For those who do not know, I am a teacher.  I’ve been one my entire life.  In fact, I have wanted to be a teacher since I was a very small child – I even asked for a chalk board for Christmas so I could truly play school.  I can’t ever remember a time when I didn’t want to be a teacher.  Somehow, I knew even as a kid my calling was to teach.  However, life is funny and sometimes we take a long time getting where we want or need to get.

I entered college and majored first in music and then various other subjects.  While I was a music major, I taught music at a local Catholic High School and Elementary School (the State at that time allowed a temporary teaching certificate if you had completed a certain number of hours.  That, however, was not my first time teaching (aside from playing school as a child).  No, my first venture in teaching was as an instructor’s aide for the American Red Cross teaching CPR classes.  After leaving college before graduating, I continued teaching for the American Red Cross off and on and also taught in various community settings.  But, I did not teach full time.

After dropping out of college, I worked various jobs (some that even allowed me to dabble in the craft of teaching) for several years until I finally decided to return to school and complete my degree.  In 1995, I returned to school full time and finished up my undergraduate degree.  I was blessed during that time.  I had several incredible teachers and mentors who not only taught my disciplinary information, but about teaching as well.  Some of those teachers taught me by demonstration, what it means to be an excellent teacher.  While in school,

I took a student assistant job in the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) office.  It was there that I really started to learn about being a good teacher.  I went to all of the workshops, trainings, and lectures as a part of my job and found my heart really yearning to teach.  Being around such great teachers and talking about and listening to discussions about good teaching and teaching techniques left me forever changed.

In 1997, I entered graduate college.  I continued to work in the WAC office on campus and in the spring of my first year I taught my first college level course.  I knew I was home.  I threw myself into that one course and was the first graduate student to receive WAC certification on campus (this allowed me to offer WAC designated courses on campus).  I taught throughout graduate college and after graduation I went to work outside the University.  I continued to teach part time and always yearned to teach full time, but still, it was not yet time.

I graduated in 1999 with my Master’s degree in Sociology and, after a short time in a Ph.D. program, got a job outside the University again.  I worked several jobs gaining experience and yet again finding the opportunity to teach workshops and part time for the University.  After working outside the University for six years, I returned to work at the University, though not as a teacher.  I worked in an administrative support position and taught part time.

I worked in that position until just recently.  The entire time I worked in this position, I longed to teach full time.  More and more I wanted the time to dedicate myself to teaching without being so tired from working another job.  Upon reflection, it seems this was to be expected given that I worked in an environment where teaching was ever at the forefront of everything I did.

Just this past fall, the opportunity presented itself for me to teach at two Community colleges.  It allowed me to earn enough money to live, but there were no guarantees and more importantly no benefits.  That was a frightening prospect given that I have a couple of medical conditions, which require medication.  I was terrified!  But, I was also excited and could hear that inner voice speaking to me so clearly.

“You have wanted to teach your entire life – wanted to dedicate yourself to it full time.  Now is the time.”

Somehow in the midst of my stressed and chaotic life, I found the courage to teach. I listened to that voice and took the risk to do what my heart has called me to do for my entire life.   The title of this post is taken from a book by a teacher of teachers – Parker Palmer.  In another of his books, Let Your Life Speak: Listening to the Voice of Vocation, he discusses vocation and how we won’t find our vocation until we listen to our hearts.  He defines vocation as the calling of the heart.  I finally stopped and listened.  I moved toward fulfilling my desire and working in the vocation I’m called to.  It took courage to teach, and I’m glad I found it.

The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer

Let Your Life Speak: Listening to the Voice of Vocation by Parker Palmer

Today, September 23, is the Autumnal Equinox, or Mabon in my tradition.

