Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Identilation

I feel like yesterday's post needs a bit of clarification because it's founded in a couple of days of training and a couple of basic assumptions.

The first assumption is that every person on the face of the planet is created in the image of God, no matter their ethnicity or gender.  Indeed, it is the only biblical stance to take that every ethnicity and gender are required to fully encompass the fullest image of God.

This means, of course, that those of us who can identify as multi-racial individuals are every bit as made in the image of God as anyone else.

But if every ethnicity is expressing a certain aspect or aspects about God's image, we've got to know how to identify as whole members of every ethnicity we're a part of in order to be fully identified within God's Kingdom. He created me as the multi-racial person I am, and to that end, I can't become a fully realized human being in his Kingdom without knowing exactly what that means for me.

What's also true is that God has placed every person on the planet into a certain place that has a dominant culture and it's that culture to whom each and every Christian is called to be a minister.  Our ability to function within a dominant culture is measured in what we call assimilation.  An individual's ability to own his or her own ethnicity is identified as identity.  People generally fall on a spectrum of identity and assimilation co-ordinates on a graph where one is the x axis and the other the y.

All of that means that the most useful people in God's Kingdom are those who can fully embrace the person God made them to be, including their ethnicity and the gifts it brings (so, having a high identity) and also those who are able to to function within the context of the dominant culture...having high assimilation.  Because I look and was brought up white, I'm very high assimilation, and I can mostly claim to be a high identity white, but my failure to fully claim the wrongs of the white race in the past (specifically as they pertain to the oppression of native people on this continent) because I feel like a good bit of that was oppression against my own ancestors means I can't be a truly high-identity white person...and that means I've got to figure out how to have any degree of "highness" in my native identity.


I hope that clarifies some.

-Zack

"I put in work and it's all for the kids, but these cats done forgot what work is"
-DMX

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Highs and Lows

This week I've become estranged to myself.

We've been talking about ethnicity at InterVarsity's fourth "Formation" for new staff training event in Great Lakes East.

Today, I realized that I haven't a clue how to deal with my identity.

Perhaps I'm white.  But that entails owning White privilege and I can't quite do that...because 1/4 of who I am, biologically, was oppressed near the point of obliteration...and I don't identify as Native because of that oppression, but in light of that, I can't quite own white privilege, I can't quite identify as fully white....probably because I'm not fully white.

But how can I identify as Native when I don't even know where to begin in saying much more than that it's 1/4 of my biological makeup.

So I'm in between, I've come up liminal in a discussion struggling to own what we are, because I feel like nothing.

But it's a lie, too, to say that I can't own white privilege.  I look, act, and was raised to be white.

So I guess I've found myself on a journey now...someday, I'll find out what that means, as soon as I can figure out where to start.

-Zack

"If everything comes down to love, then just what am I afraid of?
-Addison Road.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

The Melody

I've realized that I have a strange memory.  I don't know if it's altogether abnormal, natural, conditioned, extraordinary, or maybe even some kind of nuisance.  I think it's unconsciously selective or at least subjective.

I remember all sorts of things well, very well.  I can quickly take myself back to practically any day after a certain point in my life.  As long as a distinguishing event took place, I can get there.  Much of my life I have recorded, in writing, so maybe that helps.  A lot of the time though, I just remember things.  Certain types of things, I never really forget.

Sometimes, I lie to seem less extraordinary, or I withhold information.  Maybe that sounds too pompous...I don't know.  But it's true.  In order to not be the person who knows everything all of the time, I often don't say anything when I remember exactly the fact being recalled.

Sometimes, it makes me pretty tactless. I remember details people don't, but I think I expect them to remember things just like I do.  If you've been a victim of that from me, I apologize.

There are, of course, times when I remember things as they weren't, and that creates a problem as well; I rely too much on my memory and I argue, too quickly, too fiercely, for what I believe to be true even when it isn't.

