Over Construction

Useful Pain

2010-01-21T18:10:00.019-07:00

Two things stand out when I read the story of Job:

People talk about losing everything, and I have at times thought that I'd lost everything. Mostly we're exaggerating. Job is one of the few who actually knows what losing everything looks like, and when it happens it is spectacular and can't be mistaken for anything else.

Job's friends are jerks.

When Job was sinking headlong into the tarry morass of despair, his friends betrayed him. When he needed comfort they offered a reproach. When he needed people who loved him they told him that he was being punished for his sins. They were insensitive cads and deserved to be trampled by camels.

I can't fault them. Like Job's friends, I am at a loss when my friends are in pain. What were they supposed to do? They saw their friend in the wreckage of his life and couldn't say or do anything to restore to him what he had lost. They couldn't tell him everything would be okay; they couldn't tell him jokes to cheer him up; they couldn't tell him that they understood what he was going through. Had they said any of those things they would have deserved trampling by gangrenous sheep. And so, out of helplessness, they blamed him for his losses. What else could they do except to join him in a miserable, aching, useless silence?

Job was not the sole explorer of the far reaches of suffering. Others have been there, and Jesus Christ went deeper than anyone else. He gave his friends this advice:

Then saith He unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. (Matt 26:38)

I think of the Saviour as the fearless one who stared down mobs, commanded storms, and walked knowingly into the city where he would be condemned and executed. He had every virtue and infallible knowledge. He had penultimate authority. But even this man, who was more able than any other to stand alone, wished to have his friends with him as he entered into obliterating agony. It meant something to him that there were others who loved him just a little way off, and that they watched with him. It was important enough that he expressed disappointment when he turned to them and found them slumbering. In part he asked them to join their sympathy to his suffering out of concern for them, so that they would be protected from temptation (Mark 14:38, Luke 22:40). Even so, he would not have commanded them to pray for him were it not part of a principle that holds here as well as in eternity.

I am nothing. I am less than the dust of the earth, which makes me impressively bereft of importance. Even so, I have influence. God's commandments make it so. He commanded that we love one another, and when we obey he must bless us (D&C 130:21, D&C 82:10). The pain that comes to me through love of another is powerful because there is a God who loves these, my friends, more than I do. He sees my anguish and uses it to satisfy the law of obedience so that he can bless them. This is a true principle.

There is another principle that says those who dedicate themselves to following Christ are sent help and answers when they pray. They're obeying another commandment, that we must become like Christ (3 Ne 27:27). In your pain for the hurts of others you become an echo of the Saviour and his infinite atonement. Like him, you suffer out of love. In that moment of defenseless sorrow you become his disciple. His generous mercy falls upon you and the one you love because you are his. There is a beautiful economy of heaven here ensuring that pain from love is never wasted.

Job's friends should have chosen the silence. It would have been miserable and aching, yes, but not useless. In that silence they would have taken part in the mute and watchful service the Lord requires of his disciples. Their love and pain for Job would have become something lovely and powerful, wings that lifted them nearer to God. He would have smiled on their shared sorrow and answered their unspoken petitions for their wounded friend with infinite love and boundless mercy for them all. He stands waiting to do the same for me and mine. When I am at a loss and uncertain what to say or what to do, it is enough to accept the hurt and watch with my friend. This pain isn't redundant or wasted. My helpless silence is a prayer, and the Lord is listening.

The Musician's Promise

2009-11-19T01:32:00.008-07:00

Crowds around me, undeserving
I hold my breath and let my gaze fall
They shouldn't have to see this.
I am not their fault.

Yearning within me, undeserving
I turn out the light and curl in the dark
Hope is too sharp to handle.
I belong in the black.

I want to give but have nothing.
I want to love but do not feel.
I want to dance but can only stumble.

Music surrounds me, unexpected
I lift my feet and they become less heavy
The musician's gift surprises me.
I am undeserving.

Then he speaks:

If you will walk, I will play
If you will speak, I will harmonize
If you will lift your eyes, I will make the colours

And you will be undeserving.