The holiday of Autumn Equinox, Harvest Home, Mabon, the Feast of the Ingathering, Meán Fómhair or Alban Elfed (in Neo-Druidic traditions), is a pagan ritual of thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth and a recognition of the need to share them to secure the blessings of the Goddess and the God during the winter months. The name Mabon was coined by Aidan Kelly around 1970 as a reference to Mabon ap Modron, a character from Welsh mythology.^[14] In the northern hemisphere this equinox occurs anywhere from September 21 to 24. In the southern hemisphere, the autumn equinox occurs anywhere from March 20–23. Among the sabbats, it is the second of the three pagan harvest festivals, preceded byLammas/Lughnasadh and followed by Samhain. (Wikipedia)

In our tradition, Mabon is a time of thanksgiving - a time for us to celebrate the blessings and harvests of the year.  It is also more than that.  It is a time for us to take an inventory of our bounty and harvest and bring our lives into balance.  It is the time of the year that I always begin asking myself, “Do I have too much stuff?”  “Do I need to cut back on the “bullshit” in my life that I’ve accumulated over the year?”  “Have I cluttered up my mind and life with so much stuff that I can’t hear the whisperings of the sacred in my heart?”  Generally I find my answer is always yes.  Yes, yes, yes.  I have too much mind clutter, too much physical clutter, and way too much emotional clutter.

I certainly know I should be taking this inventory every day.  I “should.”  Well, I don’t.  Actually I do sometimes.  I don’t always. I’m not perfect.  I’m a victim of the society I in which I live.  I do not have the luxury of living in a society that allows for the easy practice of my spirituality.  So, at the milestones of the year, I am reminded to do this housecleaning and I try and do it.  I think what helps me is knowing there are many others out there who are doing the same thing I am.  So, aside from sitting down to a good meal, I am doing an internal housecleaning as well as a physical housecleaning.

Finally, I can’t write about Mabon this year without saying something about the economic situation around the world.  Many people are in a situation where the basic necessities of life – food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and education are out of reach.  As we take that inventory of our blessings, examine how we can help those who are in a rough situation.  Moreso, we need to make a commitment to be active in the social justice movement – to take action to bring about lasting social change that addresses the issues that have caused these issues.

To close, I’ll share a lovely chant written by T. Thorn Coyle and Starhawk.  The chant really serves to set the intention for some great magic.

 Harvest Chant

By T. Thorn Coyle and Starhawk

Our hands will work for peace and justice
Our hands will work to heal the land
Gather ’round the harvest table
Let us feast and bless the land

Blesses Mabon!

Gawyn

Bilbo: “My dear Bagginses and Boffins, Tooks and Brandybucks, Grubbs, Chubbs, Hornblowers, Bolgers, Bracegirdles and Proudfoots.” 

Old Proudfoot Hobbit: “Proudfeet!

Bilbo: “Today is my one hundred and eleventh birthday!”

Hobbits: “Happy birthday!”

Bilbo: “Alas, eleventy-one years is far too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable hobbits.” [cheers abound.] “I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”

[There is a dead silence from the crowd. They gaze at each other blank-faced, trying to figure out if they were just insulted. Gandalf smiles.]

Bilbo: “I, uh, I h-have things to do.” [fidgets with the Ring behind his back. Whispers to himself] “I’ve put this off for far too long.”

Bilbo: [to the crowd] “I regret to announce — this is The End. I am going now. I bid you all a very fond farewell.” [whispers to Frodo] “Goodbye.”

[Bilbo puts the Ring on and vanishes.]

Happy Birthday Bilbo Baggins!  May you continue to bring joy and delight to readers around the world!

In the story, set in 2048, Northern California has survived eco-catastrophes, wars and epidemics and forged a society based on respect for the Four Sacred Things that support life: air, fire, water and earth.  Streets are turned into gardens, streams flow free, people of all races and religions live in harmony – until the militarist Southlands attack.  How can the people of a peaceful society fight against ruthless invaders without becoming what they’re fighting against?  Musician-turned-guerilla Bird, his story-teller grandmother Maya, and Madrone, the healer, must wield a force more powerful than weapons—the fifth sacred thing.

