Artist Highlight: Eric Stevens

Eric, grew up in Alabama, lived in Chicago a bit, and found his way out to the Bay Area in 2004, through, “a series of experiments for the most part.” He attended Auburn College and studied industrial design which would later inspire him to pursue furniture work. Eventually, Eric worked for a furniture design firm but “got a little bit burned out.” He left the firm and decided to open his own shop so he could better understand what it meant to design things for other people. Eric found his design style through what was lacking when he looked at carpentry and wood working magazines. He felt inspired after reading about an artist who used mechanisms to carve wood. Although he didn’t implement the techniques immediately, it laid the foundation for experimentation with his creative medium 5 years later. He credits creative experimentation as the catalyst for making a return to furniture and create a cohesive body of work again. Eric reflected on making 100 pieces in 100 days, “So each piece was made in basically a day sometimes it would lapse over to finishing but my goal was to photograph each piece and publish it.” He commented that the biggest hurdle in accomplishing his goal was persistence and it took constantly “showing up,” for his art amidst all the things happening in life to pull him away from his art. He found immense focus through the experimental 100 pieces and worked with intention to, “try to do a better job each time.” He trashed approximately 40 of the pieces. He said there are times when he wants to trash everything he makes and commented that his work is subjective in the eyes of other people. He accepts that people either like or dislike his work while acknowledging that he has not pushed himself to sell his pieces. Since he has not moved many pieces, Eric is often surrounded by his art, which he compares to, “staring at yourself in the mirror.” Each piece Eric makes takes time. The cost of metal plates and studio space and the lumber all adds up and is factored into how he feels about his work. Eric’s shift from Oakland to the Eden area has been gradual; he has been in the area for a year and a half and is slowly meeting new people. The Oakland area is full or artists flowing from San Francisco, he commented on the way artists and creativity in Oakland feeds off of one another. Eric is slowly immersing himself in the community and making connections, most recently at the Castro Valley lumber yard, “this gem in the middle of nowhere, kind of hidden and that was fantastic, they have wood that’s been drying in the air for about 40 years and just giant pieces of redwood.” Eric identified that space is a commodity in the area and is much needed in order to get artists creating and gathering in a community setting. 

Eric's Website

Artist Highlight: Talin Wadsworth

Talin has been a print artist for 15 years now; he discovered his art while he was studying to be an architect. During a design class, he was tasked with making a CD cover, “and from then on all I wanted to do was make rock and roll posters . . . I just wanted to make cool stuff for bands in the community.” Afterwards, Talin became immersed in printing, silk screening, letterpress, “and I just got really into the craft and process of printing.” A few years ago, Talin found his new mode of printing when a friend turned him on to the risograph, “it’s this really kind of old school like printer that prints one color at a time . . .I just knew it was a thing that I had to have.” Talin found the technology to be so revolutionary to his design process that he convinced his boss to purchase a risograph. 

Talin enjoys the process of his work, “I just like following the process all the way through and having my hands on every part of that process.” Talin reflected on his varied past of dabbling in one form of printing or another, “and just like making a lot of zines on photocopies in the middle of the night and the risograph just seemed like the culmination of all these kinds of loves.” While much of Talin’s work has been for himself, one of his goals in bringing the risograph into his design studio “is to get other people involved.” He discussed the effect this form of printing has had on a younger generation of designers, “a lot of them had never seen their piece go from a sketch into a full design on the computer or even by hand and then seeing it printed and seeing it handed out  and seeing it up and around. We’re just so used to seeing our work on screens.” The addition of this tangible form of printing has helped build community among designers in Talin’s office, they spend time creating together in ways they hadn’t previously, “it has opened up a new way of thinking and working for them.” Talin commented on how digital technology has allowed for more exposure for designers and created more opportunities, “people still love books, people still love putting their hands on a print and love hanging it on their wall or having it on their desk and I think what we’re realizing is that’s never going to go away.” Talin moved to the Eden area in search of a home and a community. Talin hopes that there will be more street level engagement with art in the community within the Eden area. He commented on the dwindling store front spaces that can help people, “just kind of swerve into this new world and . . . jolt them from their day to day and just kind of happen on new experiences.” 

https://www.behance.net/talinwadsworth

On Sound Healing

“From the floor of a studio space in Oakland, I learned how to accept my memories, accept myself, let myself be loved and held from exactly where I was at.”

