My book!

Two of the sermons in this book reference one of the many "treasures” strewn about my house, specifically a little brown rock about the size of a meatball. It’s kind of lumpy and hard and drab. It’s chipped and cracked. But it has a heart-shaped hole in the side.

I have come to see this little treasure as a symbol of the human-God relationship. We too are small, lumpy, often hard-headed, stiff-necked, and wounded by the inevitable challenges and suffering of human life. In comparison to God, more like a little brown rock.

But we do have a God-shaped hole in the side of our tiny, frightened, wounded and often hard human hearts. Nothing can fill that hole except God. God put it there with great love and tenderness to help us know whose we are. 

And that's Incarnation and that’s what makes it possible for us to love God and our neighbor as ourselves, to care for others—even those we don’t like or who frighten us, to reach for God and to find God, right here on earth, in each other and in creation and in the very ordinariness of our lives.

I think you’ll find that theme running in the background of many of these sermons.

Buy it here!

 

Who are you?

Last week I was privileged to be guest speaker at West Monroe High School's National Honor Society induction ceremony. Here's what I said.
 

Picture this. A young woman gets off a train in a small village along the northwestern coast of Spain.  She adjusts the weight of her over-sized backpack and looks around.

Nearby, several young people are conversing in the rapid-fire, rat-a-tat of native Spanish speakers.

“Donde está la pension (Where is the hostel)?” The woman with the backpack has addressed her question to the young Spaniards.

“Allá (over there),” they answer, gesturing toward main street.

But the backpacker has given herself away. Her Spanish is heavily accented with U.S. American English. And the young Spaniards gather around.

Where in the United States are you from? they ask. How did you get here? Why did you come here? What’s it like where you are from? Does everyone in the United States go to college? Does everyone really own a car? Do you have your own television set at home? And on and on.

In that moment, I realized something very important, something so important that it changed my understanding of who I was in the world, and therefore changed my life. Remembering it, and telling you the story this evening, still has power to move me.

Because what I learned about myself at that moment was that, in comparison to the young Spaniards with whom I was carrying on this conversation in my rather inadequate Spanish… what I understood was that in comparison to them, I was incredibly wealthy and privileged.

Now, in fact, what they could not possibly know is that I had taken out a student loan in order to participate in a study abroad program. I had very little cash in my pocket. And after settling my things in a room in the pensión, I would go to the local market and buy a hunk of bread, a piece of cheese, and a couple of pieces of fruit, and that would be my food ration for the entire day.

Nevertheless, they were right. In comparison to them, I was wealthy and privileged… just because I had managed to do a thing they would never in a million years do, namely…. cross an ocean to spend a summer traveling and learning in a strange land. Such an experience was beyond the realm of the possible for them.

We are all here this evening to celebrate the accomplishments of and induct a hundred young people into a National Honor Society chapter that already has a hundred members. Congratulations!

Each of you who has achieved this honor and all of your friends, parents and grandparents are rightfully proud of this achievement. Again, congratulations!

But my job is bigger than to congratulate you! Laurels are no good if all we do is rest on them. My job is to challenge you. It is to call you and push you and prod you toward the next big thing. My job is to ask questions that will shake you awake, just like the questions of the young Spaniards in my story shook me awake so many years ago.

Who are you in this world? Not in the eyes of mom, dad and grandparents, but… Who are you in the eyes of a world in which only a very small fraction of kids even get to go to high school? And in which an even smaller fraction finish high school? And the percentages continue to decline of those who get to attend college, and the lowest of all, those who complete college!

Here’s a few numbers for comparison:

According to United Nations data, in 2005, less than 25% of girls in Afghanistan and just over 50% of Afghan boys complete primary school. Yes, primary school.

In the African country of Niger in 2011, just 10% of high school-age kids is actually in school. In 25 countries worldwide, less than half of high school-age kids are actually in school.

How about college? Almost 75% of college-age youth worldwide are not in college. That’s as of 2011 according to data collected by The World Bank.

