Another Confirmation

I just finished James Dobson's book Bringing Up Boys. About half the book was comprised of political rants in which Dr. Dobson is trying to scare the reader regarding the "liberal elite" or the "radical gay agenda." During those times in which he deviated from the political rants, there was, as one would expect from someone with Dr. Dobson's background in family counseling, wonderful advice for a guy trying to raise a son to love Jesus.

Although clearly over the top and despite the fact that they were the only two people in my life (including other TFA directors) who believed I was wrong for putting my family first, some of the guilt laid upon me during that last desperate attempt from two directors of Kansas City Teach For America still follows me around. Maybe someday I'll publicly share all the things of which they accused me and the creative ways they tried to leverage guilt to coerce me to stay in my teaching role, but for now I'll just share one of their tactics. That tactic was to explain to me how my son would never respect me were I to walk away from TFA's mission in KCMSD. That one was saved for the end of our meeting. I guess it was a final Hail Mary of sorts.

I knew however, that the act of neglecting my own son while trying to save a group of other father-less boys was not worth it. I can't save the world at the cost of my own family. I can still remember my former Pastor, Dan Arnold, talking about that in his sermons. About that same time in my life, I was at a Promise Keepers event with my dad and made a life-long commitment to never sacrifice my family for "ministry." I had been thinking however, that two years of my son's life wasn't that much; he'd only be 2.5 - 4.5 during this teaching gig, surely we could reconnect afterwards. That rationalization, thankfully, was countered by a good friend Noel Forester, who informed me that those years are some of the most important for father-son bonding. This timely piece of wisdom was backed up in Dobson's book.

"A father holds awesome power in the lives of his children, for good or ill. Families have understood that fact for centuries.... When asked who their heroes are, the majority of boys who are fortunate enough to have a father will say, 'It's my dad.' On the other hand, when a father is uninvolved - when he doesn't love or care for his kids - it creates an ache, a longing, that will linger for decades... boys are constructed emotionally to be dependent on dad in ways that were not understood until recently.

We now know that there are two critical periods during childhood when boys are particularly vulnerable. The most obvious occurs at the onset of puberty, when members of both sexes experience an emotional and hormonal upheaval. Boys and girls at that time desperately need their father's supervision, guidance and love. Divorce at that time, more than at others, is typically devastating to boys. But according to Dr Carol Gilligan, professor at Harvard University, there is another critical period earlier in life - one not shared by girls. Very young boys bask in their mother's femininity and womanliness during infancy and toddlerhood. Fathers are important then, but mothers are primary. At about three t0 five years of age, however a lad gradually pulls away from him mom and sisters in an effort to formulate a masculine identity. It is a process known as a 'disconnection and differentiation,' when, as Don Elium writes, 'the inner urge of the male plan of development nudges him out of the nest of the mother over a precarious bridge to the world of the father.' It is typical for boys during those years, and even earlier, to crave the attention and involvement of their dad and try to emulate his behavior and mannerisms."

"While you're climbing the ladder of success, don't forget your own family. Those years with your children at home will be gone in a heartbeat. Do whatever is necessary to grab those precious moments, whether it requires changing jobs, getting a smaller house, or turning down lucrative and exciting opportunities. Nothing is worth losing your kids. Nothing!"

Of course, ministry and family are in no way mutually exclusive. Here's a great article that explores that tension, Before Saving the World, Go See Your Family.

Bittersweet reunion

E. was one of my angriest students and that's saying something. According to other teachers, his brother was even angrier. E. fought me on everything while also fighting other students. Somewhere along the line however, E. started to trust me a little bit. He came to do what I asked about 50% of the time, which was simply amazing.

My last week of teaching, E. was serving a 5 day suspension for violently punching another student. The day before my last day, I used a sick day but came in after school to clear out some of my stuff. I saw E. walking home and he told me that on his first day back from suspension, he'd been suspended for another 5 days for again viciously punching another student. Since I knew that E would be gone on my last day, I told him that I couldn't be the teacher I needed to be while also being the dad I needed to be, so I was leaving the classroom. To my complete surprise, this angry kid who hated me at least half the time, gave me a hug while trying to hold back a tear. It made me a bit sick to my stomach, I'll admit.