I have always been sensitive to noise; sensitive to the noises of others, sensitive to the noise in my mind, to the clanking dishes in my heart. I first experienced sound healing approximately one year ago. It was around the time I had begun making things out of book pages. The spot was in Oakland and I knew I needed something. After the event I handed the man a string of paper stars punched from the most recent book I had read. I had been grasping at so many things at the time. Wrapping my arms around babies, around the wayward twenty something boys in their beds as my hands tried to know them. My fingers clung tightly to beer bottles in run down front yards and loud crowded bars. A rough smoke had filled my lungs. I wrote every day and cried in my car. I’d set my heart down and picked it back up each time, not bothering to wash the dirt off of it. I was dumbfounded really. I didn’t know what else to do with myself. What do you do with your most potent memories? How do you handle them? I couldn’t bear to begin to pick apart who I had been, and the powerful traces of what it had been like to be loved; how it had felt to belong, to a Bengal cat and a man in a chair. How to sift through the overwhelming intimacy that had settled into my bones.  

And then my feet timidly walked across the floor of Samana and found a space where my body could fit. The world looked different from a cross-legged position on the floor. Finally humbled I was near a gong, and a Tibetan singing bowl, and silver tuning forks. After some introductory dialogue he began. Gradually I surrendered, relaxed, let every new reverberation wash over me and through me. I felt cradled in the repetition; finally soothed by each new echo that filled ears and trickled down into my soul. With my eyes closed, I had visions as I repackaged my past. A rich warm stirring note pooled around me and I felt myself walk through the door of his room and wrap my arms around his biceps and press my palms against his chest. My lips kissed his neck as his left hand rested on the push-rim of a wheel and his right on top of my hand.  A bronze tone lingered somewhere in the air near me and I walked barefoot through the grass on his side yard as Simba’s wise Bengal eyes followed behind. I felt so whole. My hands rested on his kitchen table. A light tinkling near my left and I began to cry. Began to feel what had been. Was given in sixty minutes of sounds the ability to find solace in the beautiful and the ugly of a man I had loved with a sacrificial heart.

I had pulled myself up from the floor with tears streaming down my face and I knew I needed more. I had been given a lesson on the value of release. I don’t always grant myself the permission to let go. From the floor of a studio space in Oakland, I learned how to accept my memories, accept myself, let myself be loved and held from exactly where I was at.

As fall turned to winter I drove to a home in Montclair for an experience with Suellen and Jérémy. A light rain had been falling for hours. There was still a mist in the air upon my arrival. I walked down the staircase and onto the expansive front deck that had darkened to a deep chocolate brown with the water. Upon entering I became aware that this was not my house as I wandered down the steep carpeted stairwell into the den. There, a space had been lovingly crafted; blankets and pillows waited, as we were given insight into how to arrange ourselves and what to expect. A poem was read. I tried to feel at peace among the strangers. The small of my back settled into the ground and the deep notes dripped out of a saxophone and cuddled up beside me. Grainy fingers circled around the flat of a drum. Gradually, my body began to give in. Again, images and memories swam to the surface. I felt anchored by the warmth of a cello. Wind rustled my hair as I stood barefoot and singing Fleetwood Mac songs to the nine month old in my arms. I fought to jump over a six foot wall. A beautiful voice hung above me in the air. I leaned my head against the tile wall and smiled at the man I loved, we refilled the water for the umpteenth time, never wanting to leave; an empty wheelchair rested near-by. The even hum of a singing bowl rippled and seemed to pat dry my skin. I clung to moving boxes with tears in my eyes. I drove up the grapevine in a steadfast brown Honda. Tuning forks swung back and forth above me and I heard the sound of his voice again, the way he called me baby. It continued to rain outside. I walked down the hills of Montclair that early evening knowing the depths of myself. I felt lighter, my eyes lingered on my breath as it hung in the air. The windshield wipers chased after one another, as I drove slowly and avoided the flooded areas. I wanted to be as cold and wet as it was outside, wanted to feel as drenched as I did on the inside. But the chill never came, instead there was stillness, the growl within had turned to a pur. Again, I felt moved and saw that there was overwhelming peace despite every part of myself still buried inside.     

