Further Musings

Charity and I hit the mountains both of the last two weekends.  Once for a lovely little hike in DuPont Forest and today for the peak of Black Balsam Knob.  Today’s drive was a little far but once Brevard lured us in with its bakery we decided to keep driving till we got to the top of this part of NC.

In some ways these two trips have been goodbyes.  I’ll miss these mountains.  In high school I played hooky to swim in these streams and to hike these peaks.  I’m excited about moving to the Ocean State but I’ll miss these mountains mightily.

We move to RI in just over two weeks and I’ve been thinking a lot about what this year has meant and what it has been.  I took the job at Furman (and painfully left Chapel Hill) to have a test run as working as a professor.

In the end, I think this year has really helped.  After the emotional and professional turmoil of grad school my emotions and thoughts about academics felt like swirling, churning, muddy river water.  This year has been a year to let the silt settle, the water clear, and know what I want.

The year has really changed my perspective.  I hadn’t realized how different being a professor is from being a graduate student and how much more I would enjoy it.  The pressure is less.  I’m not worried about if I’m going to measure up to the department or the dissertation committee.  There is a lot less “what do I do with my life?” angst.

The days are more structured.  I taught and planned three classes a semester instead of just TAing for one class.  I see students and faculty often, and this has been really good for my mental health. And I respect myself more. I feel like an adult in a way I did not in grad school.  Students, faculty, and even the Dean see me as a valuable asset instead of a burden. That feels good.

Also, I thought I knew what it would be like to be at a liberal arts college (LAC) before I came to Furman, but sitting at the end of the year I realize that I didn’t.  I’m surprised by the depth of relationships I developed with the students in just a year.  I had students for both semesters and I didn’t expect the bond that developed seeing them twice a week for a year.  I know them better.  I’ve shaped students more here that I ever did at UNC and that has been fulfilling (and I’ve got the cards and baklava from them to prove it )

I’ve been surprised at how much I’ve enjoyed teaching upper-level seminars.  The students are interested in the material and they care more than they do in intro classes, the only kind I had taught at UNC.

I was surprised at what good colleagues the faculty were.  The job here demands less of their souls than a research university … they are still pretty odd by normal person standards … but a lot better than the vast majority of my grad school professors.  Furman isn’t a utopia but it’s better in deeper ways than I envisioned when I took the job.

All that to say that I’m glad I gave the academy a year or two as a professor before deciding whether or not to leave it.  I’ve had space to settle emotionally, get real experience being a professor in a way grad school couldn’t provide, and keep my options open between staying and leaving academia.  Working in Raleigh or DC is still an option but placing at a Furman (or Brown) wouldn’t have been an option if I had left the academy first.

I can walk away from the academy or remain in it with some emotional maturity that I didn’t have before.

I feel a connection with a church planter headed up to Boston who I had a beer with recently. He became a Christian his first year as a professor.  He wanted to become a minster but also wanted to make sure he wasn’t running from a fear of tenure.  He tenured and then changed careers.  Seeing in through brought a sense of solidness in his decision.

A year later I feel like I can leave or stay in academia on my terms, not being driven out by my own emotional muddiness nor by a lack of respect from others.  For that, I’m grateful.

Last week a friend of mine submitted his dissertation.  I asked him if I could read the acknowledgements and dedication section as they are the place where you reflect on the struggle of the last eight years of bleary, demeaning, and demanding graduate school.  It’s a thankful testimony of all the people who walked through this unique stage of life with you.  I clearly remember the emotion of writing my own.  My friend’s dedication made me cry.  A true testimony to the power of Christ in the world.

Charity and I were honored to help some friends think through who they would choose to be the legal guardians of their children.  I’ve typed up the thoughts from our discussion in case they are helpful to others.

Advice on Choosing a Legal Guardian for Your Children

You need to make this decision: Your sudden death is difficult to think about and unlikely, but it might happen. You are in charge of deciding what is best for your child.  Make this decision now and state it clearly in your written will. This will save your children and your families a lot of grief, uncertainty, and arguing during one of the worst times of their lives.

