The Light of Your Faith

“Four A.M. in the darkness of a cold winter morning, suddenly I am fully and frighteningly awake. I see it clearly: I am going to die. I am going to die. This body, this mind, this lived and living myth, this [spouse], [parent], teacher, [progeny], friend, will cease to be. The tide of life that propels me with such force will cease and I—this ‘I’ taken so much for granted by me—will no longer walk this earth. A strange feeling of remoteness creeps over me. My [partner], beside me in bed, seems completely out of reach. My [children], asleep in other parts of the house, seem in this moment like vague memories of people I had once known. My work, my professional associates, my ambitions, my dreams and absorbing projects feel like fiction. ‘Real life’ suddenly feels like a transient dream. In the strange aloneness of this moment, defined by the certainty of death, I awake to the true facts of life.”

The above paragraph is borrowed from the introduction of Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning by James W. Fowler and was slightly [modified] by me to be gender neutral.

If I were to self diagnose the stages of faith as defined by James W. Fowler, I would be in the 6th stage of faith, which is also known as Universalizing faith, the stage where an individual treats all people with compassion because the individual views all people as having derived from a universal place and thus all people should be treated with universal principles of love and justice.

I started burning devotional candles when I lived in Silverlake, Los Angeles back in the late 80s. I bought the candles because they kept me company at night, they were colorful, they lasted forever, they were cheap, and they were in every supermercado. Coffee, mangos and The Holy Virgin of Guadalupe; that's pretty much all I needed during what Fowler would call the 4th stage of my faith which is known as Individuative-Reflective faith and is often characterized by angst and struggle. I can dig it.

So my faith over the decades has progressed from the singular to the universal. and a friendly candle has been with me throughout the journey. And by the way, according to Fowler, there is nothing beyond Stage 6. Let's see about that.

Live your life [death].

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A Million Smiley Faces

I wanted to create an image of peace.
I wanted to create an image of love.
I wanted to create an image of happiness.
I wanted to create an image of you.

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Mama Always Said I Would Be a Student for Life

Near the beginning of this year I was asked to teach some classes up yonder at Randolph College. I briefly chronicled my experience here. Part of teaching, and part of living for that matter, is to be self-critical. I basically struggled as a professor. But as my anecdote details, I wasn't given much prep time. I jumped in anyways because it was something new and different. At the end of it all I thought, hmm, that's part of my legend now, I can move on. But I didn't. I often mused about how I would go about it differently if I had another chance. My mentor at Randolph, Jennifer, was big on the "if you had another chance" mantra. So I adopted her wisdom and applied it to self. Although I had taught a lot of young adults how to be showbiz accountants, I never formally learned how to be an educator. I was ok with the subject I was teaching—photography and filmmaking—because I had decent experience and I was always practicing. But I never felt at peace in the classroom. I never felt comfortable being an authority, a phenomenon that I recently learned is called—impostership. I needed to fortify this aspect of my experience. I needed some teacher training. So I enrolled in this online course offered by Columbia University called, "Inclusive Teaching: Supporting All Students in the College Classroom." In general, the course was about: establishing and supporting an inclusive course climate; setting explicit expectations; promoting diversity and inclusion through course content; designing all course elements for accessibility; and cultivating critical self-reflection. It was perfect. I guess my main takeaway was learning to not universalize my experience. Oh, and that teaching is a process. As my good friend Jesse often says, "Relax hotshot." Good advice. So I'll just keep learning stuff along the way. Mama was right. And btw, Jennifer sent me an email asking if I'd like to teach again in the spring.

I said, sure, I'd love to.

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