Smalltown Space Brings Castro Valley a New Community Gathering Space

New Year Theme

The season of making yearly resolutions has approached. I always felt resolutions were a bit stressful and a set-up to fail. I start off gung-ho and at the end of a week I fizzle. Yes, a week. 
In 2016 I decided to choose a yearly theme instead of a resolution. The idea of the theme was introduced to me by the podcast, “Happier with Gretchen Rubin”. (You can read about my 2016 theme choice here https://www.ciagould.com/blog/2016/1/28/growth). I stuck to my theme for 2016 and I feel successful instead of hating myself for failing a resolution. I will never make a resolution again because life is a journey.

I will never make a resolution again because life is a journey.
As 2017 approaches I have been thinking about what I’d like my theme to be. I chose to go with “presence”. I just want to be present, in the now. I want to give attention to what I do and say. For me, the past ten years introduced so many different ways to be distracted. I am less in the moment than I’ve ever been. I have fewer quiet and distraction-free times... forget about trying to read a book! If we’re not browsing on our phone, we’re texting, playing a game, or on some sort of social media platform. It’s madness! The more distracted we are it seems the more desensitized we become to it. Do you ever feel busy, but not productive? I get stressed physically and emotionally by feeling that I need to constantly check for something new on my phone. Guess what? Nothing interesting usually has happened within 10 seconds. 

One of the helpful tools I started to weave into my daily life is meditation. I even use an app and meditate before I leave the bed in the morning. I find myself in a better mood and with intention and focus for my day. I found a very cool local Japanese garden that I plan to do some meditation in as well.

As for practicing being present I have a few tips to share if you decide to try the same thing: 

1. Pay attention to every aspect of what you’re doing
2. Become aware of your thoughts when they begin to wander and consciously come back to what you’re doing
3. Be joyful in what you’re doing
4. Be grateful
5. Meditate

So, as 2017 rolls in what do you think you’re theme would be?

Volare

I was driving along 580 and I found myself completely transported. A song came on, and I was no longer driving but in the passenger seat of my Dad’s red mazda on the way to visit my grandma in 1995. Elvis Costello’s ‘Allison’ lilted and I was completely at peace in the moment.

I have always been fascinated and moved by how deeply music is connected to our memory. How a song can cause you to recall not only a visual cue, but an emotional and physical cue as well. As part of a reading group, I have been exploring the book, ‘How Music Works’ by David Byrne of The Talking Heads. Byrne makes such a profound and simple point in his preface - explaining that the way in which we experience music has so little to do with solely what we hear. Our interface with music includes our vision, our emotions, our company, the surroundings and the list continues on…

My intrigue for this subject stemmed not only from personal experience in finding nostalgia in music, but more so from interactions with my grandmother. My mother’s mother, Pat, was diagnosed with dementia about 8 years ago. We have watched her decline over the years with sadness, certainly, but the years have also been tenderly infused with moments of true joy and poignant signs of clarity. For me, those moments have always surrounded music. There eventually came in time Pat’s journey when, I , her youngest grandchild just became ‘honey’ like everyone else. It was strange to know someone so well, and have them feign knowledge of you - not maliciously of course - but to preserve what may be left of one’s memory. My mom suggested I come by the memory care facility my Grandmother lives in, and play some music. In her youth, Grandma was a singer, and a very good one at that. I brought in some of her favorites and began to play and sing. She quickly perked up and started to sing along. She couldn’t remember my name, but she didn’t miss a word. I had chosen Volare, a song popularized by Dean Martin in the 50’s. The wildest part of it all, was that as we were singing together, she was recalling full, wonderful, vivid memories of her own. Simultaneously, I was envisioning her singing in the kitchen on Thanksgiving, filling up deviled eggs while my Grandpa pretended to untie her apron. Even wilder, is that I now have built a memory on top of those I knew previous, now recalling her joyfully singing a song she loves with complete abandon - accompanied on ukulele by someone who is familiar to her, but no longer known.

