One Week In Bangkok

This blog entry title is obviously a play on the strange 1980s pop song, “One Night in Bangkok,” written by ABBA guys and from the concept album for the musical Chess. I remember coming back from studying abroad in Salzburg, Austria, and everyone played the song that summer. Since I have never really had my finger on the pulse of the pop music world, I never really got the song at the time. But oh, in the summer of 1985, it was hot!

It was hot last week in Bangkok as well. In fact, the original title I planned to use for this blog entry was “Hot in Bangkok,” since that works on several levels, but as strange as it may seem, while my friends and family in the USA were shivering in sub-zero temps, I felt quite strange with the mid-90s temps of Bangkok. And frankly, it would be strange on several levels.

Anyway, I spent a week in Bangkok working two recruiting fairs for teachers to come to KA. We have been going to these fairs for four years in Bangkok, but they don’t yield many signed-on-the-dotted-line teachers. In fact in Year 1, we gained no teachers from Bangkok, in Year 2, we gained 1 teacher eventually from that fair, and last year, even with about a half-dozen offers made, again, we came up bupkis. I should have done a blog entry last year, “Bupkis in Bangkok”!!

So it was with somewhat less enthusiasm that I got on a plane on January 2^nd in Cincinnati headed for Bangkok. Actually, the most amazing thing is that I got on a series of planes at all ending up in Bangkok. As my father and I drove to the airport on that second day of 2014, we had several inches of new-fallen snow on the ground, and a pronounced white fog around us. I am amazed that we left Cincinnati at all. We landed about an hour late in New York; however, that was late enough for me not to make it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art as I had planned. Anyway, Gary and Christy and I met at our favorite pizza place in New York, Patsy’s on the Upper West Side, and we laughed and laughed and worried and worried about the storm invading New York. I got on the subway to get back to JFK—again, just as the prognostications of a major blizzard were coming true, we took off bound for Amman. I landed in Amman and had three hours to get back to campus, unpack, shower, re-pack and head back to the airport for the 10 hour flight to Bangkok. All except one suitcase—who decided to stay in New York for a few extra days—made the connections, and I landed in Bangkok with the temps in the mid-90s. Within my first hour at the hotel we had our first interview…bam! Land, Shower! Interview! The interview was with a kind, energetic, involved teacher. I liked him more than my team. Bangkok was off to a rousing start!

I guess the week is so strange in Bangkok because we rarely leave the hotel. I had a great view from my room of the river winding through town with the tour boats and bus-ferries and fancy hotels on the banks of the river. It is tropically warm with thousands of heat-seeking tourists. But we were all suited up, wound up, and interviewing/scheming/planning/reconnoitering inside all day. It’s not a prison, but it’s not a vacation either.

One of the problems is that Bangkok is not among my favorite towns, or rather, a town that I have felt I have “owned.” I visited Bangkok for the first time in 1998 when I took my first trip to Asia, visiting college chum Sharon in Singapore and Malaysia. But Bangkok is a big city, hard to navigate, get inside your head. London, Vienna, Salzburg, Boston, and New York—now these are my towns.

Perhaps another reason why Bangkok remains hard to love is that it has now become a signal for the next school year. We have just rung in the New Year, and we jet off to Bangkok to hire teachers for next August! And by hiring new teachers, we are, naturally, bidding adieu to teachers we have worked with. I am still a little new at the administration game that this doesn’t bother me a little. Saying good-bye—such a part of teaching teen-agers, and in an international school, a big part with adults that cycle in and cycle out as well.

So, let me look back at one day of the week and just explore what we did that day. I met with our school head John at the breakfast buffet at 8 (8?? What a luxury! It is usually much earlier!) and I told him of our plans to interview people that day. Now what we have learned in our fair-going years is that you want to have as many interviews as possible before the interview sign-ups begin. Now, does that make sense? The way it works—by the time of the interview sign-ups, if you haven’t met with your first choices, they will probably have already snagged a job and signed a contract. So we have learned to interview before…whatever! So we read the newspaper, looked at the schedule—we had six interviews scheduled and hopes for several more.

Our first interview was with an Asian math candidate who grew up in Canada and has taught in Korea. She interviewed well, but afterwards we didn’t hear from her, and it turns out she didn’t reply to emails. Our next interview was with a sad-sack of a curmudgeonly man who teaches English in Guatemala, and has little tolerance, it seems, for the students he teaches. He is very much into technology, but there was just little joy going on there. Next we go out for lunch—outside—and find a little dive and have great curry and pad thai with a head of a school in Saudi Arabia and we discussed professional development activities in our schools. I have met her at other job fairs and always enjoy talking with her. She and John rattle on about “head” things and I marvel at what all they have to control as the head of a school.

After lunch we have four interviews in a row. Renee is young and perky, almost too perky, in fact, but we have a great discussion about her teaching of history. She is green, however, she may be very coachable. She is our best interview discussion so far. Next we meet Melinda, a woman my age, who left everything in 2010 to teach abroad. She has taught seemingly every course in history, and worked with drama and speech groups. This is a wonderful interview about her command of pedagogy and love of history. We are interested. Then we meet with a young man who surprised me how gentle he looks given his six years in the army in Iraq. Dan is a great interview as well. He grew up in North Carolina, went to Colby in Maine, has a new baby, but the conversation is so organic and unfolding…great conversation.  Our last interview of the afternoon is with a couple who teach in Kuwait. They are young, bohemian types, but strangely, the more we talk with them, the more serious they seem, the more willing to tackle all that we have on our school plate here. Another good conversation.

