Scribble Theology: Nico and the Magical Talking Bible

Hurt

Hurting is a hard thing to do.

Or rather, figuring out what to do with that hurt is a hard thing to do.  I've always held a deep admiration for incredibly destructive people.  People who can tear a room to shreds, shatter a mirror, punch a hole through the wall.  Because all of that is way impressive, but it also means a lot of miserable work the next day and possibly a lost damage deposit.

Or a lost relationship, lost job, lost whatever it is that rides on not absolutely losing your shit.  The hurt self in me--and here I bank on the recognition that we all have an inner hurt self, lest I be singled out as morose--believes that I suffer some significant caliber of mental illness, but it is unrecognizable because of my compulsive need to control my image, to give the appearance of having everything together.  But it would be pretty rich of me to think I have constructed a complex that the whole field of psychiatry never anticipated, wouldn't it?

So having some dramatic, public breakdown is ruled out as an acceptable response to hurt.  The problem is, when we hurt, we desperately want someone to know it.  All we want is for someone to see our pain, and respond with love.  Why, then, is it so hard to go to someone and tell them that is what we need?  Instead the blogosphere explodes with "sideways communication," people Facebooking about how they're "sick of fuckin' drama" or venting to Xanga about their unfair treatment.  I do, on occasion, re-read my old Xanga, and I cringe at the sullen teenager I see screaming for attention.  Nobody likes someone who screams for attention.

Maybe we are better at being composed now.  But I think a lot of us are worse at being people.  I am, anyway.  Yes, in high school I responded to a very deep hurt by flailing for attention in ridiculous ways, and yet I found from friends a level of depth, support, and patience that seems increasingly rare as I age.  And I, in turn, offered the same to others.  I held the suffering in my arms, and my heart swelled with the significance of the moment.

Now, I turn a deaf ear to many cries for help, saying I will offer only what is asked.  And in penance I don't have that person who drives to meet me in the middle of the night to sit with me by the waterfall.

I'm really not trying to make this about me.  That hurt, caring me was the introspective one; now I much prefer to universalize my experience and try to process it in the form of social commentary.  It shields me, I suppose.  But I think there's something to this... I don't know if it's the fact that we all grow up in the years between seventeen and twenty-three, replacing naiveté with a jadedness that tells us there's no actual significance in those old "emo" moments; or if it's the lightning-paced, surface-grazing communication style perpetrated by Facebook and texting, pushing an unexamined culture; or if it's something else entirely.

The imperative here is that we do something to correct that.  Maybe most of our efforts to resist the progression of the world are vain and ill-advised--the shouting of luddites at a harmless but irreversible wind--but this one matters.  We need to embrace a hurting world, sit with crying people, and allow ourselves to be awed and humbled by what woundedness is offered us.

I suck at this.

YouTube me f'real

My apologies to Jason and anyone else who obsessively searched for the fourth Scribble Theology yesterday without success.  YouTube was being a total butt and not letting my uploads work.  You may now watch and enjoy.

Chef Nico

Because I am not Amy, I do not have beautiful pictures of my food to prove it existed.  But I just want you to know that I fried myself up some catfish today, and it tasted all right, and I have yet to fall over dead from some food-borne illness.

Also, Spanish rice.

YouTube me

Hi, loyal blog readers.  I love that you come to my homepage (or subscribe via RSS) to read my random thoughts and to watch my theologically educational videos.  I really do, and I hope you continue to do that.  However, in order to promote more activity on my YouTube videos, I will be posting the fourth installment of the Scribble Theology video blog to YouTube tomorrow.  It won't appear here or on Facebook for a couple more days.

Click here to go to my YouTube channel, re-watch your old favorites (all three of them), and subscribe!  You should probably "like" the videos while you're at it... provided you do!

Overnight changes

I went to bed a normal person and woke up a hipster.

Pictures!

I was going to include this in my last post, but I know I sure as hell wouldn't read a blog post that long.  Another part of this new communication style I was talking about is we don't want to read long blocks of text.  We want bullet points, summaries, thoughts broken up into segments of 140 characters or fewer.

Anyway, thinking of mail and envelopes and such made me think of something I found in a filing cabinet my mom picked up at The Depot (a thrift store).

The envelope contained an elementary school report card from 1934 and a certificate of scholarship standing from Goshen College from 1947.  I kind of want to see if I can find the owner's descendants and give them this.

Also my previous post made me want to take this picture:

LOVE <3 (yes I just did the less than three thing).

Oh and in keeping with this whole speedy technology thing I didn't take those pictures with my camera; they're from my phone.

Mail

Is e-mail the new snail mail?  Then what's snail mail?  Hieroglyphics chiseled in stone?  Yes, I had to use spell check to spell hieroglyphics, but only because I reversed the i and the e.

I was just reading this article in the New York Times (what am I going to do when they go to paywall?) about how traffic to e-mail sites is in steady decline because that's just not how people communicate anymore.  It's all text messages and Facebook messages.  I'm guilty of it, too; why keep track of someone's current e-mail address when I can just pop over to Facebook?  Remember address books?  Holy crap.

Perhaps this is how my parents feel about letters and phone calls, but I remember e-mail with fondness.  All the way back to the sixth grade, when I shared my parents' ISP-provided e-mail account, trading e-mails with all of two people, somehow allowing myself to believe my dad wasn't reading them.  Before you protest, Dad, I still remember the time I made a document called "journal" to see if you would try to read it, which you did.  Then I discovered what was almost too good to be true: that there were websites that would give you e-mail for free.  So my first personal e-mail address became nmk116@startrekmail.com.

Yes, that's right.

I think my current e-mail address on Gmail represents the longest I've ever had one.  Six, almost seven years now?  The days of people changing e-mail addresses, I think, are mostly over.

Anyway, I'm off on a tangent, which is what happens when you get a blogger with severe ADHD.  I ask if e-mail is the new snail mail because it has been reduced to a formality.  I use it for work and parents, and that's about it.  My inbox, starting with the most recent e-mail, has messages from the following senders:  Myself, Mom, a co-worker, CouchSurfing, Mom, Mom, a group of friends, Mom, Mom, Mom, and Mom (the frequent appearances of my mother are mostly from conversation; I [still] use IMAP and detest the thread view of e-mails).

I have recently found a new use for e-mail: formal letters.  The kind other people like to write out and send to my physical metal mailbox--the kind I love getting--are just too hard for me to write.  My handwriting sucks, I don't have any stamps, and I can't keep up with my thoughts unless I'm using a keyboard.  So I write eloquent e-mails and attach stationary.

Since I cannot help but think philosophically (my philosophy major housemate gave me a book in he inscribed "from a lover of wisdom to a lover of peace with a philosopher's soul"), my concern is more than just nostalgia.  I have to ask, what are the implications on our minds and our societies when we can have fifty conversations without even leaving our rooms?  We were not designed to communicate as much as we do.  Our brains scatter in a thousand directions.  Attention deficit becomes the norm.  Is looking longingly at a past being a luddite, or just self-preservation?

While writing this post I talked with Brandi, who linked me to this manifesto.  I think it's worth a read.

OK maybe you should just go to their website

The front fell off!

I posted this back in 2008 and just uncovered it while re-reading my blog (isn't that something you should never ever do?)  It made me laugh again so maybe it will do the same for you.

Wanted: late 80's Honda motorcycle in good working condition. Nothing fancy.

From: [censored]
To: Richmond/Wayne County Freecycle
Subject: WANTED: BLUETOOTH HEADSET

Nothing fancy any would do. Thanks in advance Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry® 

-----

Every day, people who do not understand how Freecycle works pollute my inbox.  Look buddy, I'm pretty sure if you're sending this from a BlackBerry, you can afford to pony up and buy your own damn bluetooth headset.  And if you really can't afford a bluetooth headset, maybe you should be thinking about buying something else.  Especially since there is no circumstance on the planet that makes talking on a bluetooth headset OK.



(Technically he's not on a bluetooth headset but I bet most of you didn't notice that I'm sure you saw that already).


