Doubt and Faith

I got to see one of my first high school students, Sarah Sentilles, last weekend at Seattle University’s Search for Meaning Festival. I was 27 and Sarah must have been 17 the last time I saw her; now I’m 54, and she must be 44.

I started reading Sarah’s fourth book, DrawYour Weapons, a couple of weeks before seeing her. The book is a poetic meditation on art and war. So far as I can tell, there’s no narrative arc, no beginning, middle, and end. Though arranged in paragraphs, this meditation is more poetry than prose, deeper in its wisdom than sentences with their transitions can reach. The official description is “Through a dazzling combination of memoir, history, reporting, visual culture, literature, and theology, Sarah Sentilles offers an impassioned defense of life lived by peace and principle.” Yep. I taught her that. All of it.

I started reading the book because I wanted a glimpse into the woman she is now. She is smart and strong, deeply curious and moral. I would like to take credit for her intellectual curiosity, but she went to Yale undergrad after I knew her and then to Harvard for a Masters and PhD. So no, I didn’t really teach her all of that.

More than her smarts and strength, qualities I saw in her as a teenager and in her book, at her presentation I was delighted to experience her kindness, gentleness, and soft humor. From her bio I can see that she has weathered some tough times: she was in training to become an Episcopal Priest and later wrote a book called Breaking Up with God: ALove Story. The last thirty years have softened but not beaten her. I hope the same is true of me.

In the (old) article of her on Wikipedia, she calls herself an “agnostic.” Both her book and her presentation emphasized the impossibility of knowing anything for certain.

As I thought about her words, I thought of the Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh’s words: “ A finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. The finger is needed to know where to look for the moon, but if you mistake the finger for the moon itself, you will never know the real moon.” Hanh’s words, it seems to me, are about the limits of language and the importance of metaphor when truth soars higher than words can. They are about not confusing metaphor for truth, about the limits of language and of knowing.

Sarah seems absorbed in this paradigm, as I have been since my teacher’s black light lesson in fourth grade:

Teacher: “What color is this banana?”

Fourth graders in enthusiastic unison: “Yellow!”

Teacher puts the banana under black light: “What color is it now?”

Confused fourth graders: “Blue?”

This weekend, the impossibility of knowing was a theme from the rest of the day and the next day at church, too.

Robin DiAngelo’s presentation, which Ann and I attended next, discussed “white fragility” in talking about race and the importance of we as white people (DiAngelo is white) having the humility to recognize that we cannot know what it’s like to live as a black person in this society. She said, “Human objectivity is not possible.”

Beside this quotation in my notes I wrote, “(Same msg as SS).” I was referring to lessons my first year of teaching American Studies, a junior-level high school course that integrated Language Arts and History. Our class began the year reading Edward Hallett Carr’s 1961 essay, “The Historian and His Facts.” The essay discusses the impossibility of knowing or speaking truth in history because history’s story will always be impacted by the writer’s perspective. The class discussed this essay extensively, applying its ideas to the selection as our national anthem of “The Star Spangled Banner” (a song inspired by the War of 1812).

For their test on these ideas, I copied a paragraph from their American History textbook, written by Daniel Boorstin, a horrible book that presents bigoted comments as factual history. For the test, I asked students to apply Carr’s ideas to the passage. Only one student noted the sentence in which Boorstin said that although America had made some mistakes, pretty much everyone agreed that the world was better because America existed. What a disappointed teacher I was! At the end of the year, however, students studied the economic impact of Texas and California’s state textbook adoptions on history publications for schools and noticed the connection to Carr’s essay. Whew.

The conference’s final presentations were delivered by historian Taylor Branch and Rev. William Barber, who was sick in North Carolina and hadn’t been able to make the trip to the Pacific Northwest. In a discussion between Branch and Barber, whose image was beamed in, Branch said—and Barber concurred — the second amendment, well-known as the foundation of the right to bear arms, was included as a way to get Virginia’s support, and supported the right of their slave patrols to carry guns. (I have done some research, and I believe this is true, though it’s hard to find on the innerwebs. I’ll write about this in a different blog entry.)

This theme of how difficult it is to know the truth continued the next day at church. On the bulletin’s cover is a quotation from the Spanish philosopher and writer Miguel Unamuno:  “Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.”

Our minister, Ann Berney, preached a sermon titled “Faith with Doubts.” The sermon spoke to Mark 9:14-29, in which a parent says, “I do believe. Help my unbelief!” Pastor Ann’s sermon addressed the need for doubt as “a time of pause, a time of transition, a time of transition.”