After the interviews I go back to spend time on the computer writing the various heads of departments, asking them to look at the files on line. I study the files as well, reading the reference letters, checking to see if I think the candidates have the grit, resilience, intelligence and compassion to make it work here. I look through the emails sent out for more interviews, send notes out to those we had spoken to, and plan second interviews the following day with three of the candidates. I write notes to about 7 candidates who don’t look like good fits. I check and re-check with John. Actually, a fairly easy day in the job fair world. I take a spin on the stairmaster in the fitness center, and then head to the recruiter social.

I noted this mostly to look back at what we do at these job fairs. I schmooze and stalk when not huddled over a computer screen reading reference letters, or interviewing. When we like someone I stalk around the main areas of the fair, “bumping” into our favorite candidates, and then schmoozing them for awhile as we talk about the school. I like the stalk and schmooze angle! It’s fun.

Over the next two days I stalk and schmooze with Dan—we probably talk for about two hours about the school, teaching. I answer his questions, he makes notes. I like him enormously. He would make a great colleague. When we finish he calls his wife back in Shanghai. We offered him a contract, and after a few more talks with us, he accepted. Whew. That was our one week in Bangkok. I think he’s a good one.

While we signed Dan, yes, we also learned about five other colleagues who had been on the fence about their return (we don’t have to sign a contract for another week or more) who decided to leave to Jordan. So we gained Dan. And we lost a few more. It’s the nature of the ex-pat life in the international school. You lose some teachers. At this time of year, in Bangkok, it also looks a little dark, even with all the Thai sun.

At the First Battle of the Marne during World War I, French lieutenant general Ferdinand Foch sent out this communiqué: “My center is giving way, my right is retreating. Situation excellent. I am attacking.” Kind of funny that even in that tough situation, Foch saw hope. His willingness to remain hopeful eventually led to victory for his troops.

Sometimes in Bangkok we can feel as if we are losing teachers right and left. However, last year at this time we hadn’t signed anyone. Last month we signed four new people, and now Dan’s name will be on a dotted line. We just have to plug away, interview away, and find a way to conclude: “Situation excellent.”

That 1980s pop song, “One Night in Bangkok,” sarcastically juxtaposes the heady night-life of Bangkok with the game of chess. In the original London production of Chess, the setting for the song is an interview in which the candidate states a preference for what he sees as an intellectual purity in chess, in stark contrast to the seedier aspects of Bangkok's night life. Hmmm…all right, we had our week in Bangkok, the chess game continues, and I will conclude, “Situation excellent.”

Happy New Year!

 
On this quiet, cold New Year’s morning, somehow I am thinking of an old bit in Jerry Seinfeld’s comedy act of the early 1990s. Seinfeld waxed nostalgic about the old days when your family’s TV Guide came in the mail. Jerry reminded us of the excitement and how we would revere the NEW TV Guide and all the promise it held for the upcoming week….ahhhh…the newness of the new Guide! You kept it as pristine as you could for as long as you could. Then as the week went on, it lost its luster, and by the end of that week, the dog-eared, old, worn-out copy, well, you couldn’t wait to get rid of it! I remember laughing knowingly with Jerry’s bit about how a family treated a TV Guide and the cycle it went through.

Well, don’t we treat a new year in much the same way? We welcome a new year with such promise and care, and 364 days from now, we will be happy to bid this year a good riddance. Is each year like the old TV Guide of the old days????? Hmmm….

And of course, just thinking about that begs the thought about how every arrival portends a leave-taking. Every birth portends its own death.

Oh, great! And Happy New Year to you too, some blog reader will grouse!!

Every birth portends its own death. Why does that thought leave us so uncomfortable?

The Christmas story has this thought about birth and death around its edges. Thousands of portraits of Madonna and the Christ child show a wistful Mary—she is aware of her young newborn son’s impending death. Every arrival portends a leave-taking. Every birth—even Jesus’ birth—portends its own death. The Magi knew it. When the wise men, or magi, or kings, or astrologers, or whoever they were, arrive to see this special child, they arrive with old men’s gifts: frankincense and myrrh. Spices with which to prepare the body for burial. Yeah, great. Happy Birthday, Jesus!

So on this New Year’s Day, this first day of the crisp, newly-minted new year, what a strange thing to think about death. I mean, let’s face it…we will die. Each of us. All of you. Every single one of you.

The death rate among us: 100%.

The death rate among us, including Jesus: 100%. We know it: this hard-as-steel-truth. But it’s not easy to face. Not easy to bear. Not easy to talk about especially, God help us, with our own families.

So let’s return to Mary, the teen-age Palestinian girl who bears the Christ child. How was she able to understand this certain transition from life to death so well? She is tuned in, even seemingly reconciled to the hard-as-steel-fact of passing on. Mary figures out the secret to being reconciled to death: Mary links the fact of passing on (the fact of her own passing on) with the art of passing down ... of bequeathing.

Think of Mary’s song, her “Magnificat,” as her last will and testament. In it she bequeaths her son to the ages.

As if the gift of her son is not enough, there is more. This young woman, this girl-child, gifts us with a song – a song that is itself a kind of kaleidoscope: with shifting and overlapping glimpses and fragments of past and future, of ancestors and descendants, of remembrance and inheritance, of a promise that shimmers and shifts in the light. A promise passed down and taken up: generation by generation, taken up, parent to child, teacher to student, down through the millennia. A promise taken up here as we conclude the season of Advent. A promise carried in white lights and fragrant greens, in memorial poinsettias, in carols and in candles to pierce the night.

Every birth portends its own death. Every arrival portends a leave-taking.

But, listen now! With every leave-taking, there can be a leaving, a bequeathing, a gifting, a passing down.

