Gilligan's Island

I am going to start asking questions directly; let’s see what happens.

Turning 23 brought on a tangible sense of frustration — prompting me to act much, much younger. (I only wanted to stomp my feet, arms folded across my chest. *hrmmph*)

The Christian church is not static. It responds to forces around it. Obviously, race (slavery, interracial marriage). And gender, to a point (women’s right to vote).

Teachings have recognizably changed. Not even talking about the number of denominations that have emerged over the years, formed under vague pretenses that have more to do with clashing personalities than differences in faith.

I understand the feeling that comes from being part of a congregation. For the four summers that I performed in Spoudazo, I felt elated every time we sang together. As a teenager, that’s a powerful sensation. And I don’t imagine that changes much with age. Churches foster strong connections. Individuals internalize membership into their self-identity.

Yet I am baffled by the strong insistence, based in these church’s doctrines, that faith communities should resolutely reject marriage equality. Or refuse true parity for women in positions of leadership.

I don’t understand how people can take such a short view of history. I am not challenging the belief in God—not at all. Nor do I want to question the legitimacy of churches splitting off from one another. I am questioning why there is such a strong desire to hold steadfastly to positions entirely not consistent with their own faiths.

I stopped attending church years ago. So I am well-removed from it, and maybe by that fact, I’m not able to understand it.

And I hold more liberal views than most church-going people that I know. But, I know people with views similar to my own who have strong faiths. I also know of congregations more inclusive than those I’m railing against here.

By all of that, what I mean to say is this: explain to me what’s going on here. I know what communication studies tells me. I have an idea of what sociologists might say. But I still don’t quite understand what’s happening in the United States, in Christianity.

I always meant to take class with Rita Lester while I was at NWU, but my schedule never allowed for it. So my friends, teach me now.

What do you think?

The most common remark people in Nebraska and DC make about one another: It must be pretty different out there.

Can you hear the tone of voice, the indirect implications?

Even unstated, I know exactly what is being said. And my practiced replies: “It’s so expensive!” “The pace of life is much slower.” “Yes, no car — only public transportation…the metro.”

The lines avoid answering the question exactly. I never take the bait, because although people in both places want me to judge their city to be better, I can’t. Typically my real response would be to pick a trait here and a trait there to build my ideal locale. (But life doesn’t work that way.)

Dwelling on one difference: Nebraskans like to keep the waters calm. Don’t make waves if you can help it. By contrast, the way Washingtonians operate trends toward being direct. And in this regard I think that my fellow Huskers would benefit, especially as they grapple with some subjects that necessarily create turbulence.

Recently? Keystone XL, child welfare, and lgbt rights. Add to that a Senate campaign, a Presidential race, and a host of Supreme Court decisions.

Nebraskans dig in their heels and GOSH DARNIT, that’s how they feel. Yes, I know this is the case everywhere but I bleed Husker red and take it personally in my home state.

Take, for instance, two Letters to the Editor:

Isn’t Kerrey a copy of Obama?

Before voting, consider this issue

When the conversation begins and ends with ‘This is what my faith teaches me,’ how can we engage in a respectful dialogue? I am confused by the Church’s relationship with lgbt persons. The vehemence of the position matches so closely to other persecuted groups. It’s selective memory, right?

I want to shift the conversation, but can’t decide what way to go about it. I study strategic communication and still I wonder if anything short of a miracle will work. The cynic answers that support grows with young people (“The detractors will die eventually”). The optimistic points to polling gains made after Obama’s announcement. And the realist recognizes that there is still work to be done by local leaders to guarantee equal recognition and protection for lgbt persons in our communities. Omaha and Lincoln are making gains—I don’t want to minimize their work—but those two cities stand apart from the rest of the state. We need a working model that can be scaled up.

I welcome your ideas and your opinions. It’s summer break, so I’m without my usual academic bubble. Nebraska and DC are different, but there’s a lesson that can be adapted…if I can just put my finger on it.

PressPausePlay

The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent of people in an unprecedented way, unleashing unlimited creative opportunities.

But does democratized culture mean better art, film, music and literature or is true talent instead flooded and drowned in the vast digital ocean of mass culture? Is it cultural democracy or mediocrity?