Who to choose? Is there an obvious choice of grandparents, siblings, or close family friends?  If not then this might require more thought.

Questions to think about when choosing a legal guardian:

-       Do they love you and do they love your child?

-       Are they emotionally healthy people?

-       Do they share the same values you do?  Religious, cultural, etc.

-       Do they have the resources (emotional, time, etc) to raise your kids well?  For example grandparents may be too old to effectively monitor and guide a child.  Making your sibling a single parent may not be what they want or what they can handle.  That said; let them make the decision if you think they would be the best people for the job.

-       How important is having your child raised by blood relatives compared to friends who may have values closer to yours and be in a more similar life situation?

-       Peruse this excellent list of questions and suggestions.

Action steps once you have made a decision:

You must get a written will.  In it you will name an executor.  Will he or she know about your choice of who the legal guardians will be? (see question below as you think about this).

Write letters to your child about why each of you chose the legal guardian. Should something happen it will be good for the legal guardians have your endorsement and for your children to know that you chose the guardians out of love for them.

Think carefully about telling your kids about your plan:  Your sudden death is pretty unlikely.  It probably isn’t helpful to plant the idea of you dying in the minds of your kids.  It can be unnerving.  Your letter to them will be explanation enough should the time come.  On the other hand it might be helpful if they chose who to live with.  They may have  opinions and preferences you are not aware of.

Think carefully about telling other people about your choice:  Your sudden death is unlikely.  Is it really helpful to create hard feelings in all the people who you aren’t choosing?  If you decide to make your choice known to your family think carefully about how to introduce to the idea to them.

Topics for Discussion with the Legal Guardian(s)

Set a schedule for reevaluating your choice: This decision is about what is best for your child and that will likely change over the years.  What if the family you choose has twins or a child with special needs? What if the parents get divorced? What if you move to a new town and find a family you trust with kids the same age?  Setting the expectation of regular reevaluations will reduce hurt feelings if should you change your mind.

Finances:  You will need to have a frank & open discussion about your finances with the legal guardians. 

-       How much will you be leaving to your child?  This helps the legal guardians have a real sense of the financial burden of raising your children.

-       How will the inheritance be dispersed?  Will it go into the new parents’ finances (say to help buy a bigger house to hold your children) and then the new parents will treat each child (theirs and yours) as equals?  Will it be something that the new parents have access to for expenditures on your child over time (medical bills, private school, special trips to see family, etc)?  Will it be a trust that the child would get at a certain age (say 28) or for college?  Think carefully about how your choices will shape your child and their relationship to their new siblings/parents.  Put your decision in your will.

-       Are you qualified to give your child social security survival benefits?

-       Other financial assets they should know about?

Be clear about expectations for visiting your families. 

-       Have an open discussion about how to handle visiting four sets of grandparents, plus other extended family.

-       Will the children go on their own?  Will the whole family travel?

Discuss extended family issues they should be aware of: 

-       Will any family members oppose the child “leaving the family”, especially will they oppose it in a formal legal sense?

-       Any issues that they should know in navigating your families? For example, would it be dangerous to let the child be alone with a particular aunt or uncle?  Does a cousin have a history of mental illness?  This could be written in a sealed letter enclosed with the will that would only be opened if you died.

Questions to ask if you don’t live in the same town:

-       How frequently do you need to see each other for things go as smoothly as possible for the child should something happen, especially given how unlikely such an event would be?

-       Does it need to be in the other person’s town so the child will know the new house or new town?

-       How will this work if either party moves outside of an easy drive from you?

My evenings with Wendell are slowly drawing to a close as I work my way through his fiction.  He’s been a lovely voice and mentor to listen to… an apostle of rootedness and community in a time of great personal transition.

Most recently I finished That Distant Land, Berry’s collected short-stories about the Port William community.  These were by far the funniest writings I’ve read by him, and also some of the most poignant. The stories are set across a century, from the 1880s to the 1980s.  Telling stories about one community over such an arc of time means you get to see the characters grow up, love the land and the neighbors, and die off in a rhythmic wave that reminds me of both how little and how much our lives really are.