Her sermon reminded me of my first sermon when I was a senior in college. The minister at the time, Mahan Siler,  asked for youth volunteers to deliver a sermon, and my younger sister, his teenage son, and I volunteered. We shared thoughts on “Doubt and Faith” during the sermon time the week after Christmas. I spoke about doubt. Then I fainted (probably a gift from my 21 year-old brain tumor.) After the service, maybe a hundred congregants filed past to wish me well. All were kind, but only one said she’d like to hear what I had planned to say about faith.

I’ve often thought about that. Maybe doubts are more interesting than faith. (For sure, fainting is. Another blog entry for another time.)

Maybe doubts are more universal than faith. Maybe some people stop in doubt, and others continue to a faith with doubts. Maybe. It's hard to know.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Dad and I discussed his upcoming 81^st birthday on our week-end phone call”: “old” is anyone fifteen years older than you are, and you’re old when there is no one fifteen years older than you are. “I’m getting’ close!” he laughed.

Today (March 2) is his birthday. He’s getting closer!

Dad and I have similar senses of humor, so we find one another amusing. Both Southern-raised, we tell our lives and our truths in stories.

Dad grew up in the small North Carolina town voted most like Andy Griffith’s Mayberry.  His father and “Unca” Johnny owned a downtown hardware store, and Dad went to school with the white kids who lived in town and on country farms. (African-American kids, who lived, literally, on the other side of the tracks, led separate lives.)

Dad was small town cool. When his teenage friends wanted to look wealthy one August day, they drove a convertible to Chapel Hill, the nearby college town, with the top and windows up so that the college girls would think they had air conditioning. (I’m guessing in North Carolina’s heat and humidity, the pretty girls thought those were some sweaty boys and probably stank. In my day, convertibles were cooler than air-conditioning, but this was their day.)

That’s my favorite story about Dad’s childhood home. Another favorite story is about the first time he remembers seeing my mom.

“I looked up the stairwell and saw this woman on the landing above me. ‘Golly,’ I thought, ‘That’s the most beautiful girl I ever saw.’” (Golly, in case you didn’t read that right, is a three-syllable word or at least stretches its first half an extra beat. If you ever heard Gomer Pyle talk, he said it right.)

Mom was a big city beauty, and Dad was a small town “hottie” (according to my much more hip younger sister.)

Dad tells good stories, and loves poetry. He learned his favorite from a fraternity friend, and decades later was befuddled to learn it was “a real poem.” It’s not a long poem, but I can’t remember the beginning, and Professor Google doesn’t know it. It ends like this:

White folks hogs

Eat ‘em all.

One-eyed black snake,

Tearin’ through the bushes.

What a terrible thing,

A terrapin are.

He also loves Andy Griffith’s early stories. I’ve heard pieces of one so often I remember them and love them as well. The snippets come in handy. Whenever my partner Ann and I pull into the garage after being away, I say,

            That’s the end of the ride.

Pete and his gang are waitin’ inside.

At night, Ann says, “I hope Pete’s not there. I’m tired. If he’s there, I’m telling him and his friends to go home.”

            I continue:

            [voice one] “I hope you know what you’re talkin’ about.”

[voice two] “You just count ‘em while I throw ‘em out.”

[fighting noises] bing bang bam shwoom…

[voice two] “One!”

[voice one] “Stop countin’. It’s me.”

[Raucous laughter]

Only after the performance do we get out of the car and go inside. It can take a long time for a poetry-lover to get in the house.

Dad loves history as well as poetry, so he also loves Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address:”

            For score and seven years ago…

The tone’s a little different in that one, and though it’s older than the others, Professor Google knows it.

I’ve inherited some things from my father that I’m not so pleased with, like his inability to find something in the refrigerator unless it’s on the front of a shelf. However, I’m glad to have inherited his love for poetry and his sense of humor.

Happy birthday, He-who-is-getting-close-to-being-an-old-man!

           

Happy Birthday, LBM!

Little Brother Matt (LBM) turns 48 today! (Well, tomorrow, but I think it will be today when he gets it.) For as long as I can remember, LBM has signed any card, in all caps. BROTHER MATT. Sister Jen (SJ), the sister between us in age, calls him Brother Matt. I started calling him Brother Matt, but then when I was going to email him and use the first letters as an abbreviation, I would write to BM, and I couldn’t do that. Growing up, we used BM (standing for bowel movement), when we were going to talk about what other kids called “poop.” (I went to a sailing camp and knew the bow was the front of a boat, so for a long time I puzzled over why this wasn’t a “Stern Movement.”)

LBM is not poop. He is funny and smart and has been through some dark times, which have deepened him. He’s a father and loves his three kids, who are each remarkable in their own ways. He also loves dogs, and they love him, and I believe dogs are excellent judges of character. (They’re like we should be, mostly loving and sometimes concerned or downright disapproving.)