What will we gift? What will we pass down? On this beginning of 2014, this may take the sting out of death?

I suppose I am thinking about this on this new year’s morning since in 2013 there were some unexpected deaths of friends and friends of my family, and some close calls with sickness and cancer. I also turned 50, a half-century of time alive, and surely a time to wonder about mortality and our purpose.

Since I am a lover of music, comedy, and history, and I have already discussed Seinfeld and the Magnificat, let’s take a little look at history. Let’s remember Benjamin Franklin, that exciting man of the 18^th century. Benjamin Franklin, was like Mary, reconciled to his own dying and marvelously and wondrously tuned in to the way the generations are linked. He linked the fact of his own passing on to the art of passing down. Let’s listen to him through some of his last will:

I, Benjamin Franklin ... do make and declare my last will and testament as follows:
I have considered that, among artisans, good apprentices are most likely to make good citizens, and, having myself been bred to a manual art, printing, in my native town of Boston, and afterwards assisted to set up my business in Philadelphia by kind loans of money from two friends ... which was the foundation of my fortune ... I wish to be useful even after my death, if possible, in forming and advancing other young men, that may be serviceable to their country ... To this end ... I give one thousand pounds sterling to the inhabitants of the town of Boston ...

The said sum ... shall be managed under the direction of the selectmen, united with the ministers of the oldest Episcopalian, Congregational, and Presbyterian churches in that town, who are to let out the sum upon interest ... to assist young married artificers in setting up their business ... It is my desire that this institution should take place and begin to operate within one year after my decease ... In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and Seal this twenty-third day of June, Anno Domini one thousand Seven hundred and eighty nine.
B. Franklin.

The institution Benjamin Franklin imagined, and named and provided for in his will is located a few blocks from Copley Square in downtown Boston, the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology that educates young men and women of every nationality and ethnicity…educates and equips them with practical skills and technologies.

Benjamin Franklin has passed on…but not before passing down, not before gifting to the next generation a part of his own self and soul.

While we cannot all pass along large sums of money or property, we can pass along a legacy of integrity, of truthfulness, of humor, of good cheer. This Christmas season I am remembering the legacy of goodwill from my father’s friend Dick, who recently passed on. Dick died suddenly. When his son went through his father’s kitchen pantry, he found a surprising number of cake mix boxes. His asked my father about them. His son didn’t know his dad liked to bake. My father told him that Dick baked a lot of cakes—especially for people who might not get a cake. He baked for birthdays when he worried people might forget the birth of a new year for someone, or when he wanted to celebrate someone a little bit in his orbit. This big, strong-as-steel man with immense practical skill and knowledge gifted the people around him with a legacy of crumbs and icing.

We are reluctant to acknowledge the one truism: we will die. This embodied, earthly gig, this sweet, sweet gig—the one that comes with the taste of Graeter’s mint chocolate ice cream and the aroma of fresh ground coffee and the sound of an infant’s squeal—it is temporary.

I know you know it. But I also know it’s not easy to face. Not easy to bear. But again, let’s reflect on the Christmas story before we put everything away in boxes and out of sight for another 11 months. Let’s look at Mary’s story and her reconciliation of the hard-as-steel fact of passing on with the strong, imaginative, generative, affectionate art of passing down, of bequeathing.

Every arrival portends a leave-taking. But we get to make choices about what we will pass down, what we will bequeath. I suppose that if we take up the art of passing down, it will soothe the sting of passing on.

So Mere Mortal, let me put the challenge clear on this first day of the new year. How might your dying beget a birthing? How might you gift the generations to follow? How might you take up the strong, imaginative, generative and affectionate art of passing down? Happy New Year!

 

French verbs and Martin Luther

Here is the last lope around the track of Blog Entries of Christmases Past.  Today’s remembrance comes from 2010…in two days begins a new year and then a new blog entry. As the Christmas decorations start coming down we have a little time left to contemplate the work of the Christmas season… 

Away in a manger, no crib for a bed,

the little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head.

I played through this piece the other night and sang some harmony, remembering an arrangement of this I conducted when I had a church choir in Belmont, North Carolina at the Christmas of 1991. I was reminded, yet again, how when I am in Jordan, I am so very near Bethlehem and this celebrated event. Since our campus was stilled I went back and googled some information about this familiar hymn. It was written in 1883 to mark the 400^th anniversary of Martin Luther’s birth. We sing this song so often, if you are a Christian or not, it makes its way around in December, but I realized we are no longer as shocked by the image as perhaps we should be.

Stop and think about the jarring imagery: a manger is made for animals, not humans. Babies belong in a cradle or a crib, made for tender nurture. But this baby Jesus lies in a manger—hard, harsh, filled with prickly hay. The song is sweet and gentle, but the reality was not. The word “manger” comes from the French verb manger, which means, “to eat.” A manger was a receptacle for animal feed. And yet in God’s strange and unexpected ways, the manger becomes a precious vessel that holds the Christ child. When the shepherds and the wise men come in search of the announced savior, it’s not in a royal cradle, but in a humble manger that they find him. Having attended a Lutheran church while I lived in New York, I knew how powerful the symbol of the manger was for Martin Luther—that was why it was written with him in mind. Luther used the image of the manger in enlightening ways: in his writings he called the scriptures a manger, a feeding trough for believers; Luther also called the congregation of the church as the manger in which the Christ child is found. Congregation as manger? What did Luther mean? I think what Luther wanted us to understand is that the manger is not a place, but a people, an event. Where is that place from which we feed our souls? With whom we do we feed our souls?