I found a study conducted by Dr. Laura Mosqueda, the Director of Geriatrics for UCI School of Medicine - where she explained how the mind responds to music. She has been working with Alzheimer's and Dementia patients for most of her career. She began listing the areas of the Brain that are engaged when hearing and categorizing music. Truly, my friends, the experience of hearing music itself touches almost every synapse we have as human people. Diseases like Dementia and Alzheimer's affect certain parts of the brain, however because music is utilizing so many other areas in the brain, the mind has a stronger reaction, even if the memory center is being compromised. The mind is simply, incredible. Each lobe and nerve-synapse are collaborating on their tasks and building a symphony of memory, rhythm, pitch, and the like.

Yet, with all this said, it begged me to inquire about a deeper, more sobering thought. If the mind is so connected and linked with music in every part of our brains, and furthermore, our memory.. I would be remiss not to ask, “Should I be more vigilant about what goes in there?” I sincerely pose that question to those reading. Music is like fuel for so many of us - shouldn’t we be aware of what we’re letting become, often ‘lifelong’ memory and import? For those of us who are beginning to make our own music and are hoping to inspire others...are your songs something you’d be proud to sing with your granddaughter? Yet, chiefly, and most importantly - I find that moving forward, we are compelled to engage with music fully. We are to write our own melodies, to join with friends and see live shows, to be smitten with a song and play it over and over (don’t worry - we all do it). And furthermore, let our bodies and minds experience music as they were meant to. Taking it all in - finding peace in the moments where a tune takes us to another significant moment in who we are as people - people like Pat who sang Volare at the Italian Club Dance Social in Emeryville - people who let memory and music collaborate for life.

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Highway 4

Driving down a secluded road off Highway 4
Listening to Kerouac preach across airwaves that were birthed
Before I was a twinkle in my mother’s eye
Not Woody Guthrie, not Woody Allen
Steven Allen playing late-night, last-call, dim-lit piano
…in the foreground…

…I am alone…
Kicking up rocks and dust, clouding up the rear view
Dry. Quiet. Attractive. Desolate.
The ground calls to me
Inviting in its un-invitingness…I drive on.
One hill, then the next
Up and down across, a Brown. Dead. Thirsty. Land.
Acres of cold-shouldered heat, harsh stillness, and the occasional mob of cows.

To be.
How easy it is, not to be.
In parched lands
Panting for a drink.
No rain…
No interruptions…
Feeling the need to take up arms against the sea of troubles…from the process of death.
Process of Debt.
How it needs the wet.
Cold. Green.
Drowning in drought.
Cozy in our air-conditioned lives
The radio loud
Filled with a proud
Sense of control.
What happens when the gas runs out?

We know how to rule the world
Control the elements.
Build a tower
Babel.
Babel how we’ve mastered the planet
Nature, no longer a mystery.
Divert the cruel heat
Open the valve…
Let the oppressive pressure escape into the pipe of our own perspective
Let it burst through a crack in our system
Let it rain down on far off places
On others we don’t know
We don’t care.

No longer in touch with the fallow soil
We pass over it with the wheels of “progress” and technology
We don’t need it. 
Ignore it, throw it out.
Convert it into a post card or calendar
A place we’ll never visit
A landscape we’ve controlled
A scene to despise
While we swipe away flies
When camping.

But what happens when the gas runs out?

I’m too comfortable.

The Water's Edge

Below is the short story "At the Water's Edge" written by our dear friend Sami Neagu. This short story inspired us to write the song of the same title. 

I am thankful for this story, for writing the song with Sami, and for his friendship!

At the Water’s Edge (a journey to sobriety)

There is a cold wind biting at my face, there at the water’s edge.

The rocks beneath me are unstable. They shake as I adjust my feet in uncertainty. 

I am afraid of the journey, though a raft floats close to the shore. Will it hold me? Is it strong enough?