But

You will give the beauty you find
You will love out of joy in harmony
You will dance as if you flew

And the crowd around you, undeserving
will come to take, to feel, and to see
Welcome them all in from the black.
I made hope for the undeserving.

Don't call it that.

2009-10-09T19:47:00.020-06:00

Every semester or so the Pro-Life group on campus sets up a couple of boards in a public spot. They scrawl a question about abortion across the tops and leave them there, dangling markers, for a few days. Those boards fill up fast. There's lots of emotion running hot around the topic; everyone has something to say (in capital letters with multiple exclamation marks) and no one, no one attempts to take the middle ground. There is no middle ground. The most intermediate opinion would look like, "I don't much like it but I'm not going to tell you what to do." That shunts our moderate voice into the Pro-Choice camp. Once you get there it's not about babies anymore, it's about the fundamental right of each individual to do as they see fit within the law. The result is a sweltering clash of ideals in point form as some defend life while others defend freedom. It's a difficult debate. The pro-lifers snarl about freedom to live and the pro-choicers rasp back about freedom to choose a way of life. Those boards don't make anyone happy.

I like them, in an unhappy way. They get me thinking about the ranking of values and conflicting ideals. It's rash to say one side is flat out wrong. Who's going to argue that life isn't worth protecting? Obviously it is. Mine is, anyway. Likely anyone who's breathing and sentient is going to claim the same status. Problem solved, we're all pro-life! Hold on, though. Who's going to say that an individual's way of life should be out of their control? Or that it's good to force your values on another? Clearly both stances have powerful ideas backing them. The advocates of both pro-life and pro-choice are passionately devoted to their perspectives, and why wouldn't they be? Both sets of values appear to be sound, being predicated on rights that are desirable and necessary for civility and freedom. Both the right to live and the right to choose are wrapped around the guts of every North American. Try to wrench them away and we all start screaming.

Then again, no one would claim that both camps are right. The conclusions each espouse are mutually exclusive. How can that be when the opposing arsenals are universally recognized rights that normally go hand in hand? Something somewhere is off.

Until a couple years ago, I had never heard the term "Pro-Choice." I called it "Pro-Abortion." It's not the prettiest name, and it doesn't have the reassuring glow of humane responsibility that bathes "Pro-Life". People who are pro-abortion can't call themselves that or they'll be outglimmered by their foes from the beginning. If they wanted to set themselves up exactly opposite to pro-life, they could go with "anti-life" or "pro-death," but as replacements for "pro-abortion" those are hardly remedial. "Pro-choice," now, rings sweet and true, belling forth strains of freedom, liberty, and equality. This must be why it was adopted to describe one who supports the legalization and availability of abortion: it has such a fine sheen to it. But maybe . . . maybe it isn't the most accurate of names. Maybe choice is not what pro-choice supports.

If we assume that "choice" refers to the species of decision that lends life to liberty, then the anatomy of choice becomes important. Choice exists where there are three things:

A group of options (no fewer than two).
An organism capable of recognizing the presence of options.
Differing outcomes with the selection of each option.

The first two are self evident enough. No options means nothing to choose between. No awareness of the options means no ability to alter self direction, which means no freedom, which means no choice. The last piece, what can be called "unique consequence," is the component most often mislabeled or misplaced in descriptions of choice. Is is far more than an incidental byproduct, more than something that comes trailing in after the choice has been made. Choice cannot exist without it. No difference between outcomes means the decision made by the organism never mattered, and power to act and direct becomes strictly illusive. Our much vaunted rights of freedom rely heavily on the third and final appendage of choice. Consequence grants us the inalienable right to choose a way of life and a method of happiness when it brings force to the current decision and light to future decisions. Every choice downstream is marked by the third appendage. If the organism is paying any attention, future clusters of options will be flanked by notes in the margins, written there by experience. Consequence, then, develops and reinforces the power to choose by expanding the choice maker's ability to recognize and comprehend the significance of future options.

Pro-choice thought holds that abortion protects choice by creating another option. The idea is that pregnant women are mature, functional adults (or something like it) with the responsibility of directing and managing their own lives. As such they should not be forced to carry to term a child they do not want. To expect this of them is to rob them of an inalienable freedom, to hobble their pursuit of happiness. These women and their partners have a right to choose what they will do with the life they have, and abortion shores up that right.