I spent the evening with Excel and now a sinking feeling has set in. After projecting my expenses vs. income over the next 12 months I’m not altogether certain what money will be left after tuition, rent, and everyday expenses. My quality of life isn’t severely threatened—I don’t fear hunger or homelessness. Thankfully, even if I were in that predicament, my family would be ready as my safety net.

No, what bothers me is how finishing my Master’s program at GW seems to hinder instead of prepare me for taking the next step in my career (speaking solely of the financial cost). Moving expenses add up, and if a PhD program calls can I answer? Going another route, many employers offer to help with relocation these days…I think. That’s one bright point, but doesn’t account for a vehicle if the location demands it. Staying in DC may be the choice I make independent of financial concerns, but I worry it will become the deciding factor. 

Now you may say that’s life. That money always places constraints on our choices. But this is something of a formative moment in my life. I am faced for the first time with the consequences of my decision to move to one of the most expensive cities in the country for one of the more costly academic institutions.

Ignorance was my security blanket. Not anymore.

It’s time to make plans.

2011 Baccalaureate Address

by Patty Hawk

Good morning graduates and good morning to everyone here to support them.

Those who know me best use a single word to describe me—Dancer. But don’t let my graceful frame and delicate personality fool you; I once struggled with dance.

I could blame my mother who trundled me off to a children’s theatre class that ignored my obvious Nutcracker potential — directing me to flop on the floor with the other 4-6 year olds and “sizzle like bacon”.

I could blame my high school choir director who wrote only four words on my swing choir audition form, “Nice voice, awkward dancer.”

I could certainly have been defeated by shortsighted theatre directors or jealous vocal instructors, but I was determined to use the obstacles they hurled in my path to propel me forward.

That’s how I came to enroll in an undergraduate Social Dance course. Under the watchful gaze of our dance instructor/volleyball coach, Marge, seventeen women and three men twirled around the basketball court every Tuesday and Thursday. Each dance—the tango, the waltz, the fox trot, the hustle—was new, but I persevered and when we reached the final cha-cha of the semester, Marge glided to center court, gathered us close and declared, “I am proud of all of you – you couldn’t all expect to have the natural talent of Patty, but you did your best”. I had had finally received the recognition I deserved.

I share this painful struggle with you so you can recall it when a struggle in your life threatens to overwhelm you. Many of you have overcome significant challenges to get to this graduation day. If your facebook posts are any indication, those challenges are often best expressed through the lyrics of Lady Gaga or Rebecca Black.

One of the many benefits of getting older is realizing that rather than thwarting us, struggle often forms us. I have, on occasion, had an advisee ask me to indicate which of the offered courses are easiest. I am sure none of those advisees are here today—oops—there you are. My response must have sounded like a platitude, “Isn’t that the goal of education, to challenge yourself?”

Ecologist and Marine Conservationist, Carl Safina contends, “Living things need something to push off of. Each of us needs challenges to give us the right shape. The heavenly weightlessness of space weakens the bones of astronauts … to achieve and maintain strength we need to conquer forces that tend to hold us down.”

It is tempting to avoid struggle or grief or ambiguity, but humans were meant to push off. Brain research indicates that our minds develop when we engage struggle.

When I first read theologian Joan Chittister’s sentiments about struggle, I couldn’t make sense of them. She wrote, “You have nothing to offer until you have been broken.” And then I lost my father suddenly when I was 23 years old. Once the crushing grief had passed — I realized I had been broken, but I had something to offer those who were grieving. I had hope for a life after grief.

Many years later a friend of mine lost her husband and I didn’t have the words to comfort her, so I asked my mom how she dealt with the loss of my father. She said, “At first people ask you how you are and you say, ‘I’m okay’ and what you mean is I got out of bed, I cooked a meal, I’m okay. Then one day they ask how you are and you say ‘I’m okay’ and you mean it—you really are okay. It happens all of the sudden after a long time.” My mother was broken when my father died, but she used that struggle to propel herself forward—to earn a bachelors degree and two masters degrees and to offer comfort to friends who are only now experiencing a loss she experienced much too young.

Some of you may be familiar with an NPR segment that used to run every Friday morning called, This I Believe. One of the contributors was Jimmy Liao, the son of Taiwanese immigrants who worked double shifts in a Chinese restaurant to build a life for their children. From the time Jimmy was two years old he and his father would go fishing on Sundays. That time with his father was full of adventure and laughter. But Jimmy’s father had a violent side and would often fly into uncontrolled fits of rage and hit him. As a result, Jimmy was racked with insecurities, but he maintained his love of fishing and studied fish in graduate school. He was studying how fish swim in turbulent water and discovered that rather than struggling against the current they surf on the surface of the water using the current to propel them forward.