And finally, a bluetooth related conversation from my liquor store days:

Me:  This guy got a 40 of Budweiser, brought it over to the counter, paid for it, picked it up off the counter, and immediately dropped it on the floor.  LAKE of beer to clean up.  He got another one and I made him pay again.
Laura: I usually don't charge them if they break something.
Me: Yeah, except he did it one minute before close.  I had to re-mop the floor.
Laura: I still wouldn't have charged him.
Me: And he was talking on a bluetooth headset the whole time.
Laura: Oh, fuck him.

Don't watch this if you believe in the rapture.

Things I hate

I put so much negative energy into this post that my computer actually shut itself off.  See if you can guess when.

1. Napoleon Dynamite.  I refuse to ever see it under any circumstances.
2. That stupid meme involving horses and a mountain of some kind?  I don't know.  I hate that too.  It gets a "Napoleon Dynamite" ranking on my list.
3. Not having questions answered.
4. Being interrupted.
5. Realizing I'm interrupting someone.
6. The way my watch band smells like that suede jacket I bought from a consignment shop.
7. The fact that I lost the suede jacket I bought from a consignment shop.
8. Lies.
9. E-mail auto-responders. Maybe I don't care that you're out of the office.  Maybe I'm just required to include you on that list.  (I truly feel for people who have to e-mail *everyone*.)
10. My shitty laptop netbook.
11. That one guy.
12. Losing.
13. Winning.  It's awkward.
14. Passive aggressiveness (before I knew there was already a phrase for this I called it "sideways communication").
15. The fact that I will have to wait six months to finish watching HP7.
16. Verizon taunting me with its holiday ads when they know full well I can't upgrade until January 21.
17. Notre Dame football.
18. The Brew House.  Always and forever, The Brew House.
19. Changing seats.  They're assigned.
20. You'll never guess what used to occupy this spot.
21. RIAA.  Kickin' 'em while they're down, I guess.
22. MPAA?  Mostly I just hate that PSA.
23. Knowing how many more things there are that I hate that I just can't think of right now.

This might become more common

1. I'm starting to fall in love with the whole list-making thing.
2. This one is different because I have it making the numbers for me.
3. The neighbor I was talking about moved out.
4. Maybe she read my blog.
5. Or maybe her man-friend was maybe just a mover, which is lame unless they were having a covert affair which would be kinda cool.
6. I suppose it could also have been her ex-husband.
7. I hope they got back together because they had two dogs and they each got one in the divorce and that kind of makes me sad.
8. Especially because her dog is named Hermione and I imagine the other one might have been named Ron.
9. The above isn't a list, it's just a paragraph in numerical form.
10. If you want to get people to comment on your blog posts, accuse them of not reading your blog.
11. You don't read my blog.
12. If you like the video blog you need to comment on it so I have material to make another one.
13. Heartburn makes me sad.
14. I just lost a game of chess.
15. I really want to be in Mexico right now.
16. I also want to be able to read 20,000 words per minute instead of just 800.
17. It's theoretically possible.
18. This one doesn't feel as cool as the other ones. 

More like that one

1. I have been steadily moving money from my bank account into a safe.
2. This is not because I believe the apocalypse is nigh, but because I am obsessed with the idea of going on the run.
3. Why do people think having cash on hand will help them when the apocalypse comes?  You think that green paper is going to be worth something?  You'll be trading bullets for food.
4. Read that last sentence twice.  It works both ways.
5. The above actually represents how we have totally changed the meaning of the word "apocalypse."
6. It's really just Greek for "revelation."
7. I know that because I am a geek.
8. I also know that "e" is short for "euler's number" and how to find the derivative of a function.
9. I bet you can't pronounce "euler."
10. If you can pronounce it because of last night's episode of House, well, then I bet you couldn't spell it.  Before now.
11. There is a cute girl at Subway who always gives me a 20% discount on my sandwiches because I'm her favorite.  She said so.
12. I know her passion is for cosmetology and that she also wants to get into medical technology, but I don't know her name.
13. I unintentionally judge her because she works at Subway, even though my last job was at a liquor store.
14. I hope she doesn't read my blog either.
15. I pre-wrote this blog entry so when it gets published and I read it it will be like a four-day-old time capsule.
16. What if I'm dead four days from now?
17. What if you're dead four days from now?
18. Kind of a freaky thought, isn't it.
19. <-- that was a good age to be.  Remember it?  I do, with fondness.
20. Sometimes in my head I rhyme "Joel" with "Noel."  Too much Smallville?
21. If you got that you are a geek, too.

More video blogging!

Some things, but not somethings

Forget Twenty Questions, this is Twenty Answers.  To questions you didn't ask, but if you were given the chance, you probably still wouldn't.

1. I have begun using numbered lists in my e-mails in hopes that it will make it easier for my boss to address all my questions or concerns.
2. It doesn't work.
3. My neighbor has a guy friend over and I'm excited for her because this is the first evidence I've seen that she has friends.
4. Also I found her name out by surreptitiously checking her mail.
5. I sure hope she doesn't read my blog.
6. She doesn't because nobody does except Bekah and, according to Google Analytics, somebody in the St. Louis area.
7. Busted.
8. I'm sorry if you are someone else and you read my blog.  I appreciate you but you don't comment.
9. I got a Facebook message from a random person who paid $0.99 to download my ebook on Amazon.  She found it "obliquely interesting" and wanted to know if that was my intention.
10. What author does not intend his or her work to be interesting?
11. Also, is "obliquely interesting" a backhanded compliment?
12. I think "backhanded compliment" should actually be "backhanded insult."  Or maybe just "oblique insult" since we're using that word now.
13. My co-workers use the word "boff," which I suspect hasn't been common vernacular since 1992.
14. I made a list of things to do today and ignored it.
15. You should probably know your rights because nobody else is going to know them for you.
16. For example, I got underpaid several times because nobody told me Earlham has a two-hour minimum pay when you get called in.
17. I keep giving things away on Freecycle but I haven't actually taken anything yet.
18. I think that makes it OK that I never bring food to carry-ins.
19. They are called carry-ins, not potlucks, which should imply you can bring alcohol but it doesn't.
20. This space intentionally left blank.

The beauty of e-mail threads

As a student at Manchester, I often compared our school to Earlham.  Usually unfavorably.  As a member of the Earlham community, that has been reversed.  In sharing conversation with a fellow former-Manchesterian here at Earlham, we determined that in the peace-oriented liberal arts college family, Manchester is the hard-working blue collar guy who may not be the smartest person in the room, but he means well and can usually make you smile.  Earlham is the crazy alcoholic uncle who has genius-level IQ, was at Woodstock but doesn't remember it, and probably has several undiagnosed mental disorders.

You may be familiar with the universal phenomenon of unintentionally funny office e-mail threads.  Earlham definitely has its fair share--especially on the faculty list.  Many of them might land me in an uncomfortable meeting if I shared them.  But here are some moments from today:

From: Douglas C. Bennet [President]
To: Faculty, Staff, Students.
Subject: snow


Feel a chill in the air?  I did, and I'm sure a snowstorm is on its way that will will effectively close the college by early afternoon. 

With all the august powers invested in the Earlham Presidency, I'm declaring today a snow day effective at 2 p.m. 

Sometimes we see weather in these parts that gives us snow north of I-70, and no snow south of I-70.  My sophisticated forecasting apparatus tells me the snow line will be a little south of I-70, running just about at the latitude of Runyan Circle and U.  North of that line:  lots of snow -- lots and lots.  South of that, none at all, probably sunny and breezy, just the sort of day you'd like to play or watch a soccer game.  Go figure this goofy weather.  May as well enjoy it. 

Of course Earlham being Earlham, you'll want to check with your instructor.  S/he may insist on holding class or lab this afternoon, the heavy snow withstanding.  For the rest of you, dress warmly if you think you'll be outside.  I'm planning on establishing a temporary site for the President's Office right near Matlack Field, just to be sure I'm below the snow. 

