Tensegrities

More posts are available in the Tensegrities Archive

I find myself trying to sustain a lot of “tensegrity,” and decided that one way to live creatively in the midst of that is to try and journal regularly about the various paradoxes I find myself within. “Tensegrity” is a word Buckminster Fuller once coined — “tension” + “integrity” = “tensegrity.” He used it to describe the incredibly stable nature of the structures he could build by holding competing forces together while respecting their integrities. I like to use it to describe what it is to be a person of faith living in a global media culture.

Soundtrack to my life

/ 25 March 2024

In the process of thinking through digital storytelling, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about soundscapes. Recently I’ve been thinking about the music that has been a soundtrack for my life, and thanks to YouTube, I found most of these songs.

In my young life, up through high school, two songs came to mind, Rhymes and Reasons by John Denver and Mandy by Barry Manilow. I know, I know, how trite! But these are the songs I remember and can sing from memory.

Towards the middle of high school I had my first painful breakup, and of course Dust in the Wind was the song that accompanied that.

Finally, in the joy of my senior year (which was a year of affirmation) the theme for my senior prom was The Rainbow Connection and that is another song that echoes for me.

I have to also note that along with these songs I have lots of memories of listening to my mom practice the organ. I remember lying on my back on the chancel steps, listening to this Bach fugue as it resonated around the empty sanctuary. Something in me responded to it, but it wasn’t in joy?

College was a whole different ball game, and part of it was discovering feninist and womanist theorizing, and women’s music. Various kinds of advocacy (against apartheid, against nuclear weapons, for peace) took up most of my energies, and this song comes to mind for me even though it wasn’t released until years after I graduated: Sky Dances by Holly Near.

I was mostly very busy parenting during my graduate studies — both of my children were born then — but Leonard Cohen’s Broken Hallelujah is what comes to mind for me from that time period.

And then we get to the early 2000’s, and the aftermath of September 11th. Bruce Springsteen’s song The Rising and also this version is the soundtrack for that period for me.

That time period was also my early years as a professor, and both Grace by U2 and All That We Let In by the Indigo Girls frame that era for me.

My time at Luther Seminary has imprinted itself deeply on me, in so very many ways, but in terms of popular music I have to note that anti-racism activism has kept me sane. So these two songs — Blackbird also this version — and Glory as sung by the Detroit Youth Choir, are key for me.

Which brings me to the present day. There are two songs that have been “earworms” for me, or maybe just hugely resonant lately? They are Billie Eilish’s song for the Barbie movie What was I made for? and Jon Batiste’s lullabye for his wife Sulaika, Butterfly. I can listen to each of these over and over. Not sure what that says about my current state of being?

And there you have it. A set of songs that have formed a soundtrack to my life.

Advent Hope

/ 4 December 2023

Here we are again, at the start of the liturgical year, and the beginning of the season of Advent. I’m struck in reflecting on my blog, how often I write about Advent — more than any other liturgical season! I suppose that is in part because it arrives in winter for me, here in North America, and the ever darkening days and cold weather leads me both to introspection and to searching for hope.

Hope is hard to find in the midst of a world on fire with war, with climate catastrophe, with polarization, with democracy failing. And yet… and yet Advent reminds me that there is light even in the midst of the cold and dark.

One of my former students, a lawyer and peace activist, writes about finding hope in this way:

“To me, the hope lies in the surprise. God subverted the faithful’s expectations. Rather than an earthly king draped in dazzling robes and adorned with jewels, a little brown baby was born to an unwed mother and a poor father, tired and scared immigrants on a long journey, seeking a place to rest.”

May you each find hope in surprise this season, and may you light a candle to remind you of the light that shines forth in the dark.

Music and the anguish of the Native American boarding schools

/ 24 September 2023

I was recently looking for Gord Downie’s film, The Secret Path and I couldn’t remember his name, so I was doing a more generic search for pop music that addressed the anguish of the Native American boarding schools.

I found Downie’s film, but I also found this page which has a huge collection of powerful music. I think music helps me feel the depth of the pain that needs to be engaged more than print texts can.

Although if you have not read the US federal report that came out in May of 2022 on this history, you really should do so!

Juxtapositions

/ 13 September 2023

I can’t help sharing this piece from the Apple launch yesterday, which explores their current achievements around the environment and sustainability. It’s a great little story — but it’s only one version, and so next to that I want to juxtapose Bill McKibbon’s latest essay. Perhaps my point, at least one of them, is that we need both uplifting stories and also direct awareness of the complexity of the challenges we face.

Solidarity economics

/ 2 August 2023

I’ve been writing about and advocating for UBI (universal basic income) since 2016, when I first encountered the multi-faith activism around it in Toronto. Lately I’ve noticed that I need to step back a few steps and help people think about what “solidarity economics” might be. So today I shared a piece through Luther Seminary’s faith+lead site, in which I try to do just that. It’s entitled “solidarity economics and the good life”.

