three lists

How I can tell that things could be going better with me, mental-state-wise-speaking:

1. I have those little patches of eczema on my scalp that appear when I'm stressed.

2. I'm irritable and I have very little patience - with Dan, with the kids, with work, with anything.

3. I am hungry all the time and eating like crap.

4. I pretty much constantly just want to go to sleep and/or take a bath.

5. The house is yucky and I am not getting around to cleaning it.

6. My step count is way down. (Goal: 12,000. September average: 13,385. October average: 9,960. November average: 7,389. So far today: 12. Ha. But to be fair that's because I don't take my phone with me on the laundry trips up and down the stairs.)

Why this might be:

A. Just another wave of depression, which happens, because brain chemistry or whatever.

B. As much as I've said for weeks now that I'm looking forward to getting back into a normal routine, now that the normal routine is here it feels simultaneously overwhelming and boring. Did I mention that it's laundry day again? Yay.

C. Hangover from more or less keeping it together this summer.

D. Continuing total lack of future plan / general existential angst.

What I could potentially do about it:

I. Ride it out. One foot in front of the other. Tomorrow is another day. And so forth.

II. Get more sleep. Should be an obvious one but this means no more staying up late writing, and I feel like the writing is important for some reason (see C., above).

III. Stop eating sweets. I know that as soon as I have a little something, many more little somethings follow and I *also* know, as much as I hate this fact, that chocolate eating is highly correlated with yelling at the kids.

IV. Go to the doctor and get an iron infusion. Which I hate. Or try eating chicken livers, which I like.

Chicken livers it is, then?

booked

Booking travel is really not my favorite thing. At all. But I struggled through it tonight, and kids and I are now officially no-changes-no-refunds flying to Seattle for three weeks this summer. Here is the picture I got with my flight confirmation. It makes me sort of dizzy and ill. Which I dearly hope is not a premonition about the trip. 

zusammenfassung

Well, tonight's GCL session is...over. 

Did it go well? It went fine. 

Did I do well? Not really. Once again I got tongue-tied and made six grammar errors for every German word that came out of my mouth and also mispronounced most of them. And things started out well with the group singing, but by the end I'd totally lost the plot and kept starting on fully the wrong note.

The ladies were nice about it, because of course they were. But it was still very awkward. I'm not entirely unhappy that I'm going to miss the next session. (It conflicts with Christopher's debut concert as a musician. Recorder. He's been playing for a year and a bit. The song is maybe 30 seconds long. It's going to be fabulous.)

And yet...in theory at least, this is what I want to do with my life. Lead small group sessions, I mean. Tonight we talked about our childhoods, and the stories were deep and engaging and powerful. We don't live in villages where everyone knows everyone else's business any more; where else are we going to encounter each other like this?

I wonder if I can find a way to try this in English, and if *that* fails, I'll finally take the hint and give up and go back to...programming or something.

 

After GCL I bought some dinner (new Vietnamese place in Zürich, bahn mi CHF 11.50, pricey but not as pricey as other places and it wasn't half bad!) and then I went to the big once-yearly Taizé service at the Grossmunster. 

Here is what I learned: The Grossmunster is so solid that even when all the bells in the city are ringing, it's nearly silent inside the church. Crazy huh?

I sang pretty much straight through from 6:30 to 9, and my throat is a bit sore now, but in a good way.

Good night!

adult education

No writing tonight because Friday, an also I am working on the plan for the GCL group meeting I'm supposed to lead tomorrow (eek?) but related to that, I love this article,

"My Classroom Is Not a Safe Space" by Elizabeth Hunt. Go read the whole thing but the meat of it, I think, is:

Here’s the thing: Safe spaces emerge. They are not created. They are not designed. And they are most definitely not announced. Moreover, one individual cannot unilaterally declare a safe space as a universal truth to a group of people.

Do you know who gets to declare a space safe? An autonomous individual who felt safe in a space. It goes something like this: “Hey, I really felt safe in this space today.” Unless you’re from Montreal, in which case it goes: “Me, I really felt safe in this space today.” (Do not underestimate the power of the superfluous “me.” It forces you to speak only for yourself.)

Participants and students — not teachers, trainers, or observers — get to name whether a space is safe. They do so for their own individual selves, not the entire group or any other individual. And only after the fact, not before an event has started.

...

What do I do instead of declaring my classroom a safe space?