--
Douglas C. Bennett
President, Earlham College

"Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; got without merit and lost without deserving." --John Wooden



From: Frank
To: Faculty, Staff, Students
Subject: A Note From EC Women's Soccer

I've been asked to forward this note from the Women's Soccer Team...particularly those of you who will "battle the elements" and be at Matlack Field at 2pm today!
---------------------

Earlham Fans,

First and foremost we all want to thank you for your undying support and endless enthusiasm.  It is incredible to know that every time we go out to play a game we have the most dedicated crowd.  It has been a tradition over the years that Quaker Army is composed of the best fans like you all, which stand by us and support us.  Thank you for being an energetic part of the Earlham Community.  “FIGHT FIGHT INNER LIGHT”

While your support is appreciated and advantageous it has come to our attention there are times that small pockets of our support turn from innocent cheering to badgering of opponents.  This type of support, while infrequent, is not something we want to be known for.  As a proud Quaker school, grounded in Quaker beliefs and practices we encourage our fans to be clever, witty, memorable and entertaining. Support us with your energy.

Please be mindful of your comments directed at our opponents.  Please don’t call out players by their name. Personal attacks commenting on race, ethnicity, physical attributes and family life are not appropriate.  We love to play this game because of fans like you and we want to continue having fans that encourage even more people to come out and watch the game.  In order to do that, everyone needs to feel comfortable on the bleachers and along the fence. 

We love each and every one of you and thanks for coming out to support Earlham Athletics. “KILL QUAKERS KILL”

Earlham Women’s Soccer Team 2010

From: Richard

To: Staff

Subject: Soccer game--NOT an official snow day

Friends, colleagues and soccer fans,

In talking to Doug, he has indicated that it was not his intention to have the College shut down at 2 p.m. under the inclement weather policy.  We would all like to encourage faculty, staff, students and friends feel free to attend the Women's Soccer Playoff Game that starts at 2 p.m. on Matlack Field.  Supervisors and conveners are encouraged to allow people to attend the game.  No one is released from their duties for the afternoon.

Thanks for your understanding and attendance at the game.  Go Quake!

Richard

Of course it's all irrelevant to me, since my department will operate even in the end of times!  Well, those of us who aren't worthy of rapture, anyway.

Never close yourself in a wardrobe, stupid.

When I was young, I always wanted to move.

My friends would get to move.  Eric got to move into a new house with a hidden room you could get to by going through one of the bedrooms, or a secret door in the living room wall.  Jacob moved into a house where you could crawl into the cupboard above the basement stairs through an opening in a closet.  Clayton got a house with a room hidden behind a bookshelf.  These secrets weren't a critical part of my fantasy, but they were cool.

I spent my eighteen years at home in the same house--my family did move into an awesome new one, but only after I'd gone off to college.  But I would have recurring dreams that we had moved into a new house; a bigger house, with white carpets (Mom would never) and plenty of places to explore.

Now I see moving as a definite pain in the ass, but one thing is the same: the dreams.  Some months ago I dreamed that I moved to a city--maybe New York?--and into an awesome two-level apartment with a loft overlooking the living room.  Not long after that I dreamed that I had just rented a beautiful tree house, again with lots of space.  And this past Sunday, I dreamed that I had a roommate, who moved out, and that upon exploring his room I found an enormous living room with multiple rooms branching off it.  And, of course, a loft.

Mark at work says he has the same dream, that suddenly he discovers his house is much bigger than he remembers.  This instantly interested me in finding out what these dreams mean.

We had a dream interpretation unit in my counseling psychology class in undergrad, but it was the boringly depressing kind of dream interpretation; the kind where we assume a dream is a random amalgamation of memories and perceptions that doesn't mean anything.  They're the ghosts in the machine, the unintended consequences of our brains continuing to fire in patterns familiar from the day behind us.

But does it have to be that simple?  The idea that dreams have consistent symbolic meaning at first seems to fly in the face of my pragmatism, but I am my mother's child, and my mother is a devout Jungian.  Could there be a shared unconscious into which we tap?  To explain it in more down-to-earth scientific terms, could the immeasurable complexities of the social systems we construct produce consistent symbol-making in our subconsciouses?

From a couple of websites:

To see a new house in your dream, indicates that you are taking on a new identity and developing new strengths.  You are becoming more emotionally mature.

To dream that you find or discover a new room, suggests that you are developing new strengths and taking on new roles.  You may be growing emotionally.  Consider what you find in the discovered room as it may indicate repressed memories, fears, or rejected emotions.  Alternatively, such rooms are symbolic of neglected skills or rejected potential.

To see or dream that you are in a tree house, indicates that you are trying to escape from your waking problems.  You are blocking off the harsh reality of daily life.

 Personally, I'd just like an actual tree house.  That would be awesome.

There is always the danger of seeing our experiences through the lens of the offered interpretations; this is why palm readers make money.  But I think I've been making some emotional discoveries.  I became confident in my own view of the past and stopped letting others re-write it.  I walked away from someone who was not good for me.

Also, my therapist has been digging up old family dynamics and making me talk about getting beat up in the locker room in 6th grade gym class.

And with my life suddenly becoming inundated with sickness, rejection, and death, wouldn't it be more surprising if I weren't discovering new rooms?

The dangers of having an Alexi Murdoch song as your ringtone

I've been missing you lately.

Scribble Theology: The Video Blog

This is how I feel right now

I don't mind your tall city,
but I like my small city.

I like the rough brick sidewalk next to the church across the street,
the canopy of power lines and telephone wires,
the yellow light on the wooden porch
that lets me be a city boy
or a country boy, if I ignore that train whistle.

I like that everything seems just a little untidy,
like someone took a dusty Indiana town and just kept working on it
until it turned into a city,
but that I don't feel like I have to wash my hands
after everything I touch.

You can keep your fifty-first story view;
I like the secret rooftops of Xalapa and Old Jerusalem
with clothes lines and lawn chairs,
where tarps are hung to shield the spot
where that guy smokes weed and prints T-shirts.

I like my small cities.

in English, darling.

¿Por qué cada vez que vienes se quiere bajar mi puente de Londres?

(sorry i have not posted in many moons.  i have been a quivering ball of depression.)

The Hallway 2

It should be noted this isn't much of a punishment.  Mrs. Bertram once sent Jeff S., Steve F. and I all out into the hallway at the same time.  We talked, broke into a locker, and generally screwed around until she let us back in the room.  It was a nice break from class.

The Hallway: in which I am accidentally a total ass

One time I got kicked out of Language Arts for talking during another student's presentation.  After a while Mrs. Stoltzfus came out into the hallway and said "You can come back in if you're ready to treat your peers with mutual respect."

Being a seventh-grader, I forgot what "peer" meant and thought it meant "superior."  Complaining about the incident to another classmate, I angrily said, "Stephen is not my peer."

I just meant he wasn't better than me, but obviously what I said pretty awful.

What's the German word for Opus Dei?

As you may be aware, the Vatican recently decided that trying to ordain a woman is worse than child molestation.  The former is a crime against the sacraments and the latter a crime against morality, both of which are investigated by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (basically what used to be the Inquisition).

Sure, whatever, it's just Ratzinger's Church being against women.  Is that really news?


What's astonishing is that participating in the ordination of a woman results in automatic excommunication (this is actually not new, it's just re-emphasized), whereas sexually abusing a child warrants an investigation and possible de-frocking (read: results in being transferred to another parish).  No excommunication.

I'm not arguing for excommunication; I'm just pointing out the difference in the treatment of these crimes.


Obviously everyone who is not the Pope (or close to it) thinks this is a horrendously stupid thing.  Except, apparently, our own Craig Myers, who promoted the story on Dunker Journal.

This makes me angry.

(The blog post does not say "Hey, this is a good thing," but given the BRF's stated position on the issue, familiarity with Myers' posting style, and the non-critical language used in the link, there's really no doubt of the intent.) 

Update:  REALLY?

Beauty in connection, life and death

The following is strange.  It's random.  It is possibly offensive.  But it's as true as anything I've written.

I was having a truly awful day.  I was lost in my own world, I was angry at everyone, and my multitude of neuroses and mental illnesses were working in full force.

I arrived early at the chapel for the hymn sing that would open the conference, and picked an out-of-the-way seat in the fourth row with plenty of room around me for my friends to find me.  The singing began, and I tried my best to follow along, though while the Mennonites use the same hymnal as us, they tend to pick different songs.