But for some reason, I don't remember a lot of things.  I'm not, however, sure if that's an issue with the content or my own effort.  I often forget things I mean to bring along...very often.  I often forget things I need to do.  Generally speaking, I think I forget about thoughts and things having to do with the future.  That probably makes me a less than spectacular planner from time to time.  I'll resist delineating how that may or may not have to do with my MBTI preference, but it is unwaveringly certain that I'll rarely forget something that has happened but often forget things that have to do with events that have yet to take place.

So in light of, or perhaps retrospectively attached to, how well I generally remember things, I've started writing my life up to this point (or, perhaps, just as a designated end-point, the wedding on November 19th of this year).  I figured out that it only takes me about an hour to write 1000 words about my life.  That means I can write something novel length in just 50 hours, which means I can write for an hour each week and have something by the end of the year.  What that, then, means, I have no clue.  But I do know it will be an adventure.  In some ways, I have bits of it written and have for years.  In any event, I'm looking forward to looking back and tracing the line of God's faithfulness all the way through...that's probably the thought that makes it seem most massive.

-Zack

"When it comes to tools, fool, I'm a pep-boy"
-Rick Ross

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

All you see is

Been here before.  On either side.  Feeling like I need to write and being totally in the dark about what to write.  So I put on some Young Jeezy and listen to thoughts that might or might not be going anywhere...just like this.

I've started at least 3, maybe 4 or 5 entries now, since I last posted one.  Part of that is because what weighs on my mind is unsayable, or unwritable, or unpostable, or all three.  Or simply, in my limited powers, unexpressable.

This has been the longest Christmas break I've ever had.  December 9th was my last day on campus.  January 20th is my first back...and it's still 2 days away...but I don't have to tell you that...you can read a calendar.  Part of me is anxious to get back, but part of me is also anxious about starting again and a little apprehensive.  That's probably good....it's never good to be too overconfident going into anything.  I kind of want this semester to be over as soon as possible.  It's like a hump I've got to get over to get to the rest of my life.

But before I can get to the rest of my life, I have to get through it, and because of that, I'm pretty sure there's something worthwhile in my time remaining at Hillsdale.  I'm struggling to rest in that reality because here, right now, I'm mostly looking past this semester.  My work consists of getting ready for a wedding that's happening in November and in getting things ready for a semester that starts tomorrow.  Disparity.

But there's something there.  There must have always been or God wouldn't have called me to Hillsdale in the first place.  I'm trying to figure out how to soak in the good, useful for the future bits of my time at Hillsdale, all while being useful, and also not dropping the ball in planning the wedding.

It's a juggling act that I might fail, but it will be impossible to really measure.

Ambiguity is an underrated gift from the Lord.

-Zack

"So much on my mind I just can't recline
Blastin holes in the night til she bled sunshine"
-Black Star

Sunday, January 9, 2011

re:view

Today started out well enough, but I'll admit that I'm feeling a bit disappointed and frustrated right now at things that really aren't that big of a deal and in light of many little facts that are piling up on their own.

The national staff conference was great, to be certain.

But right now, I'm tired.  I'm kind of hungry but just paid far too much for a bad sandwich, and because of that, I've decided that I hate the St. Louis airport.  I can't find my gum...I thought it was in my pocket, and I'm pretty sure it was, but now I don't know where it is at all.  I don't really want to buy more gum, but I'll probably have to..I'm also worried, increasingly so, that I'll miss the entirety of the Green Bay vs. Philadelphia playoff game because it's apparently been decided to not show it anywhere in the airport.

But that's all just pointless venting.  I did just have a great few days...God definitely met us in St. Louis and the world is, I'm sure, going to be a better place as a result of the conference we just went through.

Even so...I'm tired and I can't wait to get home.  But even now, the channel just switched to the game, and even for something so slight, I know God is good...and has always been so.

-Zack

"I'm well on my way to almost everything"
-Gnarls Barkley

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Takeoff

I'm writing this in the midst of a two hour layover in Chicago's O'Hare airport, en route to St. Louis for InterVarsity's triennial National Staff Conference.  This is my first time in Chicago, and it's sort of a bummer, to say the least, that I don't get to go out and see any of the city.  I guess, in theory, I could, if I wanted to go through security again.  But I don't, far from it.