Abortion as the guardian of choice is an uneasy fit. Does it really provide another option? Childlessness is an option that may be realized in other ways. Giving the child away is one. Avoiding pregnancy is another. If the couple had no choice but to become pregnant, then certainly abortion supports choice. Disregarding pregnancies from rape (which are tragic exceptions and not the rule), such a circumstance seems overwhelmingly unlikely. More probably, our mature, functional adults made choices leading to pregnancy. Promoting and protecting choice is no longer the battle; a pregnant couple is in the post-choice arena, in which they become acquainted with the vital third appendage that gives their choices power.

If anything, abortion hinders choice. It creates an artificial situation in which people can partially disable the third appendage of their choices. Consequence no longer works for them and they are left to choose blindly, to sort among options they will never fully understand or recognize. If we acknowledge that pregnancy and parenthood are natural outcomes of both intra- and extra-marital sexual relations, then pro-life philosophy creates conditions that encourage and celebrate choice. Pro-choice does not.

We came here by musing over the jangle of apparently conflicting rights which should be mutually supportive. In the end, we had a Rose Problem: a flower named "phug" is never going to smell quite right because the name is all wrong. The debate between pro-life and pro-choice will always be cloudy because at least one of those names has been wrongfully appropriated to support a cause it does not describe. Pro-life is also pro-choice. What we have called pro-choice needs another name. Pro-abortion still works. I suppose anti-life and pro-death are out of the question, but there are other adequately apt candidates: pro-convenience, pro-self, and anti-consequence. Anti-choice. True, none of them have the gorgeous sheen of "pro-choice," but names so beautiful have never fitted properly over abortion. Perhaps this uncomfortable phenomenon merits even more attention than the search for a name that will sound like a bell . . .

A Havler Production

2009-08-27T02:01:00.002-06:00

Lost in the gadgetry of despair
I abruptly terminate this poem.
And look, it doesn't even rhyme.

See

2009-07-12T15:17:00.007-06:00

Time stands behind me like a wall.
Back there is my camp.
It is where I pitched my tent.
My pots and towels and blankets hang in their places.
They are not waiting for me.
Time herded me away long ago.

Time stands before me like a gauntlet.
Ahead are questions and uncertainties.
There I keep my fears, because I can see
where the ground falls away from underneath.
These leaps are designed for feet more sure than mine.
Those flights are made for legs more brash and sturdy.
I am tired already and I cannot see the end.
Time waits impatiently, demanding.

Time stands beside me, a breathless companion
Trembling like a sweet high note
Eager eyed and humming with intensity
Pointing there to show a crimson splash
A flower.
Running here to bring me to
a laughing gurgle and shattered light
A brook.
Time dances at the edges tugging me and pleading:
Only look. Just see.

I smile to time behind.
I nod to time ahead.
I slip my palm into the hand of time
and together we walk to the first precipice.

Time always wants to fly.

An Overdue Absquatulation

2009-07-05T14:25:00.006-06:00

I was observing the blessing and passing of the sacrament with unusual attentiveness the other week. That guy was blessing it - the one in the wheelchair who speaks and moves as though his motor cortex is always fritzing or as if there's a neuromuscular tangle somewhere. He moves with an erratic tremor and speaks with difficulty. It is hard for him to form words and hard for everyone else to decipher them. So I was watching and listening carefully and thinking. I was admiring the way the other man supported him and helped to make this endeavor possible, because he did it in a way that did not lessen the one he was helping. And I was also admiring Wheelchair Man, because this is a demanding task for him and he is willing to do it anyway. The ordinance is important enough to him for him to put himself in front of everyone while his weaknesses are most exposed. Here, in this, he betrays a humility and dedication that takes me aback. I hate to be seen doing something without any trace of excellence, and so it took me by surprise, this foreign breed of excellence that lives in patiently working through a task which one can only accomplish gracelessly.