So…. who are you in the eyes of the world? Well, one answer is, you’re a member of a privileged minority that has access to education, indeed, to education that has been largely paid for by tax dollars up to this point.

And when it comes to college, because you are the smart ones, many of you will qualify for TOPS—Louisiana’s excellent and generous college scholarship program.

The more challenging question is, What are you doing with the educational privilege you enjoy? How are you going to use your privilege as an educated person to give back to your community? How are you as an educated person going to seek justice and peace in the world? How will you promote the common good at every level of society?

I’m not just asking how you’re going to pay the bills and accumulate personal wealth, although I hope you are successful at that too! I’m asking, What are you going to do to leave the world a better place than you found it? Because that is the responsibility of each and every one of us who enjoys the privilege of access to education.

Recently I was searching for something online, and I stumbled across a music video produced by an organization called “Playing for Change.” It begins with a street musician in Los Angeles singing and playing the song, “Stand by Me.” Then it shows the Playing for Change team going around the world collecting performances of the same song from Africa, the Netherlands, Russia, South America, Italy—and more. And all of those performances are merged into a wonderful montage of voices from around the world singing one song.

The electronic merging of those voices from around the world stands for the mission of the young men and women who formed and founded Playing for Change. They intend to change the world through music and their skills as communicators and the wonders of digital media.

I think they’re making progress.  You can check them out online at playingforchange.com.

But what about you? How are you going to change the world? How will you take your candle and go light the world?

2012 Year in Review: March

This isn't the best photo I made in March, but it is certainly the most special!

Me and Tom Tran at The Bean

Tom Tran is a photographer I met on Google+, just one of many with whom I have become online friends. But Tom is different in that he is the only one of all the photographers I've met online that I have now also met IRL (in real life)!

For the past couple of years, I have been going to Chicago a couple of times per year to get my "city fix." These trips are schedule around performances by Lyric Opera of Chicago and include at least one meal at a nice restaurant, perhaps a visit to an art museum, and photography.

In March 2012, having been on Google+ a few months and met Tom, he and I planned to meet and "photowalk" The Loop together on a Saturday afternoon. What a great time we had! From the beginning, it was as if we had known each other much longer.

We met at The Bean in Millenium Park, a famous Chicago landmark. You can see a bit of it over Tom's right shoulder. The real name of this highly-polished steel sculpture by Anish Kapoor is "Cloud Gate," but everyone calls it "The Bean" because of its shape.

We walked north to the Chicago River, where I took a photo that won a 3rd Place ribbon at Art With a View in Monroe in November of this year. We wandered around The Loop and photographed some of Chicago's interesting architecture. We stopped and talked over lunch.

Tom's story is amazing. He and his family escaped from Vietnam a few years after the war had ended. They were among the many who left at great personal risk via an over-crowded, too-small boat to head out across the South China Sea! But they made it, spent two years in a refugee camp in the Phillippines, and eventually came to the U.S.

And if Tom looks a bit familiar, it is because he played a prominent role in the movie, Good Morning, Vietnam!

I'm looking forward to photowalking with Tom and other Chicago photographers when I go back in March of this year.

    

2012 Year in Review: February

February in Louisiana means tulip trees (Japanese Magnolia) spring into bloom, and what show offs they are with their regal purple trimming!

The photo below swims to the top of my memories of February 2012 for two reasons. First, I took it in Georgetown, having gone there to pay a speeding ticket. Everyone who lives in northeastern Louisiana and goes regularly to Camp Hardtner or Pineville-Alexandria--in other words, most of us Episcopalians--knows the drill. I was on my way to some church function, don't remember what, when I crested the hill approaching Georgetown with my mind on other things. Bam! I was toast.

You Had Me at "Hello"

So I went to Georgetown not in the best mood and not feeling particularly gracious toward the place. But I allowed extra time and after paying the ticket, went exploring with my camera. I encountered a friendly resident who welcomed me to the community. I drove through the town and discovered a lovely recreation area on the east side, where I photographed beautiful grasses, reeds and reflections in the lake. I found a rusting disc abandoned in a yard and added some photos to my #ruralruins project. (I love photographing old people and things. Hmmm. Not sure what that's about!)

