In Angry Jesus’ Off-Center Gaze

October 26, 2008 in Personal Reflection
Tags: angry, center, eastern, gaze, icon, jesus, off-, orthodox

One religious icon displays itself prominently in my cozily-sized bedroom. I call it a lowercase him, and I introduce him to friends as Angry Jesus.

Strictly speaking, Angry Jesus isn’t angry. In fact, he’s probably about as far as angry as a lithograph print of an Eastern Orthodox portrait of the Sacred Heart can be. Yet “Angry Jesus” he’ll stay.

Framed within alternating deep hues of red and ochre, Angry Jesus the Icon shouldn’t, by all rights, seem so imposing on my mostly bare walls. He stands, shoulders square with the frame, holding a scroll in one hand, his other hand bent such that ring and pinky fingers touch his thumb.

The whole of the portrait — including his halo, his long, flowing brunette locks and the ever-requisite beard — seems browned and dull, as if viewed through layers of beeswax. In the middle, set off from his colored but drab robes, there’s a shape of a teardrop. In it, shining, polished and slightly curved steel appears to pierce his heart-shaped heart. The rest of the teardrop is filled by appropriately tricolor fire.

Angry Jesus never looks at the eye-level viewer, but instead slightly above and more slightly to the right. I don’t know why, and he offers no ready clues.

He doesn’t appear to smile, laugh, cry, blush, or retort sarcastically to the Pharisees — his mouth is a thin, inexpressive line. His face betrays neither pain nor contemplation.

It’s this face that earns Angry Jesus his epithet. He isn’t angry, by any stretch of either my imagination or what little theology I’ve absorbed, and I call him angry for my tacit fear of the alternative.

For what else explains his expressionless-ness, but sober judgment? What could I have done that has earned me his judgment? — and then a deluge of my deepest memories reminds me.

I don’t think I’ll change his name, anytime soon. Soberly Judgemental Jesus would be a whole lot harder to live with than a mere Angry Jesus.

Five Days Early, or Nearly a Century

September 6, 2008 in The Way It Were
Tags: 11, action, bunau, bush, canal, center, historical, man, men, panama, parallel, phillipe, roosevelt, september, trade, varilla, world, wtc

As I finished reading The Path Between the Seas, a history of the Panama Canal by celebrity historian David McCullough, I came across this Teddy Roosevelt quote toward the end.

Roosevelt, now years out of office, vented his frustration that then-President Wilson had offered Colombia more than $20 million in restitution for America’s appropriation of the Panamanian isthmus in a letter to an old Panama Canal supporter Philippe Bunau-Varilla:

One of the rather contemptible features of a number of our worthy compatriots is that they are eager to take advantage of the deeds of the man of action when action is necessary and then eager to discredit him when the action is once over.

In an essay no greater than 200 words — not including footnotes, citiations or quotes — explain how this does or does not apply to contemporary politics. You have until the end of the period.

Is All This Trouble Really Worth It?

May 28, 2008 in Personal Reflection
Tags: 15, bare, bones, center, committee, do, edublogosphere, education, flair, hate, horrible, i, i hate, imposed, keyboard, legal, maggot, master, mind, minimum, misery, numbing, of, painful, pieces, redo, rot, russian, sadism, self, student, taskstream, tasktream, teacher, teaching, the, tort, ultimatum

I’d fill you in on the details of the meeting that decided I was to redo — depending on how you view it, do in the first place — the TaskStream busywork, except a certain unnamed source specifically requested that I not quote him.

Not that I’m bound by his ultimatum, legally speaking. Any first-year law student could tell you that truth is an absolute defense against libel, the tort most commonly used in cases involving the written media. However, I’ll honor his request.

After explaining to the makeshift committee about my conviction that, for some reason, everyone involved with student teachers I’ve ever met excepting one has decried the “uselessness” — their word and mine — of credential programs, the committee was unconvinced.

I hadn’t taken that TaskStream stuff seriously. After all, all these credential programs lack merit, I quoted. Paraphrased, their response:

Not this one.

There was, admittedly, one quite convincing personal protest by he-who-shall-not-be-named-or-quoted, but I won’t name or quote him, even though it does him an unfair disservice. I’d much rather quote him, to be honest, and if he revokes this stipulation I shall do so willingly and without hesitation.

Suffice it to say that the committee wasn’t amused by my complete lack of regard for the documentation component of my student teaching semester. Expletives had been involved, and I hadn’t bothered to do more than what I thought was the absolute, bare-bones minimum. In effect, one observed:

What kind of teacher only shoots for a two out of four, for barely passing?

My mind flashed back to 15 pieces of flair, and the rot at the center of the maggot.

This meeting was last week.

As of 13 hours, 52 minutes ago, the first half of my student teaching project was officially redone. Mind-gaggingly painful, headache-inducing sadism. Only Russian has strong enough words to describe the pain of my self-imposed misery.

Screw this, he wrote in a moment of undirected anger and frustration. What’s the big deal with teaching, anyway? Why can’t I be a pilot, instead?

Yet I know I’m going to actually do the assignment this time, and do my God’s-honest best. Hell’s bells.