Wednesday, August 11, 2010 by Jay T.

My wife’s mother died early this year.  She was a collector who lived just up the street  from us for almost twenty years.  The last seven months of our lives has been about stuff.  Lots of hers and some of ours.  We’ve carried truck loads of it to the recycle depot, the thrift store and the Habitat for Humanity ReStore–a shop for used building materials.  We’ve given away bunches to neighbors.  Corvallis Antiques sold lots of it before and during an estate sale.

Our floors are being refinished.  We painted the ceiling and walls first.  The living room, dining room and hallway were stripped of furniture, curtains, wall art and baseboards.  It not only stinks in that center part of the house, it echoes.  The floors are curing and giving off gas now.  We can walk through those rooms, but it gives me a headache to remain.  So I’m turned out of our house.

Time for an adventure.

For the first time since college sophomore year, I went camping on my bicycle without support.  I hauled all my own camping and cooking gear.  It worked.  I didn’t take much.  It was only an overnight turnaround to Armitage Park.  About 37 miles there.  I returned on a hilly route–to show myself I could do it, so the return was 60 miles or so.

Armitage Park still has the classic picnic grounds of my childhood–even if they’ve built a freeway bridge over the top of one end of it.  It now has a campground, which I knew about, but hadn’t seen.  It was filled with large recreational vehicles–some of them towed by semi-truck tractors.  Several pulled box trailers behind them, from which classic cars would emerge.  With a bicycle, cargo trailer and seven foot diameter tent, I felt out of place.  I didn’t have the amenities the campground expected me to be carrying.  No electrical plug.  Nothing to hook up to the sewer connection.  No shower.  Nothing to provide myself any shade on a very hot day.  But I did have a stove.  I could easily carry my book to the shade of a tree to cool off while reading.  The McKenzie River flows right by the park, with some pools to soak in.

Grace always comes to my meals, but whenever I observe her, she’s a few moments late.  So I wait expectantly, thankful for her arrival and the opportunity to remember her.  I was waiting for her before dinner at Armitage–freeze dried chili mac and fresh cucumber.  Once again, it was opened to me how this is enough.  All that I had was all that I needed right then.  Water, simple meal, warmth, simple surroundings.

For the trip, I had packed as little as I thought I could manage.  I had enough.  Amazingly, I used each piece that I packed, except the extra matches, the rain fly for the tent and the cycle repair stuff–all the items I bring but hope not to use.  I hadn’t expected to use my warm hat, overshirt and water resistant warmup jacket.  After a brisk float down the McKenzie yesterday morning, I needed them.

It was enough.  Enough to remember how little I need.

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Sunday, April 4, 2010 by Jay T.

The meeting room for Corvallis Friends looked a bit different this morning.   Big sheets of newsprint were spread around the floor.  All who came were invited to lie down and be traced around, yielding a body outline.

A special invitation had been issued to children, letting them know that worship would be designed to include them.  A few adults, seeking a quieter space on this Easter Sunday, chose to absent themselves.  Some probably chose to join the early walk and outdoor worship, which gathered at 6:20 am in a local park.

After many body outlines had been traced and some posted on the walls, I explained that the markers, yarn, ribbon, flowers and glue could be used at any point during worship to add to the image of one’s body.  I asked Friends to notice how the feelings within and recognize them.  I explained that George Fox had written about this process many years ago and that contemporary Friends, some of them in our meeting, were rediscovering the ways our Teacher is present in our hearts and bodies.

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Posted in Flexing some forms, Physical activity | 1 Comment »

Thursday, November 26, 2009 by Jay T.

In late slanting light I saw the Sisters two days ago.  Triune and illuminated, their western aspects excited me enough to ride partway up the ridge on whose shoulder I now stand.  The vision wasn’t repeated that afternoon, but perhaps it is what stirred me this morning as I lay warm, long before this fine red dawn.  Or perhaps it was something greater than just a vision.Something shook me off the couch and out of the age of sail.  Earlier than I’d been thinking to leave, I was ready.  Out the door and into the age of internal combustion, propelling me higher than cranks and gears brought me 38 hours back.  At trail head, the eastern fringe was already red.  Clear there, just as it had been on Tuesday.

Now, the three are silhouetted below a canopy of stratus, with glowing yellows and reds behind them.  My two companions have quieted their games of Chase and Ring Around the Biped in favor of a slow, quiet stalk between my legs by the strong-eyed one.  I’ve come up the steep southern slope, like some long-ago, strong-willed nephew.  Perhaps that has made me pause, winded.  Perhaps it’s the excitement of the vision before me.  Maybe something greater.