Of course at this time of year many congregations set up manger scenes on their grounds, but it begs the question, where is the real action of the manger? What is the responsibility of being the manger? Where does the real Christmas story take place? 

I remember a marvelous sermon sometime in the early part of this century in New York in which the minister reminded the congregation, “Christmas isn’t really about the manger—it’s about the Babe.” She then quoted Martin Luther who said, “For not all mangers hold Christ and not all sermons teach the faith.” When we focus on ourselves, then we see cease to be a manifestation of the manger of Christ-like values.

As I pondered Martin Luther and Christmas traditions and the flight I am about to make, and the resolutions I will surely devise in the next two weeks, I loved the challenge of living up to the responsibility of Christmas. Followers or not of the Babe in the manger, there is a mighty responsibility to live up to the ideals of this season and how those ideals might transform the world. Luther offered an answer in a long-ago Christmas Eve sermon: “We are the humble barnyard animals that go with this manger. There Christ is placed before us, and with this food we are able to feed our souls.” The manger, by definition, is a feedbox. Many congregations, many non-Christians sponsor food pantries for the needy. When we recognize ourselves as mangers, then each of us can be a food pantry for all who hunger; we offer that nurturing to the others around us.

This morning a very sweet 10^th-grade girl stopped and asked me, “Are you going home for Christmas?” The question was everywhere in the air today with the ex-pats looking forward to flights and time away from that proverbial Gerbil Wheel of School. I smiled and said, “In all my years on earth, I have never missed Christmas at home with my family in Cincinnati. Never!” Since I have been in Jordan, this is my fourth year at King’s Academy, going home is even more exciting than it ever was. I enjoy the work here, but I miss the conveniences and my logic of my homeland. I miss the ability to jump on a plane somewhere domestically and visit friends and family over a weekend if I so desired. But I am very excited about this flight and time spent in Cincinnati.

In the footsteps of Christmas, when love comes into the world in the vulnerability of a child, when light pierces the darkness, and hope is born, when you think about it, as the poet wrote, the work of Christmas has only just begun. There is always that danger to sentimentalize the cuteness of the newborn child in that manger, rather than focus on the awesome mystery of the incarnation. When we look to the incarnation of God and the profound mystery of the birth of love into the world, then we can begin to change from expecting the worst to working toward something good. So from our kneeling place beside the manger, we slowly rise to our feet, and the miracle of this birth and the glow of this gift of love stay with us, lie within us, even as we slowly step back toward that cowshed door and out into the cold January air and to the world from which we came. We begin again in this new year with courage and joy and love to set about doing the work of Christmas in all the far away and forgotten places of our lives and in the world where people expect the worst.

Christmas 2009-style

For today’s trip down memory lane of Christmas Past Blog Entries, we go back to 2009, the year KA had its first senior class. This year was the most volatile in the school’s history, a particularly difficult year in the life of this young school. In this entry I mused about angels, and especially about the angel that had visited Mary for the Annunciation:

"I thought about how startling it would be to have a run-in with an angel. No wonder the first thing an angel says is the predictable, “Fear, not!” Anyone who knows their Bible knows that 99 times out of a 100 when humans run into angels the first words out of the angel’s mouth are always, “Do not be afraid.”

This could reflect on angels, I guess, but maybe it just says something about the state in which angels typically find us: afraid. You could forgive angels for smelling out fear a mile away. After all, fear seems to be a constant companion for us. Our ancestors lived in fear about food and shelter. All these millennia later, despite the frozen meat section in your grocery store, we still live in a state of fear. These last 18 months or so we have been terrified about the global financial markets collapsing and empty retirement accounts. And before that, we were terrified by terror, and anthrax, and the Cold War. Some of our Americans are terrified of Barack Obama. Some are terrified of Sarah Palin.

But as senior Ghassan read the familiar passage during a Lessons and Carols of “Don’t be afraid” from the angel to Mary, an unmarried teen-ager, I thought…hmmm… I wonder if it ever crossed Mary’s mind to retort, “Easy for you to say!”

A student sang the song, “Born to Die,” which made my mind race to the Resurrection and the angel who greeted the women at the tomb with the same, “Don’t be afraid.” Of course those women had just a number of hours earlier witnessed the Resurrection, and they are asked not to be afraid?

How in the world do we manage all this fear? Our seniors are afraid about college acceptances. Some of us are afraid of the sustainability of this grand experiment in the desert, and the list really is almost endless. Of course the fears that plague all of us can hardly be overcome by the words of the angel who proposes to instruct us: “Don’t be afraid.”

Two weeks ago today, on December 11, a particularly stressful day (even though Fridays are officially off days, I spent 8 hours with the hardest working people at KA—the class deans of the office of Student Life) doing work that a highly-paid administrator should have done (‘nuff said). At one point I walked over to the refrigerator for a Diet Coke in Sheena’s apartment and a magnet caught my eye. The black-and-white magnet read:

Peace

It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work.

It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.

--Unknown writer

I grabbed a post-it note and quickly wrote down this intriguing conceptualization of peace.

Later that night I googled this saying—having never heard it before, and on a website, someone shared the greater context of this definition. Here is the fable I found on the internet:

There once was a king who offered a prize to the artist who would paint the best picture of peace. Many artists tried. The king looked at all the pictures. But there were only two he really liked, and he had to choose between them.

One picture was of a calm lake. The lake was a perfect mirror for peaceful towering mountains all around it. Overhead was a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. All who saw this picture thought that it was a perfect picture of peace.

The other picture had mountains, too. But these were rugged and bare. Above was an angry sky, from which rain fell and in which lightning played. Down the side of the mountain tumbled a foaming waterfall. This did not look peaceful at all.