Fast forward to last Friday night, Erin and I are at Crown Center, eating in the food court after we'd taken Dawson to the Holiday Lights Train. A few minutes earlier, in the Crayola playroom, we noticed the black kids in school uniforms being followed by some tired looking parents. I probably wouldn't have noticed that tired look before my days in inner-city KC, MO. While we were eating, E. came walking among a group of about 5 siblings being herded by his tired looking (most likely single) mother.

When he saw me, E.'s face lit up and he ran over to give me a hug. His mom had a "who is this guy" look on her face until E. told her that I had been his teacher. At this news, E.'s mom smiled. I didn't notice the smile however, because I couldn't look her in the eye. I was filled with so much shame for walking out on her son. Erin told me about the smile and said that I seemed to shrink with guilt before E.'s mom. I will say, however, that in the midst of all the guilt and awkwardness of seeing a former student, it sure felt good to see the smile on his face. E told me that the kids are totally disrespecting the teacher who replaced me, which is no different than how they treat all the teachers at that school.

Adding even more strange thoughts and feelings to that situation was the fact that a few minutes later, Erin was approached by one of her students and family. This family was your typical wealthy suburban family; two kids, two parents and one grandma along for the ride. The contrast was jarring. It's almost incomprehensible that two different worlds exist within the KC metro area and that the inhabitants of these two worlds are almost completely ignorant of the realities of each other's worlds. It's also amazing that, when you consider the individual school's performance records and the records of their districts, Erin and I were simultaneously teaching in one of the nation's worst schools and one of the nation's worst schools. If I had made it a whole year, I think we could've written a book.

I'm not the only one still sorting through the emotions of walking away from Teach For America's dream that "one day, every child in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education." In fact, as of early December, 28 of the 152 KC Corps Members had quit. When you consider the qualifications TFA Corps Members have to demonstrate to get chosen, including the demonstration of persevering through difficult circumstances, that's an incredible rate of attrition. When you also consider the success TFA has had in many other districts across the nation, those 28 people are making a huge statement about how dysfunctional the KCMSD really is. I wonder whether the loss of their accreditation and federal funding could result in the shutting down of the entire screwed up system.

A good friend who quit a few weeks after me was called by one of her parents after her resignation and the parent expressed thanks for what this teacher had done and frustration at having to send her child to such a terrible school.

While it sure seems to me that there is no way I could have made any impact in just 7 weeks, E.'s smile and that bittersweet reunion makes me think otherwise.

A Car Wreck

I'm now working as an auto insurance adjuster. I do all of my work from the office,so if there are any injuries resulting from the accident, the claim automatically gets reassigned to an adjuster in the field. There are some serious injuries, obviously, but even if there is the possibility of a minor injury, the claim still gets sent to a field adjuster. If a person has just a small pain in their neck, there still needs to be an investigation because while that pain could end up going away in a day it could also turn into a chronic neck injury. So no matter the extent of the injury, an investigation is always required. We also keep a record of where each person is sitting in the vehicle. A curious reality of car accidents is that one person may walk away from an accident relatively unscathed while another person sitting in different part of the vehicle could suffer a serious injury. As long as the injuries and passengers are put in the file at the time the claim is filed, future treatments may be covered by the insurance company. Another curious thing about injuries is that they may not present themselves until months after the accident.

A few days ago, I had the privilege of having breakfast with one of my college mentors, Dr. Sondra Cave. In addition to being a mentor, she was also my "mom" while I was in college; letting me cry in her office after Erin dumped me (thankfully she eventually wised up) and later serving as Erin's wedding coordinator. Despite all she had done for our university and even despite being named alumnus of the year, a year ago Sondra was laid off from our alma matter. To put it mildly, it was a painful experience for her and she's still working through some of the effects of that betrayal. On the positive side, however her consulting business has taken off now that she's been forced to market her incredible gifts.

That morning, Sondra and I swapped stories about the hellish despair we've both gone through lately. I told Sondra some of the emotional breakdowns my short stint in the Kansas City Missouri School District had caused me, some of which I'm still not comfortable sharing on this blog. We also talked about how we've both come a long way in our recovery Physically, I'm back to normal but I'm pretty sure I'm not yet fully recovered emotionally.

