Tag: Learning

It’s Been A Year

A year ago I dropped Amy and the kids (one of whom was only 4 weeks old) off at the airport. I then turned around and began packing up a yellow Penske truck with all our worldly belongings.

Some sweet friends helped with the packing and the cleaning.

Then there was a pipe to smoke, a meal to eat, a few final goodbyes, and then off to the airport again to pick Dad up and start the drive west.

And so, here we are. A year in California. Almost a year in Oakland.

I’ve been through 3 major transitions in the last 10 years. First, Salinas to Durango. Then Durango to Boston (with the added bonus of bachelor to married man). And then Boston to Oakland.

Each transition involves a loss and a gain.

An embracing and a letting go.

Over the past year, I’ve actually really struggled to know what those things were as I’ve processed this experience and this transition.

It may turn out that as another year comes and goes I discover that what I thought I was embracing and letting go of where not really the thing.

But, this is the best I can say at this point in time, a year out.

Letting go? The thing I was a part of had an aura around it. It was cool. It was new and fresh and moldable and had good graphic design and your pulse moved a little faster when you heard about what we were up to.

There were questions and debates and creative thinking and good books were read and discussed and argued over and the envelope was pushed.

Not so much in the new thing. Now there’s more of a weekliness, a grind, a steady pace, and a walking with brokenness in broken places.

Bottom line: it’s not as cool.

But, the embracing.

The embracing of being wanted, instead if simply needed. Of transformation, not just creation.

Embracing being embraced.

Embracing all the strange and unexpected steps that led to this particular moment in this particular place.

The point is not which is better. The point is living into the moment and opportunity that is present right here, right now.

I’ve never been good at that, so the opportunity to learn how to do this is a gift.

To embrace.

First World Problems, Atheism, Gender, and Thinking

Tony Jones created waves this week when he said that he is not an atheist (despite his doubts about God), because the overwhelming majority of people around the world believe in God. (Original post here; response to waves here)

In other words, atheism is a first-world problem.

Which is a fascinating way to think about it, and it highlights a common conversation I have with students.

Higher education in the US places students squarely in the middle of a great paradox.

  • On the one hand, they are lucky enough to have access to an incredible amount of knowledge, research, information, and skills. They have access to more of these things than any other human beings in the history of the world.
  • On the other hand, what is presented and taught as enlightened/educated/sophisticated thinking (and not just the thinking but also the conclusions) are ideas that are actually shared by a very small percentage of people (both historical and living).

A great example of this (alongside Jones’ point) can be found in this interview with Camille Paglia. Her point is neatly summarized by the sub-title of the article: “ignoring the biological differences between men and women risks undermining Western civilization.” (Read the whole thing, it’s a tour de force).

I’m sure my feminist friends at various universities around Boston would want to paint Camille as a quack, but here’s the more essential point: what is often packaged as truth and enlightened thinking are ideas and conclusions that very few people around the rest of the world actually share.

Now, I am not a traditionalist, I am not advocating for group think, or for chucking our ability to draw our own conclusions.

But, and I am speaking here most directly to my student friends, what is often communicated to you, especially in the university setting, are conclusions draw from a very  narrow stream of thought. The knowledge available in this world is a big, wide steam.

There’s a lot more out there.
Keep thinking, keep exploring, keep learning.