rus vanwestervelt

I had the great fortune of watching the inauguration in its entirety with my advanced composition students today. For the most part, they took the event quite seriously, writing excerpts and reactions in their daybooks as our 44th president delivered his inaugural address.

Class began about 36 minutes before the president-elect was to take the official oath, and I seized the moment to pronounce this occasion as, quite possibly, the most significant moment of their lives that is not the result of some catastrophic event. I do believe that at least a few of them grasped the meaning of the moment, and they were the ones who immortalized their experiences in words. I asked them to take care of those entries, for someday, when their own children might ask what they were doing or thinking on this day, they can share their written thoughts as if they were expressed just moments earlier.

I was struck, personally, by the significance of this day, but not for the same reason that some of my students might have been. My own children, ages 12, 7, and 4, will think nothing of the importance of an African-American becoming president of our country, just like I, at their age, could not comprehend what the big deal was to have best friends who were black. When I was 7, it seemed like ancient times when there were actually separate eating and sitting areas for blacks and whites.

Not in my lifetime, I always thought.

And so it will be, thankfully, for my own children and, for the most part, the teenagers that I teach.

But there’s something deeper that I felt, too, as I was preparing my students for the remaining minutes leading up to the swearing-in ceremony. I may not remember what segregation was all about, but I do remember many broken promises by our former presidents and other leaders, both national and local. I’m old enough that I’ve been through seven presidential transitions, where I’ve heard the dreams and the hopes and the prayers of a brighter future, a greater day for America just over the horizon. I’ve heard the stern statements of a stronger, more united nation that will not give in to the tyrants and the terrorists around the world who threaten our own democracy. I’ve welcomed the promises of a stronger economy, better health care, and thriving classrooms. And I’ve believed in the beliefs that this time would be different; this time would be real change; this time would be like no other.

And I thought: why is this new administration any different? Why should I believe just one more time, when my heart has been broken repeatedly, a sorrowful cycle that seemingly knows no end?

The answer is in the eyes of my children, the words of my students, and the voices of my children’s best friends. There is hope because, for this generation, they know nothing else but a life where African-Americans can become presidents and speak of dreams that, in their hearts, are not broken.

Just a few moments ago, my buddy’s son, who is 8, read for me an essay he wrote about the inauguration, and why this day is so important to him. As I listened to his high-pitched, innocent voice recite the reasons why President Obama is both inspiring and better than any president we’ve ever had, I heard something resonate through the words: Belief, filled with hope and with love.

I am 43, soon to be 44, and I am not too young to be surrounded by cynics who believe that this is all smoke and mirrors, that no great change can come so swiftly to our country and our people. But these are the same people who, 30 years ago, believed in peace, and hope, and love. We imagined, along with John Lennon, that anything was possible with love. We believed that, together, we could make a change that would be long-lasting and beneficial for the world. We believed in ourselves and our country. We believed that love and fairness and justice would prevail.

Many of us have had our hearts broken since then. But all it takes is to look into the eyes of our children and see that they, too, have dreams that, with these new promises, peace and love are possible once again. It is this spirit, this belief, this faith that we must embrace, the faith and love from generations young and old, that will give this great nation the chance to realize the dreams of a more peaceful, more confident, and more loving world, where our children’s children will be born wondering what all the fuss was about, so so long ago.

I’m gonna tell you how it’s gonna be, you’re gonna give your love to me,
I will love you night and day, know our love not fade away

I spent the greater part of the morning poring over old photos. Most of them were from the seventies and the eighties, when I was a little more reckless than I am today. It was great reliving those memories, and it was even greater now wallowing in the past, wishing to return to something that was so long ago.

It’s easy to do, isn’t it? We see a snapshot of ourselves when we were younger, with good friends we haven’t been in touch with for so many years, and we want at least a part of it back. We want to return to a certain innocence that we believe is still possible.

I think the better thing to do is reclaim that innocence that is still with you. The old, fading pictures have done a fine job of freeze-framing a moment for us to remember, but we are too quick, I believe, to think that the goodness within that picture is, for some reason, locked in that past.

I dare say, nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, it is locked up within you, longing to be released again and cherished as a part of who you are.