My fellow Bethany students wandered in.  I glanced in their direction, hoping to catch their eye, but they didn't see me; they sat on the other side of the room, laughing amongst themselves, celebrating the dinner they'd had together--the dinner I'd missed for a previously-arranged one with my parents.

I felt abandoned.  Rejected.  Alone.  And worst of all, everyone could see that I was alone.  I stuck out, the one person in a room full of Anabaptists with no friends or family, with no ability to connect to others.  The loser.

This is what I mean when I talk about mental illnesses.

I became less and less interested in the songs, my voice fading into a quieter and quieter tone.  After a few minutes, a woman involved in the conference came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder.

"We're trying to get people to fill the front rows," she told me.  "Would you mind moving up?"  I told her I would not.

I was furious.  Not only was I a leper, now I was being chastised for it, asked to rectify the situation as if it was my fault I was all alone.  I seriously considered just leaving.  Fuck this hymn sing.

I moved sideways to a section of seating that was more populated.  By now, though, my last shred of sanity was gone.  I numbly opened the hymnal and accompanying book to the appropriate songs, but I stared straight ahead, no longer even pretending to sing.  My mind left my body to sit there, catatonic.

I was jolted to attention by a man moving aggressively into the chair next to me and offering his hand.  Great, I thought, now I have to pretend to be interested in meeting someone new.

It was Stan Noffsinger.

I've never been out for drinks and deep conversation with Stan, but he always addresses me by name and has always been a friendly and engaging person.  While I never would have predicted this reaction to him, I felt my anger and resistance melt a little.  Desperately, I clung to familiarity.  He was safe.  I was safe.  All was not well, but with Stan there I could at least survive to the end of worship.

We sang a song, then Stan turned to me and asked, "Did you hear about Art Gish?"  I felt a hint of fear creep into my chest.  I told him I hadn't.  "He was killed today," Stan said.  "He was working on his farm and his tractor flipped and pinned him."

"Oh, no," I said.  I wanted to say "oh, God," but this was the general secretary of the Church of the Brethren, and I was uncertain of his position on breaking commandments.

Instantly, I was cured.  This tragic news was the slap in the face that brought me out of my own, small world, and re-connected me to what was real.  Suddenly I could feel the love of those around me in worship.  The connection to Stan strengthened.  Just then the music started for the next song, and now I sang loud and clear.  This was my worship, my celebration.  For Art.  For life.  For the joy I felt in the community in which I stood.

I did not know Art personally, though I think I met him a few times.  In life I admired his work, but I never got the opportunity to connect to him as a person.  In the moment I learned of his death, though, he gave me the gift of connection when I was at one of my lowest points.  Art Gish, the peacemaker, brought peace to my heart.


I know this is a strange reaction to have at the news of someone's death--especially the death of someone who was such an amazing gift to the world.  It is self-centered and short-sighted and possibly evidence that I am a sociopath.  But that is my story of Art's gift to me.

Rest in peace.

I write like...

When I blog:

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

When I write creatively:

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I was also going to include a badge for my academic writing, but the obviously deeply flawed algorithm compared my academic writing (which, let's face it, we all know is amazing) to the writing of Dan Brown.  Now, maybe you liked The Da Vinci Code, but the best thing I can say about it is it probably would have been really good if Dan Brown were a good writer, and the movie was cool.

Brandi put it best:  "So your academic writing is like a bad novel about religious secret plots that was written to be a screenplay all along.  That's funny."

In defense of my writing, I don't think the computer brain behind this analysis has any kind of academic writing fed into it, so it'll give wildly strange results if your offering is not actually literature, and those results should in no way be considered accurate.

But still.  Dan Brown?

In which I surf couches in Pittsburgh

Like thousands of other Brethren, I made the trek to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania this past week to attend Annual Conference.  I fiercely avoided anything that looked too much like a business or insight session, and spent my days trying to score free meals and hang out with friends.  Which may not have been worth the registration fee, but maybe conference will have a balance of $119 this year.  And then I will be responsible for making it not lose money.

Since I'm dirt poor, I was determined not to drop money for a week in a hotel.  The problem was that I decided at the last second to go, and everyone who was offering floor space had already given it away.  Not about to be foiled once I'd made up my mind, I turned to Couchsurfing.

Couchsurfing rocks.

After many inquiries, I found two hosts between whom to split my four days.  The first was totally cool, and we shared much in the way of beer and good times on the Fourth of July.  My other hosts seemed quite awesome as well, and were definitely super generous, but I was sadly unable to spend any real time with them; I kept getting back late from late evening activities, and they had a sane bedtime.

I don't have any pictures to accompany this post because I couldn't bring myself to be that guy who snaps lots of photos with people he doesn't know.  I'm too awkward and reserved, though I did find someone who makes my neuroses seem virtually non-existant.  (By the way, finding a new show that is six seasons old is really, really bad news.)

Finally, I will in some way reward anyone who can accurately explain my occasional use of the phrase "in which" for post titles.

In which my blog holds me accountable

Things I said I'd do, with commentary.

• I'm going to run regularly. - I'm working on it.  I ran three miles today, my fourth time running in a week.
• I'm going to eat real food. - This one's still mostly a failure, though I did have a delicious pie containing cherries which I helped pick.  Actually, the cherries that went into that particular pie were all picked by me.  That's real food, yes?
• I'm going to do research. - Fail, and no comment.
• I'm going to write beautiful letters to beautiful people. - I wrote a few beautiful letters, but apparently that's weird and I haven't gotten any back.
• I'm going to take naps in the grass. - Not yet.
• I'm going to do yoga.  Even if it's bad yoga. - This one was probably overly ambitious anyway.

Dear everyone I've e-mailed, called, or texted recently

Please put your heads together and decide on ONE of you to get back to me.  I'm starting to feel pretty pathetic.

/emo

The truth is out there

So my last post was slightly snarky and was based largely on wild speculation by a guy with a weird name.  And Stephen Hawking, but he was just being hypothetical--he wasn't actually claiming aliens had hijacked a US space probe.

But lest we be too smug in our mockery of alien stories, you should be aware that Fox News and The Sun both ran this story about a fighter pilot being ordered to shoot down a UFO the size of an aircraft carrier.

(Cue spooky X-Files music)

Instructions for First Contact

I would like to share a few bits of information I've gathered from around the web about space and aliens and the like.  We'll start with a brief history lesson regarding the Voyager space probes.

In 1977 (the same year that brought us Star Wars), the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes were launched for deep space exploration.  Voyager 2 was the first (and only) probe to take a close-up look at Uranus and Neptune, and Voyager 1 is the furthest human-made object from Earth.  They are currently just a few years from exiting our solar system.

They carried, in addition to all the sensory stuff, a sampling of music and greetings in fifty-five languages, in case extra-terrestrial life ever found them.

In 1979, Star Trek: The Motion Picture hit theaters.  Let's get one thing clear: the television show Star Trek started airing in 1966, eleven years before any of that Star Wars plagiarism.  Anyway, the premise of ST:TMP was that some advanced alien race had found one of the Voyager probes and repaired it with their own technology, in the process giving it sentience and causing it to come back to Earth looking for its creator.  In the Star Trek novel The Return, William Shatner claimed the aliens that modified Voyager (or V'ger, as it called itself, because the "OY" had been scratched off and apparently its self-identification was based on its hull markings) were Borg, but it's usually best to ignore anything William Shatner writes.

Or directs, so you can go ahead and ignore Star Trek V.

To be fair, the Voyager probe in question in ST:TMP was Voyager 6, but bear with me here.


In April of this year, Voyager 2 started sending back information in an unknown data format.  You know, like if you send your professor a .odt, but he doesn't have OpenOffice.  Wikipedia calls this "scientific data format problems," but alien expert Hartwig Hausdorf (the perfect name for someone in a generally discredited profession) suggests the probe has been hijacked.  As in, some alien race is sending us their term papers, but we're using different word processors.  Kinda freaky in light of that whole Star Trek thing, right?  Especially since it almost meant the destruction of Earth.  Actually, kinda freaky regardless.