I can see the plumes from the fiber plants near home.  Farther on from the paper or can making in Halsey.  Is the one due south from Brand S?  or OS?  No matter.

I think of those plumes as the largest object in view.  Then I remember the mountains.  How does one measure a mountain?  Where, at the bottom, does it stop?  Where at the sides?  Is forgotten Adams the largest in the Cascades?  Surely the cloud canopy is larger still.  But perhaps not an object.  No matter.

As I move along to the top, the dogs resume their running–moving at least as constantly as my mind.  The still, low sun projects shadows above the Sisters on the canopy that now grazes their tops.  As ambient Light grows, snow shows on their flanks.  Triune still, they fade, seeming to diminish a bit.

The dogs keep playing.  Somehow my descent on the gradual path takes longer than the steep way up.  Ever a sucker for a red-haired half Celt, I allow the strong-eyed one more freedom and more treats than she’s earned.

Am I Thankful this morning?  For the plumes that mark employed neighbors?  For the mountains’ shape?  For the canopy under which I walk?  That is more pleasant than walking within it.  For the companions on whose excuse I walk?  Or for the understood connection that lets me appreciate them all?  This is what undergirds us all and gives no bottom line for my restless minds’ demarcation between.

Posted in Physical activity, Keeping low, Journal | 1 Comment »

Tuesday, July 28, 2009 by Jay T.

One of the finest blessings of my life is being part of a neighborhood network that is working to develop shorter paths for our food from soil to table.  We have been meeting regularly for just over a year now.  In the summer, it’s once a week to pool and share what we can harvest from our own gardens.

As there is need and availability, we make a connection with a local producer of food staples to cooperatively distribute some of the crop.  We’ve done this with soft white and hard red wheat (grown in land that had previously been used for grass seed), pinto beans, garbanzo beans and tempeh.  For a variety of reasons, the shortest path from our kitchen to the farmer’s field leads first to our neighbors’ doorsteps.

Sunday’s SHARE exchange was interesting.  The guy from across the street brought a gunny sack full of well-sprouted Yukon Gold seed potatoes that a local nursery had given him.  In the matter of minutes, several of us hatched a joint planting scheme.  For a couple of days, Bob, Ed and I have been watering, then spreading layers of cardboard, chippings, dirt, compost and manure on a patch of ground (about 20′ x 30′) in front of Jenny & Don’s house.  Linda and Lucy helped us toss potatoes and straw on top of that Tuesday evening.  We have about 100 days until first frost, so we’re cautiously hopeful of bringing in a crop this summer.  It’s risky enough that we aren’t putting anything of much value into the venture other than our labor and some water.

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Posted in Neighborhood, Physical activity | 4 Comments »

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 by Jay T.

I’m looking forward to volunteering next month with Bike First, the Portland affiliate of Lose the Training Wheels.  We help people with disabilities learn to ride two wheeled bicycles.

The teaching I do there is quite different from my usual work in the school year.  The teaching system at these bike camps was founded on the insights of a mechanical engineer.  It relies on some very cleverly designed machines to do the teaching.  Had it been designed by teachers, it would be focused on the interaction between cyclist and teacher, rather than the interaction between cyclist and bicycle.

Bike camp is a unique experience for me.  There’s nowhere else I practice my teaching craft that my own personal style is so clearly secondary to another element in the learning relationships of students, skills and objects.

Because of  the reliance on the innovative machines, limiting the curriculum to just one skill set, and limiting the students to those who can walk, keep feet on pedals and want to learn this skill, we succeed at a high rate.

I reflected on this on Sunday morning.   Is there a technology to teach the insights and skills of silent worship?  Quakerism is not something I believe so much as something I practice.  Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Physical activity, Prayer | 3 Comments »

Sunday, February 22, 2009 by Jay T.

Last week I was reminding one of my 5th grade PE classes about the Jump Rope for Heart event that was planned for a few days afterward.   One of the students explained that he wasn’t going since he didn’t see that the American Heart Association needed any more money.   I rather agreed with him, but remained silent as I’m the principal organizer for the shindig.

“So why do it?”  I wondered that week.   Jump Rope for Heart raises money for the Heart Association.  Children ask people they know to contribute, usually a flat dollar amount, in honor of the jumping that they will do at school.  The students are motivated by prizes they earn for raising different dollar amounts:  water bottles, jump ropes, plastic toys, tee shirts.

After the event, I had my answer.   It felt right in these ways:

• Thirty seven children enjoyed jumping rope for an hour.
• They worked hard at the jumping.
• They helped each other across grade levels and economic strata.
• They took some initiative to ask scores of adults to contribute.

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