And I found a yard with a small tulip tree full of bursting blooms in easy reach of me and my extension tubes. I made a number of images, but the one above became an immediate success on Google+, and that's the second reason it is featured here. It shot quickly to the top of my "Google+ Timeline," a feature that tracks the popularity of your posts, and stayed there for a long time.

When I posted this image again as my February #bestof2012, it again shot up to near the top on my G+ timeline. Indeed, I am considering submitting it as my "best of the year" to a wonderful project on Google+ called PlusOneCollection.

PlusOneCollection is headed by Russian photographer Ivan Makarov. For the second year in a row, he is soliciting "best of the year" photos from the international community of photographers on G+. These photos will be collected into a book published in at least two forms: 1) An eBook that will contain all images submitted, and 2) A hardcover print book that contains the best of the best selected by a jury from among the G+ photographer community.

I had an image in last year's eBook, but I did not make it into the print book, so here's hoping for this year! I would be so proud!

But here's the best part. All of the proceeds from the sale of the book go to a charity. This year's charity is The Giving Lens, a nonprofit funded primarily by photographers. The money will put digital camera in the hands of Masai children and teach them how to use the cameras to tell their own stories. I love it!

So...., I forgave Georgetown for the speeding ticket that took me there, and I am overdue for a return trip to see what else the community has to offer this photographer!

And, BTW, on G+ among the photographer community, all of the petty divisions of race and nationality and so forth do not exist.

2012 in Review: January

This has been a most challenging and difficult year for me in many ways, and I approached the end of it not feeling particularly on top of my game and more wary than hopeful or excited about a new year. So when photographers on Google+ started posting their "best of 2012" photos and thoughts, my first thought was, "I just can't do that this year. No heart for it."

But, in fact, photography has been the best thing about this year. It has kept me sane and trudging along through some real crap, and indeed has provided not only creative relief but inspiration when my images have been well-received by so many of that same international network of photographer friends.

I encountered photography when I went back to the University of Iowa in my late 20s to get a degree in Journalism. I did lots of photography and achieved some recognition for it, but then went off to graduate school. Years later, after many years of graduate school, struggling to achieve tenure and being an academic department head, I found my way back to photography (long story for another time).

From 2005 through 2011, I shot some but not enough to do a "best of the year" review. In 2012, I shot 4,387 images with my digital 35mm camera!

So I decided to give "best of 2012" a shot after all, one month at a time. I completed that task today on Google+, and decided I'd share the results with a larger audience. And because the words that go with these images are just as important as the images, I'm going to use this blog to do it. The story is, after all, partly about coming to terms.

Joy

Here's my favorite from January. As whale shots go, this little tail slap is not that spectacular. But it means the world to me as one who has studied and loved whales form afar for decades but has only twice managed to get close enough to make a decent photograph! It is from my January trip to Hawaii to an academic conference.
                         
                               

Interfaith: Together Building Community

Bethel Church of God in Christ provided music at a recent assembly.

At the end of my last post, I promised a bit more about Interfaith and I want to share three things. First, I mentioned in that post that Interfaith needs “organized people.” By that we mean people who understand that the self-interest of each of us is interconnected with everyone else’s and that the community thrives when we all have voice and participate in public life. 

That requires developing relationships with people we do not usually rub elbows with in everyday life. It means going out of our own neighborhood to meet in a church on the other side of town. It requires patience and can be frustrating, but the rewards are huge—both personally and communally. 

Second, I also mentioned in the last post that Interfaith needs “organized money.” By that we mean “our own”! In other words, Interfaith strives to support itself by dues-paying institutional members. In addition, we receive some grant support from the business community and various foundations, and gifts from individual people who are not part of a member institution. 

As a matter of policy, we do not accept any funds from any governmental entity at any level. That is because we sometimes go to governmental entities to get things done, or we need to call upon them to be accountable. For example, Interfaith convinced Monroe City Council to invest city economic development funds in NOVA, the independent workforce intermediary we helped get started that is currently contributing over $2 million annually to the economy of Ouachita Parish.