The giant Tol Proudfoot with hair that stands out like an old straw broom and his minute wife, Miss Minny, frame the largest section of the book.  Their late marriage, deep love, and infertility moved me as much as their antics made me laugh.  Wild man Uncle Burley Coulter chases coons with the hounds, grieves, regrets and grows as a character, and dies a death that is a premonition of the best New Yorker article I’ve ever read.

This was a treasure of a book.  I’m deeply grateful to have spend so many evenings with Wendell this year.

This Lent Charity and I have been sporadically praying through Eastertide.  We’re most faithful at praying the Vespers prayers.  Each evening we finish with a petition and a thanksgiving.  The petition reads:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep.  Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake.  Amen.

When I pray this prayer I often think of the sad and lonely who weep or work during the night.  Sometimes I think of the joyous (little Marjorie H. often comes to mind).

Last week brought another part of the prayer home when I received an email from a former coworker.  She told me that one of my favorite coworkers died the night before after two weeks in the hospital.  At age 52, on her retirement date, she had a massive heart attack and stroke.  Little did I know as I prayed these Lenten vesper prayers, I was praying for Kathy as she lay dying.

Last night, in That Distant Land, I read a Wendell Berry short story about an old man quietly facing and embracing his impending death.  It reminded me of the ubiquity of this human experience.  It reminded me that my grandfather isn’t that far from this.

I love how these prayers awaken me to the wisdom of the church.  I’m grateful to be praying for folks, even when I don’t know that I am.

This will be my fifth year (2010, 2009, 2008, 2007) participating in the December Photo Project sponsored by the Tredways.

Looking back through all the beautiful pictures that I worked for of the things I love makes me smile.  I remember how hard I worked for some of those shots and how fulfilling it was to see them pay off.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  I really love the way the DPP has made me look for beauty in everyday life.  It makes me try to be artistic, to notice the beautiful things around me every day, to capture them in a pleasing way.

This is a particularly good challenge to me this year.  I am living in a new city that I can be pretty down on.  I think it will be good for me to be challenged to look for the beautiful here.

Thanks RT for creating culture of beauty and noticing.

Another bit of prose from Wendell Berry that I’ve come back to more than once.  It reminds me of all I wish I had asked my grandparents.  Had I only been wise enough to ask.  But as Berry says “a boy’s mind is different from a man’s by precisely a lifetime.”  And so it is that I read this wistfully.

Uncle Jack forsook his present worries, and the conversation, belong then to him and Grandpa, took up the burden of times only they had known.  They spoke of horses and mules and men and days.

Now I can wish that I had stayed and listened and tried to remember.   Now I can wish I had foreseen then what I would want to know now, and had asked the questions I now wish I had asked.

What did their elders remember of the Civil War, and of the time before that?  What did they tell about slavery?  After the war, how were things rearranged between the races?  Was the Klan active here?  What did it do?  Who was in it?  What was it like here before the railroad came, or all-weather roads, when the only dependable transportation to and from Port William was by the river?  What did they remember of the still-standing ancient forests?  How did they make it through the depression of the 1890s?  The drouth of 1908?

But a boy’s mind is different from an old man’s by precisely a lifetime.  And so the talk of that day went out into that day’s air and light and the silence beyond, and the silence has kept it.”

Andy Catlett: Early Travels.  Pgs 70& 71.

Recently I’ve been reading another Wendell Berry novel, Andy Catlett: Early Travels.

I am loving Berry’s books because the feel so quiet and I long for that so much.  Reading them is like sitting beside a lazy river on a sunny day.  It’s beautiful just to glance at, but the longer you sit with it and the quieter you get, the more you like it.  The more its beauty seeps into the soul a bit.

I’ve come back to a couple of  passages more than once.  I like the one below because it makes me wonder about my ability to become like the Mom in her gracious, faithful love . . . and I wonder what about being a Christian demands that we do have vision for change in ourselves and the people around us . . .

