Fluorescent Buzzing Silence

The smell of pot strikes me in passing
Simultaneously out of place
But whispering, familiar, and lost.

Words spit into a cellphone:
"Our bikes have been stolen."
Not a good sign.

Settling in, now the chalkboard imperative:
"Leave this room as you found it."
Fine with me. Empty I entered.
Empty I will depart.

Through the slats in the blinds, and glass,
More percussive words punch through
A story between me and the setting sun
Behind the slouching mountains across the valley.

In this fluorescent buzzing silence...like what?
Like it's just what I need today.

Myths and fairy tales; Truths for all times.
Except tonight. Tonight they wait.
Tonight we pause, and in the silence...

Lamenting a Season of Service

Back in March, I re-posted a paper which I wrote in 2007 for my senior English project, called "A Season of Service." It was based on experiences amassed from late 2005 through the summer of 2007, especially my volunteer work with the Iowa Dept. of Correctional Services. As I mentioned in that post, those experiences became a catalyst for dramatic life changes in 2008, moving my family from Iowa to Virginia to start graduate studies in seminary and in peacebuilding/conflict transformation.  These are my butterfly stories. They're pretty. Like butterflies.

When I saw Howard Zehr speak in Des Moines in March of 2008, he told the crowd that butterfly stories are good. But so are bullfrog stories. The stories that aren't so pretty. The stories that end in sadness or failure or tragedy. Well, I was reminded today that there are some bullfrogs hiding amidst the butterflies of my Season of Service story.  Today I received a letter from Jan, the woman who helped me facilitate the writers' workshop program three years ago. While it lifted my heart to hear from her, and she offered some encouraging words, the primary tone of the news she shared with me was sad. It took me a bit to adapt this news to the sun-shiney story I've been walking around telling for the past few years. So read on after the break if you're up for a dose of the dark side of reality...

Looking back at A Season of Service

This post is a mix of housekeeping and navel-gazing. I'll get the latter out of the way first and move on to the former after the break. "A Season of Service" is a paper I wrote for my senior project to complete my BA in English at Simpson College in the fall of 2007. Creative nonfiction had been (and continues to be now) a literary genre that I enjoy very much, especially from folks like Jon Krakauer and Donald Miller. So I wrote this paper from my own experience facilitating a creative writers' workshop at a women's correctional facility in Des Moines, Iowa the summer prior. The experience of the workshop and the paper that was born out of it became life-changing events that would soon radically change the world within my family. In March of 2008, I was speaking with my co-facilitator and a workshop participant who had since been released from the facility at a restorative justice conference in Des Moines. Howard Zehr was the keynote speaker and someone I had never heard of. I've told this story many times in the two short years that have passed, so I'll go light on it here. Essentially: Howard Zehr radically altered my life and the life of my family. Of course, I qualify that with the years of discernment and spiritual growth that had preceded this moment of seeing Howard, but I'll let the statement stand.

A few months after finishing "A Season of Service," I posted it on my other website, Honnold.org, in serial fashion. About once a week, I would drop a section of the paper onto the site and let people comment on each. [Update: The original posting is no longer available on Honnold.org - BG, 1/16/2011] I'm reposting the entire story here on the Restorative Theology blog, all at once, for posterity and that it may be incorporated into this new-ish web project of mine, because it is a significant marker along the journey. It marks the end of the last chapter of my family's life together and the transition into this current chapter. The story itself is a reflective one, bouncing around over a few years in the midst of the primary timeline, the summer of 2007.

I've been posting long papers recently, and I assure this is the longest. But if you're interested, read on after the break for an important story from my not-so-distant past: A Season of Service...