But when the king looked closely, he saw behind the waterfall a tiny bush growing in a crack in the rock. In the bush a mother bird had built her nest. There, in the midst of the rush of angry water, sat the mother bird on her nest - in perfect peace.

Which picture do you think won the prize? The king chose the second picture. Do you know why?

"Because," explained the king, "peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble, or hard work. Peace means to be in the midst of all those things and still be calm in your heart. That is the real meaning of peace.”

--- Author Unknown

This conceptualization of peace resonates with me as I find myself consumed by the pressures and challenges at KA. As a teacher and dorm parent, there are many times when there is noise, trouble, and hard work all at once! Yet, I do often find peace, knowing that this is part of the process of growth and transformation in this young school. Working in Jordan is generally far from an easy or trouble-free process, but as I take the long view of what we have accomplished in the last thirty months, and the students I have met, I find that mysterious peace. I am able to be at peace knowing that I am doing what I was meant to do, and that everyone involved will grow through the problems we are facing. Cultivating a confidence about my abilities to manage and overcome the obstacles allows me to feel at peace amidst the challenges that arise.

Of course, life wouldn’t be very interesting if everything was quiet, trouble-free, and effortless. We may wish at times that this were the case! However, our triumphs are gained through the more chaotic and difficult times. When noise, trouble, and hard work fall upon us, how we perceive it and react to it makes all the difference. The challenge is to learn how to be at peace inside ourselves, even when things around us are far from peaceful.

On this Christmas evening, with the chaos and noise and hard work of the holiday winding down, I am left with a marvelous calm, an understanding that I hardly have all the answers, but a serene peace that we are making a difference in a few people’s lives.

God bless us everyone…and Merry Christmas. Peace to you.

A look back five years...

Five years ago I wrote this blog entry. This past Tuesday night, Christmas Eve, my sister and I sang in church for the 40th Christmas Eve in a row...wow...let's look back to Christmas 2008:

Last night my sister and I sang in our family’s church on Glenway Avenue. There isn’t anything novel in the announcement of that performance—we have been singing on Christmas Eve together, without fail, every year since I was 10 and she was 7. If you know about where my age falls, you can do the math, and figure out that this is a tradition that dates back to the era of Watergate in American politics.

Over the years, of course, many variables have affected this set-in-stone performance. There has been a name change in terms of what this church has been called (my family still is not happy about the change in 2004—my father suggested they just call it “The Anything Goes” church) and there have been 7 pastors (by my own count this frosty Christmas morning). There were some years my mother was in the hospital, and one memorable Christmas Eve where doctors allowed her out of the hospital for three hours so she could be bundled up—IV and all—to come to the church and hear us sing. There were years when the hairstyles and the outfits mattered so much more than the song being delivered to the church family. There was the year the church team forgot to turn on the heat, and up until I put my fingers on the keyboard, I kept my hands encased in much-needed gloves.

Ever since my sister got married in 1994 she has made a point of locating songs for Christmas Eve that illumine parts of the Christmas story we might have forgotten—she has made it her mission to act as surrogate pastor and remind us that there are nuggets of wisdom still to be gleaned by the oft-told Christmas story. For years I had chosen semi-flashy pieces designed to show off our vocal skills—then as Elizabeth took hold of the annual song choice (and leave no doubt—she is in charge of choosing!) she chose songs along the lines of Amy Grant’s “Grown-Up Christmas List” that act as beautiful meditations of how we can look into the traditions and stories and find something refreshing, re-invigorating, and re-affirming.

When I got home this year Elizabeth presented me with a song I had never heard, a song entitled, “Not That Far From Bethlehem.” I immediately noted, “Hey, I don’t live that far away from Bethlehem in Jordan! It’s only about 50 miles to Bethlehem!” Elizabeth—as wise mothers often do—nodded in knowing assent. That was partly why she had chosen this song, it fits into the reality of our lives so well these days. I have gone off—left the country—but where I have settled and made a new life—is not very far from the site of the genesis of the Christmas story. That Elizabeth—she is a good one, you know.

Rendering the song last night allows me to think about my life in Jordan—thousands of miles away. I love to go to Mukawir near Madaba in Jordan. It is about a 40-50 minute drive away from KA. At Mukawir stand the ruins of the once-lavish summer palace of our biblical acquaintance King Herod. Archaeologists tell us this was a sumptuous villa with opulent apartments for the royal family. It boasted a Roman bath with hot and cold pools all with a stunning view of the Jordan valley. When you hike there it is possible to close out the 21^st century and focus simply on the ancient ruins and the staggering natural views. How interesting to compare Herod’s summer get-away with the Bethlehem birthplace of Jesus—not a castle, but little more than a grotto, or a garage.

The words to song Elizabeth chose offer this refrain:

We’re not that far from Bethlehem—

where all our hope and joy began.

For in our arms we’ll cherish Him.

We’re not that far from Bethlehem

What a wonderful meditation. In the last few weeks here in the United States, I have realized, again, that while I may live thousands of miles away, I am not that far from the love of family and friends. Each day I visit someone, talk to someone, reunite with someone who makes my world meaningful and brighter. I realized yesterday that there has been a preponderance of wonderful activity with people whose names begin with D. Here are just some snapshots of the Four Ds bringing home the meaning of Christmas.

Two weeks ago I spent an afternoon with my mentor, the iconic Doris Jackson. We came to Hackley the same year, 1996, and look back that we bonded on the first day faculty gathered that year. We team-taught a course together in 1999-2000 and have forged one of the best friendships over the years. My KA friend Rehema and I spent the afternoon visiting and feasting on Doris’ legendary potato salad and roasted chicken (seriously, it may just be the best anywhere!). Going to Doris’ house is like soul food on a plate, and soul interaction in the family room. No matter how far away I go, I am not that far from Doris’ love and affection (or watchful eye, she would add!).

