MLK: Ebenezer Baptist Church, 5 months before his assassination

"I say to you this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren't fit to live.

You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid.

You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You're afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you're afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand.

Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at ninety.

And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.

You died when you refused to stand up for right.

You died when you refused to stand up for truth.

You died when you refused to stand up for justice."

palabras bonitas son tan facilés

and I am just so weary of the ways of childish men.

the bittersweet between my teeth

In Hinduism, he told me, there are two paths to G-d: Love and Knowledge. In high school, I think I followed that Love path--loving my youth group, loving my leaders and friends. Then college came, and with it the path of Knowledge.

I can see how some would think of it this way, the quest for Knowledge itself as a way of being hungry. And I don't want to discount that.

But I don't know if Knowledge is a path to G-d.

Because how does thirst really ever come except by knowing you are utterly dry, and without? Is this why is says do not be wise in your own eyes? Love and Knowledge are compatible, but they are also not equal.

But thirst, to thirst in your blood and in your bones and in your eye sockets and nerve endings, to want, desire, crave, ache for, need something more--this must be a path to G-d. How could someone live thirsty and not in the end meet G-d?

Like the Spanish boy in The Alchemist, who sells his entire flock of sheep and leaves everything he knows to get to Egypt. Even if he doesn't make it, he will die trying to find and fulfill his legend.

And lately that question that gnaws at me--can people change?--has taken a new dimension, Can a person become hungry? Are we either born or not born with this hunger? Can it be grown in us? I know it is not hereditary.

I want to be able to believe that overarching statement that we are all longing for the same world, whether we know it or not, we are all longing for connection and for freedom and for the Prince of Peace to reign on earth. But sometimes I'm not so sure...

But as for me, I have to get to Egypt. If it means selling everything I have, I will buy no other way. Even if I never see the pyramids, I will not rest from this desert crossing. I will walk mi camino propio, and I will not wish for another.

it takes an ocean not to break

In Bellingham two weeks ago, L., J., and I crashed a wedding. On a napkin I scribbled this snatch of handwritten vow, ''For freedom from doubt and suspicion, I commit to interpret your behavior seeking to understand in love.''

Now, aside from the fact that any man saying that to a woman, or person saying that to a person, makes me want to weep, all this reflection on the salient and unspoken rules of classes and cultures has me thinking: when you exist in the dominant experience, or at least the headlining one, unintentional ignorance and/or willful oblivion comes easy.

When the different does appear (in the form of homelessness, minority cultures, women's experiences, etc), it is so easy to regard with distrust and suspicion, which we know gives birth to judgment and pride. In the flicker of a brain wave, you are ruler of your own universe, miles and miles from the heart of God.

But to learn to seek to understand and face situations and cultures and people not being wise in your own eyes, giving the stories of others fullest attention and questions and empathy--now this may be something like that woman Wisdom! And oh, how I want to walk closely with her!

In all things,

at all times,

you will abound with everything you need.

back at blue ridge

Today, when we are discussing ''Los opciones de Kelso (la rana) para resolver problemas grandes y pequeñas,'' we come to ''Calmate.''

''Cool down your chicken,'' Sirgio says, explaining the meaning of ''Calmate.'' I ask him if his mom says this, and he nods his head.

Of the same child, a bright reader, I must frequently request, ''Read it again please, this time nicely,'' as he lapses into funny accents almost without fail by the end of the first sentence on each page.

Later Seth raises his hand as la Maestra asks everyone to put their hands down. ''I was going to say something important,'' he declares.'' ''You have one second to do that,'' she responds. Esta maestra es una poca intensa.

''My great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather died 10,000 years ago,'' Seth says.

First grade is about following directions; stomachaches and hard falls can be cured with an ice pack or drink of water. I've been working a lot on reading with these little ones lately, in Spanish and English. Teaching reading to a kid who struggles to connect sounds to letters is no easy task, not to mention that English has 1100 rarely reliable ways to spell 44 sounds for Spanish's 38 and 35 reliable ones.