The land behind is desolate. I have lived there many years, grabbing at objects of dust, collecting incessantly in my obsession. I have no nourishment. Though I fill my stomach with the rotten fruit of the barren land, I am empty. 

The starved are all around me. We strive to collect more and more dust. We revel in it, realizing not that we are rolling around in the staining dirt, and that our faces and hands are soiled, our grins contrived, and our bodies shriveled and useless.

There is a sea before me, and there floats the raft, at the water’s edge. 

I am afraid to wade into the water to reach the raft, for all the dust I have fought, scrapped, and struggled to gain will be washed away. All I know will be gone once I climb that raft. 

So I stand there, ready to turn around, there at the water’s edge.

I look behind me and the land, and dust, and dead fruit all call to me. And I reach a moment of immense struggle. 

And then a breeze blows softly across the water, as the raft bobs slightly in the calm sea, and I smell the fresh aroma that comes from beyond the water’s edge. 

For that instant, the putrid stink of the land is gone, and I am awed by a brief moment of sanity, of clarity.

So I close my eyes, and take my first step of faith into the sea from the water’s edge, and I see the dust wash away from my foot, cleansing my toes as I wiggle them in wonder. 

Then my other foot goes in and soon I am wadding, then quickly swimming through the quiet waters, leaving a trail of dust behind that soon disappears beneath the surface and is gone, forever. 

I reach the raft and there is a hand there to pull me up. And I look about me and see that it is no raft at all but a giant arc floating on that still water, and there are faces all around me, with not a spot of dust upon their completion.

I look back to see that water’s edge, and the land beyond, now seeming so dead and insignificant, and I smile, my first genuine smile, free from dust and full of joy. 

There is a water’s edge that many reach, and see the raft that bobs slightly in the distance, and they turn away, back to the dust, to the rotten fruit that does not fill, and I watch them, with tears and compassion. 

And I realize that we can bring anyone to the water’s edge but we cannot push them in. Every person must choose to swim for the raft, or die in the dust. 

There is a water’s edge, where many come, but few enter. But the raft still floats there in the freshness of the breeze, waiting patiently. 

Samuel Neagu ©2011. 

The Soil and Our Common Home

 

“Nothing happens in living nature that is not in relation to the whole.”  – Goethe

“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.” – Wendell Berry

After roughly two centuries of unprecedented technological revolution in agriculture and a half century of steady chemical, genetic, mechanical, and economic innovation in the farming industry, a still, small voice has emerged – or re-emerged– in the conversation about farming in an advanced modern age. These are the new agrarians, those farmers, workers, intellectuals and religious critics who insist that we consider the damage inflicted on our natural home by industrial farming practices and the further danger that lies inevitably before us if we do not reconsider and reform our practices and root them again in the local, the traditional, and the cultural.  Agrarian and local agricultural movements are challenging us to question the way that our industrial and consumerist lifestyles have become disconnected from the land and from the soil. Modern industrial visions of society, which prize efficiency, mastery of nature, and profit before all else often label small-scale, local agricultural endeavors as “utopian”: "No ordinary, modern person has time for this way of life," it is charged, or "This way of life will never feed the world's poor and hungry," or "Technological advance has shown us the only way to farm efficiently for maximum output is mono-cropping." In fact, the quality and care of our soil is an essential component of our human existence; it is not simply an optional, inert element to be manipulated and exploited. The soil is an integral building block of our families, our households, our cities, and our economies. It is the hyper-industrial vision that is utopian in fact, because it proposes that we build a bright, productive future without attention to the soil, the element that is the bedrock of our existence. We have simply lost sight of the reality of our integral relationship to soil because of our understandable dependence on large, corporate scale farming, a form of farming that is predominant because of the effective capture of technology, land and market share by what Wendell Berry terms “agribusiness”.