From time to time, I have a debate with some good friends who have weathered a few decades with me. It goes something like this:

Good Friend (GF): You can’t live in the past. You have to discard those old shells like a crab molting, getting bigger, stronger by shedding the old, dead skin of its former self. You meet new people, grow up, gain new experiences, and too many of them have nothing to do with the relationships and experiences you had in the past.

ME: But those relationships are possible because of those past experiences. Let’s consider ourselves grapes for a moment, shall we? Let’s just, for the sake of argument, make the assumption that, one day, we will become wine. The distinctive taste of the wine is from a long heritage of grapes grown in that region. The grape does not become distinct when the process begins to age the wine; it relies on its history to become, eventually, a fine-tasting wine that is savored by many. If it weren’t for that grape’s past, it would be some generic, fermented drink that is corked and put out for sale. Even Aristotle believed that unfermented grape juice was a good wine’s childhood.

GF: You make a lot of mistakes in the past, though, and the only way to move on from them is to put them behind you, especially when you meet somebody new who doesn’t care about where you’ve been, as long as you don’t go back there again.

ME: There’s a difference between going back and preserving the essence of you. Nobody is suggesting you should shirk your current responsibilities to relive some moment in the past. I argue that the past defines who you are today, and you can’t let any individual enter your life with demands to make you discard that past for the sake of the relationship. From the day you were born, your experiences have been defining and refining who you are. I say, to your old, bad self: It’s all about the Not Fade Away. Refine, Good Friend. Refine like a good wine in the glory of ’09.

Well, maybe that last part was not said during one of our debates, but I say it to all of you on this, the last day of 2008.

Love yourself. Love your life. Love those in your life. Cherish the experiences captured in those snapshots and remember the aspects of you that you continue to refine. There’s no need to abandon the great times of the past; build on them, instead. Make the experiences in 2009 be as rich as the colors (or variations of gray!) in those old photos, and continue to refine the great person you continue to become. ☺

The family sleeps still. It is a little after 8 a.m., and just as is the case every year, my children finally succumb to the need for rest and let go of the anxiousness of the season.

It has been a busy few weeks. They need the rest, and I cherish the quiet to read and to write.

I just finished reading John Grisham’s Skipping Christmas, which was a fun, quick holiday read to keep my mind off the hectic happenings all around me. Now I’m immersed in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, and can’t stop turning the pages. This is a highly edited piece of writing, folks, that has cut out all of the fluff. She (or her editor) wastes no time with telling the story. It’s a style of writing that I can appreciate, but only in certain stories. This is one of them. I wonder if the remaining three books are written so concisely. . . .

This will be my challenge for the remainder of the break: To balance process with product. Time (as I’ve been given this morning) is the ideal way for me to manage the two with some measured success. The less time I have to work at this pace, the more I feel the paralysis working through me, until it’s all about lamenting about not having a process at all that might lead to any product.

My morning has been ideal: to multi-task at will between reading two books, writing both in my digital and paper daybooks, sketching abstract art, working on a 400-piece jigsaw puzzle, and cleaning up in and outside the house. All this in the last three hours since awaking a little before 5:30. When my family awakens in the next 30 minutes or so (I expect), I will be ready for the day with greater energy, patience, and outward loving for all of them. It is the best of all worlds for me.

I hope you have had a wonderful holiday. I’ll be around to friends’ blogs and facebook pages to see the updates and photos as the morning progresses. . . .

I was pulled over the other day by a Baltimore City police officer, and I saw something I’ve never seen before in a cop’s eyes: fear.

About 30 minutes before I was pulled over, K-Man called me and said his car wouldn’t start. I told him I could leave in five minutes to pick him up. Those five turned to ten, and I felt a little rushed heading out the door to take the detour into the city. I made good time, though, until I got behind this 18-wheeler that just made it impossible to pass. I followed him off the highway and onto one of the city’s major arteries. Still, though, I found myself stuck behind him, unable to get ahead and make up some lost time. When you teach a first-period class, you can’t afford to be late. It’s a big no-no to leave 30 kids unsupervised outside your locked door when that late bell rings…

We finally pulled up to a light where I needed to make a right, and I had just enough room to squeeze by and cut a quick path through the corner gas station. Even as I was doing this, I thought that I better have some reason for being here. I slowed down, looked at the prices on the pumps, and then proceeded to jump back on the road and head toward K-Man’s place.