In the eighteen years since its publication, hundreds of thousands of people have read The Fifth Sacred Thing and been moved by its imagery and drama.  Now, at this time when our future seems so precarious, we want to bring it to the screen and to a whole new generation who are more visual than verbal.  To do it right—big screen, special effects, major actors and director, will take lots of money.  What we hope to raise here is just the beginning, but a very important one.  

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fifthsacredthing/the-fifth-sacred-thing

If you haven’t read the book, I highly suggest it.  You can get a copy of The Fifth Sacred Thing here.  You can also check out The Fifth Sacred Thing Movie Website  or Facebook Page.

Service Yes.  Servitude NO.  I got the idea for this post from T. Thorn Coyle.  As Wisconsin stripped the right of collective bargaining away from its public employees and now Ohio seeks to do the same I have just seethed for days.  I am a public employee and have been for several years.  I have given hours and hours to the public with no thanks at all.  What I have received in return for my dedication is nothing but criticism about my ridiculous benefits and high salary.

Lets get some things straight.  My salary isn’t high.  In fact the entire time I’ve worked as a public employee my salary has never gone above $25,000 for a single job.  Currently, I make a gross wage of $ 21,382 per year.  I had to work three jobs just to move my gross income to $27,000 last year.  After removing the amount I pay out for my retirement, health insurance, and taxes I make a wage that borders on the poverty level.  I am not much different from my brothers and sisters in other positions in this State or others.  Though the salaries may vary, so do the costs of living , so it is about the same.

We do have what appears to be excellent benefits.  Why do we have such Cadillac benefits as some have called them? Why I will be happy to tell you.  Because our salaries suck.  Yes, it is that simple.  The politicians in their beneficence sought to compensate us in some way without having to raise our salaries.  So they hit upon this wonderful idea – give us “deals” on retirement and health insurance.  Yes that is it – make the employees pay less for their retirement and health insurance, and we won’t have to raise their salaries!  Yes ladies and gentlemen you heard me correctly, the same people who are screaming about public employees having ridiculous benefit packages are the very same people who gave those benefits packages to us to keep us pacified when we were making salaries that made us eligible for food stamps! (by the way, that might be why we organized and fought for collective bargaining, but I’m not one to speculate)

So, let me bring this home.  Public servant means that we work to provide service to the public.  However, that does not mean we work in servitude.  When we were hired for our jobs, we did not sign a paper waiving our individual freedoms nor did we sign ourselves into indentured servitude.  Would you kindly remember that when you come into our offices with your attitude of entitlement?  Just because you pay our salaries does not mean you own us.  I have news for you.  I pay taxes as well.  Public service means just that – service.  It does not mean servitude.

So the next time you start to criticize those big salaries or big benefit packages of public employees, rethink that.  Aim that criticism at yourselves because there are no free rides in this world.  You don’t get anything for free and you and your elected politicians should have known that each time they tried to stave off a problem by using these benefits as a stop-measure in place of providing a reasonable rate of pay there might be trouble in the future.  You may want to hold accountable those who are actually responsible – the politicians and yourselves – not us the workers who make it so that your garbage is picked up, you have fire protection, police protection, teachers for your children, roads to drive on, etc.

Have a nice day.

Just a few days ago we lost a major champion and ally of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered (LGBT) community.  As lgbt people,  we have very few real champions outside our own community.  Occasionally however, there is a person who comes along who champions our cause.

Elizabeth Taylor was one of those people.  Some of you are too young to remember it – all you know is the old eccentric lady who was married a bizillion times who was the uber gay hag.  Others, may only remember the uncanny beauty or the actress who left spellbound.  Well there was much more to Liz than any of those images.  Above and beyond all of those things she was a champion for us.  She was a champion for us at a time when no one wanted to touch us.  When the plague – AIDS was devouring members of our community like a shark in a feeding frenzy.  Liz reached out and loved us.  She put her money where her mouth was and spoke up and spoke out.  She criticized rich and powerful, friend and foe because they did not do enough about the plague.  She held us and loved us when others feared us.