This term is itself prone to exaggeration and misunderstanding. Agribusiness has many defenders and detractors who often talk past each other, and so coming to agreement on what constitutes "agribusiness" can be difficult. Its defenders – prominently found among university teachers, scientists, farmers – argue that the debate is over before it begins: globalization is a fact, and if we are to feed the whole world as fast and efficiently as possible at the least expenditure possible, the forces of commercial markets, capitalist logic, and innovative technology must take precedence in our method. Its detractors insist that, as with any human endeavor, we must begin with the whole – humanity's relation to nature, the priority of natural stability before efficiency – and not with the parts – immediate output and profits. Furthermore, it is argued that there is little use in universalizing industrial farming if in the end it exhausts the globe of the very resources – soil, clean water, and organic matter, complex ecosystems – that are necessary to farming. To complicate this debate further, critics of agribusiness often miss their target by registering broad, alarmist warnings that cannot see the deeper cultural dynamics operative in the overtaking of sustainable farming by agribusiness. A deep critique of agribusiness must take into account culture in order to explain both the problematic reach of agribusiness and also the reasons for its appeal. Indeed, culture is already embedded in the word "agri-culture," which signals a need to go far beyond the admittedly necessary tasks of protest and legal revolt. As this essay progresses, I hope it will go some way towards a articulating a truly cultural critique of agribusiness' shortcomings. For now, we simply note that the prevalence of agribusiness is reflective of a certain cultural shift in Western, and especially American, thinking about the way humans engage in production and consumption. 

Our acceptance of agribusiness as the predominant system of food production is a prime example of late modern society’s inability to imagine alternatives: when told by experts, specialists, and politicians that things are they way they are as a matter of necessity and that they will never change, we simply acquiesce, punch in, punch out, and hope for just enough to sustain our ongoing rate of consumption. This is not to vilify the lives of most American laborers, or to engage in cheap criticism. Rather, it is to note a logic that underlies modern, capitalist society. This logic generates a practical ethic found on a  vision of the good life that isolates economic success and individual freedom as the highest goods. Though the history is a long one to recount, it has been convincingly argued that one creation of the modern age was the "possessive individual", that individual that exists in fundamental isolation from others, with its own independent and autonomous "interests," over against other's interests, and who flourishes to the extent that he or she can secure as many economic and proprietary assets as possible in a competitive, conflictual world. Our production and consumption is not a natural, peaceful activity, but rather a competitive one. Atop this competitive contest is a regime of "experts" (to invoke Wendell Berry) and "managers" (to invoke philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre) that direct our competitive energy into consumption. The expert and the manager are epitomized in the capitalist owner, who effectively diverts our production into capital and reduces the laborer down to consumer. Indeed, when our involvement in making and creating and working and eating is primarily relegated to the management of specialists, experts, and employers not much remains but "creative" consumption (and if we doubt this, consider the staggering amount of money spent by the marketing industry on subtle tactics to manipulate and condition consumer desire). Incidentally, behind this system is Marx's theory of the "alienation" of labor, a dynamic implicit in capitalist economies that demands that the intentional, cognitive, integrative activities of the intellect be usurped by managerial classes that regurgitate the duties of labor back to workers as "process," and "task." 

Given this culture of "total consumption," it should come as no surprise that our consumptive practices when it comes to food are no different. In a world driven by the imperative of consumption, our food’s beginnings, paths and destination are of little concern, simply because we have been told by the experts that we have food that is easy, cheap, and available on demand. Categorically, our involvement in the production of food and our attention to its cultivation in patience is severed. Meanwhile, our consumptive habits necessitate that we forget those things that matter most to our future, our soil and our land, which continue to be diluted, degraded, and destroyed. A pioneer of the “biointensive” model of farming, John Jeavons, writes:

“What are the dimensions of the challenge of raising food that sustains the soil? Current agricultural practices reportedly destroy approx. 6 pounds of soil for each pound of food produced. United States croplands are losing topsoil about 18 times faster than the soil formation rate. In fact, worldwide only about 33 to 49 years worth of farmable soil remains...

Why is this happening? Conventional agricultural practices often deplete the soil 18 to 80 times more rapidly than nature builds soil. This phenomenon happens when humus (cured organic matter) in the soil is used up and not replaced, when cropping patterns are used that tend to deplete the soil's structure, and when minerals are removed from the soil more rapidly than they are replaced. Even organic farming probably depletes the soil 9 to 67 times faster than nature builds it, by importing organic matter and minerals from other soils, which thereby becomes increasingly depleted. The planetary result is a net reduction in overall soil quality.” 