Jimmy writes: “I believe I can get around the obstacles in my life not by fighting them, but by yielding to them and pushing off from them. It is what Taoists call Wu Wei, literally: to go with the flow. Now I could take the energy of my father’s violence and move through it, to surge past that turbulence. I could let my father be himself without giving up on myself. This is different from forgiveness. It’s the way I choose to define the events in my life — by my response to them.”

That is what struggle can do for us. Propel us to new understanding or new opportunities or deeper compassion. We are different on the other side of struggle. The world becomes less certain, but once we are “broken” we are able to engage others more authentically.

Of course it is not enough to endure struggle with the hope that we will emerge wiser. We need to engage struggle in a way that allows us to recognize the moments of grace that keep us from retreating until the storm passes.

In recent weeks, for example, the seniors have been a little tense. This is completely understandable, but what words do you think your friends would use to describe your behavior for the past month?

Many of you know that my sister Mary robbed me of the Ivy Day crown when we graduated college. As first runner up I got neither the crown of ivy nor the magnificent corduroy robe.

Am I a hero because I have finally forgiven her? Perhaps. But I have certainly come to a place where I can appreciate her wisdom. One of the things my sister has, on occasion, asked me is, “Who will you be in the middle of the struggle?”

Anyone can be compassionate and open when everything is going smoothly, but who are we when the job is not a dream or the diagnosis is frightening or the relationship is complicated?

Who will you be in the middle of the struggle? What do you need to do to lift your head above the chaos of the moment to witness the suffering of others and reach out with compassion?

Playwright and filmmaker, Howard Zinn, wrote: ”To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness… If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act… And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future.”

I like this senior class and I have been honored to serve as your class sponsor. I claim 14 of you from my LAS classes, 30 of you from the Communication Studies capstone course, 70 of you from my interpersonal communication and public speaking classes and I claim the rest of you because you have served this community generously in your time at NWU.

Despite the theme of my talk, I am confident your lives will be touched with struggle and filled with grace. But I hope each struggle brings you closer to the person you imagine you might be and those who love you know you will be. Surge past the turbulence and harness the energy to act.

My dancing career peaked that cold winter day on the basketball court. Since my dance partner was my best friend Katrina, I learned how to follow and lead. There are no more dance worlds for me to conquer. But I have tried to take the lessons learned on that dance floor to engage all the struggles in my life. I encourage you to do the same. When things seem darkest just imagine me triumphantly cha-cha-ing while the snow whips outside on a cold Western Nebraska night.

 Embrace what is next—the successes and the struggles.

Congratulations class of 2011!

I struggled, when I was little, to think about time. I remember looking at a clock and in a flash reading the face. But then stalling: Is time divided into 60 or 100? So maybe my fascination with the passing years makes sense, because I never rightly understood it. Or felt I did. 

I expend more effort than I ought searching my memory, less photos and Facebook, and I find myself troubled that I recall so little. As a child I would squint my eyes shut and think hard, “I want to remember this someday.” How often do we? (Rarely, in my case.)

Meanwhile, the future confuses me mostly. Yawning holes keep swallowing my dreams and reshaping the scene ahead. From the middle, the connection between the past and where I thought I would end up lapsed (so it seems). In the absence of an idea I find myself always searching for clues, at least, of what’s next.  

Along the way the erstwhile figures by my side moved places and so did I. Change, that ubiquitous state, acted as it is want to do. Marriage… Children… “Young adults” striving to define life according to standard measures of achievement or happiness on a condensed timeline. The metaphorical ground drops out below me when I juxtapose that image and my self. Accepting a different outcome is an evolution of thought.

Words catch in my throat when I try to articulate my vision: insecurity shakes my voice and vulnerability turns the sound inward.

Today a new class joins the ranks of Wesleyan alumni, and so my thoughts dwell largely on my graduation a year ago. Our class sponsor said then that struggle often forms us. That “living things need something to push off of.” My own words look foreign to me now, the product of a deeply sentimental boy reluctant to continue on. It’s not that I feel a desire to return or to repeat, but instead to re-collect the sensibility.

