Tag Archives: lies

Mar 19 2016
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learning to live, social work, what students are teaching me, what they are teaching me

students and clients

mosthopeful.student-photo.3.19.16

Several times the last few weeks I’ve been struck with a kind of running-out-of-time panic while standing in front of students with pens in hands, phones in hands, laptops on desks, mostly paying attention and a few paying attention to look like they are paying attention.

I’m not sure what the sudden shock-dropping imperative is connected to my eye-welling realization that I have them for such a short time, and they will spend such a long time working beside people who have been told and treated like they are worthless more times than I can generously imagine. mosthopeful.quote.otis-moss.3.19.16

There are other similar but less such moments of sudden shock when I’m trying to catch up with emails and trying to catch up with emails and trying to figure out what it means to operate between clients and communities and friends and students who expect me to tell them how to do it. I don’t really know how to do it, to be fair.

But I also know that my friends hear me either talk like I know what I’m doing or like I know I must figure out what I’m doing. I know the people I work with day to day believe that I am anticipating something worthwhile and valuable to come from the work, or at least I know I don’t have any other options even if what I’m doing doesn’t matter.

It’s those moments, though, where I’m on the floor or in my chair with a client as I remember (between my fears of taxes and the email I forgot to answer) that there are human beings waiting for someone to acknowledge that they are strong as hell. It’s those same moments where I see my students, pens and phones and laptops in hand (part attention, part facebook, part studying, part snapchatting), with their whole lives in the field in front of them.

And on Saturday nights when I should be doing something ridiculous and irresponsible and hilarious, I find myself happily grading their papers and praying that somehow, between my ridiculousness and their distractedness, that they hear me say the human beings in front of them in the world need someone. They need someone to look at them, to see them,to see the story behind their eyes that says they are bigger and badder and bolder than everything about them would suggest. To look at them and say they are waiting for the one person who might tell them truth about what they are made of instead of the lie of what they think they are supposed to be.

And I want my students to know that the person their clients are waiting on are the people in my classroom behind their awkward desks, pen, phone, laptop and all. And I want my students to remind me as I stand in front of them and get punched in the emotional jugular with the out-of-nowhere reminder that no matter what I am thinking about or dealing with, when I show up for work I am looking at a group students who have the power to change the hateful, xenophobic, racist, sexist, imperialistic and hateful world I wake up in and operate within every morning.

They deserve it: client and student.

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djordan
Pine Tree

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Jul 24 2013
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learning to live, what they are teaching me

the best of us and the worst of us

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we act our best
when we know we need to 
and it’s not completely a lie
but rather an appearance that
only shows the things we are most proud of in ourselves. 
 
so at work
at events
in conversations
over coffee
over brews
sometimes over family dinners
we act our best
 
and then there are those other times where 
we act ourselves
which is not different from our best
but includes the rest of us
the jealous of us
the insecure of us
the intimidated of us
the petty of us
the bitter of us
and also the best of us. 
 
and every now and then
because God knows we need our sanity
we find those people who allow 
the best of us
and the worst of us
the jealous of us and
the humble of us
the insecure of us and
the confident of us
the intimidated of us and 
the empowered of us
the petty of us and
the courageous of us
the bitter of us and 
the reflective of us
 
the best of us and 
the worst of us. 
 
and it’s the people
that holy few people
who know us completely 
at our best and at our worst
that we rest in and
that we find ourselves in and
that we discover the courage
to seek first the kingdom with. 
 
at our best and our not best. 
 
djordan
Pine Tree Dr.
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Feb 16 2013
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grief and trauma, learning to live, the calendar

a people who tell the truth | thoughts on ash wednesday

from dust you came, and to dust you will return

It occurred to me while getting a cross of ash smeared over my brow, hearing the words, “from dust you came, and to dust you will return,” that one of the things I appreciate the most about the faith I’m finding myself leaning into more and more is that we are a people not only allowed to tell the whole truth, not only even encouraged to do so, but ultimately demanded to do so.