This way of life is simply unsustainable.

But there is another way, a way that prizes patience, faithfulness, and receptiveness, rather than profit, efficiency, and progress as the only aims and ends. It is the way of nature, and it is the Christian way, because it is rooted in the Christian idea of creation. If the entire universe is created by the hand of a loving God, then creation must first be received, contemplated, observed and listened to, before it can be acted upon and exploited. The gift of creation is not ours to define, manipulate or bend beyond all recognition. It has its rhythms, its harmonies, and its cycles that we must attend to, and only after attending to them can we faithfully act on nature and with it. This is why, though many Christians sometimes fret about terminology like “Mother Earth,” or “our common home,” etc, it can be said that we share a biological and even spiritual connection with the whole of nature.

The Dominican theologian and philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas used the word “participation” to describe how it is that creation relates to God. Participating in God is a kind of “sharing” in God’s perfections, a sharing that is common to all creatures and beings because of God’s indwelling presence. This means that all have a share in this same source and presence. God’s creation of the world is not a once-and-done action, with creation now in place and carrying on independently of God. Rather, God is the energy and presence  involved at every moment of creation’s unfolding. He is related to all of creation in the most intimate manner, and therefore, all of creation has a share in God’s being. God infuses creation with his presence and love, and so it can be said that every bit of creation shares a common bond with every other bit of creation – we are not one homogenous, undifferentiated whole, but a wonderfully dependent, interrelated unity-in-difference – indeed, a kind of spiritual organism. Therefore, to the extent the we neglect the profound spiritual dynamics of nature, we neglect our own well being and flourishing. With every attempt to manipulate and force nature’s hand, we violate and disrupt our shared spiritual connection, and we and our common home will suffer.

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The Flags on My Freezer Door

On the fridge at home, in between pictures of our boys and artistic expressions done by the said three and four year old hangs a flag. Some over the past few weeks who have graced us with their presence have looked at that flag somewhat quizzically, because although it is a familiar looking flag it holds no national bearing in our quaint little semi-suburban home. My wife is a British citizen, and the boys and I, American. So why, some ask, do we have the flag representing the nation of Afghanistan hanging from our freezer door?

            At 32 years old, I realized late in this still early life of mine how ignorant I was of the bubble I lived within. Born a white American, raised under western Judeo-Christian values, and having spent my entire life living in the suburbs, it was very easy to conform to the culture that I found myself in, completely unaware of anything different. Now I’m not saying I should feel guilt for any of this as some have made me feel in the past, nor do I think that where I was born and how I was raised is a burden I must carry for my entire life.

            However, because my knowledge of history and geography rarely snuck out of a private school text book, and because my understanding of current events was conveyed to me through the smoke-screen of confirmation bias and media propaganda, I found myself unconcerned or more often than not, too opinionated about things I knew nothing about. I was distracted by the consumerism, individualism, and egoism that have plagued my imprudent culture for far too long.

I pleaded with Santa Claus, Christmas morning, to grant me the experience of peeking my head into the living room to a child-sized battery-powered jeep. I prayed for shoes that filled with air when you pushed on the tongue, and come holidays I would muster up the strength to eek out a ‘thank you’ for the tenth pair of black socks I received. I had no understanding of what it must be like for the kid who went to sleep hungry after working all day in a factory to make my cheap socks. I was taught at an early age, unintentionally or not, that America was the greatest, smartest, and friendliest nation in the world. We were the good guys, no exceptions. I was told to accept those who are different than me, as an American, but never to deny my superior knowledge and worldview no matter where I fell on the political and philosophical spectrum. My social training was based on this formula: Money plus power equals success divided only by compassion and multiplied by self-interest {Money + Power = Success ÷ Compassion × Self-interest}. The pinnacle of life: own a home that houses two cars, a boat, 2.5 kids, a materially satisfied wife, cable TV, and a nice IRA. Conform, conform, confirmed.