But there's one more thing I want to tie in to all this.  This data corruption--or hijacking--happened just three days before Stephen Hawking (you know, the astrophysicist slash smartest person ever to cameo in Star Trek) warned that instead of seeking out alien life, we should be doing everything we can to avoid contact.  He speculates that intelligent life we meet could well be nomadic, looking for new worlds to conquer and strip of resources before moving on (not that it wouldn't have some poetic justice in it).  If that also sounds like a movie plot, it's because it is.

So basically we're all going to die.  There is no possible way we would be prepared to fight off aliens capable of interstellar travel, so we might as well just accept it.

BUT, in case we do meet intelligent life that isn't just interested in a delicious new planet or paving a new intergalactic highway, and in case you happen to be the person who makes first contact, you should probably be prepared.  To this end, the folks over at io9 have posted this comprehensive guide for how to make first contact with extra-terrestrial life.

If you're in danger of not sleeping because of all this Voyager 2 creepiness, go ahead and read the "current status" section of the Wikipedia article on Voyager 2.

Of months and summers

It has been less than a month since I last wrote, but still far too long.  I get so caught up in everything but writing, I forget to write.  Then I make new friends and read their blogs, and I am incredibly jealous of the poignancy with which they offer up their thoughts.  Or perhaps just of the profundity of those thoughts.

Of course, I'm also appreciative of their beautiful minds and pens and keyboards.  But still.

I think my problem is I'm always waiting for something--always putting something off, and justifying it by establishing some artificial boundary that makes my procrastination seem rational.  I'll do my homework after I watch Stargate.  I'll catch up on reading over the weekend.  I'll eat better when my schedule allows.

So, summer is here.  As of today, or as of Sunday, or at the very latest as of the 18th.

• I'm going to run regularly.
• I'm going to eat real food.
• I'm going to do research.
• I'm going to write beautiful letters to beautiful people, starting with Tucker.
• I'm going to take naps in the grass.
• I'm going to do yoga.  Even if it's bad yoga.

We'll start with that.

Writing to change the world

Credit Brandi on the post title.  I was just reading her blog, of the same name.

In my Introduction to Theological Reflection class, we were given a semester-long assignment, called a "focal practice."  First, we were to write a short "This I Believe" essay, then create a focal practice around that belief and write ten journal entries documenting our experience with the practice.

I wrote that I believe "God is in the silence."  I talked about my desire--longing, really--for space and silence.  These are things I never get, because when I'm not frantically trying to finish an assignment I started after most of my classmates had finished, I'm murdering time by playing stupid online games or watching the latest episodes of my favorite TV shows on Hulu.

As for a focal practice, I don't have one.  I wrote about various things I did--attempts to cook, bike rides to school--things that make my life better, but that are not necessarily related in any focal sense.  Then, today, while doing a shift at Bethany's front desk, I got overwhelmed with a desire to write.  So I wrote the following:

I give myself "no credit" on this assignment.

I have failed to create any kind of focal practice. My writing here is reflective of a general theme in my life, which is a vague desire to be better in some way, accompanied by nothing more than fragmented half-attempts at doing something. So I tried to make broiled whitefish once. So I put together an altar. So I've been running. Sure, all of these things connect in my crazy post-modernist understanding of life and meaning and everything, but they aren't focal. And I'm not focused.

I face the same problem with writing. I'm a writer, kind of, except I don't write. And when I do, I don't write enough. I don't write enough to break out of the forced text and cliche and into something that will actually bring meaning to my own life, let alone to other peoples' lives. In writing, I start a new project wanting to name some kind of profundity, but then the ADHD sets in and I find myself entirely incapable of narrowing my vague creative desires down into something with focus.

A few weeks ago I stumbled across a guide to making a tape-less, staple-less booklet by cutting and folding paper. So I took some scraps of paper, put them together, and wrote "confessions" on the front. And I started to write.

Of course, this project is yet another one that has no focus. No boundaries. It's not "confessions" in the sense of "forgive me, father, for I have sinned." It's a confessional. I want to say, "This is who I am. This is what I think. This is what I'm going through." And, you know, it doesn't really have to have focus. Because it's just for me. It's just a little notebook where I can scribble some things down.

So I wrote about my lack of focus. My struggles with a learning disability. My recent separation from my partner of over a year. My theology of appeasement. My inability to follow through on anything, ever. Maybe when I'm done I'll tear it up. Maybe I'll put it in a box to read when I'm fifty. But at least I'm making something.

Maybe I'm not a writer in action--at least not as much as I should be--but I am a writer in belief. I believe that through writing I can mold the disjointed events of my life into a story. I can create meaning where none was inherent. I can process the things that whiz by me when I'm too distracted to stop and deal with anything.

I think writing changes the world, but not by being famous, unless you're Karl Marx or something. Writing changes the world by providing a lens I need to experience the world. It's a change of interpretation.

Maybe this post has nothing to do with the guidelines of this focal practice assignment. But I felt like writing it.

Theories on life, the universe, and everything

I'm actually not at all a fan of the Hitchhiker's Guide "trilogy."  But it is a good phrase.

I just saw this blog post passing along a brief lesson in life from Kurt Vonnegut.

I used to--and, to some extent, still do--seek the sort of life that would make a good movie.  Walking home from high school on a rainy night, after staying late to work on newspaper layout, I'd think how good my surroundings would be for some melodramatic montage, and I'd imagine the minor-key piano music and whining vocals that would accompany such a scene.

We all do this.  (By "we all," I mean "most of us, I think.")  We expect life to reflect entertainment.  After all, entertainment reflects life, right?  But entertainment reflects only the dramatic (and, at its best, the profound) in life.  It's a skewed look that uses semi-realistic people, relationships, events and themes to create unrealistic patterns and meanings.  We see this, and we expect our life to weave itself into natural plot lines; we expect people to exhibit the consistency and predictability of a well-developed character.

But people are not consistent, and life has meaning and story only through interpretation.  Out of this cognitive dissonance, we create the drama we expect to see.

Vonnegut:  "[B]ecause we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs.  So people pretend there is drama where there is none."

The blog author continues: "That's why people invent fights.  That's why we're drawn to sports.  That's why we act like everything that happens to us is such a big deal.  We're trying to make our life into a fairy tale."

The very definition of news geek

Diane Rehm said on the radio this morning, "Close to a third of homeowners owe more on their homes than they are worth."

I said, out loud, to the radio, "Close to a third?  It's twenty-four percent of homeowners with mortgages."

Glenn Beck mentioned me on TV

Do you think he listens to himself when he talks?

Headline of the day: "Gates Calls Europe Anti-war Mood Dangerous to Peace"

I also just realized how much I hate the NYTimes' style re: caps.

Too much to study to have time to study

Today started well.  I got up at 1:30, which I don't feel bad about since I worked until 4am and went to bed at 5:17.  I did a little stretching, had a quiet breakfast of grapefruit, OJ and green/white fusion tea, and sat down at my computer just to do a brief e-mail and news check.

News checks are never brief.

Did you know crickets are able to pass information about predators to their young in utero?

But this is the article that got to me.  It's about global climate change, and the small cost of curbing it.  One study says $80 per metric ton of CO2 would do the trick; the author suggests $300 in light of recent pessimistic news.  An increase of $2.60 per gallon of gas.

But we won't have it.  Who cares that we're definitely on track for disastrous temperature increase this century, and that there's a 10% chance of a catastrophic 12-degree increase?  That's cool, as long as I get to drive cheap.

Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert is quoted in the article:

“Global warming is bad, but it doesn’t make us feel nauseated or angry or disgraced, and thus we don’t feel compelled to rail against it as we do against other momentous threats to our species, such as flag burning.”


“Moral emotions are the brain’s call to action.  If climate change were caused by gay sex, or by the practice of eating kittens, millions of protesters would be massing in the streets.”


My favorite part of the article, though, is the end, where the author is responding to Dumbass Senator James Inhofe and others who would deny the existence of human-caused climate change or point to the fact that there's "only" a 10 percent chance that we're going to hit "We're All Going to Die" on the Global Warming Scale in the next century:

Most people would pay a substantial share of their wealth — much more, certainly, than the modest cost of a carbon tax — to avoid having someone pull the trigger on a gun pointed at their head with one bullet and nine empty chambers. Yet that’s the kind of risk that some people think we should take.