So I'm here.

And I could read, but I've done a bit of that already and I know it rarely gets me motivated like writing does.

So I'm writing.

I'm looking forward to SC11 (as it's apparently going by these days), but I don't quite know what to expect beyond the descriptive marks on a page, a very ambiguous page, delineating our schedule for the extended weekend...or extended last half of the week, if this is work instead of retreat.  Honestly, I'm not too sure how to think of it.  In a lot of ways, I could say that a lot of the time in my job.  Usually, I measure it by energy expended, so it's hard to tell.  There's something intensely fulfilling about the "job" I do, but at the same time, it's often challenging work.  I don't expect SC11 to be unchallenging by any stretch, but I don't know what to expect really, and i imagine it will be challenging in the best possible way.  Right now, I mostly just know I'm looking forward to worship and to seeing people.

There's a guy a few feet from me practicing balance on one foot, dipping down to touch the floor.  He's about 6'3", and I know he's on staff in the pacific northwest.  I'm sure he doesn't recognize me, though I recognize him and a few others around from ONS.  I'm probably being unnecessarily anti-social right now.  I'll be plenty social the rest of the week.

A man just walked by, tall black hat set atop hopelessly fluffed out hair.  Jewish, I imagine, and Hasidic.  There was a time in my life when I had never been to an airport without seeing some Hasidic people somewhere.  That wasn't true anymore after this past summer, twice, in Detroit and once, in Madison.

Of the seven books I'm reading, two of them are steeped in American Jewish culture, but are quite different otherwise.  It's a culture I don't know much about, and it's also a culture I'll never really be able to wrap my mind around.

I do enjoy Klezmer bands though.....and like that, I distilled an entire race of people to a single thing I experienced once, in Wooster.


We've got to experience culture to be anything at all, but if we don't do it correctly, we'll start separating the people from the culture.  So many people come back from other countries and talk about how they learned that no matter how far away you get, people, at the heart, at the same.  That's true, but that heart is a lot deeper than we think sometimes.  Most of the time, I think we immerse ourselves in a culture and try to figure out ways to cut away the culture and realize what lies beneath.  But that's useless because, though something must lie beneath, we just cut away the things, mentally, that are different from ourselves, products of our own, often bigger and more prevalent, worldwide, culture.

Cross cultures to live.  Cross cultures at your own caution.

And sometimes, stop the analysis and just be.

Abide in me, Christ said.  We do far too little abiding and far too much attempting to ascertain.

But just abide.  Just be.  I'd tell you how to do it, but if it was something to "do" it wouldn't be abiding at all.

-Zack

"The system's broken, the schools closed, the prisons open"
-Kanye West

Monday, January 3, 2011

In Retrospect: 2010

I've probably got a few long-term regular readers to be expecting this.  For as long as I've had a blog, which is getting close, now, to half of my life, I've designated superlatives for different things in my life that have had any sort of significant impact in the last year.  I think, generally, I've posted a lot less lately than I did at the end of 2009 and for most of 2010, though I've intended for the opposite to happen.  That being said, I'm going to stick to this little tradition, even though right now I don't feel particularly up for doing it.  But that's a terrible excuse, so I'm going to do it, because if I don't do it tonight, I'm not going to get to it.  I leave for St. Louis on Wednesday, and I cannot wait to spend 4 days with the rest of the InterVarsity staff in the country.   It sounds breathtaking thinking about it.  All that being said, I might be most looking forward to reconnecting with staff I already know who are a bit more local.  Perhaps that makes me less adventurous or something.  I'm also feeling extraordinarily excited for our worship times, led by Andy Kim.  He's my personal favorite worship leader, still on InterVarsity staff.  He might be the best worship leader in the world though.  The fact that he's in our biregion makes me a bit prouder than propriety would allow.

That's a lot of ado, so without further of it...my yearly superlatives.