LBM is six years younger than I am, so when I left for college, he was twelve years old. I must have thought of him as a somewhat fragile toy as he was growing up. A couple of times, SJ and I dressed him up: once as Santa Claus and once as an old man. My cousin Lori and I once dressed her younger brother Kenny and LBM as girls. LBM wore my wrap-around pink and green frog skirt, which fit him perfectly as a long skirt. We took photos, and then I lost and forgot about the roll. Mom found it, developed it, and looked at the photos with me. When she got to the photos of LBM dressed as a girl, she said, “She’s a pretty girl. Who is she?”

I said, “Mom, look really close.”

She studied the photo for a while and finally said, “Nope. I don’t know her. But she sure is pretty.”

I was amused. “Mom, that’s your son.”

Mom was not amused, and all the blood ran from her face.

The years when he was especially little, LBM slept in a sleeping bag on the blue shag carpet that ran along the hall to the kids’ rooms. This was about the time that SJ and I discussed LBM and his fears one day. We wondered together if he might be gay and agreed that we would always love him and would help our parents love him, too. We never spoke about it again.

As it turned out, I am the gay one and SJ and LBM have always loved me and have helped my parents accept me and my partner, Ann. (It would take my brain tumor for them to love Ann.)

When LBM received the coming out letter I sent him, he says he sat on his porch, letter in hand, and cried. Then he sent me a letter saying that he would always love me, and he understood that because I was unable to be in a relationship with him, him being my brother and all, (despite what some folks think about Southerners), he understood that I would be disappointed in all men and must therefore be a lesbian.

LBM has always been funny in a kind way. During radiation for my second brain tumor, when I was writing a Caring Bridge blog, he often commented in a way that built community. I had hoped to share an example with you, but my files are too much like Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler’s  (Bologna was the key, as I remember) to find his old comments. Even online, he was funny and kind, able to make us all laugh and bring us together.

Because I couldn’t find his comments from my blog, I’ll share an example of his humor that Dad told me about. When LBM was in college, Dad confronted him about how much he was spending on clothes. Dad said, “You’ve spent as much this year as I have in the last decade.”

Matt responded, “Yeah, but look at your clothes.”

As Dad told me the story, he laughed and acknowledged that LBM had a point.

As LBM and I straddle the half-century mark, six years isn’t as significant as it used to be. Though he lives in Connecticut and I live in Seattle and we live very different lives, we’ve grown closer. I feel lucky that he’s in my life. I hope that his kids and my sister’s kids are able to be there for each other like LBM and SJ have been for me. That’s a gift to pass through the generations. (Early signs are promising.)

"The largest property-tax increase in King County in modern history."

King County’s 2018 property taxes will rise 17 percent higher on average than last year’s: The Seattle Times reported it’s"the largest property-tax increase in King County in modern history." 

A Seattle Times local front page article today requested stories about the impact of that tax. (The story’s not yet on the web as I’m writing this, but it will be if you want to check it out.) Because I am disabled and my income is from private disability insurance and Social Security Disability Insurance, and my partner is retired, this tax will impact us. We received our notice as I was writing this: our property taxes are high. I will submit a personal story—as requested—about our property tax hike, but today I sent concerns about the paper’s request and my hopes for the story to the Seattle Times staff.

Their request focuses on unhappy tax payers, asking people to share if they are "considering an extra job or...thinking about moving because of the rising fee."

I hope this story will include the context of a public school system that has been failing its most vulnerable kids and a state which, according to a Seattle Times column by Jon Talton on March 3, 2015, had "the most regressive tax system in U.S." (I don’t know if we’re still #1, but I’m sure we’ve not gotten much better.) In 2010, our state defeated the Bill Gates Sr. measure for an income tax on individuals who made over $200,000 a year and couples who made over $400,000 a year according to Andrew Garber'sSeptember, 2010, Seattle Times article. Though we see ourselves as a progressive city, our tax structure belies that image.

Our state’s education funding also belies our self-image. In 2010, Washington’s Supreme Court ruled in the McCleary decision that the state was out of compliance with its constitutional duty to fund fully public education, and in the intervening years the state has been ruled in contempt of court for not making adequate progress in adequate funding.

As a public high school teacher in Washington’s wealthier suburban neighborhoods as well as schools in low-income neighborhoods, I felt the personal impact of this inadequacy and saw the impact on my students.

The property tax hike is to address inadequate funding. In a city that sees ourselves as progressive, we need to look not only at the impact of this tax hike but also at the impact of our regressive tax structure and inadequately funded schools.