In a somewhat related matter, watch this and all other performances by George Watsky:

Scariest damn thing I've read all week

Please see this long but important New York Times article. Here's my favorite part:

"Marshall recommended that textbooks present America’s founding and history in terms of motivational stories on themes like the Pilgrims’ zeal to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the natives." (Emphasis mine).

This is sort of the topic of my thesis.  I think it would be more accurate to say, "the Pilgrims' zeal to slaughter the hell out of the natives, which they justified by calling them 'Canaanites.'"

What's YOUR favorite part?

Problems with theological research

Googled: "shouldn't use" + "five books of moses"

Result: "The main principles of Kashrut are laid down in the Five Books of Moses and are ... So you shouldn't use Worcestershire Sauce, which is made from anchovies, ..."

A slightly more substantive "I'm home" e-mail

Hello!

I've had a few days to rest and recuperate from my travels, and I've found that I've picked up a couple of new habits, neither of which has any logical connection to my time in Israel/Palestine.  The first is that I stop eating when I'm full, even delicious Thai food; and the second is that I'm waking up earlier and more easily (yet not on an Israeli time schedule, either).

But that has no bearing on anything.

As I am in the United States and on a semi-normal schedule, I'm available for sit-downs or speaking engagements of basically any kind.  If you or your group are interested in a meeting/presentation/interview/etc. regarding the current situation in Israel/Palestine, please contact me.  I can tailor my angle to specific interests and concerns, or I can just report on my experience there.

Please contact me if you have any interest in hearing about the trip, whether on a personal level or in a more formal setting.  I will, as promised, be sending some more updates that I didn't get completed while I was overseas, so all you need to do for those is keep checking your e-mail.

Thanks once more for all your support.

Nick

PS - This isn't an advertisement; I'm not looking for speaker's fees or anything.

Do you have a van parked on the street?

Some auto owners might feel a sense of impending doom when the person knocking on the door uttered those words. I, however, could not imagine any following sentence that would particularly upset me. "Someone hit it. With a bulldozer. Head on. At sixty miles per hour." Okay, cool. Actually, does insurance cover that?

"I think someone broke into it."

My reaction was more interested than concerned. Apparently the door had been open when my neighbor left for work this morning, and was still open when she returned, causing her some concern. I went to check to see if anything was damaged--nothing there is actually worth taking except the gas in the tank--but found everything intact. In fact, if I had to guess...

...I'd say I probably just managed not to shut it last night. Improbable as that is, it seems more likely than someone breaking into my car without damaging or disturbing anything, including the radio, and then leaving the door standing open.

The iObama

From the New York Times, regarding the upcoming Apple tablet computer:

"The device promises to hasten the extinction of paper, solidify Apple’s advantages in the mobile computing market, cure hunger and finally broker a peace between Jay and Conan."

I'm home

Just a quick update to all of you letting you know that I am back in Richmond, safe and sound.  More stories from my time in Israel/Palestine will follow!

-Nick

Soldiers on the Roof

Greetings!

 

Before I begin, a lightning update on where I am now: I'm in Jerusalem, and have been meeting with various peace groups here.  I'm heading back to the States on Monday.

 

This e-mail, however, goes back a few days to a story that happened in Al-Khalil on Wednesday, January 13.

 

Soldiers on the Roof

 

I was on potato-peeling duty for dinner in the CPT apartments, and was lamenting the fresh bag of potatoes I'd just been given, when I heard someone yell that there were soldiers on the roof.  Since I will take confronting people with guns over peeling potatoes any day, I dropped everything, grabbed my camera, and ran upstairs.  When I got to the roof, Paulette was arguing with maybe six soldiers about their right to be there.  After talking with others, it seems I arrived rather early in the encounter, though I did miss her trying to shoo them away (literally by waving her arms at them and saying "shoo!  shoo!").  They had also challenged her to prove she lived there, though that didn't really go anywhere.

 

Paulette had a camcorder, and I began recording video on my camera as well (though the batteries died shortly thereafter).  Pete was also taking multiple photos.

 

As the soldiers still refused to leave, we broke into a round of "Joy to the World."  I hope no videos surface of this, as I was definitely singing in the key of H.  They climbed to a higher level of the roof, and we followed them.

 

The soldiers began arguing with Paulette about their practices in Al-Khalil and various other relevant issues, and I don't remember the specifics of that conversation.  After a while, Paulette went back downstairs, and I found myself alone with the attention of a semi-circle of soldiers.

 

"Forgive me," I said.  "I'm new here, and I can't really speak to what's happened.  But I just want to say what I've observed.  There's all this fear that everyone has a knife, or a gun.  You've mentioned specific attacks that happened five months ago, or several years ago, anywhere in the country.  I'm from the United States, which in some places is a very violent country.  I've lived in a city where people are killed every day, often for the color of their skin, not once every five months.  I've worked with kids who live in neighborhoods where nine-year-olds are carrying guns and selling drugs.  But if someone where to ask me if I wanted the army to come occupy the city to make it safer, I would say absolutely not.  I would be horrified by the thought."

 

That launched us into a very long conversation, most of which I'm sorry to say I can't recall all that well, so what follows will just be snippets of what I remember.  At some point, some of the other delegates started talking to the soldiers, so that after a while I was talking to just one of them--Yadid (which means "friend"), the tallest, who I was later told had been acting disrespectfully to Paulette before I arrived.  Joseph and two Canadian girls, who were traveling independently and staying the night with CPT, also joined in.

 

There was some argument between the soldier and one of the girls about territory and history, but I tried to keep the conversation on the current actions of the military.

 

What I would call Yadid's central argument was that the occupation, checkpoints, and detentions in the street are all necessary to keep people safe and prevent terrorist attacks.  He also claimed that if Israel were not occupying Palestine, then the Palestinians (I presume; it was more of a "they") would be occupying Israel.  I told him that while I did not at all agree with that position, if it were the case, CPT would be there working with them.  He seemed genuinely glad to hear that.

 

He mentioned his desire to keep his family safe, and that became our common ground.  I told him I, too, want his family to be safe, and we acknowledged that we had the same goal and different ideas of how it could be achieved.

 

Yadid had a very different impression of the safety of Palestinian areas than I.  "If I came into these places without my vest and my gun, they would throw rocks at me or shoot me," he said.  I replied that I had walked through these neighborhoods, and had never felt unsafe.  "Yes," he said, "because they know you're their friend."

 

"Why can't you be their friend?" I asked.  "And besides, I have had Palestinians tell me 'Shalom' because they think I am Jewish.  I have still felt completely safe, and nothing has happened to me."

 

I also talked with him about some of my research on terrorism, and he seemed genuinely interested in it.  I talked about Jihad, since he had asked about September 11, and he jumped at my comment that concessions would not appease that breed of terrorist, linking them to Hamas.  Hamas, I assured him, is Islamist nationalist, and is a very different kind of terrorist organization.  I told him a psychiatrist had found that 50% of suicide bombers out of Gaza had their homes destroyed as children, which traumatized them and thrust them into a desparate situation.

 

"And why were their homes demolished?" he asked triumphantly. I told him they were built without permits, and he responded, "It is the same in any country! What happens in your country if someone builds something without a permit?"

One of the Canadian girls jumped in and pointed out that elsewhere one would pay the fine and be done with it, whereas here they must pay a fine, have their home demolished, and pay for the demolition anyway.

I added that of the over 6,000 building permits requested inthe Hebron district in 2009, only 13 were granted. He commented on the subjectivity of data, but I think such a startling hard number gave him something to think about. 

 

Finally, the people below must have gotten impatient with us, because we were called in for supper.  The soldiers were invited to join us (on the condition that they leave their guns outside), but they said they couldn't.  I got Yadid's e-mail address on the condition that I would not bombard him with pro-Palestinian literature.  "I think you are completely wrong," he told Joseph and me, "but maybe it is good that you care about something enough to come all this way.  It is better than sitting at home and doing drugs."

 

That, to me, became the most important part of the conversation.  It is neither an easy nor a common thing to respect the value of another's passion when it fuels a position so opposed to one's own.  Seeing that recognition gave me hope for dialogue between the various sides of this conflict.