Not 10 seconds on that road, I saw the flashing lights in my rearview mirror, and I realized that, somehow, that cop was able to get around that big truck, too.

The officer took little time to make it to the side of the Jeep. I rolled down the window, and with both hands on the steering wheel, I turned to look at him.

“Do you know why I pulled you over?”

The Jeep sits high, and in our eye-line, I was looking down at him. It struck me immediately that this was not a normal stop. He looked nervous–even fearful–of this stop, and I realized that there was already suspicion about my motives. I was the suspect, for whatever reason.

“I’m sorry, officer. I don’t know my way around here, and I’m picking up a friend who has some car trouble.”

“License and registration, please.”

I turned on the interior lights so he could see the baby and booster seats behind me.

“I have my license in my left pocket, and my registration is in my glove compartment. I’m going to get them now, in that order.”

I figured this communication couldn’t hurt. I once saw a show about how to survive a pullover, and the number one piece of advice is don’t surprise the officer with any sudden or hidden moves.

“You from around here?” he said.

“No. I’m from Towson.”

In retrospect, I think this might have been the exchange that clinched it for the officer that I was just a bumbling driver and not some runner from the law with a few kilos of white powder sewn into the seams of the boosters in the back seat. Towson’s about 5 miles from where I was pulled over, but to us suburbanites, you might as well ask us to go to Idaho when it comes time to cross that Big City Line.

He looked at the license and registration briefly, then handed them back to me with a relieved, “Drive safely.”

Which, of course, I did do after I pulled away from the curb.

I am suspect, though, that the fear I saw in that officer’s eyes is indicative of the ever-changing job they have to keep us safe. Just a day or two after I was pulled over, another police officer in a county west of Baltimore tried to make the same roadside stop. This time, though, the person he was pulling over took off once the officer left his car, and a chase ensued. Moments later, the officer lost control of his car and ran off the road and into a tree, killing him instantly.

I am suspect that we are all suspects now in the eyes of the police, simply because the chances are higher than ever that the person being pulled over has a crisis or is desperate or is running for one reason or another. It’s not just the police, though, who are suspicious of us. We’re all suspicious of each other, it seems. Within a half-mile from my house, we’ve had several recent incidents of rapes and robberies, and just behind my daughter’s gym, two 17-year-olds were carjacked and kidnapped. The boy was stuffed in the trunk while the girl was raped in the back seat.

There’s desperation and suspicion all around us, and I’m afraid that, in the eyes of those who have dedicated themselves to protect us, we are all suspects. This puts all of us on edge. Given the current economic conditions surrounding us, especially as emotions run as high as the expectations to let the the cash flow a little more freely during the holiday season, we are faced with a different type a challenge: How do we rise above those suspicions to secure the love we want to share openly and freely with all those around us?

To consider insulation as a possibility saddens me greatly, but it might be the best thing we can do at this time. Love the one you’re with, right? Let them all know how special they are, and work hard to solidify that foundation of hope, love, goodness, and faith with those you trust. My guess is that, if enough of us do this, we’ll begin the process of re-establishing those larger communities of love and faith where, to be suspect is no longer the default.

Friends:

I will be taking another sabbatical from my blog for at least two months, if not longer. My writing energies have shifted to several book-length projects that require much of my remaining free time after teaching and spending time with my family.

I could not be happier with the writing and the teaching I am doing; it’s just that there’s little time to spend here at my blog, and I don’t want to leave my readers hanging around waiting for another post.

It is my hope that, when I return, I will have more good news to share of my writing and teaching endeavors.

Until then, I pray that peace and love leads you well into the golden slumbers of autumn.
Rus

It’s winding down. Coming to an end. Wrapping up.

No matter how you put it, my summer vacation ends in 48 hours, when teachers report back to the classroom for a week of professional development, meetings, and, most important, planning time to get ready for the new school year.