“My mother I believe I knew fairly well from a fairly early age.  Looking back, I love her simply as I knew her to be.  And I wonder, too, at what she came to be as she grew older and the trials of motherhood and other early difficulties fell away from her.  In her old age she seemed to me to become almost purely generous and wise.  Unlike my father, for whom love was always involved with fear and exasperation and who felt personally affronted by any unremedied flaw, she accepted what she could not help and came finally to a quietness within herself that signified great faith, and no fear at all.

But I had to grow and age into knowledge of my father, and I am afraid to say yet that I know him fairly well.  Insofar as he was a critic of the people and places he loved, he was as much a visionary all his life as I was to be at any age – though at the age of nine I could not have envisioned that.  He bore the burden of his certainty that some things could be improved, and of his vision of how to improve them.  And over and over again he suffered enormous frustration at his or anybody’s inability to make the needed correction.

Both he and my mother were motivated by great love, bu hers abounded quietly, and his was instant and ungraduated, always at full flow.

One morning as I was watching him shave, I asked experimentally, “Daddy, what would you do if I died?”

His reply was shocking, for it came while the sound of my voice seemed still in the air, and with a force of passion that I had not until then imagined: “I would cry my eyes out!”

Last night Charity and I watched a young man take this brutal double hit to the head.  As his arms staid bizarrely up in the air, motionless even as he lay unconscious on the field I really wondered if I had just watched someone die on live TV.

After all my thinking about football this off-season, I had wondered what my reaction would be when the season started up.  I thought it would be like being around a lot of chocolate cake: tempting, yummy, and something that makes me feel guilty even as I really enjoyed it.

Instead I found out last night that I can’t enjoy it.  Between the permanent brain injuries caused by repeated head trauma, the culture that feeds into the football scene, and the economic exploitation of the young men that play I found that I couldn’t enjoy it.  My stomach turned.

As the people around me argued about whether he maintained control of the ball and scored a touchdown before he was knocked unconscious and carted of the field, I realized that I’m done.

On this theme Charity and I drove 45 minutes up to Dupont State Forest in NC today.  I did some fresh water snorkeling (so, so cold) while Charity peered at the fish from the warm safety of the bank.

Afterwards, we sat on a rock in the middle of the river talking about how to settle into Greenville.  Do we make the university the center of our lives?  Downtown?  The little town near the university?  Which church do we join?  In all of this, how do we take into account that we may not be here in 10 months, or that we may be here 30 years?

On the way back we stopped at Caesar’s Head to admire the view (below).  We could see more than 30 miles and clearly see individual buildings in downtown Greenville.

I always want to be able to see that far in life.  What town will we live in next year?  What job will I have?  Will we have a child?  Will we be a part of a community where we love and are loved?

But we can’t.  That insurmountable fact requires either faith or fear.  Currently, thankfully, we’ve got both.

So for now we’re making a conscious effort to put ourselves in front of beautiful things, people we like, and to worship.  We’re planning and acting as wisely as we can.  And we’re praying that God will take us good places and convince us to worship Him wherever we land.

I’ve realized that in order to learning to love this new place (which is very different from our old place) I need to find the things this place does well and go enjoy them.  The food may not be as good . . . but the lake is awesome.  So tonight we scurried out the door at 7pm with lawn-chairs, books, and hazelnut coffee (from Southern Season of course ), and drove down to the lake.

To our surprise, campus was lively.  Groups of college students sat by the lake chatting.  Bicycling families rolled by.  Couples lazily meandered from bench to bench chatting.  Families chased their small kids away from the edge, forgot about them, and then chased them again.   Just enough people around a big lake to make it feel lively and yet not so many that it felt crowded.

Twas good.  Good to get out of the house.  Good to be still and to read.  Good to enjoy something unique to where we are.

We’re now two weeks into our tenure here in Greenville.  Good news is that the new work environment has been great.  The bad news is that the hope of permanent position has faded.  We’re on the job market again.  For the third year in a row.  That stinks.

I’m usually not one for lists but I’m working on using words to talk about the adjustment process from Chapel Hill to Greenville.