The discussion reminds me of William J. Barber’s revelation in his excellent book TheThird Reconstruction. He reveals that the recent governmental take-over by self-serving Republicans (not all Republicans are self-serving), began on the Wake County School Board in North Carolina, the system where my siblings and I were educated, a system once renowned for its public schools.

The discussion also reminds me that our nation elected a wealthy bigot to its top office, not just because of Russian interference but also because we as a nation are so easily swayed by fears—individual and communal—about losing our excessive wealth.

Recently, the progressive Baptist preacher NancyPetty traveled from North Carolina to preach at our little Wallingford church. One question she asked sticks with me: How uncomfortable are you willing to be for liberty and justice for all?

There are very real stories of people pushed into unhealthy work lives or out of Seattle altogether by this property tax hike, but their stories must be seen in the context of a regressive tax system and underfunded schools.

Our state and our nation need to ask Nancy Petty’s question: How uncomfortable are we willing to be for liberty and justice for all?

Welcome to the Upside of Downhill, Sister Jen!

Sister Jen is not a nun. She’s my sister. And today’s her birthday. Happy Birthday, Sister Jen!

Though she’s younger than I am, I look up to her. To be literal, she’s 1.5 inches taller than I am, and sometimes she wears high heals or stilts (okay, not really stilts).

More idiomatically, she’s an impressive person: smart, kind in a gruff way, funny, and unpretentious. Her credentials show that she is smart: she was a Morehead Scholar at The University of North Carolina, has a law degree, and is a vice-president for a Wall Street investment banking firm.

I notice her smarts more intimately, however. Last year at the beach, when my siblings, my parents and I were discussing later in life issues, my dad argued that the house was in good shape for my parents as they grew older. As usual, I argued with his every point. Sister Jen accepted his desire to stay in the house, and said, “Okay, if you’re going to stay there, you’re going to need to do some work to make it safe.”

She’d used the magic word: “work.” Dad was going to have to rise from his retirement on the couch and get work done on the house, something he’s always resisted. When my parents returned to Raleigh that summer, they started researching retirement housing, put money down on a place being built, and will move in August.

Sister Jen might like you to believe she’s not kind, but her gruffness is all fluff. She’s also been generous with me over the years. When Sister Jen fell on asphalt and was  helicoptered to the nearest trauma center for emergency brain surgery, I didn’t visit her in Florida because I thought I’d wait until she needed help at her home in New York. (This was before my own brain surgery, in the days when I might have been helpful.) When she returned to New York, she healed more quickly than anyone thought she would, and I never visited. When I had brain surgery a couple of years later, she came for a week to help, and when I tried to apologize for my own failure to show up years before, she waved off the apology. (Perhaps this is my way of apologizing again.)

Hmmm. Well, I guess her gruffness isn’t all fluff. Sometimes she’s gruff when someone tries to take advantage of her, particularly because she’s a woman. The year following my brain surgery, we had dinner as a family, and Sister Jen rose to get herself some ice-cream. I asked her to get me some, too. Dad said, “Hey, how about some of that for me, too, Girl.”

Jen retorted, “ She’s had brain surgery. I’m getting her ice-cream. You can get your own.”

When she was working at a different investment banking firm her first year out of college, her boss called her in to fire her. She fired back at him that she hadn’t been hired to go get coffee for the men and that the place had a glass ceiling. She left that meeting with a promotion.

One of my favorite aspects of Sister Jen is how funny she is. A few years ago, she was sitting at Little Brother Matt’s home, his youngest child G in her lap. Sister Jen said to G, “My nieces and nephews on the other side of the family call me ‘Auntie Cool.’ I think you should have a nickname for me. What should it be?”

Without missing a beat, G said, “Why are your teeth so yellow? We should call you ‘Auntie Yellow Teeth.” (G inherited SJ’s sense of humor.)

An hour or so later, SJ got up to leave, and Little Brother Matt asked why she had to go so early. “I’m going home to bleach my teeth,” she told us all, laughing and looking softly down at G.

Sister Jen and her husband still live in their six-bedroom home, their fourth child leaving the nest this fall. The home has a carriage house, swimming pool, tennis court, and lawn that served as a playfield when we were all younger. She has money in these times when money is so glamorized, but her cool seems separate from her money. For example, she was the first mom in her area to have an ipod perpetually around her neck. This is the kind of cool she is: not pretentious, but hip.

Today, Sister Jen is not just fifty, but in her fifties. I’m guessing she’ll age like Maxine, that grumpy woman on the greeting cards, who says things like, “Everyone is entitled to MY opinion.” She’s smart, kind, funny, and down-to-earth. I love all those things about her. I especially love that she’s my sister.