recklessly dreaming

The majority of today has been spent getting ready for classes next week - readings and writings for the week ahead.

However, tonight I have been side tracked by Trickster makes this World - Lewis Hyde. Mischief, Myth, and Art are the avenues by which Hyde visits trickster both in the ancient stories/mythologies and in more contemporary places.

This book has found its place on my reading list after a session at 2006 Soliton and a evening conversation with Kester Brewin and others (for those of you in Abilene - Greg/Travis - yes, this was an emergent gathering).

This is my first detailed look at trickster and the role he has played and continues to play. On more than one occasion, I have heard reference to him. his behavior, and/or its impact. However, before now, it hasn’t been a theme I’ve looked at specifically - seeing how it is woven beyond one genre, story, culture, time……

Due to the hectic nature of this semester, I won’t have time to sit and read it as quickly as I would prefer.

Here are some quotations of his observations from the intro.
- trickster is a boundary crosser
- he also attends to internal boundaries
- We constantly distinguish – right and wrong, sacred and profane, clean and dirty, male and female, young and old, living and dead – and in every case trickster will cross the line and confuse the distinction.’ Trickster is the creative idiot, therefore the wise fool, the gray-haired baby, the cross-dresser, the speaker of sacred profanities.
- Trickster is the mythic embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox.
- …for there are also cases in which trickster creates a boundary, or brings to the surface a distinction previously hidden from sight.
- In spite of all their disruptive behavior, tricksters are regularly honored as the creators of culture.

‘I want to argue a paradox that the myth asserts: that the origins, liveliness, and durability of cultures require that there be space for figures whose function is to uncover and disrupt the very things that cultures are based on.’

Many thoughts and implications are running around in my head. More to come.

The logical thing to do once I start taking classes again is to pick up where I left off on my personal reading list. A nugget from tonight from The Irrestible Revolution - Shane Claiborne instead of Introduction to the Pentateuch or Making wise the simple - both of which are waiting on my desk. (Reading Quiz? Really? You must be kidding!)

[from his talk, 'Crawl Through the Window,' at Eastern's graduation ceremony. Here is the brief backstory -I told the story of how some friends and I were busted for rappelling out of the windows of one of the dorms. The dean had written us a warning that said, 'Can you please enter and exit the building through the doors, like everybody else?']

The doors of normalcy and conformity are dead. The time has come to give up on doors and find a window to climb through. It’s a little more dangerous and may get you into some troubl, but it is a heck of a lot more fun. And the people who change the world have always been risk-takers who climb through windows while the rest of the world just walks in and out of doors.

Sorry Joel that I haven’t been more frequent in posting – I know it has been over a month since the last post. Note the new picture of me on the right. This is sitting up at the President’s house overlooking campus and the ocean. Here is the brief update:

1. I am no longer living out of an overnight bag.
2. The month of training is over. A few days after my last post, my student leaders arrived for their training. A week later the rest of my students (Spiritual Life Advisors – SLAs) and the RAs arrived for their training. (Their training was 2 solid weeks plus a week of move-in/new student orientation activities.)
3. Our softball team clinched the Malibu Summer Softball League Title/Championship/We get shirts this past Sunday. This is the point where someone like Chuck says, “shhhhh we don’t talk about it. We want to be undefeated!” (We have one more game a week from Sunday. Nope, I am about the shirt. Go us.)
4. I moved offices (in the middle of week number 1 of point number 2).
5. It is day two of school. I am an instructor for one course and taking another. My MA left me 8-9 classes short of an MDiv. Pepperdine will pay for me to complete it, so here I go.
6. I am on a founding committee for a film festival in Malibu (goes hand in hand with the film class which I am co-instructing).
7. I have a dishwasher and it currently requires packing tape. What a fantastic invention – the stand alone dishwasher.
8. There are new pictures up on my flickr site – ones of my new group of students and from when I was wee.
9. Went to an Emergent gathering in Ventura, met good people, had good conversations, many thoughts….

I am sure there is more, but I will save it for later.

It seems like I have had an overnightbag packed for three solid weeks. We are at that time of year where everyone is retreating (or in the case for tomorrow a training). In the past couple of weeks we have been to Big Bear (right as the fires were there), Newport Beach (yes that would be in the OC) and San Diego (yes Sea World, and yes I do have a moral objection to animals in captivity like that). Tomorrow we head out for Pasadena - we are getting certified as Strengths Coaches. This is a great opportunity and I am excited about it, but it is the extremely worst time of the year to be fitting it into the schedule.

I am starting my second year here in California and am wrapping up a summer that has been anything but restful. I am now three weeks into training season and will be there through the end-ish of August. I will be looking for somewhere to escape to for a bit around that time - let me know if there are any good suggestions.