No Child

Last night, Julie, Abby, Jeremy, and I (four teachers in the NYC area) went to see this amazing one-woman play. Nilaja Sun is a teacher, writer, and actor who created a play to tell the story of her time as a teacher in a Bronx high school, working with teenagers who have, in many ways, been "left behind".

It was amazing.

If you have anything to do with urban kids, urban education, or urban life in general, this is a must. Ms. Sun was so skilled at jumping from one character to another from moment to moment, from the elderly janitor of the high school to a streetwise student named Shandrika to the toe-the-line principal, Mrs. Kennedy to the Jamaican security guard to herself, a teaching artist in the Bronx. And many more.

Samuel.

Samuel.
Originally uploaded by grbecca.

This is my nephew Samuel. I got to spend a little bit of time with Samuel and Gabriel (my other nephew) when I visited Grand Rapids two weeks ago.

To The Thumb!

Sleeper State Park
Originally uploaded by eckerput.

Mary Beth and I leave today for a little cabin, here, at Sleeper State Park. Brr. And Yay! I'm looking forward to the time with trees, wind, beach, and water. And, of course, my dear cousin.

Risen!

This poem was referenced in yesterday's sermon, though I missed it because I was leading Children's Worship.

Seven Stanzas at Easter

By John Updike
Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

I love poems that make me learn something new...for example, before yesterday I had little idea what "Max Planck's Quanta" meant, although I probably read about in a physics class some years ago. Now I do, and it makes my understanding of the resurrection that much richer...thinking about God's ability to direct atomic activity in angelic messengers, not to mention the physical body of Christ, is a weighty thing, especially since I've always considered angels to be supernatural. Is there atomic activity in the supernatural? Or do the atoms in supernatural beings behave with disregard to natural patterns and laws (like, for example, quantum theory)?

This One's For You, Mom.

This One's For You, Mom.
Originally uploaded by grbecca.

We spotted this while crossing a street in Morningside Heights last Monday. Mom, Rachel, Rachael, and Gabriel were visiting me in NJ, and they wanted to go to Grant's Tomb. So, to Grant's Tomb we went. Who knew the people in Morningside Heights were desperately seeking my mother? It's a good thing we went.

New Yorker

Of the several changes in my life that have recently taken place, I'm currently reflecting on my ever-growing stack of unread New Yorker magazines. Now that I'm not riding the subway as much, my reading time (that is to say, the time when I have no other choice to pass the time but read) has been drastically diminished. I loved reading the New Yorker on the subway, just because the articles were the perfect size (as far as length and my mental capacity) for the PATH ride from JSQ to the World Trade Center, and from Chambers Street Station to Newkirk Ave. Granted, I would still have to travel with a highlighter to mark the phrases, words, and people that I would later look up on wikipedia.com or in my dictionary. But now, reading the New Yorker has become something I need to intentionally do--and I'm finding it doesn't fit into my schedule. Or perhaps I'm just lazy.

So then, I ask myself...why do I even subscribe? Do I really enjoy reading the magazine? The answer to that is "yes, mostly"...although I am not ashamed to admit that the cover art and cartoons are the main attraction for me these days. Even when I'm sitting at home, and have the choice to read the New Yorker or do something else, the something else calls out.

Oh well. I at least have a few plane trips to look forward to that will give me some reading time.

And, next weekend, it's off to a little cabin in the woods (or some such place) with MB...so hopefully there will be time and space for some New Yorker "catching up" there.