They left when we did, which suggests they were just waiting for us in order to save face.

 

He's just a kid

 

When I reflected later in the evening on what had transpired, I realized something else I had observed: in the past, soldiers have been scary to me.  I have placed upon them the "older than me/taller than me" impression.  This changed Wednesday night.  Talking to Yadid, I realized he was just a kid, probably younger than me (I'm guessing twenty, because Israelis generally go into the army at 18 and he commented that he has nine months left).  He had a gun and a uniform, but it did not make him more informed than me, and I did not have to yield to his authority.  At the same time, he became a real person.  It's hard to explain, but I feel that conversation greatly helped me to understand the soldiers here.

 

A story I previously reported

 

The CPT release concerning the incident that happened right before we got to At-Tuwani can be found at http://www.cpt.org/cptnet/2010/01/12/tuwani-shepherd-tortured-five-hours-israeli-soldiers-and-police.

*Other links*

Delegation blog: mideastdelegation.blogspot.com

My blog: cptnick.blogspot.com 

The Star of Goliath

Hello everyone,

I'm back at a computer after several days without internet access.  Many exciting, depressing, and encouraging things have happened over the last few days, and in good time I will share with you all of them, but at the moment I feel my priority should be getting some sleep.

From now on, you're likely to get more, smaller e-mails from me, rather than big chunks of text.  These will continue after I'm back in the U.S., as there are many stories to tell.

However, I wrote something the other day when the internet was down, so here it is:

--------

Nick's CPT Update Monday, 1/11/10

Hello friends and family,

I'm back in Al-Khalil after two nights in the village of At-Tuwani in the South Hebron Hills.  Our internet isn't working at the moment, so I'm writing this ahead of time and don't know at the moment when I will be able to post it.  At the time of this writing, anyway, it is almost noon on Monday, January 11.

The trip is starting to take its toll on me emotionally; the last two days have been particularly intense and draining.  Hebron introduced me to settler encroachment, blatant injustice, and military harrassment.  At-Tuwani, however, painted an even worse picture of the occupation.  First, I'll rewind to some of the stuff I didn't get to report on earlier.

Al-Khalil, continued

I've given up on trying to report everything I learn from everyone I talk to, at least while I'm here.  When I get home, I'll dig through my notebooks and regale you with every detail.  For now, however, I'll stick to my broader experiences here.

Since I enticed you with mention of home invasion, I'll start there.  We got back to the CPT apartment on Friday laden with filafels for lunch.  As we were arriving, Drew and John ducked out, having gotten called to a home invasion.  We continued eating, but before too long we received a call for backup, so several of us set off with Paulette, a full-time CPTer here, at a fast walk.

We were just a couple hundred meters from the house when we passed a group of soldiers, one of whom was holding a large pry bar.  We met Drew at the entrance to an apartment building, received an update from him, and were able to go up to talk with the family.  I was struck by the way we were welcomed into the home and served hot tea: even the shock of a home invasion seems to have no effect on Palestinian hospitality.

Here's what happened:

The family was eating lunch when soldiers entered their apartment, giving no reason.  They gathered the family in one room and held them there while they searched the house, then they went upstairs to a small room that one of the family members, a student, uses to study in.  He offered the soldiers the key to the room (it may have already been in the door; it was when we got there), but they ignored him and broke the door open.  Then they went and looked around on the roof, which for some reason is common.  The glass over the solar water heater was cracked from where a soldier had stood on it previously, and there were cuts in the chicken-wire fence where they had cut it to look through.

Drew and John arrived with a partner of theirs in Al-Khalil and entered the apartment while the family was being held in the room.  Their partner asked the soldiers for a warrant or a written order from their commander, one of which is required for them to be able to enter a house.  The soldiers refused to show either and told the partner he had one minute to leave.  The partner said, "It is the law."  One of the soldiers responded, "Go f--- yourself.  I am the law!"  All the while, Drew was videotaping the soldiers.  Finally they left, though it was not clear exactly why.  I am quite sure, however, that they were very relieved when they saw us walking, that they were not still there when the whole group showed up.

Events like this are not the exception here; they are a common occurance.  Only a small fraction of them are ever documented like this one was.

That is not the end of Al-Khalil, but I want to get on to At-Tuwani.


Arriving in At-Tuwani

"You have entered a village that is nonviolently resisting ethnic cleansing."

Those were the introductory words from Joy, a CPTer in At-Tuwani.  At-Tuwani is the largest of many small villages and hamlets scattered in an area of the South Hebron Hills.  There is a permanent CPT presence there, and the village (and its neighbors) have been insistent on keeping their land despite constant harrassment from both settlers and soldiers.

I want to say a word about settlers: "Settlers" is a blanket term for Israeli civilians living on occupied land.  This is illegal: international law forbids an occupying power from transferring civilian population to occupied territory.  There are, however, different kinds of settlers.

In and around Jerusalem, many settlers are not ideological or zionist.  They may not even know they are settlers, as their neighborhoods are not advertised as "settlements" and many of them are Jews arriving from abroad and simply going to the cheapest housing.  It is far cheaper to live in East Jerusalem, or in a nearby settlement, than to live in West Jerusalem.

In Hebron, we are getting more into the territory of ideological settlers.  They are more likely to engage in harrassment of Palestinians, and they are often zionist in that they believe the land was given to them by God and they have a right to take it.  We heard stories of militant occupation by settlers willing to live in difficult situations in order to claim land, and saw an example of an outpost.  I would also surmise that, at least in the case of settlers living inside of Hebron, their ideology can be somewhat mitigated by their daily interaction with Palestinians.

In the South Hebron Hills, the settlers are, for the most part, highly ideological and militantly zionist.  Those who don't want to rarely have to see a Palestinian, as they would never be allowed inside the settlements, which are locked up tight.  They would see them briefly on the road, as they travel between settlements for school or work.

Some of the settlers, however, will see the Palestinians more often, when they come on to their land to harrass them, assault them, poison their sheep, destroy their property, and more.  Slowly but surely, they expand their settlement.

A familiar pattern might look like this: the settlers build an outpost, which is illegal.  Then they build a road to the outpost.  Then they supply the outpost with electricity and water, and the outpost becomes a settlement.  If they run in to Palestinian opposition, the military administration declares the land "disputed" and a "closed military zone," and keep out any Palestinians.  Note that "disputed" is a joke, as the Palestinians generally have deeds proving their ownership of any land they have left.  Since Palestinians can't cross on to the disputed land, it is then declared "abandoned" and given to the Jewish Land Trust, which passes it on to the settlers.

Back to At-Tuwani.  Tuwani is overlooked by the Ma'on settlement and the Havat Ma'on outpost.  Settlers from the outpost tend to be the most troublesome, as they are as a group more militant.  At the time of our arrival, there was plenty of stress for the local CPTers, for the following reason:

Two days before we arrived, a family from At-Tuwani were grazing their sheep on their land.  Some settlers from either Ma'on or Havat Ma'on (I'm not sure which) arrived and called the military--another common tactic, as the military tends to be as much the settlers' gun men as keepers of the peace.  Not wanting a confrontation, the family quickly herded their sheep back on to land that was even more clearly theirs.  This didn't help: the soldiers attacked and beat the family, then "arrested" (abducted) the oldest brother.  They tied his hands and feet and blindfolded him, and took them back to the military base, where they beat him (still blindfolded) for hours.  Finally, they dumped him on the side of the road, still bound and blindfolded, at night.  He hid until a CPTer and someone from the village were able to find him and bring him back.

Again, this is not a unique story.



We had a little time to drop our things and unpack a bit, then we were off to join a march from At-Tuwani to Al-Fakhiel, a local school about an hour's walk away.  The settlers commonly prevent children from getting to school, so the march was a nonviolent action to protest that, and the military's inaction and complicency.  Though it was a march, at the insistance of the organizers, we rode in a trailer pulled by a tractor.  At the end of the march, there was a press conference.  Hafaz, a local organizer, spoke of the need for the international community to get involved.  They do not want food or money from us; they just want their children to be able to get to school safely.