Literature:

Book of the year: This is always the hardest decision.  I read a lot of books and a lot of them mean a lot to me when I'm reading them.  2010 was typical to that end.  I read a total of 51 books and over 16000 pages. My biggest accomplishment among them was War and Peace, but, though I read it for most of the year, I don't think I could quite call it my "book of the year," even thought it might influence my life and way of thinking for awhile.  Near the beginning of the year, I read one of the most interesting, best written novels I've ever encountered.  It stuck with me all year long, and I found myself comparing books to it all year long, always deciding that whichever book I was reading was never quite as good, the narrative never quite as strong or the characters as quirky and compelling.  I think, perhaps in the easiest decision I've ever made for this title, The Ground Beneath her Feet by Salman Rushdie is my book of 2010
Runner-up: Peace Like a River, Leif Enger

Author of the Year: This is strangely new this year.  Perhaps I never read enough in past years.  But it just makes so much sense.  I've taken to more series reading lately thanks, I think, to Harry Potter, so authors are more immediately important than they have been.  That being said, I'm not picking an author of whom I've read a series this year.  Salman Rushdie didn't just write my book of the year.  He also wrote two other books I read in 2010, both of which were hot contenders for runner up (The Enchantress of Florence and Fury).
Runner-up: J.R.R. Tolkien


Motion Pictures:

Film of the Year: The first year I did this, I'm not even sure I had a movie of the year.  I wasn't into movies and I was far from writing an I.S. about film.  But things change and this is now one of my most contested awards.  My film count has dwindled significantly since graduating from college.  I watched over 150 movies in 2008, but just over 70 in 2010.  Thanks to the Hillsdale Film Society though, I've been able to see some great films I wouldn't necessarily gravitate to on my own.  I was especially surprised though, when they showed a film without any dialogue.  It consists of montage and time-lapse photography to paint a picture of the chaos of modern life.  It may not be the best way to spend a Friday night (or, as I learned, a Sunday afternoon) but Koyannisqatsi by Godfrey Reggio, more than any other film, impacted my life in 2010.
Runner-Up: The Terminator, James Cameron

Television program of the year:  I don't watch much t.v.  Indeed, short of the occasional sports game, I don't make it a point to watch anything.  That being said, there are still a few things that I'll watch anytime I get the chance, and in 2010 Parks and Recreation was that more than any other show.
Runner-Up: American Pickers


Music:


Song of the Year:
This is incredibly hard.  Actually, it's near impossible.  I don't really know what direction to go with it and it's a chore of chores to decide a single song out of the hundreds I listened to last year.  Music means a lot to me, as it does for a lot of people my age, and singling out a single song as my top for a single year is a preposterous proposition.  But, even so, it is the proposition with which I am currently faced.  Partly because it's so hard a task, but also because it's absolutely what I feel to have been the most important song to me this year, I've got to pick: Mystery, by Charlie Hall
Runner-Up: Airplanes, B.o.B. and Eminem

Artist of the year
With extremely varied taste, this is hard to pick.  Depending on the time of day and my mood, I could enjoy something and someone radically different from one day to the next.  Picking a person or band that illustrates a year of music listening for me will never be easy.  That being said, I think, for his presence in so many places and for his re-emergence, I'm actually going to go with Eminem this year.  I can't really believe it either.
Runner-Up: Phoenix

Album of the year:
And maybe the album of all time....My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West is, perhaps, as I've said before, the best piece of musical art ever to emerge from the hip-hop genre, and perhaps since the jazz age.  Kanye is an artist with a vision for his art and anyone who says otherwise, doesn't understand and hasn't taken the time to try.
Runner-Up: Dreaming Through the Noise, Vienna Teng

Sports:
Team of the Year:  This always goes to the team I follow that has done the best in the calendar year. This year is actually simple.  It's cut and dry.  Teams were either completely unworthy or obvious choices.  The winner is the Cincinnati Reds for making the playoffs for the first time in 15 years.
Runner-Up: Green Bay Packers


And that's all folks.  I didn't really have the energy to do this tonight, but I pounded it out anyway, sort of for posterity's sake or something like that.  I hope you enjoyed reading it!  Happy New Year!

-Zack

"Sweet Jesus Christ, my sanity"
-Charlie Hall