Being myself, I was also admiring my own discernment and fairmindedness for thinking to admire both of them. Most pleased with myself was I. How satisfied I became with my lofty perspective. How softly the smugness stole into its familiar camp in my heart. How eagerly I welcomed it.

So far everything here is running along through a familiar track. But this time I took a moment to trace my superior thoughts to their origin. Here is what I found:

Some years ago I read an article in that most honourable and august publication, The Reader's Digest. The author was mother to a child with a difficult handicap. She expressed her exasperation with people who gushed at her about how wonderful she must be, to have so much patience and fortitude. She said that certainly she needed both patience and devotion to raise her child, but her efforts were dwarfed by the struggles of her child, who strained to live with and through her disability. This girl needed to have patience with herself and also with everyone else, because these people didn't know how to react to her. The hardest work, the most exacting virtues, were required not of her mother but of her. No one ever thought to gush about her. The mother wrote the article in protest of this skewed perception, and this article was the well from which I drew my marvellously supernal musings.

I have suspicions that something like this is true in every case where I am pleased with myself for being wise. The best thoughts I can find knocking about in my head were put there by other people. None of the credit is mine. The camp inhabited by smugness in my heart ought, by all rights, to remain permanently abandoned, because I am not my architect. These mental towers were designed by someone else. The best parts of me were shaped by other people through the qualities they showcased, the words they said, the thoughts they wrote. Why do I become so proud? If I have admirable qualities, it is because I am a shameless parasite.

The camp for smugness is hereby being razed to clear the ground beneath. We're building there - an all season cottage for gratitude, who is far better suited to watch over the collection of thoughts and imaginings that is me.

Unity and Individuality

2009-06-16T00:39:00.021-06:00

Some months ago two of my luminescent friends (Sera and Ryan, both of them the human equivalent of a solar flare) had a brief interchange of blogs on the topic of unity. Specifically, what is the point of possessing individuality if inseparable from it is the obligation to surrender it? If you lose yourself in unity, as commanded, isn't that a forfeit of the agency so central to our purpose? How does this stuff fit together? Does it fit at all?

These are limp attempts at paraphrase and I find them inadequate. Here: links. Take them and be enlightened.

Sera: Womanhood Rant
Ryan: Does the individual have a place in Mormon ideology??
Sera: Becoming Identical vs. Becoming Unified
Ryan: Individualism is a lie we must cherish

Unity is one of those ubiquitous concepts of Mormondom. The scriptures are riddled with it, and it pops up on Sundays whenever the subject at hand concerns missionary work, service, temple work, Zion, the ward goals, eternal families, the final millenium . . . Try getting away from it. Go ahead. Failure is good for you.

What they don't talk about so much is individuality. Agency has its primacy of place, yes, but individuality itself is never extolled as a virtue. At least, not inside the chapel, not from the pulpit, and not from the chalkboard. And agency is to be used to submit your will to another's, not to preserve autonomy. Is individuality a neutral attribute? Like dimples, maybe? Nice, but you don't really need them?

D&C 76 seems to imply that inequality and individuality both survive into the next life, preserved in the limited kingdoms. Glory in the telestial kingdom is numbered like the stars. It sounds like the classic mosaic model: together but different! The melting pot is over in the celestial kingdom, where there is a single glory only: one enormous blazing sun. It looks alarmingly as if the clear and defined differences that arise from individual preference, choice, and volition are kept only when power and responsibility are curbed to accommodate limited capacities. Which brings forward an unpopular conclusion: the defense of individuality is a wasted battle, because individuality is not exactly desirable and therefore not worth protecting.

Not desirable? For me, without differences between individuals there would be no richness of experience. Life would be without taste or texture. For Sera, these differences are vital to becoming edified. She says that without them there can be no true unity, only a bland sameness repeated endlessly. So individuality is vital, but it musn't be guarded unless you're aiming low. The only way I can make this work is if persons are never more fully themselves than when they are lost in the appreciation of others. Perhaps this is what it means to be one: not identical, but so intertwined in enjoyment of one another that the collection of celestial individuals runs together into a reverberating, rebounding, brilliant mass of light. Many people, none of them the same, but so caught up in each other they make one sun flooding everything in and out with truth, comprehension, and love. That kind of love isn't possible unless there is someone who is other, who can be loved and appreciated specifically because they are not you. Appreciation of them would only be compromised if you were concerned with maintaining your own identity and autonomy. How can you be lost in the brilliance of those around you when you are tending to your boundaries? You shut yourself in, you shut them out, you block the light. You are a star. Your light is small and cold.