If preschool and kindergarten are about concepts (time, family and community, spatial and mental categorization), and in grades 6-12 we teach content, then grades 1-5 are all about skills. Cutting, coloring, pasting, tying shoes, ordering, arranging, writing, reading, adding, subtracting, dividing, multiplying, problem-solving, observing... I guess I just never took the elementary teaching vocation very seriously, but think of where you'd be without these basis abilities?

Last week my Latino first grade teacher pointed out that the reason our afternoon block can be a little crazy with behavior problems is because we have all the English readers in one room at that time. ''You mean the behavior kids are white,'' I said, a bit boldly, knowing we were both thinking of the eight or so kids who consistently tend to act up. He nodded, embarrassed. He isn't trying to stir up anything, and culture plays a large part, but it's true.

So, there's that.

new year, happy

and all the lives we ever lived

and all the lives to be

are filled with trees and changing leaves

-Virginia Woolf

A couple of years ago my friend Darrelle started a blog. To introduce us readers to her story, she begins by talking about roots. She shares about her life in Colorado, about what it means to be from a place, and also what it means to leave that place. How we are born in and leave and return to geographical and metaphorical places (and relationships) in our lives.

Roots grow. Leaves change color. Branches must be pruned. A tree becomes unrecognizable from a seedling. And yet without the seedling, there would be no tree.

I am talking about identity. You are older, but you are the same. At any given point in the line, the spiral, the web, the building, you are either becoming more yourself, or less yourself.

For me, being from Washington means so many things.

Familiarity with Salish words and names, the normality of seafood, salmon, and berries, taking ferries regularly, dirty cars and teeming gardens, composting and rain, seasons and driving, Asian food and earthquakes. Mountain houses and evergreen trees.

I think of the island town of my birth and the Upper Columbia of my adolescence, now the vineyards and Blue Mountains of Walla Walla.

Chacos and Birkenstocks, dirty feet and snowshoeing, Indian reservations and long summer nights, the drive-in, bow-hunting and fly-fishing, ground wheat berries and sprouted grains, homemade wine and beekeeping, the Kootenais and the Salmo Priest, Quillisascutt Valley and all the orchards along the river.

And woven into these northwest roots the language of Santa Barbara’s beaches and Westmont, beloved; the self-assurance of San Francisco walking; wide-eyes of London exploration and burly glares of self-protection learned in Tegucigalpa and along Honduran trails.

I think about where I’ve come from and each stage I’ve passed through even while remaining the same. Stretching and growing and expanding but being essentially the same person, the same species of tree.

Each step is a stone of sorts, a stepping-stone. Or how could we get to where we are going? How could we miss steps but keep on with the journey? That would not work. I am grateful for Telford’s class, as it helped prepare me for living in San Francisco. I am grateful for coming back to Santa Barbara after working as a chaplain and wondering what the hell was happening to me, not being able to process anything, struggling to put words to those experiences from General Hospital.

And it is has stuck with me, what he said about not judging or looking down on who you have been, not looking back to think with relief, ‘I’m so much cooler now,’ and sensing your earlier self a stranger. We must learn to be okay with the places we have been, the roads we have walked, the scenes carved into our eyes. And not only okay, but richer and kinder for them.

Where you are now, there will come a day when you also want to write that off. You are not where you will be! And that is okay too. Karen always talked about chronological snobbery, about the need to be patient with others, to remember, as Brad said, that people are rarely where they will end up. Gentleness, gentleness, in all interactions.

Because sometimes the lack of manifest empathy makes me sick to my stomach. But even this must be forgivable, for empathy only comes from walking in the hardness. And some walk flatter, not better or worse, paths.

This 23^rd year was my golden birthday, and to be honest, it has been a painful year, marked with loss. If you know me, you know I love gold—earrings, rings, headbands, scarves, glitter—and this year really has held none of that.

But then maybe that is what it means to become gold—to walk through fire, and come out purified. Well I do not claim purification, though I have seen so many things held dear crumble into ash at my feet. And I will say that of transformation, like alchemy, I know no other way than to walk through flame.