While I've been given some great opportunities to use some of my teaching and leadership gifts withing Indian Creek Gardner, I'm intentionally holding back somewhat; being hesitant to commit to some things that I know I could do and working to protect my time with my family and my time to myself. I've also had some discussions about potential full-time ministry opportunities but I'm very hesitant about those, too. Right now, it's wonderful to work my 40 hours, leaving the job at the office and to come home to a night of playing with Dawson, jogging on the treadmill, reading a book or working on a sermon for Indian Creek.

I know this place I'm in isn't long term but it's a really nice place to be; a fact that actually scares me. I'm scared of being complacent and missing something great God may have for me because I'm too busy enjoying my comfort to sense his nudge. Which makes that conversation with Sondra so timely.

Sondra expressed my 15 weeks of Teach for America/ KCMSD as a car crash; a short but intense experience that launched with huge hopes and dreams before violently crashing into a reality of guilt and shattered dreams. The grief and guilt of which is compounded by the grief of Trinity Family Gardner ending the day before I was accepted into TFA. The thing about a car crash, Sondra reminded me, is that it may take months for all the injuries to appear and even years for those injuries to recover.

So just take it slow, she advised, allow yourself time to recover and trust that God won't let you fall asleep in complacency.

War Crimes and the American Conscience Part III

During downtimes for my training with Farmers, I was able to read an interesting book from 1970 entitled “War Crimes and the American Conscience.” The book was an analysis of US war crimes committed in Vietnam in the light of the principles of the Nuremburg conference; the recorded notes of the 1970 Congressional Conference on War and National Responsibility. Below are some excerpts.

“Yet [most Americans] should recognize that vigorous objections to policies which the individual regards as unwise is the very stuff of which democracy is made. The true patriot follows the whole of Carl Schurz’s admonition, ‘My country right o wrong; if right to be kept right, if wrong to be put right.’ – Senator George C. McGoveren Pg. 167

“There is a strong emotional argument for supporting our soldiers on the line with everything they need. But they are best supported by actions designed to bring them home and to limit the power of the Executive to demand their sacrifice in an ignoble venture. I have stopped voting for Vietnam war appropriations, and I shall not do so again. – Senator George C. McGoveren Pg. 168

“But a new idea for the United States – a central one for empire – developed after WWII: The matter of winning any particular war, or of losing it, became secondary to the quest for constant military engagement and the display of American power. War became a continuous way of life. War is no longer attached to interests, purposes, or objectives. It became an end in itself, prepared and conducted at the pleasure of national security institutions.
“Since WWII, indeed, the primary activity of national security institutions has been to police the world. Law is subservient to the club, to napalm, to the bribe, to the rolling thunder of the B-52. The United States has executed scores of agreements, assigned hundreds of thousands of troops around the world, placed tactical and strategic nuclear weapons hither and yon, bought and sold governments. National security activity has become a criminal enterprise without political accountability or human motive.
– Senator George C. McGoveren Pg. 172

“As the administration pursues its doctrine of ‘low profile’ involvement around the world, using the CIA or foreign troops rather than American soldiers for intervention, the need for close and continuing public scrutiny becomes more urgent. There is a need, for example, for development of a new standard of bureaucratic responsibility. Would it change the decisional process and the causal view of war if Government officials were personally responsible in a LEGAL sense for their policy actions?
If such questions are to be answered in a positive manner, the Congress and the people must redefine legitimacy, put another way, rather than the internal and national security institutions spying on the people, it is now time for the process to be reversed. – Marcus Raskin Pg. 170

“This is to say that the imminent danger to a democratic society is not the specter of overt military control of national policy, but the more subtle one of a military isolated from the general citizenry, allowing for greater international irresponsibility by its civilian leaders. It is only when the consequences of such irresponsibility are uniformly felt throughout the body politic that we can begin to hope constraints will develop on the use of violence to implement national policy. – Charles C. Markos, JR.
Pg. 181

War Crimes and the American Conscience Part II

During downtimes for my training with Farmers, I was able to read an interesting book from 1970 entitled “War Crimes and the American Conscience.” The book was an analysis of US war crimes committed in Vietnam in the light of the principles of the Nuremburg conference; the recorded notes of the 1970 Congressional Conference on War and National Responsibility. Below are some excerpts.