So then. To be self contained and carefully apart is also be separate, alone, and miserable. It is to wither as your regard and attention narrow and collapse in the sterile environment of self only. In counterpoint is the celestial state. D&C 76 says people there "see as they are seen and know as they are known." In the celestial kingdom there is no hiding. You see those around you with absolute clarity, perfect understanding, and engulfing, overwhelming love, because you have forgotten yourself and are pouring out into them; you are cradled in the same regard and they pour into you. After experiencing that, how could you feel you belonged anywhere else? Maybe it's too late already. We weren't made to be in full expression in any other, lesser circumstances.

If all this is true, then to desire exaltation is also to desire to bring everyone you love with you. If you have only yourself in mind it is not exaltation you are thinking of. So forget your fabulous individuality and lose yourself in the remarkable, exquisitely unique individuals around you. Pour yourself out, and you will unselfsconciously, unaffectedly, undilutedly express yourself with perfect fidelity. And you will find that unity is the setting in which you become completely yourself.

Faith and Rejoicing

2009-06-01T15:18:00.010-06:00

If you will turn with me to 1 Nephi 5:5 you will find Lehi attempting to placate Sariah. He says,

"But behold, I have obtained a land of promise, in the which things I do rejoice."

This is fascinating, because at this point in time the situation is as follows:

Lehi and his family have been forced to flee Jerusalem because the good citizens there have been plotting to kill him.
He has left to rot considerable lands and wealth.
Two of his sons think he's a hopeless lunatic.
His wife thinks he's a deranged incompetent.
The son that has confidence in him is away on a dangerous mission with the rest of his sons. They are long overdue to return. Chances are they have been eaten by wild animals or Laban.
He's off in the wild with nothing but a tent, some pack animals, and a bitter, mutinous wife.

Circumstances are, in a word, grim. Certainly they are not promising. And he's rejoicing in having a land of promise? He can't even see it from where he's standing. It will be 10 years of travel before he and his family land there. In those 10 years, his family will march along the brink of starvation, his eldest sons will wax homicidal toward him and other family members, they'll get lost at sea, and the ship will nearly sink in a monstrous storm - the ship that no one knows how to build yet. And Lehi is just happy to know that they're headed somewhere nice. Might this be an extraordinary example of faith? I think so.

So, then. Faith now and then must ignore all available evidence, all salient indications of what may be expected, and instead anticipate things which are manifestly impossible. Also we see that some are able to rejoice even when life is wedged in the U-bend of the toilet. Lehi shows that if you can somehow look beyond barren likelihoods to the land of promise, you can be happy even on the precipice of despair, defeat, and aborted dreams. Lehi probably didn't know what was in store for him in the short run. He may not have anticipated the hunger, the mutiny, and the decade of worn shoes, dusty clothes, raw meat dinners, and cranky women. But he believed that what was at the end was worth having, and that it would be given him exactly as described. He made the gamble we call faith, to trust in things you can't understand and expect things you've never seen because God made a promise.

Perhaps that's what faith requires: believe that you will receive if you obey, but more than that believe what you are promised is worth more than what you're giving up. Lehi had that kind of faith. And Lehi was right. He saw the land, he walked there, he watched his children grow and begin to spread over a landscape rich in everything they would ever need. He had enough faith to follow until he could see for himself how great cause he had to rejoice. More astounding, he had enough faith to rejoice long before the soil was under his feet and the scent around his face. He rejoiced in rags, in danger, in desperation, in hunger.