We must tell the truth: the good, the heartbreaking, and the completely unexplainable.

And so we operate in a season of lament and reflection. We begin it by marking ourselves with the dust we come from and the dust to which we will return. We take time to fast from things to remind us of our desperation and dependence on the king of the coming kingdom for anything to be worth telling in the end.

And even when shiny churches and slick preachers grin and tell us how to be happy, we must tell the truth that the world goes not well. Injustice abounds and work toward justice often feels like tiny drops in an enormous ocean. Hearts ache with broken families and open wounds. Loss stings years later like the day death stole life from our fingertips.

And so we tell the truth. All of it.

The hope of the kingdom coming is only truly hopeful if it is the refrain after the we see the deep gray all around us, and admit that we are both broken by it and perpetrators of it.

Until all is made new.

And so, for lent, we remember that from dust we came, and to dust we will return.

djordan
Washington D.C.

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Feb 11 2013
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learning to live

the threat of ambition, the need for obedience

while there’s nothing we’ve been taught to avoid like disobedience
there’s nothing we’ve been taught to value blindly like ambition.
and we assume that our ambitions result in our best
and that our best results in the best of those around us
but our ambitions are challenged by all the things which pull us away
from simple, longstanding obedient commitment
to be who we are and where we are and why we are in the world.

there are always shinier places
and loftier goals
and fancier titles
there are always more noble causes
and more remarkable feats
and more impressive benchmarks

but there is nothing like long and simple obedience
proving to be anything but simple
proving to require a holy trust and an unwavering commitment
even when the story is over but the people carry on.

so there is nothing like long and simple obedience
which challenges great ambitions like nothing else.
so there is nothing like long and simple obedience
to family
to vocation
to community
to justice
to beauty
to freedom
for others and therefore for ourselves
that drives a dagger through the lying heart of great ambitions
to show the selfish, insecure desires which so often create them.

djordan
Pine Tree Dr.

RELATED POSTS | crack our great ambitions | when there’s nothing else to do

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Apr 24 2012
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learning to live, what they are teaching me

losing and finding ourselves

When in Louisville this March, I went to see an art exhibit of Goicolea’s work at the Museum Hotel 21C. The piece above is a photo of his work where a relative of the Cuban American artist has been drawn from a negative rendering of the old photo, then posted on a telephone poll that sits inside the gallery.

I’ve been haunted by the piece ever since, and have been trying to understand myself what is so compelling about it.

With an ancestor’s portrait posted as lost on a telephone poll, it seems as though there is something deeply honest about looking, as if for someone lost, to find out who we are, where we’ve come from and what we are made of. We know that the stories we can remember of our own lives have been incredibly impacting, and we know that our parents share similar stories which have shaped who they are as well, and on and on through a timeline of generations ahead of us, a timeline that will precede after us.

Everyone looking for and finding themselves.
Shaped by the stories of who we are and who those who came before us were.

And we claim the stories of heritage we want attached to us. Stories of hard work and family and ingenuity and generosity and imagination.

And we wrestle against the stories we don’t want attached to us. Stories of racism and illness and greed and selfishness and arrogance.

The folks who check in for help to the psychiatric inpatient unit have been teaching me this last month what it means to grasp both sets of stories as we search for who we are and who we can be in the world. We look at our own lives and the lives of those who have come before us, we take a deep and unjudging breath, and we embrace the stories of hard work and racism and family and illness and ingenuity and greed and generosity and selfishness and imagination and arrogance.

In losing hopes of curating our stories to manipulate who we wanted to be, we find ourselves in the wholeness of who we are.

And in so doing, we are held and found accountable by those who have struggled with stories before us.

***

The picture below is a triptych of Goicolea’s where he has brought together all the family images from generations past and present, and placed them next to each other in one print. Because of the dates of the compiled photographs, a grandmother might be sitting as a child in her own granddaughter’s lap, blurring the lines of space and time while fortifying the lines of influence.

djordan
Pine Tree

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