New Chapters and What Hinders

 I had an odd dream last night I want to discuss to preface today's thought.  In the dream, I had to spend three days in what was essentially a detention center.   I was assigned to a bunk in a large room, and other bunks in it were partitioned off with plexiglass.  When I went to settle down in my bunk to sleep, I was told by someone to keep my cellphone (which for some reason I was allowed to have) in a secure place, as people could steal it while I slept.  The phone was, interesting enough, on my wrist.  So, if I recall correctly the dream, I removed the phone and slipped it into a pocket. While not necessarily a bad dream, it is not the most amicable situation to be detained somewhere, and that dream represented some things for me.  When I looked up the symbolism of that, I noticed several things coming to view:

1. Feeling trapped or restricted by a particular situation.

2. Some unresolved guilt.

3. A perceived loss of freedom through circumstance.

4. Anxieties about being judged.

5. Self-imposed limitations.

6. Inner factors that may be hindering or restricting progress in life.

It is no small secret that I especially can relate to the first one over the past few months.  After having a move that was beyond our control, I had to relocate to a whole new city, and begin to rebuild a life I once had and was used to.  It has had challenges, and in all honesty the place I live now is not my ideal. However, on the positive, I am working in a job that is an actual vocation now, and I am making the best income I have in ages, so that is a nice benefit.  And, the income I am provided has helped with some rebuilding (although I still have work to do yet).  In casual conversation with Barbara yesterday, she reminded me that I am where I am by design, and I am destined to be there a while.  But, naturally, I have questions as it is a bit to take in.  And, that is why I am talking about this today. 

Hindrances are a pain in the backside but they are also a fact of life.  And, I feel some now, several as a matter of fact.  When one starts over in life, you have things to face, things to overcome, and things to achieve, and all of that is where I am at right now personally.  The prison dream last night symbolizes the limitations I am facing, but also the fact that they are temporary and won't be forever.  Even now, I am at a point where I can think about something I only dreamed about in years previous - owning my own home.  I have a decent income, a decent credit rating, and also I have a couple of areas of prime interest to me that I can consider buying properties.  However, that too is a process, and I won't get a home overnight.  But I can begin the process of moving toward the goal.  And, that is where overcoming some limitations - especially that of my own impatience at times - comes in handy.  

I have talked a lot in the past months about the new chapter I am coming into in life, and at this point if it were a literal book I would still be in the middle of the opening paragraph of it.  I am in what is called a sort of transitional/recovery phase, as the previous years were a bit challenging and I am in this place due to things that happened then.  Some of what happened was due to my own lack of planning and mistakes, while other aspects of it were things beyond my control.  But, I am at this place now.  And, as I have learned, what happens in life is not an accident, although there are times we miss a turn and have to go on a detour to get back on track again.  I have heard it said that when you think life is falling apart, in reality it is God making everything fall into place.  That is perhaps the mentality I should have as I navigate through a lot right now. 

Entering into a new chapter can be a scary thing, and what has happened in my life just over the past 11 months has been a paradigm shift in life for me - the life I had before, a life I had settled into over a period of about 32 years - has changed.  In the process I lost a lot, and I have had to adjust to a different standard of life for the interim that I was not expecting.  But, I survived it, and as the dust begins to settle I will begin to see things fall into place.  My late spiritual mentor and friend, Fr. Eusebius Stephanou, was once fond of saying in both his writings and his messages that "Man's disappointments are God's appointments."  He may have been onto something.  The last time I went through a radical shift like this was 33 years ago, and it took a little over a year to get back on track again but I eventually did.  The difference this time is that I have a lot more thankfully to work with, and it is making the process a lot more smoother than I had anticipated.  Being older when facing things tends to make one think more rationally, and I would have to say I am handling this better at 55 now than I would have at 20.  So, I want to review myself now a bit to just share what has fundamentally changed in the past year.

From roughly 1998 up to 2020, I worked in the corporate world, and to be honest while the jobs I had did create a level of predictability and security, they were just that, jobs. Prior to 1998, most of my work was limited to landscaping at first, then moving up to restaurant prep cook work, and then to working as a security officer - jobs like that got me through my undergraduate tenure in college in all honesty.  I supplemented those types of jobs then with being an itinerant minister for the Pentecostal denomination I was part of, and although I never got rich from doing that, it was fulfilling.  Then, after almost 8 months of no work in early 1998, I finally got an office job, and I did office work as an administrative professional for the better of 32 years until COVID-19 happened and I was laid off from the last position like that I worked, which entailed data entry at a large bank in Frederick, MD.  In the ensuing years, up until the end of 2024, I was doing two things - pursuing my doctorate, and also finally able to use the paralegal certificate I had earned earlier in 2006 by performing as a freelance virtual paralegal for a budding company.  Once I earned the doctorate though, I felt a career change was afoot, and only three months after earning that I ended up in my first full-time teaching position, which is where I am at now.  For once, I feel like I am in a vocation instead of a job, and while it has its share of stress (especially last year - my goodness!) it also has a lot of wonderful rewards too.  My new vocation as a full-time teacher is an integral part of this new chapter I am settling into, and I have a feeling it will be a major part of my story from this point. 

