, these applications were distributed in a pick-up box near the front door of the company. Needless to say the box was quite neglected and there was a deposit box beside it for the return of the completed applications. Yet, the dark secret was that the CEO himself took care of the deposit box. When nobody was watching, he took all the carefully prepared applications, tore them up for good measure and threw them in a bin in the dank basement of the company’s headquarters.

So, there was an internal meeting and the very next day the company opened an H. R. office for the first time. Then they proceeded to hire the first person that walked into the waiting room with a completed application. To make a long story short, the new hire added to the distress of the internal family affairs and worse robbed the company until she was caught and fired. To hire so quickly was a stupid move and the company realized it. It also realized it was yet incapable of processing potential new hires and following through to the successful integration of a good candidate.

Meanwhile, the waiting room of the H.R. office filled slowly with new potential employees. They left their applications and rang back for follow-up interviews. The H.R. office politely took their applications and filed them in a filing cabinet. They took the calls and politely gave as much information as was appropriate and accurate. Some of the applicants were persistent. Others just left their paperwork. Yet the CEO worked night and day studying employee hiring processes. He even organized a task force to help his employees participate in the process with consultants in the business. He knew that a new hire from the outside was vital to the health of his company. He regretted the torn-up dank applications in the basement. But he could do nothing to salvage them now. Yet he had faith in the future of his company, in the policy changes he had proposed and the efforts of his taskforce, H.R. office and ultimately in the employees he had not hired or identified yet.

If anyone can discern the particular meaning this parable has for me—you deserve a prize. But if the general message is potent enough for you—that is more than great.