48 hours. At least 20 of those hours will be spent at our community pool, thanks to Mom Nature giving us a weekend with “an abundance of sun,” as reported officially by the National Weather Service. It’s a fitting way to close out probably the best summer I’ve ever had.
There’s no way I could ever list all the great things about these past two months, but if I had to start making a list, these memories would be on it:

1. Florida. Without a doubt, this was the summer’s “big event” in our family. We did the daring thing and drove down to see my sister and brother-in-law, did the Disney Thing, and even spent a day in St. Pete in the Gulf. It was so good, we’re considering moving down there permanently to be closer to them. We’re even planning a return trip in December, at least for another week.
2. Joining our Community Pool. The girls became members of the swim team, and we spent every day before our Florida trip hanging out at the pool, making many new wonderful friends and giving our children the opportunity to forge their own new relationships with the neighborhood kids. I cannot say enough about how great everyone has been at this pool, and we will be sad when the season is over in a few weeks and they close up for autumn and winter.
3. Meeting New Writers. I co-taught a 3-week graduate course this summer, my fourth and final time doing so, and I met some outstanding and genuine writers who brew magic with their words. These are teachers from around the state who have unlocked their writers within, and I gathered much strength from them as a writer myself. It took some time for me to really understand how they made an impact on my life, and I think that I am now only beginning to understand the lessons they shared. I will miss teaching this course in upcoming summers, but now it is time for me to convert those many experiences into my own words as a writer.
4. Creative Time. I’ve written more this summer than any other, except possibly in 1989 when I discovered my muse and used the healing powers of the pen to come to terms with my father’s death. I have been selfish with my creativity, blogging little but writing daily in my daybook and taking the time to sketch and paint–not for an audience but for me. The therapeutic benefits are even greater than I have ever realized, and it is nice to take the pressure off of me to produce something for a larger audience all the time. My belief is that being selfish in this way will help me refine my more public pieces and connect with my audience selflessly, giving them what they need without compromising the personal voice that allows me to write with a defined identity.
5. Backing Off, Lightening Up, Giving Myself a Break. I’m too hard on myself. I always have been. There’s been this need to produce, to succeed, to thrive, to live fully by doing more, more, more. But I’ve been realizing–especially this summer–that living fully means less, less, less. A few weeks ago I got the news that our school’s journalism teacher was moving up to an administrative position in an adjoining county, and I was asked to drop my two sections of English 12 Honors and pick up the two Journalism courses. I decided to take the change in position, even though that meant not teaching some just incredibly wonderful individual in English 12. I know this sounds like more, more, more, but I feel more centered, more focused to handle the needs of our students and our school as I work with our major publication teams. I am a teacher, and a writer. I am not a writer who teaches or a teacher who writes. I am both. Equally. and I have stopped this internal push to ignore the many great things right in front of me and pursue something I think I don’t have. I’m settling down. Enjoying. Seeing the beauty in what’s before me, around me, within me. I have the greatest teaching job in the best school in the best county around, and I have the time to write. What more could I ask for?

Yeah….I think I’ll take those summer lessons with me as school resumes. The time spent with family, the relaxing hours by the pool, the magic of Disney, the warmth of the sun-soaked Gulf, the inspiration from other teacher-writers, and the feeling of living life at a slightly slower pace, where realizing the moment is great just because you are alive to experience it.

I’ve just returned from a relaxing trip to Florida, where my family and I stayed with my sister and brother-in-law for a week. They live in Orlando, and we were never a few hours away from any of our destinations (most of them were mere minutes away from their home). We spent a day at the Magic Kingdom, a day in St. Pete on the Gulf, and the remaining days lounging around Orlando at Downtown Disney or at the pool. We were all reminded how much we miss being around family, and we’re planning a return trip as early as December.

We went down on a shoestring budget, yet we never worried about running out of money. Our entire focus of this trip was about living fully and not spending money. We did not get caught up in the trap of buying a lot of souvenirs and visiting a lot of high-priced attractions because this was our “premiere” vacation destination. Instead, my wife and I remained grounded in the what this trip was all about: family and giving our children experiences to understand what living a meaningful life is all about.

And maybe that’s what I take from this trip: Living fully is not about living in the material world. At home, our children desire the material goods more out of boredom than out of any real necessity. While we were on vacation, they did not crave electronic gadgets to pass the time; instead, they focused on spending as much time as possible with their aunt and uncle. They craved experience and love, not iPods and Playstations.