When back in town I try and see my friend Debbie—a friendship ignited while we both sang and sweated in the 1980 All Ohio State Fair Youth Choir. This choir is one of my favorite memories of my youth, and while we did not see each other from 1985 until 2005, ever since the 25^th anniversary of our choir, Debbie has been a faithful friend. We get together for breakfast, and I bask in the beam of her marvelous smile and wisdom. It is a friendship that has stood the test of time. Seeing Debbie reminds me that I am not that far from the ebullience of youth and the thrill of making new friends.

On Monday of this week my junior high and high school friend Dawn and I had dinner at the “Golden Lamb” in Lebanon, Ohio. Dawn decided that we should take our high school AP History teacher out to this famed establishment—the oldest continuously serving restaurant/inn/pub in Ohio, going back to 1803—as she took us 25 years ago while we were finishing high school. My friendship with Dawn goes back to the U.S. Bicentennial—it is a treat to know and care about someone who has seen you through the seasons since you were 12. Our teacher, the inimitable Jean Michaels, is one of the main reasons I became a teacher—I saw how much she loved her job, and I wanted to do something that offered me the chance to love life in the same way. Mrs. Michaels is a little older these days than the halcyon days of our AP and Dickens class in the early 1980s, but no less feisty, opinionated, funny, or sharp. It was a delightful evening remembering that we are not that far from the days we chose our careers, and started out with high hopes and expectations.

And two nights ago I talked on the phone with a former student, David, from the class of 1998. It has been awhile since we visited, but we re-connected through the miracle of Facebook. David was in my very first class at Hackley, and his enthusiasm, even-handedness, and focused curiosity has always made him a favorite of mine. He has traveled the world, lived in China, is finishing a law degree, but our conversation reminded me I am not that far from the excited moments that have gratified me as a teacher.

The other day I joked about the miracle of Facebook and my sister, ever the insistent mother, reminded me that it is not really a miracle, “Johnny, come on—the ‘miracle of Facebook’?? The birth of Jesus is a miracle, not that you can log on to Facebook!” Yes, you are right Elizabeth, but Facebook is an exciting new way (for me) to reconnect with the message of what Christmas means to me.

However—this is a certainly a week when people celebrate miracles. The Jewish tradition of Hanukkah—the Festival of Lights—commemorates the time when a small amount of oil lasted 8 days and kept the light in the temple from going out. And so this week allows us a chance to think about, what exactly is a miracle? Last Sunday my marvelous Aunt Dot hosted a Griley get-together that dwarfed all others. Our cousin from Charleston, Barbara, joined us for a delightful reunion. Is that a miracle? I guess in December we are prone to hope for miracles. We yearn for them. Deep down most of us believe that darkness can be overcome.

The other day I played my Denison cassette tape of the entirety of Handel’s Messiah.  I love so many moments in this beloved classic but when the chorus bursts out with “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed” I am overwhelmed by the multi-facets of that glory and our search for glory in general. Such images of wealth and power must have filled the minds of the Hebrews after they heard that prophecy from Isaiah.

The Messiah who showed up, however had different trappings of glory—I guess one could call it the glory of humility. This messiah emerged as a baby who could not eat solid food and depended on an unwed teen-age mother for shelter, food, and love. God’s visit to earth was in an out-of-the-way shelter in a feed trough. Indeed, the event that divides history into two parts may have had more animal than human witnesses! As songwriter Phillips Brooks penned:

How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given! So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His heaven. “  --O, Little Town of Bethlehem.

 

With all my Jewish and Muslim friends I try and look for an ecumenical approach to Christmas, besides the sacred understanding of the birth of the Messiah. And I am not talking about a Santa Claus spin on the holiday or trying to cover up religiosity. I mean—in the birth in Bethlehem, how can we walk away with an ecumenical understanding? Simply put: Jesus’ birth is a reiteration that love came down, and offered vast promise. It is about the power of love to change, and the power of cherishing each other. Christmas offers us that opportunity to turn back to those promises—those hopes and joys, and remind ourselves we should never allow ourselves to be that far from Bethlehem.

We’re not that far from Bethlehem—

where all our hope and joy began.

For in our arms we’ll cherish Him.

We’re not that far from Bethlehem

Way back in 2007--my first return to the USA from Jordan

For the next few days I will indulge myself a look back at the first few years of my life in Jordan. Here is an excerpt from my Christmas blog from that first year in Jordan, way back in 2007. It is interesting to re-read that excitement about the first flight back to Cincinnati from Jordan. I have since made that trip many times, but it is charming to remind myself of that first year of the school. Have a Merry Christmas Eve, blog readers!

From 2007:

The sun is shining, the grass is green;
The orange and palm trees sway,
There's never been such a day
[except] In Beverly Hills, L.A.