“The American tradition is to locate the source of evil deeds in evil men. We have yet to learn that the greatest evils occur when social systems give average men the task of routinizing evil. - Edward M. Opton Jr. Pg. 113

“As the satirist Art Hoppe put it, ‘The best way [to kill civilians], it’s generally agreed, is to kill them with bombs, rockets, artillery shells, and napalm. Those who kill women and children in these ways are called heroes...’ How is it, the foot soldier must wonder, that ‘to kill women and children at less than 500 paces is an atrocity; at more than 500 paces, it’s an act of heroism.’ – Edward M. Opton Jr. Pg. 115

“We should pay tribute to that small but courageous number of the American armed forces who have refused over the years to follow orders when it came to the indiscriminate killing of civilians… These are heroes whom we ought to remember and honor – not only for their own sake, but because they provide us with an example of what individual conscience can do against the immortality of an act of Government.” Pg 148, Hans Morgenthau

“The free and responsible man will support and refine man-made laws wherever possible, but he will not permit his conscience to be limited by statute or its application. If he is a religious man, he will appeal to transcendent authority and join St. Peter in saying, ‘We must obey God rather than man.’ He will ‘seek first’ God’s kingdom, insisting that every other loyalty is a lesser loyalty. Or, lacking the authority of revelation, he may join Thoreau in refusing to pay taxes, in denouncing legalized racism and an unjust war, appealing to the ‘general right and obligation of men to disobey commands of a government’ which they consider morally wrong.
Flag-waving chauvinism must be recognized for exactly what it is. If Auschwitz was inhumane, so was Hiroshima. – James Armstrong Pg. 152

“The ultimate crime is war itself, and trying to assign degrees of criminality to certain of its forms is like trying to disguise the stench of rotting carcass by pouring perfume on it. – Jerome Frank Pg. 162

“Public officials should, therefore, be made to answer such legitimate questions as whether we have a real interest in the outcome of a conflict and, more importantly, whether we have a RIGHT to interfere. A refusal to answer on the basis of such considerations as ‘You’d support me if you knew what I know,’ is an abuse of power that a democratic society can never tolerate. – Senator George C. McGoveren
Pg. 166

War Crimes and the American Conscience Part I

During downtimes for my training with Farmers, I was able to read an interesting book from 1970 entitled “War Crimes and the American Conscience.” The book was an analysis of US war crimes committed in Vietnam in the light of the principles of the Nuremburg conference; the recorded notes of the 1970 Congressional Conference on War and National Responsibility. Below are some excerpts.

“If we work up to the level of our technology in terms of the wars we are prepared to fight, the sky is the limit; There will be absolutely no control over what the United States can do, because it is the most powerful nation in the world and has the most advanced military technology. We will use other tactics, we will fight ‘clean’ Vietnams, where our hands don’t get dirty, where we fly in the stratosphere, not seeing what we are hitting and killing. - Hans Morgenthau Pg 27

“It is also a reality, I think, that no American President will look upon himself as a possible perpetrator of war crimes. It could not occur to him, it could not occur to the American people – except to the young – that war crimes are something that can be charged to Americans. – Daniel Ellisberg Pg 31

“The blind destruction of whole villages with artillery or from the air, on the grounds that one had drawn fire from somewhere in these villages, would seem on this basis [Nuremberg Conference Definitions of War Crimes] to be a war crime. - George Wald Pg 75

“As a nation, we have abdicated our responsibility to differentiate between means and ends in the execution of our foreign policy. We turned this responsibility over to an Executive who is not bound in the conduct of foreign policy by much more than his own perception of the world and the consciences of those who surround and advise him. – William R. Corson Pg. 91