I have come a long way from when I earned my first official paycheck working alongside my dad in the maintenance department of the Holiday Inn on Jekyll Island, GA, back when I was only 19 years old and fresh out of high school.  That is almost 40 years ago now, as since then I went through a variety of positions rising up the occupational ladder.  I earned my first chef's certificate in 1992, thanks in part to a free program in the state of Alabama called JTPA, and later I would acquire a class-D security license three years later while working for a large Florida megachurch.  11 years after that, I completed a paralegal studies course by correspondence and earned a certificate in that as well, although it would be many years (13 to be exact) before I could use it.  And, in the midst of the 36 years between earning my high school diploma until now, I completed a complete college education with three degrees - a BA, an MA, and a Ph.D.  Every aspect of my life was ordered in those steps one way or another, and completing all those opened the door to the next chapter in life, where I am at now.  I have some feelings to share about that, so let me do so.

The journey of life is for a reason, and just like a literal book it has chapters we live out.  You know you are at the end of a chapter when it seems like all of a sudden there is a disconnect between your previous life and what you are entering into now.  Some things cannot be done the same way anymore, and there are adjustments to make.  Those are the opening sentences of a new chapter in one's life, and they are not always easy.  The old phrase "new levels, new devils" applies in that with every milestone one faces a new set of different challenges, some of which perhaps they had never encountered before. And, that can be scary.  However, the feeling of overcoming a challenge is also something that defies description too, and it is a good feeling that is similar to when a firefighter successfully puts out a five-alarm fire - you may feel exhausted, but now you can rest easier knowing that hurdle has been overcome.  I know all these feelings well, because I have went through them very recently in all honesty, and it can be a lot to digest.  However, as I have also noted before, often in retrospect you see how it all fits together - it may be a bit murky now, but in the long run it makes sense.  Let that encourage those going through these sort of chapter-like transitions today.

Thanks again for allowing me to share, and will see you next time. 

Feelings of Discovery

 I wasn't planning on writing again in August, but I wanted to actually share just a few things, as the "feelings of discovery," as I call them, have been making themselves present recently.  I am not totally sure of what it all means yet, but for the most part I am actually feeling good about things.

In our grade-level faculty meeting today, our team lead - a sweet lady named Miss Myers who teaches 11th-grade English - posed a question to us as a group activity.  The question was something like, "if you were to describe the beginning of the year as weather, what would yours be?"  For some, it was a sunny day, although the history teacher had a more grim forecast of hurricanes and destruction which caused us all to have a good chuckle.  My answer however was interesting - I said mine was like this dry, dusty condition which is now starting to get the first sprinkles of a good spring rain.  The question our faculty team lead posed was an interesting one, and it made me pause to think a little about how things have been over the years. 

I have talked I think before of dreams I have had on several occasions about tornadoes and floods.  The most hair-raising dream I had about a tornado was several years back, when in the dream my great-grandmother and my mother were alive, and we were in a car traveling.  As with many dreamscapes, the scene was a sort of amalgamation of the country roads of my youth and a little bit of the I-4 corridor between Lakeland and Tampa in Florida, and on the horizon I recall this huge tornado - it was black, and it was perhaps bigger than any actual twister in history has ever been - it looked like it had a diameter of several miles, and it was looming right in front of us.  Mom, Granny, and I were in a car traveling in this dream, and we managed to avoid the storm somehow but at the same time we knew we needed to get home fast.  In the dream, what was representative of Granny's house sat at the intersection of two roads, and there was not a tree in sight and in many respects it didn't look anything like Granny's actual old house in Hendricks, WV, but rather had a similar setup to my grandmother Elsie's house that used to be in Augusta, but it looked a lot nicer.  We got into the house just in time, and I remember that big twister of monumental and colossal diameter going right by the living room window, where a rocking chair sat parallel to the window looking out, and it did not even touch the house yet I saw how scary it was up-close - it was pitch-black, ominous, and just not something I would ever want to face in real life.  As scary and formidable as it looked though, it never touched or harmed us.  A second and similar dream I had at another time I cannot recall offhand entailed my living in this beautiful house - it had a nice porch with French doors, and at the end of the yard was open water - a bay I believe.  In the dream, there was a huge tidal wave coming, and to the right of the house was a spillway with a concrete pavement.  The floods came, and the wave towered over the house about 500 feet - it was huge and scary.  And, from up the spillway came another rushing torrent of water too, and both of them hit the yard. The steps to my front porch became waterfront property, but again the flood never touched the house itself except now the front door had to be accessed by boat.  Considering all I have been through and what has happened over the past several years, this is where I have a "feeling of discovery," and our faculty relational exercise sort of sparked how this fit together.  Let me explain.