All this tells me that we’re doing something right. Living fully is about the experience, especially with others. It’s not about the desperate attempt to fill our four walls with the latest inventions and gadgets that always leave us feeling an even greater desperate need to buy more.

Maybe this purchase will make me happy. . . .

No. It’s about priceless purchases of time with family and friends. To me, that’s what living fully is all about.

So I offer these five original tips to help you on your own journey toward happier living. Let me know if you are already living by any of them and, if you are, the strength you’ve gained in your journey.

1. Know where the sky begins. I was raised to reach for the stars, to believe that many, if not all, of the greatest things in life are just out of our reach, high in the sky. But I’ve realized recently that, just like the ocean begins at its first little licks on the sandy shores, our sky begins in the blades of grass at our feet. We no longer need to believe that all of our dreams are waiting for us in some far-off galaxy of stars. When we stand tall, we are already immersed in our skies, where our dreams are already within our reach. We cannot live our lives thinking that greatness begins in some great future. Greatness is here. All around you. Begin realizing your dreams, because you are already among the stars.

2. Live Small. Our lives are so busy and hectic that we need to remind ourselves to slow down and refocus on the finer aspects of what’s in front of us. When we were driving down to Florida, we enjoyed the colorful landscaping of the median areas separating the north and south directions of I-95. From a distance, the blends of oranges, reds, yellows, and whites contrasted the golden green grasses nicely. It wasn’t until we were in the Magic Kingdom where I was able to savor the beauty of the single bloom and all of its intricacies. Like an impressionistic painting, both views serve a worthwhile purpose. Stand back, and you see the beauty of the finished product. Look more closely, and you see the unique qualities of the individual colors, as if they are living a life of their own among the thousands of other dabs of colors working together to form a bigger, as-beautiful picture. Look for the small all around you: the flowers, the friends, the everything. Discovering beauty within beauty guides us to inner fulfillment, and it never costs a dime.

3. Make small commitments–and keep them. We live our lives doing our best to uphold the big commitments we’ve made, but when we find ourselves being anything less than perfect, we automatically feel as if we have somehow failed, and the pressure we (and others) put on ourselves can be catastrophic to our health and well-being. While we strive for perfection in these areas, we cannot be so harsh on ourselves that it compromises all other aspects of our living. One sure way to help us through those challenging times–and to keep us afloat the rest of the time–is to make small commitments that we know we can keep. And, upon fulfilling them, we feel better about ourselves. I keep a rolling list of 10 things to do, and at least half of the items on that list is to help others in some way. Just yesterday I learned that my childhood neighbor’s mother passed away about a month ago, and so I added to my list: Write encouraging note to Bruce and mail it. It doesn’t take much time to buy a card, write a brief encouraging note, and stick it in the mail. It’s a small commitment that I can keep that will help a friend through his grieving while keeping me immersed in fulfilling commitments. These are the things I can control. These small commitments keep me focused on achieving the small so I can continue achieving the big, even during challenging times where I might have mis-stepped a little. I look at it this way: fulfilling these little commitments is like feeling the pulse of my own beating heart; they are the reminders that, in this moment, I am alive and am very aware, and there is much to celebrate in that simple fact.

4. Establish your anchors and lifelines. We need constant reminders to slow down, savor the moment, take the time for ourselves and for others. We do this unconsciously in many ways, from choosing bumper stickers that define who we are, to putting our best friends on speed-dial or on IM so they are just a click or two away. But we need to make a more conscious effort to keep that focus, because too often, we are looking desperately for anchors or lifelines when we are at the end of our rope. We need not wait that long. In fact, we need not wait at all. My anchors are my daybooks, my cross necklace, a few books (Tao te Ching, the Bible, Walden, and others), a handful of photos, and small items that I’ve collected, both from my childhood and from my parents’ estates after they died. They are reminders of what my life is all about and what is most important. I test the strengths of these anchors nearly every day, and they never fail me, for they are rooted in love. I have lifelines extended to various people in my life for various reasons. I used to hesitate to reach out to them because I thought that it made me seem weak, or that I was becoming a burden on them with my troubles. The truth is, I now see myself as no more a burden as I view others who come to me with needs. I like the lean, the give and take we offer each other in this world. It reminds me that we are not alone, and we sometimes need a friend to just listen to us, to be there to hold our hands and comfort us until clarity comes once more. Do not be afraid to set your anchors and establish your lifelines. They are the lights in our tunnels when we feel as though our fall into the abyss is neverending. All we need to do is open our eyes, reach out our hands, and have a little faith.