Thus begins the somewhat obscure verse to the immortal “White Christmas” anthem written by Irving Berlin in 1942. In that year Berlin was Christmas-ing in California, writing songs for movies, far away from his beloved New York. This verse holds a special resonance for me this year—indeed, I would only have to change a word or two to reflect my new situation! Let’s change the “orange and palm trees,” to “olive trees,” and move Beverly Hills to Jordan and the picture is quite accurate! As I look outside the window right now at KA, we have the perpetually blue skies (a title of another Irving Berlin number by the way—Blue skies, nothin’ but blue skies, from now on…) I have come to expect in my five months in Jordan, and it is about 60 degrees out there in this corner of the Middle East. In spite of the lovely day, I concur with Irving Berlin’s next line: I am longing to be up north… and of course, in the next measure the world heaves a nostalgic, sentimental sigh as Bing Crosby’s baritone plaintively muses,

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,

Just like the ones I used to know…

When Berlin penned this ditty 65 years ago, many people were serving in the armed forces overseas for the second American Christmas of World War II. I can only imagine the millions of lumps in throats as people yearned to be back home, yearned to see their loved ones, and dreamt of those Christmas pasts of bountiful blessings. I understand that feeling better this Christmas than maybe ever before.

As all of you readers are aware, I moved to Jordan five months ago, and my compatriots and I are about to complete the first semester at KA. Since I started this blog in late July, I have henpeck-typed some 140 pages of my impressions—ruminations on the various and sundry experiences—from the gastronomic, travel, political, frustrating, joyous,  challenging, humbling, and triumphant aspects that have opened up in my life since journeying to Jordan in July (hard not to relish that alliterative phrase!). I have this sentence stuck in my head from one of Bing Crosby’s Christmas specials, a delicious staple of my childhood December viewing: “Unless we make Christmas an occasion to share our blessings, all the snow in Alaska won't make it ‘white’.”

As I wrote this last Tuesday: Tomorrow I will be celebrating my blessings as I board a plane in Amman, Jordan, and fly to Chicago and transfer there for a flight to Cincinnati. And there I will get the best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.

Thirty hours after I left my apartment at KA, my dad met me at the Cincinnati airport. I got the best greeting you could imagine: “You’re skinny!” (It’s funny—people say this to me when they haven’t seen me for awhile. I rarely lose much weight, but maybe I am remembered as, what, more “solid” in their memories??)

The next few hours were fun as I padded my feet on wall-to-wall-carpeting again, and had cold milk, and a BLT, felt the weight of a quarter again in my palm, brushed my teeth from tap water, and drove a car. Ahhhh. Pretty good stuff.

We headed over to my niece and nephew’s school to pick them up—they didn’t know I would be in yet, so I got to surprise them. Jack’s jaw dropped, and he went silent, and Emma’s eyes widened and screamed out, “King!” Cashmere sweaters are nice, but that’s the real pay-off!

We spent the afternoon playing hide-and-go-seek, eating gingerbread cookies, wondering what Santa might bring. At one point as we hid from Emma (Jack and I always hide/count together—it’s a team project us boys), Jack whispered to me, “King, I missed you more than anybody else did!” How sweet can a 5 year old get???

As the violet hour of dusk approached, we headed off to the Cincinnati Zoo for the Festival of Lights. In the mini-van I asked if we could eschew the DVD player and listen to Christmas carols instead. Emma responded: “Oh sure, why not? You’ve gotten everything else you’ve wanted today!”  Oh yes, the bloom is off the rose! The warm welcome was nice while it lasted!

Today as I shopped around the west side of Cincinnati, the mercury rose to 60 degrees. Wait—it felt like Amman just the other day…

Guess what was on TV last night as I began addressing the Christmas cards? I kid you not—the movie White Christmas—one of those movies I can watch over and over again, and I tear up every time when the old army guys show up for the General toward the end of the movie. And while addressing cards to friends in Dobbs Ferry, Atlanta, Charlotte, San Diego, Columbus, et cetera, I was reminded of another Berlin ballad to savor:

When you’re tired, and you can’t sleep,
I count my blessings instead of sleep.

So I fall asleep, counting my blessings.

Thanks Irving for the reminder…

The Metropolitan Museum of Art as Diner... Hmm....The Imperial Diner as Museum

 

Last week when I arrived in the United States I went first to New York City. Some years I go there immediately upon my arrival in the USA and some years I go at the end of the winter break. But whenever I go, there are a few constants in my visit. One habit/custom/ritual/tradition is that I go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art every day. I know some of you wince or moan to think of going to an art museum every day, but as I explain it to people, for me going to the Met is actually like going to a diner.

I come from diner pilgrims. For years my mother made a pilgrimage to Frisch’s for her morning coffee and visit with the regulars. Obviously she could have eaten breakfast at home while her children readied themselves for school and quickly ate cereal. But there was something more in store for her at Frisch’s. Then about 20 years ago when my father retired from the Cincinnati Fire Department he began going to a diner for breakfast conversation. Somewhere in the 1990s he started going to the Imperial up the street for his chatfest and coffee. Yesterday, my first full day in Cincinnati for the 2013 Christmas break, I slid into the booth opposite my father for the morning habit/custom/ritual/tradition.

These daily visits to the Met in New York and the Imperial in Cincinnati are more alike than I realized.

When I go to the Met in New York every day, I go for maybe an hour, maybe an hour-and-half—that’s all! I go to check in, start the day, see some familiar things, soak in an atmosphere and plan that I know like the back of my hand, and then go about the business of the rest of the day. When my father goes to the Imperial six days a week (he takes Sundays off), he goes to check in with the regular denizens, officially starts his days, sees the familiar in an atmosphere and plan that he knows like the back of his weathered hand, and then goes about the business of the rest of his day. He is there for about the same amount of time that I am at the Met. Wow! The similarities…

But there is more than just a same old same old mundane routine in common. For starters, both visits offer a kind of sustenance.  Hmmm…the Met feeds the soul while the Imperial feeds the body (although, I hasten to add that Kurt, one of the regulars at the Imperial, reminds the buddies that “we sure don’t come here for the food!”).  But the parallels continue on into a more profound realm. Both spaces have a great deal of the “expected.”  For example, when I go to the Met, I always go and see at least one thing I know very well. My father knows exactly where every character will sit in the Imperial.  No one changes his “role” or his “place.”