Even in her death, she championed our cause. http://www.edgeonthenet.com/index.php?id=117830

So, when we are remembering her, yes, love her for her glamor, her glitz, her style, her beauty, and her Divaness, but most off all, remember her as one of our most beloved champions.  A champion who will be missed sorely for who is there to replace her?  Who will have our backs?  Who will help raise money to keep the AIDS organizations afloat?

Goodbye Liz.  Thank you for all that you did.

Elizabeth Taylor

(1932-2011)

“Vicki Barnes is the Executive Director of the Sweetwater Housing Authority in Tennessee, a position appointed by the mayor and City Commissioners to oversee operations of the public housing facilities in Sweetwater. Yet instead of doing her job to ensure equal access to public housing facilities in her city, Barnes has gone on an anti-gay tirade, issuing a letter to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), comparing LGBT people to murderers, drug dealers, and prostitutes, and suggesting that new anti-discrimination protections from HUD that are inclusive of sexual orientation could result in children being emotionally and/or physically abused.

Barnes wrote in her letter, available here, that LGBT people have made a “personal and moral lifestyle choice” to follow a path of homosexuality, and as such, they shouldn’t be afforded discrimination protections from HUD. Barnes goes on to write that LGBT people threaten the family unit, and could prove disastrous to public housing all across the United States.

Barnes ends her letter by saying that if HUD is going to offer anti-discrimination protections to LGBT people, Section 8 Rental Assistance Programs will suffer, because landloards won’t want to rent to people who might be gay.”

SOURCE:  Change.org

Today I became aware of Ms. Barnes letter and wrote a few of my own.  I wrote one to the Mayor and City Commissioners of the City of Sweetwater, TN urging them to take action regarding Ms. Barnes.  Ms. Barnes is certainly entitled to her own personal opinion.  However, as the Executive Director of the Housing Authority, she is responsible for seeing that programs are administered fairly and equitably.  The second letter was to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.  I wrote it to counter Ms. Barnes letter – to support equal access on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.  Finally, I copied the Executive Director of The Tennessee Equity Project with  the letter I sent to the Mayor and City Commissioners in Sweetwater, TN to make sure the organization is aware of what is going on.

• Mayor, Doyle F. Lowe  203 Monroe St. Sweetwater, TN 37874
• City Commissioner, Bill Stockton  203 Monroe St. Sweetwater, TN 37874
• City Commissioner, Julian F. Walton  203 Monroe St. Sweetwater, TN 37874
• City Commissioner, David M. Cleveland  203 Monroe St. Sweetwater, TN 37874
• City Commissioner, Tommy Haun  203 Monroe St. Sweetwater, TN 37874
• City Commissioner, Billy G. West  203 Monroe St. Sweetwater, TN 37874

• The Regulations Division, Office of the General Counsel, US Dept of Housing & Urban Development, 451 7th Street, SW, Room 10276 Washington, DC 20410-0500
• Tennessee Equality Project, Tennessee Equality Project, PO Box 330895, Nashville, TN 37203

I love to play World of Warcraft.  I love to read the books and I am an admitted “lore buff.”  That is I loved to play until I entered the new zone “Uldum,” which became accessible with the Cataclysm expansion.  Immediately upon entering Uldum, you are attacked by “sand pygmies.”

As I proceeded into the zone past the cinematic, I didn’t see anything else of the “sand pygmies.”  Soon, I was soonrunning around in a zone that was a play on ancient Egypt (which I thought pretty cool).  I began to try and get to know the lay of the land.  Then, while following through on one of the quests, I was sent to kill “Sultan Oogah.  When I got the quest, his picture popped up and it was a “Sand Pygmy” with a turban.  That was it.  I couldn’t do it any longer.  The only thing I could think of was the racist imagery in the Bugs Bunny cartoons that I remembered from my childhood.  The physical features of the “sultan” reminiscent of stereotypical imagery of Arabs, the location a desert – very Egyptian, the costumes, everything put you in mind of Arabia.