“Can any country such as the United States, with its predominant military and economic power, with a position so commanding in the world, carry out warfare against a weaker state, without in fact pressing its advantage to the limit of its own assessment of its own security? When the United States has exercises restraint, it has done so only in response to perceived threats from a stronger or equally strong power.
The basic issues is the permissibility of basing a foreign policy on our unilateral determination to use violence whenever and whenever we see fit, to achieve ends as we determine them. This basic notion of how we use our military power really has to be attacked before we can work out ground rules for managing the violence on the battlefields. – Richard Barnet Pg 98

“Turning now to the rest of the American population and its response to My Lai, we can identify at least three psychological mechanisms called forth to avoid facing such unpleasant truths. The first is denial, ‘The massacres didn’t really happen or have been exaggerated.’ The second is rationalization, ‘War is hell.’ And the third, in a way more politically dangerous, is the mobilization of self-righteous anger; ‘Stop picking on our boys. The Vietnamese had it coming to them. You [the bearer of the news] ought to be sent to Vietnam to fight.’ - Robert Jay Lifton Pg. 106

“When we go into a village, we classify all the people into different categories. But these categories do not depend on something we perceive about them; they depend on what we do to them. If we kill them, they are Vietcong. If we capture them and tie them up, they are Vietcong suspects. If we grab them and move them to a camp, they are hostile civilians. Having don this to many people who are in fact innocent, the definitions we have imposed become real. The men who have been tied up or tortured actually become our enemies and shoot real bullets at us, but still we are facing the shadow of our own actions. – Robert Jay Lifton Pg. 111

Red Pill, Blue Pill

"[It is a shock] to learn that in every nation where we now have terrorism, the USA had first done terrible things. We've overthrown their governments, installed dictators, undermined their economies - all to strengthen our business interests. The terror attacks are retaliation for what we've done to their countries.
Chomsky [an author] shows how our corporate media have created an image of fiendish terrorists who 'hate us for our freedom.' But they really hate us for dominating them. Since we started the aggression, the attacks, detestable as they are, son't end until we change our policies.

The most pathetic thing is that we Americans still believe it's 'our' country, when it and both political parties are firmly in the hands of the corporations.
This view went against everything [we] have been raised to believe. We've all been subjected as children to patriotic rituals that caused us to connect the nation we live in with our family and then with God - the founding fathers, our own father, and the Heavenly Father all joined in patriarchy. Because of this emotional identification, we react to criticism of the country as an attack on our family. This hurts our feelings on a deep personal level, so we reject it, convinced it can't be true. It's too threatening to us. We tune it out and often resent the people making it."

"Western propaganda uses this to whip up war fever. The media in Europe and North America have seared all sorts of atrocity stories- some of them true, some of them not - into people's minds to justify invading the country and bombing the people.
The Taliban are bad guys, no doubt about it. I'm not fond of them at all. They killed hundreds of people, including friends of mine. They would've killed me if I had stayed.
But the USA has killed fifty thousand Afghans just in this current war... and more every day. They're devastating the country. They make the Taliban look like boy scouts."

- two excerpts from Radical Peace: People Refusing War

It's when you've learned enough to "take the red pill" that the above comments make sense.

I think what finally put me over the edge was Walter Wink's The Powers that Be. While reading that book, all the other biblical and extra-biblical study I'd been doing all came together.

Here are some other red pill-esque quotes.

"One of the most persistent ambiguities that we face is that everybody talks about peace as a goal. However, it does not take sharpest-eyed sophistication to discern that while everybody talks about peace, peace has become practically nobody's business among the power-wielders. Many men cry Peace! Peace! but they refuse to do the things that make for peace." - MLK Jr.

"Naturally the common people don't want war... That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or not voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." - Hermann Goering

A Radically Patriotic 2011

Last night, Erin and I watched the movie The Help. It was a great movie! Without giving too much away, I'll share that the basic premise of the movie involves some of the characters intentionally breaking a law of the State of Mississippi (1950's Mississippi) in order to work to bring racial equality to the nation. Watching that movie made me thankful for those patriots who love our country enough to engage in the civil disobedience necessary to create a more just and right society.

I'm also reading another book that is challenging me to help make this nation a more just place, though more on that later.

But here's to a more radically patriotic 2011. More to come...