REA talk links

/ 12 July 2023

I’ve been asked to share the links from my remarks at the REA2023 panel on publication today. Here they are:

Hank Green about adaptation and generative AI

My writing

Creative commons licenses

Maria Popova of the Marginalian

Brian Stout of Bridging Toward Belonging

Heidi Campbell’s e-books

Open access and the Religions journal

Almeda Wright’s advice during last year’s publications session

Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird

Early scholarly work on “algorithmic enclaves”

Gregory Ellison’s Fearless Dialogues

Facing fear

/ 30 March 2023

Eric shared with me today this essay from a key scientist in the AI world that was published in Time Magazine. It is beyond alarming. I found my stomach clenching and my breath becoming shallow. Both of which signaled that I am afraid.

But what to do with that fear? My plaintive response to Eric was precisely that: what can we do? And so when this other essay crossed my inbox this morning I knew I had to share it. It’s written by Bill McKibbon, whom I’ve followed for years. He’s a very thoughtful observer and science writer, and he reminds us that humans can choose NOT to do something.

So, in the midst of the fear that ChatGPT and other AI mechanisms evoke for me, I want to lift up that there is also hope to be found in the collective work of humans seeking to slow down and pause.

And, at the risk of sharing my faith, my mantra lately has been verse 11 from Psalm 46 in the Bible: be still and know that I am God.

Humans are not God. But humans can listen deeply for God, and discern accordingly.

Marking two decades of blogging...

/ 18 March 2023

I started this blog back in March of 2003. I was increasingly worried about how to balance what I felt and believed, with my teaching responsibiliites. It didn’t seem appropriate to hijack a classroom to talk about why I didn’t think we should go to war in Iraq, but I also didn’t want to hide how I felt about it.

So I started a blog. Over the years this blog has gone through various technical changes, not to mention software infrastructure, moving from wordpress to jekyll, for instance, and moving from something I wrote in all the time, to something I only occasionally write for.

And yet I’m still doing it. And it still matters to me. Here is a link to one of those very early blog posts, dated March 16, 2003.

Writing "I am" poems

/ 21 January 2023

One of the exercises I’ve used in a variety of settings — and which we are using this year in a Wabash symposium — comes from the work of George Ella Lyon. The idea is to fill in words to a series of prompts that begin “I am from…”

You can find Lyon’s explanation and a bunch of examples at that website, but Alex just suggested I post my own here. I was surprised by how much of what sprang to mind for me came from my earlier years, not so much later on.

  • I am from the sound of my mother giving piano lessons in our front room as I try to keep my baby sisters quiet.
  • I am from the touch of tears kept bottled up inside as I stay silent in the shame of using food stamps.
  • I am from the touch of hands seeking to stretch and support the muscles contorted by my son’s cerebral palsy.
  • I am from the smell and no smell of frozen nostrils in 20 degrees below zero weather.
  • I am from the smell of books: new books, old books, books that are the wallpaper of my home and office.
  • I am from the smell of fresh-baked bread: crusty bread, whole grain bread, Swedish tea ring, maple walnut sticky buns.
  • I am from the taste of peanut butter rice Krispie bars, Campbell’s mushroom soup chicken and rice casserole, pineapple cream cheese green jello.
  • I am from the taste of fresh baked naan, my husband’s curried chicken, my mother-in-love’s schnitzel.
  • I am from the values of small town Oshkosh, Wisconsin: stoicism, hard work, ignorant racism, complicated faith, joy-filled summer roller-skating.
  • I am from the sight of Lake Michigan, rivaling my first sight of the ocean in Massachusetts.
  • I am from the music of Sweet Honey in the Rock, Bruce Springsteen, Eldbjorg Hemsing, and Cloud Cult.
  • I am from the ideas of Lois McMaster Bujold, Audre Lorde, Louise Penney, Parker Palmer, and Debra Harkness.
  • I am from places of elite education which drew me beyond my home with deep resources for learning, and at one and the same time taught multiple varieties of supremacy; places which tolerate radical ideas as a way to co-opt them, and offer empty status as a way to undercut them.
  • I am from the community of St. Paul, Minnesota where my children have grown up and my vocation has taken me to Luther Seminary.
  • I am from the family of Jesus, broken and shared, giving and forgiving, fraught with oppression and singing with hope.

Advent Resources

/ 7 December 2022

Here we are in Advent again. I am reminded that not everyone lives in the liturgical calendar, so just know that Advent is the season of anticipation and preparation for the birth of Jesus. It’s marked by the four Sundays prior to Christmas — a longer season this year, since Christmas is itself a Sunday!

Here are some of my favorite resources:

More posts are available in the Tensegrities Archive