• I start from the assumption that every student in my classroom is a capable, self-managing, responsible adult. Even if they are only 20. Even if they are sullen and look grumpy.
• I operate from the principle that I know absolutely nothing about what each student has had to weather in life. Even if they are only 19. Even if they are cute and bubbly.
• I design my classes with lots of time for students to connect with each other in a convivial way — especially if we’re addressing serious topics — so we can slowly build relationships.
• I try to create an environment where we can be imperfect, where half-formed thoughts are invited into discussions and awkward silences are allowed to just be.
• I build question-asking activities into every class.
• I am honest and transparent when I’m struggling with how to teach (which is all the time).
• I take responsibility and apologize if I mess up or say something untoward (also all the time).
• I don’t get defensive if a student challenges me. And if I do feel defensiveness creeping up, I try to identify it.
• I set boundaries and uphold them, whether this applies to deadlines, office hours, or student requests.

In essence, the only things I can control in a classroom (or in life) are my assumptions, my beliefs, my behaviors, my choices, my actions, and my reactions — basically me. Everything else is out of my grasp.

I have zero control over how my students experience me and my class, and even less over how this experience intersects with who they are and how they feel on a particular day (or every day). I certainly have no say in what constitutes a safe space.

My classroom is not a safe space.

But maybe, just maybe—if my intentions line up with my actions, if I approach my teaching with kindness and confidence, if I create the conditions for students to connect meaningfully with each other, if what I offer resonates with what they are ready to learn—a student will say, “Me, I really felt safe in this space today.”

fundamental

Tonight I got to go to class by myself, yay. And I've found a spot to sit where I can hear and see, and bonus! the people next to me don't seem to mind me when we do group work. (Read: they are foreigners too.)

Turns out the instructor only got through half his slides last week, so I got to hear the end of the presentation I was complaining about reading on Friday night. It both was and wasn't what I thought it would be. The story, roughly, is that the idea of the Holy Trinity isn't biblical - it evolved after the Bible was codified, in a time Christians were trying to describe themselves in the vocabulary/context of Hellenistic philosophy. Then it got set in stone for 1600 years and now, when we try to explain it, we have the problem that we've lost the cultural context in which it was formed and we also can't point to the Bible for support. Conclusion: we should stop worrying about it and go back to the ideas of God that are in the Bible.

I'm just really suspicious of this idea of going back, and it comes up a lot - going back to the Bible, or back to Jesus's teaching, or back to the early Christian communities. Don't we have to go forward towards seeking a place for Christianity in a postmodern, atheistic world? Isn't the problem less that people tried to explain their religious ideas in a new context than that we stopped doing that, and started memorizing formulas in the terribly misguided belief that they could communicate some universal truth independent of cultural context? As well-intentioned as the various forms of small-f fundamentalism may be, erasing the intervening hundreds of years of imperial and colonial Christianity seems like yet another act of violence against their victims. And for all we've screwed up, we have also managed to learn a thing or two since 300 CE. Right??

But then, what does it mean to be "Christian"?

Poor Daniel wants to go to bed and I should too, there's playgroup tomorrow morning. More on this...sometime...

more music

I do get the distinct impression that I'm repeating myself here, so dear reader (hi, Sben), my apologies. But I just did a search of my own blog [1] and as far as I can tell I haven't written this before, so...

There's this gospel (in the American not the European sense!) musician and minister, Bishop Freddy Washington, who has been coming from New Jersey to Switzerland to give workshops for something like 25 years. I haven't been able to make it to one in a while, which is sad, because they are all sorts of awesome, but there's a concert at the beginning of December that I hope I'll be able to see.

The white-person rhythmical abilities of the Swiss (and I'm fully Swiss, in this case) do not actually improve on contact with Actual Musical Talent (holy shit can this man play the piano), and yet his passion is contagious and people end up singing their hearts out even if the result isn't always ready for prime time.

There's a long-time-Swiss-resident Elvis impersonator from Hawaii who is almost always there, too - in fact I think he's organizing the workshop in December.

It's one of those things...fully American and yet if I'd stayed in the US I'm pretty sure I never would have experienced anything like it.

I'm kinda down on Christianity lately, but this gives me hope. Here's a song of his.

https://soundcloud.com/bishopfreddywashington/tracks

Also on the topic of gospel, on the plane to Dulles I watched Amazing Grace. Best flight in a long time.

[1] Blogger, will you please add the eye-roll emoji? I really need it! Thank you.

this! this! this!

Here's a cool little documentary about Choir! Choir! Choir!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaDbjDy0R0k

Interviewer: At the end of the day, what do you hope people will take away from this?
Daveed: Love.
Nobu: Um....I would like people to take away that they're not alone, and that they can reach out and they can be part of something that will enrich themselves personally but also bring them closer to other people and maybe...possibly create bonds that then will...they can move forward together with those.
Daveed: I just want people to have memories ...

and also:

Daveed: It's about us connecting fans and blurring the line between performer and audience and allowing them to meld and create something new in that in-between space that we occupy as performers.