Interfaith uses its funds primarily for the training and education we need to organize people and money to get the job done. We have one organizer-trainer who is the sole staff person for the Ouachita Parish cluster of Interfaith and the “glue” that helps keep us volunteers on track!

The third and last thing I want to share in this post is that we have begun to plan an event for this fall called “Conversations about Monroe.” Our goal is to bring together six people—the pastor plus five others—from 20 institutions, or approximately 100 people. These people will be divided into “house meeting” size groups of 8 – 12 people each. With the help of a facilitator, each group will have a conversation in which each person will be encouraged to share his/her vision and energy for making Monroe, West Monroe and Ouachita Parish a community in which everyone thrives. The purpose of this event is to set Interfaith’s agenda for the next few years and identify people with vision and energy to carry it out.

You will hear more about this in upcoming weeks. For now, I can say that I will be one of the facilitators. Several local pastors have agreed to attend and to bring members of their congregations. All who care about this community are welcome. Please comment below or contact me if you'd like to participate.

Best Game in Town: Interfaith

In early summer 2001, I walked into the ULM Catholic Student Center where a meeting was just getting underway. By the end of that meeting, I knew that I had found something of great value. It was a meeting of leaders of Northern and Central Louisiana Interfaith.

The first thing that got my attention that evening was the mix of people in the room. They were African American and white, Missionary Baptist and Episcopalian, Church of God in Christ and Lutheran, Ba’hai and Jewish, from the north side and the south side, teachers and janitors, businessmen and laborers, and although it was less immediately obvious, they were poor and middle class and relatively well-off. And they were there to work together for the good of the community.

Interfaith celebrates its 10th Birthday with a skit.

Of course, I did not yet understand how my own life would be affected, but I remember leaving the Catholic Student Center thinking, “this is the best thing happening in this community.” I have been involved with Interfaith ever since. We have had our ups and downs, successes and failures, and we are now in a time of rebuilding. But it has changed my life, it has changed the community, and I still think it is the best thing happening in this community.

Why? Of course I must mention some of our big successes, like getting the city and the school board to cooperate in closing a 12-foot deep drainage ditch that runs right along the edge of the playground of Madison James Foster Elementary School. Teachers had fished more than one kid out of the water during rainy seasons!

The city school system began a cycle of major remodeling projects, but mysteriously ran out of money when they got to the dreadfully inadequate, deteriorating gym at Carroll High School. We went to the school board and said, “That’s not acceptable,” and today Carroll has a new gym.

NOVA might well be our biggest accomplishment to date. NOVA is a workforce intermediary. It is employer driven. It locates living wage jobs with career tracks and benefits that are going begging in this community for lack of skilled applicants. Then NOVA, with the help of Interfaith, recruits motivated but underemployed people in the community, gets them in and through the training they need, and into the jobs employers have been unable to fill. Through NOVA, we are building the middle class of Ouachita Parish.

NOVA executive director Paul West speaks to an Interfaith assembly.

Just a few weeks ago, NOVA expanded into the Delta. NOVA, with the help of Interfaith, will conduct two graduation ceremonies this summer. The one for Delta graduates has not yet been scheduled. However, Ouachita Parish graduates will commence at St. Thomas’ Episcopal at 7 p.m. July 26. Come to hear how lives have been changed—not only those of individuals but of entire families!

But most important of all to me is the relationships I have found and cultivated through Interfaith. I am welcome at New Light Baptist Church and am on the board of directors of their community development organization. I am connected with people at Jesus the Good Shepherd Catholic Church, at Mt. Nebo Missionary Baptist Church, at Messiah Lutheran, at Lighthouse Church of God in Christ, and the list goes on.

My relationships through Interfaith are central to my rootedness in this community. They are what make “community” out of diversity for me.

Want to get involved? Interfaith needs organized money and organized people to do what it does. I’ll write more about that next month, but for now, see me if you’d like to help. And I will definitely need some folks to provide finger foods for the reception to follow the NOVA graduation!