Why should we, who are much more comfortable, not do the same? The promises given us as Latter-day Saints are extravagant. We are commanded to take ourselves and our families to a land where we are surrounded by light, the people we love, and an excess of joy. We're told that it is a place desirable above all others, and that there we will be happy, fulfilled, and exhilarated at what is before us. Do we believe it? Do we have faith, as Lehi did, that if it has been promised to us the impossible will somehow be made possible? If we believe all this, if we know these things, then the barren reaches that sometimes stretch from horizon to horizon need not blind us. We can look beyond them to the promised land, and rejoice in the wilderness.

Exceptions

2009-05-29T00:27:00.011-06:00

A friend posted a blog about exceptions, and how every rule seems to have one. He related a couple of the more salient ones. Back in Paul's day women in church were supposed to keep their heads under cover and their mouths shut; they don't now and there's nothing wrong with it. Murder is always wrong, unless you're Nephi and Laban has succumbed to his inebriation. My friend's focus was on other, more complicated questions, but he mentioned these things and got me tinkering. I'm thinking there's a lot to be learned from exceptions and some of the best scientists agree with me.

I know of very few immutable rules. When I find one I take special note and add it to my collection. So far the list looks like this:

God is always right.
There's no way to salvation except by baptism in the name of the Saviour by proper authority.
Sin hurts.

And then I run out of cast iron laws. Even so, not all of the remaining laws are as flaky and arbitrary as they might look. Some exceptions - like the grisly episode in which Nephi decapitates Laban - are easier to mull over if you assume they haven't really broken laws but instead are obeying the unabridged law. You know:

In brief, thou shalt not kill.

But "thou" means people, not God. He can kill anyone at anytime and it's still a further manifestation of perfection instead of an embarrassing smudge on His record. So, assuming that God can decide someone needs to die at any time with ultimate impunity, it isn't wrong to kill them if you've been divinely commissioned to carry out the divine decision. It's just wrong to make the decision yourself. Because you, clearly, are people, and they're not allowed to rush about rubbing other people out. Except during wars . . . Oh dear, everything went murky again. But there it is: exceptions probably aren't cases outside the law. More likely they are hints at the expansive, panoramic, principle based law out beyond the brief rule of thumb we're responsible for.

It needs more thought, but there's something there. Exceptions aren't really exceptions. That's the neat thing about eternal laws: they are never defied, never 'broken', never suspended. So if someone behaving righteously appears to be stomping all the rules to crumbs, then likely there is an eternal law somewhere of which you are not yet aware or aren't incorporating. It just needs some thought and prayer, and you will find that the law was beautifully honoured, not sidestepped.

If all else fails, there's always 1 Nephi 11:17.

About Beauty

2008-09-16T21:19:00.006-06:00

Beauty has much occupied my mind, not simply of late but for most of my life. As a child I took offense if someone told me I was pretty. It was an insult, of course. There are so many personal characteristics on which to comment. If a person searching for something to compliment settled on my appearance, weren't they congratulating me on something over which I had no control? It could only mean I had no other admirable qualities. It was inevitably a horrible moment, especially for a child who stubbornly believed appearance didn't matter. Not only did I have no other advantages, but the only thing in or about me that was good was irrelevant. So ouch. Please excuse me while I go cry.

Adolescence was more interesting and agitating. By then it was obvious not many shared my theory that looks aren't important. I altered my theory to, "Looks shouldn't matter," and spent hours agonizing alone over the ethics of wearing makeup, shaving leg hair, and plucking eyebrows. My deliberations told me they were all wrong, all unnecessary, and all hurtful. They shouldn't be expected of me or any girl. Why were these cosmetic rituals so essential to the others? Why didn't they fight against it? It was disturbing and confusing - especially when I was the only one feeling disturbed and confused about it. (For those who didn't do public high school, this was all of the time.)

An Animal Behaviour course from the Phsychology department blew it wide open. Here was explained what was attractive and why. The "prettiness" debate I'd hosted in my private council ended. The entire topic was disgusting and depraved. Worse than that, it was a betrayal of what I valued and hoped for. The existence of these behavioral mechanisms meant that humans were mindless bags of meat with no meaning in life beyond their own proliferation. Shame on me. Shame on the human race. We're supposed to be better than the animals. So ran my thoughts.