Love. Connecting people. Creating something in that in-between space. It drives me crazy when churchy people think they have a corner on this, because they don't, and all too often we spend so much time and effort putting up walls and worrying over the details that we lose the plot entirely. Let us open our hearts and our doors and rejoice with all that is Love, wherever it appears.

blue

The Blue Mosque in Istanbul is a major architectural landmark that can hold 10,000 people, has six minarets, and is bathed in blue light at night.

The Blue Mosque in Zürich is hidden in among some taller apartment buildings, hosts up to 200, has no minarets (they're famously forbidden here), and is painted cornflower blue.

Blaue Moschee Merkez, Zürich

This the kids and I learned today at the Tag der offenen Moscheen (Mosque open house day?). They were not exactly overrun with visitors: when we were there it was me and the kids, a couple who live nearby, and two religious studies students. Two very kind men of Turkish descent showed us around and sat and talked with us over tea and cake. It was kind of stark and very obviously a converted space, but the cushy carpet everywhere and the sincere welcome made it easy to see how this unassuming building would be an important part of home for Swiss Muslims and new immigrants.

We heard that one of the main goals of the umbrella association of mosques in Zurich is to get themselves officially recognized as a religious organization so that they can get state support - but this is a status that the Catholics in Zürich only won in 1961 and certain Jewish communities in 2005 (!), so nobody is holding their breath.

On the other hand, they made a point of speaking Hochdeutsch for the benefit of the American; and as we left the man who was showing us around got into a deep discussion with the couple about people they knew in common, so they're way more integrated than I am. I mean, obviously. But also, sigh...

cash

Today we got to properly leave the house for the first time in three days, yay!

There's this building on Dan's commute that from time to time has convoys of police cars in front of it, and for a long time we wondered what it could be...a jail? But it turns out that it's owned by the publishing company Orell Füssli and they print banknotes there. The company traces its roots to Christoph Froschauer, who famously printed Zwingli's Bible translation, and today they had an open house to celebrate 500 years of the printing business. So we got to go inside the building where they print Swiss money! Cool...

They had a Froschauer Bible on display, and a little exhibit of posters and maps that the company had printed.

Here's one for the Swiss rail company, by Swiss graphic designer Hans Erni. Apparently this was before they added the Italian "FFS" to their acronym.

And here's part of an exhibit on banknote printing. The company printed a special commemorative note for their 500th anniversary, and Christopher was sorely disappointed that we couldn't figure out how to acquire one.

Not pictured: in the very slow freight elevator that connected the exhibitions to the cafe, we learned two nicknames for Orell Füessli, Orell Furtzli (Orell farts) and Ohrli Füssli und Schwänzli (ears feet and tail, as in the leftover animal parts you'd get at the butcher). Tee hee.

friday night rambling

In grad school we had a professor who taught molecular biology for engineers, and he was super into making animations for his class...little blobby enzymes happily plugging along the DNA track, doing their particular transcribing duties. Great. He was also super into selling the idea of animations as a teaching tool. Not so great, because it seemed obvious to me that his presentations were successful because he put a lot of thought and work into them and not because they were animated - and that giving animation tools to lesser lecturers with would likely be a time suck that made their bad presentations even worse.

PowerPoint, it seems to me, has the same problem. I wish every instructor for my theology courses could be forced to read Tufte's book on PowerPoint. Which I didn't even like that much, all those years ago when I read it, because I believe that good PowerPoint presentations are possible and useful. But there are so very many terrible ones out there trying to prove me wrong.

For example. I was just looking over the slides for the lecture I missed last night and I cannot tell you what the guy's major point might have been. There are 26 slides about the history and peculiarities of the doctrine of the trinity, and then on the last slide he appears to say, "...and no sane person can possibly understand any of this, so we should just give up and revert back to the God of the Bible, who was unambiguously One."

Don't quote me on that, that's a wild guess. But why should I have to wildly guess? Shouldn't the evening's thesis be obvious even to the language-impaired foreigner who missed the lecture? Darn you, PowerPoint.

It all gives me a headache, anyway. If God is the name we give to the thing so big we can't hope to conceive of it, then there are no wrong answers - just an enormous set of pictures and approximations that are true only to the extent that they help us become better individuals and a better human race. God is one, God is three, God is many, there is no God - all true! Can't we all just get along??

I'm seriously considering Pastafarianism.