More on the village of At-Tuwani

As I described, the people of At-Tuwani have been slowly losing their land to settlers.  This is not their only difficulty: they have faced the demolition of their homes and buildings, and many of their homes have demolition orders on them.

Here's the lowdown on that situation: any construction in Area C (Israeli controlled) of the West Bank requires a permit.  Basically, Israelis can get these permits and Palestinians cannot.  They occasionally try, but even trying and failing requires a significant financial investment.  An example of the injustice regarding these permits: in 2009, Palestinians applied for 6,142 building permits in the Hebron district; only 13 were granted.

As such, every single building in At-Tuwani is illegal.  This includes their school and cistern, both of which have demolition orders on them.  Demolition orders must be issued a few days before actually demolishing a structure, but they are not a guarantee that it will happen: some buildings have had demolition orders on them for well over a year.  But this means they could be torn down at any time, putting the residents in a constant state of fear that their homes will be destroyed.  Sometimes, the military goes so far as to park bulldozers on the road to At-Tuwani just to terrorize the villagers.

Despite a promise from Tony Blaire, who said there was an agreement with the Israelis, the village has no electricity.  Acting on the promise, the villagers constructed the infrastructure to bring electricity from the Israeli network into the village, but the army confiscated the electrician's work truck and tore down two pylons because they were "too close" to the highway.


School patrol

The next morning, several delegates joined the full-time CPTers on "school patrol."  I was on breakfast duty, so I was not one of these delegates, but here's the deal:

There are children in two nearby villages who attend school in At-Tuwani.  The shortest road from their villages to the school passes directly between the Ma'on settlement and the Havat Ma'on outpost.  There is a middle road that also passes dangerously near the settlement, and a third road that goes around.  The difference is between a twenty minute walk and an hour and a half one.

Some time ago--I don't feel like going back for my notes--CPTers tried to accompany the children on the short road.  They were attacked by settlers, and though the children escaped, the CPTers were badly beaten and had to be hospitalized.  They tried again with the middle road, and were again attacked.  Since internationals were being injured, though, this brought enough attention that the military struck a deal with the mayor of At-Tuwani that they would provide an escort for the children going to school, so long as no Palestinian adults or internationals went along.

This deal only works so well.  The military escort is frequently late, if it bothers to show up at all.  The point at which they meet the children is well within settlement territory, and is not where they agreed to meet them.  And even when it works perfectly, the children are being escorted by the same soldiers they've seen harrassing and arresting their families.

Under this arrangement, "school patrol" is a bit different than it was during the attacks: an Italian peace group that also works in At-Tuwani, Operation Dove, goes to the villages from which the students walk and waits with them while they watch for the military escort.  When the escort arrives, the children go meet them and walk.  CPT waits in At-Tuwani and watches for the escort to arrive.

On Sunday, the escort arrived at the meeting place, but left again immediately because no children were there.  Remember, the meeting place is in settlement territory, and it would be dangerous (actually, impossible) for the students to be waiting there.

The children had exams that day, so they decided to walk anyway.  They tried to take the middle path, but a settler had parked his car and was waiting in ambush.  He got out with his face masked and approached the children, who ran away.  The CPTers here have found that any time a settler masks his face, he intends to do physical violence.

After an hour and a half of phone calls to the military from CPT, Operation Dove, and one or more human rights groups, two foot soldiers and the settler police showed up to escort the children.  When they were just halfway past the settlement, the police drove off, and the soldiers got into a settler vehicle and left.  The children were forced to run the rest of the way to the waiting CPTers at At-Tuwani.

Our life

Living without electricity or running water was an interesting turn.  Even in the winter, we had sunlight pretty much as long as we wanted it, so that wasn't a major issue.  Flashlights helped us out at night, and the village has a generator (with a demolition order on it) that supplies about four hours of power each night.  Drinking water was purchased at the village store (they order it just for the internationals), wash water came from a cistern and could be accessed from a tap in the bathroom, and dish and tea water was drawn from the village well.  I went to draw water both mornings and found it to be a fun chore, though I imagine the novelty would wear off before too long.

The worst thing for me was that both toilets to which we had access were "squat toilets," which is a euphemistic way of saying "hole in the ground."  Used handwashing water is used to flush, and they drain to... somewhere.  I'm not particularly interested in knowing where.

We managed to jam twelve people into Hafaz's small living room on sleeping mats, without a whole lot of room to spare.  Both nights were rather horrid for me in terms of quality of sleep; I must have woken up every ten minutes Saturday night.  Sunday was marginally better.

Peter, one of our two Australian delegates, has fallen quite ill in the last couple of days and was running a fever of 105 last night.  He's seemed to have gotten a little better, but the poor guy seems miserable.

Catching up to now - 3pm Monday

We called taxis to bring us back to Al-Khalil this morning and have had a decently relaxed day.  We met with a shopkeeper who works with human rights groups and is a "convinced" nonviolence activist, and are now back at the CPT apartments.  Shortly we will be living for overnight stays in Palestinian homes.  The men are going to stay with the shopkeeper we met with a while ago, so I'll get to talk to him about some of the CPTers we know in common, like Cliff Kindy, a friend of his who has a farm near where I went to college.

Delegation blog

Something I have promised and not delivered: the official CPT delegation blog for this trip can be found at mideastdelegation.blogspot.com.  It lacks posts, a fact you can blame on me, since I'm the "blog coordinator."  But, as you know, we've been away from the internet.

Just a reminder, these e-mail updates will all be compiled at cptnick.blogspot.com.  There are a couple of things I'm leery of posting in such a public format for security reasons, so not quite everything I send you will appear there.  Also, even in these e-mails, I may withhold or change names because some of the people we meet with could be in danger if they are identified.

Thoughts on conflict, dispute and neutrality

I have always tried to be as objective as possible (insert post-modernist reflections on the impossibility of objectivity here) when dealing with matters of conflict and politics, and especially concerning the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.  I complained that a week-long seminar in which I participated on the subject was biased against the Israeli side.  Even recently, just before leaving for this trip, I wrote a press release expressing my interest in learning about "all sides" of the conflict.

But objectivity and neutrality are not the same thing.  The latter has become too often the norm, particularly in the press, though that is not something I wish to tackle right now.

As Dr. Ken Brown commented in a class I had with him, "The more you study an issue, the further from the center you'll find yourself."  This is certainly the case here.  At the risk of sounding arrogant, the truth in this land is not found in the center.

I mentioned earlier that Israel benefits from saying "let's negotiate" while grabbing more land.  To be plain, under international law, the whole occupation is illegal.  The land is not disputed; it is occupied and stolen.  Even talking about a "conflict" implies some balance of sides, as if two factions are shooting each other.  But this is a matter of occupier and occupied.  In this story, one faction has a monopoly on money, resources, weapons, equipment, and legal structure.  The other struggles to scrape out a living, denied any shred of normalcy.  One side expands and takes, while the other side tries only to hold on.  When it comes to ownership of the land, one side has proof; the other side vetoes this proof with guns.

The message from the international community cannot continue to be about getting the two sides to the table.  Our message has to be simply, "end the occupation."

End rant.

I hope all of you have been doing well in class, work, or whatever it is you're doing.  I apologize for the sporadity with which I have been sending updates, but computer access and time has been even more limited than I expected.  You'll probably continue to get these well after I return home as I struggle to catch up on everything I've learned and experienced.

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Back to 1/14

As you can tell, I was a little upset when I wrote that.  I thought about taking out my political bias, but that wouldn't really be giving you the full feel of my experience here.

A quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. has been popping into my head frequently these last few days: "The arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice."  I always that it was a cool saying, but my time here has transformed those words somehow.  Now, when I say (or type) them, I feel moved almost to tears.  Justice will come.  I trust that.  And amazingly, I continually meet Palestinians who, despite the conditions under which they are living, share that faith.  I just hope it isn't too long in the coming.

Since then, we have had the opportunity to stay with host families in Al-Khalil, visit Bethlehem and spend the night in a refugee camp, and confront soldiers on our own rooftop here in Al-Khalil.  All of these stories will get to you--if not in the next couple of days, then certainly upon my return.

Blessings to you all,
Nick