It wasn't until I stumbled into love that I reopened the internal Prettiness Seminars. You see, the feeling I had looking at him was the same I got from looking at the more spectacular sunsets, or a sharp black sky lavish with stars. There was a revelation: features which I don't consider attractive can be, at the same time, beautiful. I found that even here, despite all the hormonal and cognitive hard wiring, we aren't animals. As in everything else, we can choose. What I love is beautiful because I love it.

Little me had it right: ultimately, looks don't matter. But little me was missing the important clarification that makes it true: looks don't matter because beauty matters so much. There is an expanded sense of beauty that comprehends what is good and true as well as lovely, and without it . . . Well. We'd be like the animals.

An Explanation

2008-09-14T13:36:00.008-06:00

Blogging is something I thought would never happen to me. It seems a poor match for a girl who obsesses over privacy and has trouble keeping a journal up to date. I'm supposed to write something thoughtful and meaningful regularly? And you want me to post it to the world? Crazies, all of you. I shun it as I would shun Facebook. (And I do. Oh, I do.) Given all this, the existence of any blog (albeit largely blank) merits some justification.

There is a group of wonderful, creative, and brilliant people who give off light the way fresh paint gives off fumes. I call them my friends and they let me. They've been poking at an ideal called "A Thomas Jefferson Education" for over a year now. (For those not familiar with TJEd, click here for a decent summary of the concepts and objectives behind leadership education.) The definitive work on TJEd by Oliver DeMille is very clear regarding the nature of education: it is not a thing donated by some teacher, but rather a thing you create and secure for yourself. There is no other who can take responsibility of it for you. Others can guide and help you, but the most important direction, motivation, and inspiration comes from yourself - the student.

I am a graduate of the public school system and an inmate at the nearest university. I have spent my life in a system designed to teach me what to think rather than how to think. Sadly, I'm a good student; I learned all the wrong things, but I learned them well. It is easy to live my life according to specification (Queen Rule Follower am I) but hard to take on a project of my own design and purpose. That ability died somewhere in Grade 3. My friends have similar stories of interests curbed, enthusiasms quashed, volition bruised, and individuality pruned back to keep it safely inside the acceptable mould. Our public educations prepared us to drudge in the work force, but we don't feel prepared for much else.

For those still grappling with the "But why this blog?" question, I'm getting there. Patience, please.

My stellar group of friends is dissatisfied with crippling along on a public education. They're going after a functional education instead - a leadership education. After a few conversations and a meeting or two, this group of five organized itself into a miniscule school for self educators. We meet now and again to talk about our areas of interest and to present what we've discovered. The rest of the time we separately study anything we wish as directed by our personal, hand tailored curriculums.

Online tools are fiendishly handy to group coordination. The group uses Google Calendar to plan meeting and events, Buzzwords for online conferencing, and blogs (ha-HAH! here it is) to share what we're finding and more particularly what we're thinking. There's another principle from TJEd: Scholars write intensively about what they study because they're learning to think as well as gaining knowledge. This blog, then, is my personal studies log. "Over Construction" seemed apt - it's my education, it's definitely not finished yet, and this time I'm in charge. Finally.

Forecast for Over Construction:

My studies for this semester are just beginning, but the topics will revolve around a few core areas:

Self Management. Think Stephen R. Covey and you'll have the idea.
Movement. I'm a Kinesiology major at the U, and human movement is the beginning and end of everything we do.
Natural Health. This is deliberately a broad topic. I wanted something that accomodates nutrition, fitness, and health geared practices (ie. sleeping.) The medical world doesn't quite fit here. They are centered on pathology. Pathology is not health.
Music. Mostly practical studies. Blogging what I'm learning could be difficult and pointless. (Example: "I finally have the finger pattern down for the last 16 bars of Waterfall!" Exciting for me. Not for you.)
Gospel Studies. Why go stealth? I'm LDS, there is a God, and Jesus is the Christ. The self education project would be so much wheel spinning if I neglected this, the most important and meaningful field of study. It is the foundation for everything else.

There. You have the reasons for this blog. Be welcome. Let me say now that all thoughtful comments are appreciated. Weigh in at any time!