The Art of Dance. The name of my new class! A tiny shift on paper but a massive shift in my world. One that came about so impossibly that it can only be thanks to God's intervention. For all my strategizing, striving, strain and stress, constantly maneuvering (dodging, receiving) the aggression, intensity, and volatile temperaments in my workplace, this transaction was inconceivably smooth. For once, with minimal effort on my part, everything just fell into place, in spite of the personalities, admonishments, and seeming difficulty of it all. Where the opposite is a daily practice, God really made mountains into molehills. Suddenly, in a place of such heaviness...my burden is light! (Matthew 11:30)

During the March Forth madness happiness, all kinds of things surfaced, including the journals (diaries) I kept throughout college. Check out the name of this purple one from nearly twenty years ago (eighteen, to be exact), long enough for me to forget most of what's recorded inside. Turns out some things haven't been forgotten, after all.

Before falling asleep last night, I was thinking about my difficulty "hearing" from God. Then I had a gorgeous  dream. It was a rehearsal for a dance show in which each piece represented a sculpture (Rodin, most likely) showing how the figures got into the positions captured in the sculpture. One dance had a leaping man. Another dance had a couple in the foreground, upright and closely intertwined. The last dance featured multiple figures crossing upstage, simple black silhouettes against a vivid orange ombre backdrop.

How's that for the Art of Dance?!? And a new chapter in that book :)

Reunion. Can it really be called a reunion if nothing held together in the first place?

My actual college experience was disjointed and largely lonely, definitely not a picture of connection that left me forever nostalgic. I remember sobbing in the chapel because I didn't want to be there and felt so alone. It's both hard and easy to understand. Logically, it would be hard to find good friends if I frequently went home on the weekends. I didn't thrive in the party scene, couldn't find my academic home, and breezed through the dining hall because I felt self-conscious scanning the crowd for a seat with all those cliques staring back at me (so it seemed). I briefly had a friend from chemistry class (until he liked me and I didn't like him back like that) and we used to object to the black pants girls. Then I became one of them, in a lame if you can't fight 'em, join 'em move. I had never even worn black until then! At the same time, it's (still) hard for me to understand how it could be so hard to find kindred spirits. I guess their rarity is what makes them so special.

I remember my student telling me a story about getting stung by a dangerous, tropical jellyfish and her father and brother basically saved her life by peeing on her. Apparently the urine sterilized the wound and allowed her to live.

So, I propose P-ing on reunion. To make Preunion. This word better captures my reality. There can't be a reunion where there was no union. But a preunion suggests a forthcoming union. And that sounds more like it, to me. Plus, a little irreverence would do me good.

Attending my preunion was exciting and promising. No pressure, only possibilities. I was there to do some excavation work. To uncover some ruins. To search the archives. To visit the new sprout garden and plant some seeds. To await their fruition.

Attending my reunion was intimidating and disappointing. I still felt incidental. I still got lost when the private school crowd got going about their yachts and summer homes. (never mind the babies and spouses.) I still felt self-conscious about my lack of fashion sense. I still fell prey to guys looking for a good outside with little notice of the inside.

I think of reunion and my heart gets stuck. I trip over ex-boyfriends and lost friends, and like a one-two punch, I fall right down my well-worn why-didn't-I-at-least-apply-to-transfer trap.

I think of preunion and my heart relaxes. There's nothing to see here. Just wait for what comes. Enjoy the trailers. After all, this is just for your entertainment.

It was a preliminary step. I didn't walk away with everything packaged into a pretty party favor tied with a bow (actually, they gave us a kite). But I did begin to wrap and unwrap my heart around the whole college experience. It's not a perfectly integrated free flowing river of love and acceptance. But I'm taking it back, reclaiming it, as a part of me.

I went there. I lived there. I loved there. I cried there.

It felt surprisingly homey to be back, places that were so familiar that it almost felt like I never left. That nook with a beige phone in the chapel basement; the ascent up to the dance studio; that lone room #100 off the foyer that, for the 3rd time, won't leave me alone. It can't be a coincidence that I slept in the very dorm I lived in and most loved with my palatial zen room overlooking the most beautiful part of campus.

I stayed there. I tried there. I slept there. I left there.

One of my old journals surfaced during March Forth and it turns out I'd forgotten a few things. Somebody noticed me. Somebody wonderful who cared and made me really happy. Somebody missed me...a lot. And then I...forgot. I messed up. I missed out. I moved on.

I got stung and apparently I stung, too. Suddenly that  hurts from a fresh lash of regret. What can be done now but try in some weird way to cleanse the wound and salvage some life?

During preunion, I got an unforgettable compliment, one of those "priceless" moments that makes it easier to say... I'm no longer looking for my college to make me. To give me a place to call home or a sense of belonging. To supply me with friends or my identity. It's a part of me, not me, and not even a very big part of me.

I guess the thing about college is when  it happens and how. It's a developmental stage, a transition from childhood to adulthood, of sheltered independence that sends forth some of those first steps. It's an intense time of living in community, amplified by physical proximity, the late night lifestyle, and generous amounts of alcohol.