So why does one go every day?? Is there something more we seek to find, or happen to find in making these daily stops?

Last week at the Met I visited two of the paintings I know extremely well. One is a Rembrandt and one is a Brueghel. These are paintings that have been in my consciousness for 20 years, and I have taught them, used them in tours at the Met, and reflected on them. And yet…in my visits last week, I caught something new about these old favorites.

Rembrandt’s Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer is one of the art works I have talked about the most in the last 12 years of teaching art history.  Rembrandt has painted the philosopher Aristotle standing in darkness with light shining on his face, his sleeve, and his right hand. While his hand rests on a bust of Homer, his stares past it, projecting an introspective and melancholy wonder. This piece is my “diner philosophy” of the Met. I come by there all the time, and yet…and yet, might there be some new revelation? Last week as I looked at the familiar Rembrandt, I noticed for the first time that the philosophers' arms seemed like scales in a balance. This wasn’t a big surprise since the piece is one of contemplating avenues to pursue in life—teaching or wealth and fame.  But I had never really seen this familiar work in quite the same way. Were 'Aristotle’s' arms actually weighing the different paths in life like scales in a balance? After seeing this piece for so long, I loved how there was something still new to be gleaned from such a familiar piece.

On another day, another “diner visit” to the Met, I soaked in the familiar Brueghel painting of  The Harvesters. This is a piece that at first glance is about the silly average bumpkins in this Dutch society. But as I learned long ago, there is subtext to the Brueghel piece, biting commentary about contemporary politics in the Dutch world. But the other day I am staring at this familiar piece, standing in practically a well-worn groove for me in front of this painting, when I decide to look around in the painting a little more closely.  The bumpkins are all there,  yep,right in their places, but as I look in one of the trees on the side, I see something completely new to me! There in one of the trees is hiding a devilish boy, waiting for the perfect time to throw apples down on some unsuspecting denizens!  How have I been looking at this painting for so many years and missed this little gem of humor?! But this is exactly what I mean about the Met being like a diner for me…I go regularly, see the same faces (albeit ones of paint!) and yet, I keep going not just for the expected, but for the revelations, the epiphanies, the joy of the unexpected!

The Imperial is not unlike a museum—there are old faces in these booths, and like the Brueghel, they may come across like average bumpkins, but there is more than meets the eye. If, as Kurt attests, the food isn’t the draw (and yes, I can attest to it, the food is unremarkable in every way!) then what is the draw for these regulars who congregate six days a week at this diner??? We can make breakfast and coffee at home. But there is a camaraderie that attracts and binds. For this particular group of men it is a common bond of losing wives.

But I think there is still something more.  There is humor, there is learning, there is sharing, and yes, there are revelations and epiphanies at the Imperial. To continue with the Brueghel parallel, there is often political subtext as well…

Yesterday I was very aware of the human connections at the Imperial, and in a melancholy way, because of the absence of some of the humans. About a week ago, Dick Kitz, one of the regulars and among the most colorful canvases at the Imperial, died suddenly. He was in his late 80s, so maybe it is never exactly “sudden” then. This guy sat opposite my father in his booth for years. Dick never varied in his breakfast order—it was always the same: fried eggs hard, a stack of white bread, and a cauldron of steaming coffee. But each day Dick or my father would bring some problem to the table; some days they discussed electrical wiring, some days, concrete issues (i.e. cement), and on and on, the same old same old ritual of trying to solve some problem. But woven through their talks was humor: political humor, old man humor, and even more. It was as if these Brueghel-esque characters were weighing the choices they had made in life, seeking a little validation and approval for how they have lived their lives.

On our refrigerator at home hangs a sign that Dick once gave my father: “I can only please one person per day…today is not your day. And tomorrow doesn’t look good either.” Dick Kitz was an ornery and eccentric man. He could also melt your heart with a laugh or a reminiscence of his beloved, late wife. He might also bake you a cake if he was in the mood. There was that joy of the unexpected with knowing Dick.

At his funeral, Dick’s daughter told my father that she was sure her father’s morning visits to the diner had prolonged his life. There had been a kind of psychic sustenance with the treks to “The Institution of Higher Learning” (as Dick dubbed the Imperial). The day or so after his funeral, my father told me that Dick’s son came and made the morning pilgrimage to the Imperial. When he left he paid for the breakfast of everyone in the Imperial.

Of course my visits to the New York daily haunt of the Met, and my visits to the Cincinnati daily haunt of the Imperial, do happen to be timed to the season of Advent. This is a season of theologically anticipating the birth of the Christ child. There are expectations tied to this season, and a trotting out of routines and customs and rituals and traditions. This is a season suffused with expectations, and that can often be part of the problem. We can “expect” the holiday to go a certain way, and often we might be let down, since the reality almost always will compromise our expectations.

But there is a strange convergence for me of the Met, the Imperial and Christmas. All three share some longing. In a word, in all three, we long for joy. I walk across the park, go into the massive structure on Fifth Avenue, lope up the grand staircase, and long for joy at seeing these examples of artistic triumph. Whether these men know it consciously, or not, they seek the Imperial diner on Glenmore Avenue every day because they long for joy, the joy of human connection and fulfillment. Might our joy be enhanced by opening our eyes to the familiar and seeing some of the surprises around us?

Advent is a wonderful opportunity to remind ourselves of expectations. In the midst of our familiar we must always be open to the joy of the unexpected, an important life-affirming sustenance.