Friday, June 19, 2009





We had our annual meeting for the Electronic High School up at the Utah State Office of Ed a couple of days ago.
The overview: much to be learned and relearned with EHS in the near future.
We're moving over to an opensource software base to save a load of money that was lost with the budget cuts this year. That's going to be an adventure.
On the way home, I was happy to head up the canyon and readjust the riggings. Beautiful day, overall.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Ah, ramble on.
Define the hope that keeps those who see the world from the margins of the earth as it meets both darkness and the light. What keeps the heart's drum beating when it seems that the secrets the idle withhold fortunes from those who would work with all of their hearts for the common good?
It is sheer labor enough to push on, often into the blinding incandescence of a billion egos shoving back, singing the songs of themselves at a feverpitch. Dreams can come true, but they are more likely to flourish if they follow the grain of popular society and those who seek justification. Remember the Mahatma; he did more than only a very few for the rest of us, yet he still died thinking that he had failed in the greater part of his labors. His path was higher than most can ever hope to aspire to, even in fantasy. The aspirations of the great are the seeds that might become oaks centuries from today, and that is why the greatest often feel more lowly than they are perceived by others.
Remember the dreams of the Buddha, the hopes of Mohammad, the aspirations of Jesus, and the ideals of Lao-Tsu. These weren't always lauded, often were spat upon, found themselves exiled, or worse, given death as payment for their works.
Prophets aren't recognized as such by those who aren't in synch with their hearts. That's why they are cast out, seen as antisocial, uncooperative or at worst, unfit to co mingle with the rest of polite society. Not all prophets have found their views canonized in scripture or justified through later reflection. Most, I'll posit, simply died or were slowly killed by societal pressures, seeing themselves as misunderstood, or worse, as untouchable failures.
I have known a few of these, and more than a couple have already met their ends at the hands of misunderstanding or irreconcilable differences with society at large. They always fight hard against what they see as unjust or unwholesome behavior and treatment, and often try to show others the way to healing or change. They do great things, they exhibit strength and beauty through unconventional means, and leave the world a little better. They are most often seen by conventional or unfamiliar others as deserving of their pain or of punishment handed out by life and institutions, even when those institutions might have been seeded by people as unconventional or visionary as the persecuted soul being condemned.
Love is more than a pejorative, ethereal, or trite cliche. Love is the ideal sought after by idealists and seekers everywhere, it is the hope that keeps even the most jaded materialist seeking God or spiritual comfort at the end.
Hope is more than mere faith, it is the flame that is imagined as both warmth and the quenching waters of life. It is the promise that souls cling to, the birthright of all who claim to have felt a closeness to something unseen.
Hope is the light that touches the earth at the margins, illuminating the envelope that is our body, that which is, at this moment, our shared lives in this shared world.

Friday, June 5, 2009

I haven't been on game for a while; lots of concerns and anxiety about the world and universe in general. After school got out for the summer with still no firm prospects for employment in the future, the roller coaster really started buffeting.
Now, Ryan hasn't had things too easy lately, either. He felt gravity's thump while playing with his students at recess on the second to last day, falling on and fracturing the hell out of his wrist. He had been anticipating (with some trepidation) surgery on his knee and now faced another slicing and dicing of his wrist, so, long story short, Ryan and I lit out once more for the upper left corner of Wyoming and lower middle of the great state of Montana.
We again took it upon ourselves to allow only a quick three days and two nights to drive all the way to the heart of the Beartooths and back. Along the way, as usual, we took in beauty and the power of raging rivers, we met grand people and a few really unhappy ones, and were changed by the feel of good earth under our feet and the rush of gravel or asfault beneath our tires.
The nights out there have a way of changing perspective, and if one can rally forces fast enough to get up early again, the mornings have a similar effect. The two views combined are truly life-changing, so if one can bring his own realizations to bear on the world and view thereof, the elixir of that perspective is more powerful than I yet understand.
Ramble on, my dear readers, and may the light of the world illuminate that which is before you.