            And yet today I find myself in a different place, though not yet content, I’m learning to be thankful. Thankful my mom led me to the teachings of Jesus. Thankful my father showed me what music was. Thankful they both showed me what love was, and now that I’m a parent myself, thankful they stayed faithful even as hard as it was. I’m thankful for the opportunity to travel, to meet new people. I’m thankful for teachers. Teachers outside the classroom, who may never know who they are. I’m thankful for the teachers in the classroom who broke the rules and taught outside of the textbook. Who made us read hard books, and taught us to question everything including what they themselves were teaching. I’m thankful for the men and women who have and continue to pour into my life challenging me to live out my ideals, not to give up on them, but rather to pursue them and to see reality and idealism collide into a beautiful life. It is because of these people I discovered the bubble, and though it is a long and at times painful process, I enjoy watching it pop.

            I don’t often quote Bob Marley, but some of his lyrics have been sticking with me lately. In “Redemption Song” Bob sings the words “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds…” Now the reality is, I never emancipated myself from anything. It was through the people who taught me, who led me to scripture, who helped me through the lies and gave me the hand of truth that pulled me to my feet. We need each other; we’re not meant to be alone. But what I think Bob Marley was saying was similar to an analogy I’ve discovered.

            You see we’re all born with glasses. As we grow these glasses may change shape and size but we always wear them. It’s through these lenses that we see the world. Often times I have discovered that instead of looking at our glasses, we forget that they’re on. And yet, we still see all other pairs resting upon the noses of our brothers and sisters and we begin to replace the word “glasses” with the word “veil”. “If only they could see the world through our eyes”, we say, “then they would be enlightened.” And yet we forget that the lenses of their glasses have been molded and forged through birthplace, tradition, teaching, upbringing, experiences, and circumstances. I’m not saying that all lenses are correct for the eyes of the one wearing them, on the contrary what I am saying is – What if we were to take our own glasses off from time to time and ask the simple question, “Is this the right prescription?” Perhaps when we begin to exchange the prescription of judgment with the prescription of understanding, then we begin to discover that most our differing views make us stronger not weaker, bind us together not pull us apart, and create opportunities to humbly pursue objective truth as a community.

I want to live this way more and more everyday. I want to raise my boys, and Lord willing one day girls, in the same vein as the people who have showed me freedom. I want my family to understand the world from our neighbors next door, to our neighbors in the Middle East. I want to create a culture in our home where we learn about the world, engage with the world, get to know people from all walks of life, and learn to love them. Learning is key. I want our family to share justice, mercy, and freedom with everyone we meet, and yet continue to take off our glasses and ask if the prescription is right.

So what does this have to do with the flag on my freezer? There are many ways my wife and I hope to create this culture in our home, this one is very simple. Every month we, as a family, pick one country and learn as much as we can. We eat food from that country, we read news about that country, we pray for that country, we try to meet people who were born in that country, and we ask how we can be involved with that country. Now I know my boys are young and what they retain from Afghanistan September, I can’t be sure of. I know that I’m naïve and still have some bubbles to pop. I know that this “quest” we’re on will change and morph, it may be uneventful one month, life giving the next. All I know is my boys now know Afghanistan exists. They can’t speak Pashto or Dari (nor can they pronounce it) but they know there are people there just like you and me. Kids just like them. They don’t know the politics, they don’t understand the religion, and they don’t yet understand how the Afghan people affect their little lives eight thousand miles away, and yet one of the first things my four year old asks when he wakes in the morning is, “have they stopped fighting in Afghanistan?” It’s one of the big things we pray for at night before bed. I’ve been stumbling over my words trying to explain it, but I think a simple “no” would suffice, and a hope that my boy and I, along with others would take off our lenses and ask the question once again, “Is this the right prescription?”

I write this to explain to those who enter our home why we bare the flags of other nations in our house, to others I write to plead with you to humbly look at your worldview and question it, and for others I write to say thank you. I think I’m also writing this as a way to look at my own pair of glasses again and to challenge myself to question and live up to the ideals that fill my head and heart.

Paul Keim