Blizzard seems to have just taken that old Bugs Bunny racist image and moved it from an African American framework to an Arab framework.  What’s worse is the “unga bunga ooga booga” jibberish (just like the bugs bunny cartoons) that these “sand pygmies” use as their “barbaric language.”  Finally, let’s face it, “sand pygmy” is not too far a stretch from a pejorative used for Arab people.  I cannot believe in this was an accident.  I cannot believe the similarities in the design of the “Sand Pygmy” to that of the little racist African American was an accident.  Those kinds of accidents generally don’t happen.  History teaches has shown us these “accidents” don’t just happen.

When I got the quest to kill Sultan Oogah (see the screen capture at the end of this post), it was just too blatant for me to ignore.  I realized that I had ignored other discriminatory issues in the World of Warcraft.  I had ignored the incredibly sexist design of the female Night Elf sentinels who while standing will periodically will bounce up and down so their breasts will bounce.  I had ignored the female demon succubi standing around and gyrating their hips while dressed like a dominatrix who sound like they are having an orgasm when they die.  I had also ignored the fact that an entire race – the Trolls speak with a Jamaican accent, wear dread looks, are cannibals, and practice vodoo – just a little racist in my book.  Now let’s talk about the homophobia.  It is subtly present throughout the game, in fact an NPC that I was interacting with just said something about his butt hurting (he had been captured and I had just freed him).  I’m not the only one who has noticed these things, here is an example from a post on the Curse.com forum http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/143781/why-is-wow-so-sexist.

In my moral and ethical thinking, I was complicit in the sexism and racism and homophobia because I ignored it and continued to play the game.  It doesn’t matter if some things in the game are not racist or sexist or homophobic.  If any part of the game, whether it be quests, NPC’s (non-player characters), lore, whatever it may be, is racist, sexist, or homophobic, then it is wrong and anyone who continues to play gives their consent to the racism, sexism, and homophobia.

I will no longer do it.  I have stopped playing.  I plan to write the Vice President for Creative Design, Chris Metzen.  I also intend to copy the letters to several national organizations – the NAACP, the National Organization for Women,  American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

I am doing so because there are a millions of people who play World of Warcraft and through this subtle presentation of racism, sexism, and homophobia, Blizzard is sending  a message that racism and sexism and homophobia are ok.  Perhaps nothing will come of it – I understand that.  But, I also know that my conscience will be clear.

In the Christian tradition it is Advent, the time of preparation and waiting for the coming of the Nativity or birth of the Christ.  One of the Christ’s many names is the Prince of Peace. The story of his birth tells of peace on earth and goodwill to all.

Each year at this time, we hear songs and watch movies that preach a message of hope and compassion.  We talk about the “Christmas Spirit” and make half-hearted attempts to reify the concept by volunteering for a day at the local homeless shelter, donating a toy to a needy family, or just writing a check to some charity.  Soon after the holiday “season” the “reason” and the concept seem evaporate – usually around December 26.

Politically we argue and fight when the world holiday is used rather than Christmas with those who are Christian adamantly stating, “Jesus is the reason for the season.”  We go to court to fight about whether or not a Nativity scene can be displayed on a municipal government’s grounds, we scratch and fight over the last Betsy Betsy doll, and worry about what we are going to get the person we don’t like, but whose name we drew at the office “holiday” party.  And yet with all that is great with this “season” there are many of our neighbors who will still be cold, hungry, lonely, and forgotten.  And, those who were special enough to get noticed during the “season” will soon be forgotten after the “season” until next year, when it is time time to find the reason for the season again.

What happened to peace on earth and goodwill toward all?