I have been utterly schooled by the past year — taught the limitations of my body’s resilience and my will to keep going, especially in the tenuous balance between my Master’s program and working. I learned to accept weakness as a normal facet of life, one to study and in studying strive to best. At heart, I yearned (yearn) most for the perspective that always comes a year late.

A short story about time: My mom, each night, would set the table for tomorrow’s breakfast so that I could wake without getting her out of bed. I emerged from my covers before the sun, and poured my Apple Jacks or Alpha-Bits cereal and milk. Many mornings my dad came home from the night shift to watch cartoons with me before himself going to sleep (X-Men or Captain Planet, I remember). Somewhere along the way, I understood that rising so early was strange and so I would lie wide awake in bed wishing myself into a dream-state again. I never understood what the problem was with listening to my body saying I’d gotten the rest I needed, time to get up.

The Greek language includes a word for time that English lost: kairos. The closest definition being ‘the right time.’ My mind tracks immediately to Ecclesiastes 3:1, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.” Though I suspended that formal belief system long ago, I keep faith in goodness. I am blessed to know too many exceptional people — individuals with a capacity for doing — not to hold tight to that belief. I hope I might also turn words to action.

Everything circles back. It’s all based upon building a seamless life. I am struggling against conflicting forces. DC… Nebraska… I can only throw my hands in the air at the tension.

But today I feel OK and better than that, even. One year ago I knew that the next year would be filled with the unfamiliar. It was. And so I give up questioning (so frequently).

I’ll never understand it entirely. Yet as they say, fake it until you make it. Que sera sera.

What does privacy look like in 2012, do you suppose?

The courts divide privacy into four categories (appropriation, intrusion, private facts, and false light - if such things interest you).
Meanwhile, the rest of us not in law school or a media law class probably think most immediately of Facebook and Google, and the public’s struggle to keep both companies from collecting wells of private information.

But I’ll tell you, I’ve never personally worried much about what either does with my favorites or my search history. I’m not reckless; I restrict my profile and take care to protect my contact information, like phone number and location. But when someone recently suggested that privacy doesn’t exist in 2012, I balked.

Are you suggesting you don’t have any secrets?

Three different lines of thought that I can trace here.

1) Google grew up with the mandate, “Don’t be evil,” but long ago threw that notion to the side when the reality of being a company with far-reaching influence overtook any supposition that it was still the upstart on the tech scene. But (and add Facebook now), what interest does a company like this have in knowing what I, specifically, search or put on my profile? Until a day comes (if it does) when I am a public figure, no one cares. We live in an information economy, and I help their bottom line. I’m an anonymous number among millions of others. The value is in the aggregate.

2) This is my dad’s paranoia in play, when he would insist in the late 90s that even if we turned our old Gateway computer off there was a villain out in cyberspace — probably sitting in his parent’s basement — who was accessing our private information (have fun with that Sim City 2000 profile, dude!). Computer networks are an abstract concept, not helped in the least by the advent of the cloud. So, it makes sense that we distrust these companies and their ability to keep our data secure. Concerns about identity theft are legitimate, but I suggest that so long as you take care to spurn any African princes and don’t click strange links, you should fare alright most times.

2) Here’s where my communication degree inevitably shows up. People seem to equate the growing fire hose of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Foursquare, etc with an all-pervading sense of exposure. Like Joe Schmoe’s social networking presence tells you everything about him because he can tell you where he eats and spends spring break. Not only that, but what he listens to on Spotify while studying for the big test. (Which you also know about, because he posted an update saying he was taking a break from Facebook last week.)

One of the prominent theories in communication studies, symbolic interactionism, posits that through conversation (taken broadly), persons construct an image of self that is projected to the world. We constantly negotiate our social environments in order to define our identity. I find it oddly deterministic to say that these new technologies reduce our ability to share — or not share — information with others as we so choose. Facebook and the others don’t mandate behavior. And as far as I know, there’s no broad push for you to post the sonogram pictures (as an example). The tension here is society navigating the new boundaries of this Hi-Def public sphere as we attempt to define how others perceive us.

We still have secrets, or at least I do. Privacy in 2012 is what you make it, not what your social network of choice says in its terms of use.

I don’t speak too often — OK, so I’m actively opinionated — about issues that I am passionate about. But videos like the one found on the linked page remind me that equality isn’t unattainable. It truly can be realized across generational and belief boundaries.