I'm left with all these memory threads that I'm trying to untangle - the short ones, long ones, knotted ones and double knotted ones - so that kite can actually fly, or at least get a lift-off. Maybe someday I'll grasp these loose threads and attach them to that kite and...let it all fly away.

Redemption is reclaiming a memory. It is remembering what clearly was not good, not right, and yet acknowledging, where we can, that what was our breaking may actually have become our making.

Between March Forth and reunion, I have a rather large vault of memories displayed in front of me.

Where you find yourself now has most likely come out of the best of times and worst of times in your own life.  It is a huge grace to reclaim memories which may have been locked up in old closets of your memory, to salvage what otherwise might be lost on us.  The gift of redemption draws from the treasury of our own memories... (The Gift of Memory by Br. Curtis Almquist)

I can be sure that nobody ever has, or ever will, like me for my money, but looking at this treasury, I feel quite rich.

Simple bean salad

Dried white beans, soaked overnight then simmered
Red and yellow peppers
Celery
Red onion

Tossed with olive oil, lemon juice, salt & pepper, plus some basil (just because I had some, but I bet cilantro would be good, too). Enjoy!

Most people go gaga over babies. Not me. I think there's nothing cuter than a teenage boy struggling to find words to present this, a collective class gift....

I've received many things from students: cards, food, gift certificates, a Christmas ornament, candle holders (that was a surprising one), little love-notes, along with un-love notes published publicly online :(

Working with the public, I put myself out there for approval or criticism, a challenging aspect of an already challenging job. I guess it's not realistic for everyone to like everyone, and public figures are subject to public opinion. I'm reminded of that every time I think of a future employer looking me up and landing on that yucky review from someone I evidently eerked.

But this is what I need to keep closer to my heart. A symbol of someone's appreciation. Something I can hold onto when I get down about the countless thankless jobs within a teacher's job...practicing to protect the children in the event of something crazy, going for basically years without water because then I might have to go to the bathroom, and who has time for that?!

I touch it and remember the smile of the sweetest student I could ask for, of her parents' and grandparents' sacrifices and heartfelt appreciation, of the tears that inevitably come to my eyes when I talk to them. I look at it and see my initials and remember that this is for me. Not for the late night emails, the vacations spent working, the sleepless nights spent grading and regrading, desperately trying to get it all done on time. Not for the work, but for the love.

My most personal student gift, next to that ornament ;) and like Louise said, my way to wear the gospel.

My best transformative craft project yet, inspired by a gift I received from this amazing place (actually, basically copying their product). This was my real gift to my graduating students. Books deemed too outdated by the school library, that were in a reject pile destined for the trash, that I eagerly salvaged with a special eye for library cards and interesting covers (surprisingly hard to find!). Books that are now interlaced with blank pages ready to receive new thoughts, a souvenir of their school and its past, reflecting the generations that came before. Books that are now back in circulation. My students were so touched. I feel frankly rather triumphant to have completed one of my project fantasies, to have a real product received by real people, transforming real trash into a real treasure, at least in my eyes.

First step: cut off spine (requiring scary guillotine machine and a burly ally)

Next step: carefully measure and align paper (requiring child labor), remove some old pages and intersperse with new paper, then drill holes and thread coil (thanks again to aforementioned ally)

Last step: admire and distribute!

False generosity. I have to be honest with myself about my real motivation in giving 25 gifts, one to each senior. Unlike real, pure generosity, this was laced with self-serving interests. Not for my students to like me or to think of me as generous, but to give myself the gift of cleaning. It gave me so much pleasure to get rid of stuff. Of course I deliberately chose a gift for each student that connected to something personal I've noticed about them. A comic book, movie, map, etc. Some of the items were special to me, like my own books from college. But what is more precious to me is breathing room, creating space for a new flow, and passing forward something on the chance that it might mean something to someone else. They say people who are planning suicide start to give away their possessions. Well, I've been contemplating killing this career, and derive some satisfaction in dispersing my belongings. Ironically, the more space I create - to move, to breathe - the easier it feels to stick it out!

Retraining my mind. To focus on the positive, even if it's only briefly. After letting myself get devoured by the toxicity of my most immediate environment, which thank God has taken a long awaited turn out of the dark, with now one less hand pulling false alarms and twisting logic into a manipulative mess...I have to set my gaze upon this sight:

A short-lived display of hand-made love. Pro-kindness, the new and improved term for state-mandated anti-bullying. Lovely things happening in the same place  as all that upset me. Reminding me that it's not all bad, especially if I can get outside of my toxic box to get a better view. While I try to repel the rest, like a raincoat, never letting it touch me, these golden stickies are what I need to gather, attach, take shape, and radiate. Or maybe because I let it touch me, now I can take the broken pieces and rearrange them, with the red flags and false alarms as merely peripheral points in a larger mosaic of love.

Practicing hospitality. I don't know exactly what that means, but for me, today, it means making the other person feel welcome, while not putting myself out so much that I get grumpy and ruin the whole atmosphere (which I managed to do anyway). So my past roommate's goodbye bouquet became today's greeting in a...beer glass. Work with what you've got ;)