Good Things about Greenville/TR/Work

• Seeing mountains everyday on the drive home.  Beautiful.  I even stop in the parking lot when I walk out of Walmart to admire the vista.
• Actually going to the mountains.  The state park 30 mins away is awesome.
• It is so quiet at night.  No nightclubs.  No drunken college students screaming.  No cars with thumping base parked next door.
• My department is very friendly.  They are abnormally social for PhDs.
• The university is so small that it’s quaint.  Every time I have a question about how to do something, say get an ID card, people tell me to go see Paul Smith or Jim’s wife, Betty.  I have to prod them about the department/service because they just think in names not in abstraction enties like HR.  Always.
• The small raised bed in our yard has given us an endless supply of cherry tomatoes.
• Our new house is great.  It’s huge, clean, and well insulated.  It feels a bit like living in a hotel.  Dual sinks are as good as advertised.

Culture Shock Items

• Gritty rural poverty and obesity.  Whew.
• The constant sound of lawn care in our neighborhood.  Our landlords believe in . . . ah . . . a natural lawn approach (let grow what may) which we like.  Our neighbors worship theirs.  There always seem to a noisy offering taking place.  Let’s just say the property lines are pretty clear.  Decidedly not the woodsy CH approach.
• Kids. They are everywhere in the neighborhood.  The little girls next door use the playset in our yard which is fine but strange after 8 years of living on a block comprised entirely of college students and childless couples.  The little boys across the street who pee in the front bushes are particularly funny.
• The ugliness of some of the necessary drives (esp. between here and downtown Greenville).  It’s miles and miles of ugly strip malls, abandoned manufacturing plant and treeless parking lots.  It hurts the soul to drive through.
• The traffic.  Whole Foods and TJ’s are 30 minutes away and it can be a brutal drive.  Bleh.

Things I miss about Chapel Hill

• The food.  CH is a paradise.  For comparison, 3 of the top 10 places to eat in our little town on Yelp are gas stations.
• Our friends.  This weekend we were at a wedding with many of our favorite CH people.  We laughed and hugged and celebrated for three days straight.  It was lovely and awesome.
• The church.  Our first visit drove home the difference between where our church in CH is and where the church we visited here is.  It’s not bad, it’s just pretty different at first blush.

During our recent trip to Nebraska several people inquired after my mother’s health.  I’m grateful to report that her cancer has been gone six and a half years and she’s doing well.  She’s even starting to drop some weight recently. 

Staying with her and Dad in Maine last week reminded me about how grateful I am for her.  She verily sparkled with joy about the wind, the water, and the waves out our front door.  Everyday she soaked them in as she listened to her mystery novels and worked on her crosswords and solitaire.

I’ve realized recently that much of my wisdom comes through the long years of conversation I’ve carried on with Mom.  Wisdom has been a hot topic for our church recently as we’ve journeyed through Proverbs.

There seem to be places and times where her wisdom really comes out.  As a teenager I sat at the counter and talked with her as she worked on dinner.  But the real place to catch her is the same spot it’s always been, at the end of the day sitting on the foot of their bed.  She tells great stories, she asks great questions, and she has a lot of perceptive observations about life.  It can take a certain spot to get her talking but when she does it’s a treasure worth staying up for.

For the last week I’ve been reading Team of Rivals, a biography about Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet.  Among the many things that have struck me is the fluency, constancy, and thoughtfulness of the letters she excerpts from.  Their way of communicating was much more deliberate and much more thoughtful than the emails I dash off.  For example, I can’t remember the last time I gave anyone advice in writing, even though it seems a wise way to reflect on others problems.

I found this excerpt particularly adroit.  As someone who rarely fights I’ve half-wondered if I should conflict more with others to practice for when I’ll have to fight.  I like Lincoln’s reply to a man he pardoned from a court-martial for publicly deriding his superiors:

“No man resolved to make the most of himself, can spare time for personal contention.  Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper, and the loss of self-control.  Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones, though clearly your own.  Better to give your path to a dog, than be bitten by him in contesting for the right.  Even killing the dog would not cure the bite.”

Quoted in Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin.  Pg. 570