5. Create experiences. We live fully by experience. We live deliberately, as Thoreau writes, to corner this thing called life and see if we have yet lived. We suck the marrow out of life by immersing ourselves in the experience and making things happen. It doesn’t have to be a 2,100-mile trip to Florida and back, where you see gators and ducks as you never imagined. It doesn’t have to be a well-designed, fully choreographed excursion to another country. While it can be any of those things, it can also be the experience we make in walking outside and studying the wild overgrowth in a once-loved butterfly garden, or a walk around the block where you find yourself waving hello to neighbors you’ve seen only in passing cars. It doesn’t even have to be a physical experience. Try something different that you’ve never even imagined yourself doing. Paint, draw, construct, build, take apart, design, write, watch. Remove yourself from the mundane and place yourself outside of your comfort zone. Immerse yourself in experiences and then talk about them. Share them with others. Or, at the very least, write about them. And then build upon them. Stretch that comfort zone, experience by experience, and be aware of what you are doing, why you are doing it, the entire time.

Lose yourself in the magnificence of the moment, and you will never look back on your life and ask, “where did the time go?” It’s far better to look into your life and realize that the time didn’t go anywhere; it’s right here, right now, and it is absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful.

Hi, folks.

I’ve posted a new story of mine on a separate page of my blog. You can access it here. It’s called “Immortal Footprints,” and it’s a unique piece because the writing spans a 20-year period. The fresh piece is the revised version that follows the original. I encourage you to get through the tough parts of version one to better appreciate the significance of the revision.

Enjoy (I hope). I had fun writing this in the last few days.

I just spent the last few hours reading over my first official “daybook,” penned twenty years ago, exactly. The pages are filled with dreams, good intentions, philosophy, devotions to God.

In other words, they’re penned with the same dreams, good intentions, philosophies, and devotions that I have written in my latest daybook, twenty years later, exactly.

What I’m supposed to be doing right now is working on a personal piece for an anthology of original work written by 19 of the best teachers I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. I had this epiphany today that my contribution would be a braided piece combining the first and last daybooks of my involvement with this 6-credit graduate course. In 1989 I was a Fellow in the program. In 2008, I am team-teaching the course for the fourth time in the last six years.

Looking over the daybook, though, made me realize a horrible string of coincidental tragedies that have plagued me while involved in the Institute.

In 1989, I was still wiping the dirt from my father’s grave; we buried him in April of that year.

In 2003, the dirt stains were more prevalent; I had just buried my father-in law two weeks’ prior to the start of the program.

In 2005, I buried both my aunt and uncle a few months before the Institute; both died in tragic circumstances.

In 2007, just weeks before the Institute began, I buried both my mother and my mother-in-law.

Now, in 2008, I am hopeful that I will end my run with teaching this course on a very good, upbeat note; preferably, I will make it through next week without any tragedies.

Reading over the 1989 daybook, though, initially struck a melancholic note within me. I wasn’t necessarily pleased with the similarities between the two books, separated by 20 years. I felt like I hadn’t learned anything, I hadn’t grown or matured at all.

In fact, I felt like I was still the same person I was 20 years ago. That upset me greatly.

But in letting that settle within me a little, I’m beginning to look at this latest epiphany in a different light.

This is who I am. I will always be a little disorganized, I will always believe in a love that is greater than mere words, and I will always make somewhat unrealistic goals that, honestly, I simply won’t fulfill. I’ll beat myself up over it, eat a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food, get over it, plan to develop a better plan to thwart my inability to follow through, and set new unrealistic goals–and genuinely believe that things have changed.

And maybe they will for a few days. In the long run, though, I bet the farm that I’ll be writing a daybook entry in 2027 (God willing) about how I need to organize my life a little better, set new goals, write some new pieces (and submit them for publication, of course!), and believe that world peace is possible in my lifetime.

I sure hope they’ll be making Phish Food then. I hate to mess with routine.