When you dream of storms or floods - particularly whirlwinds like monster tornadoes - it is a sign that something is about to rock your world.  I have had more than one dream about scary tornadoes, as well as a couple about mega-tsunami floods, and at the time I had many of these dreams I was in a good place.  However, a sense of foreboding always gripped me with a dream like that, and later I would understand why.  As I mentioned, in the past few years my world has been rocked in so many ways - a year ago this week, as a matter of fact, I was in danger of being thrown out of our house because my money had dried up and I had no way to pay rent.  On October 5 in a little over a month from now, Barbara and I will commemorate that happening.  After enduring a divorce, the death of both my parents and then my last grandparents, and then after being forced out of our house I went through about 2 weeks of relying upon God's mercies to provide for me (and he did).  In addition, I got my doctorate but it was not the way I imagined that either - no ceremony, no significant memory, or nothing.  Then, I started a new job, moved to Baltimore with two new roommates who to that point were strangers, and it felt like my whole world was turned inside out.  I lost a lot, and even now I am still trying to piece some things together, but I am still here.  The storms of life came, they really gave me a whisker-whipping, and I thought I was going under so many times, but here I am.  And, now a new chapter is opening itself, and it's a good chapter - I am settled into my new role as a teacher, and I feel my "groove" so to speak now, and it may be possible for me to purchase a house soon.  The "feeling of discovery" here is a new land, and I am like the first settler in this new land, and as the new chapter starts to really open up I will discover much.  I did get some wounds yes, and I feel the exhaustion of the past year catching up to me as I am now having some health challenges I never anticipated, but I believe I am a better person coming through it.  So, let's talk about that feeling of discovery.

I am a pilgrim of faith, as my Christian walk relies on God's grace like a car relies on gasoline to operate. Part of a pilgrim's journey is coming into a new land, settling it, and taming it to turn it into something great.  I feel like a pioneer who is starting to upgrade the lean-to I was living in to an actual log cabin now, and building a house - even in an allegorical sense like this - takes a lot.  Knowing the "lay of the land" is vital, and I am still scouting some areas of the new territory out in all honesty.  After all, even looking at this big city of Baltimore here, it took a couple of centuries to grow from what was essentially an Indian boat dock to one of the largest cities in America.  The Baltimore of 1600 would look totally different than the Baltimore of 2025, namely because the Baltimore of 1600 did not exist.  My new frontier in life didn't exist a few years ago either, but here I am taming and claiming it.  There is still much more to discover,  but I am on a path of discovery, so we will see where that goes. 

Thank you for allowing me to share, so as you prepare to celebrate the long weekend with your families, may it be blessed, and will see you next time. 

Back to School

 My weeks have gotten much busier beginning this week, as the school year officially starts at the Catholic high school where I teach in Baltimore.  I know that many kids dread school starting, as many of us also did when we were kids, but in a way teachers have that same feeling.  It isn't that we hate our jobs - teaching is not a mere job, but a vocation, and many hours go into it outside the classroom too - but just that getting back into the routine, anticipating what the new kids this year will be like, and so many other normal feelings go into play with this.  That is frankly true when one starts any job, be it a prep cook in a restaurant or a corporate executive in an high-rise office.  There is natural apprehension, but the good thing is that it does quickly dissipate too.  Let me explain.

Today, I taught the first classes of the year with a totally new group of 11th graders, and while I was expecting some challenges out of them similar to some I had last year, in all honesty it went surprisingly well!  Turns out they are generally a decent group of kids, and I am teaching four classes this year in my subject area, with my fifth class being a study hall. The study hall consists of a group of my former students from last year, but they were not bad either - most of them were some of my better students from last year, and even the more "spirited" ones were nothing I couldn't handle.  I do have the challenge this year though of being what is called the "hopper" - what that means is that I don't have my own classroom, but rather teach my five classes in different classrooms while maintaining a desk in an office for a base.  That will prove a little different, but to be honest I am looking forward to a little more variety this year.  If the rest of the year goes as nice as the first day, I am thinking this will be a good year.  Of course, I also went into it with a good attitude too, and that helps as well.  We have some new and better systems in place this year, and it has somewhat streamlined our work a little better - the new principal that started this year really has a vision for the school, and he is implementing some new stuff that will make less stress for the teachers as well as helping the students be more committed to learning.  These are good things, and I am fully supportive.  I am looking for the following year into some other opportunities however if God opens a door for that, including possibly teaching overseas, but if God wills for me to commit a third year here, I can do that as well.  God's plan is ultimately the perfect plan, and either way it always works out.   I will deal with the specifics of that some other time however. 

Realizing the effort that goes into starting a new school year from a teacher's perspective has made me appreciate my former teachers more.  There is a lot invested into lesson planning, making sure that the students can understand the material, and then there are the creation of exams, coming up with syllabi and annual plans for the school administration, and then the meetings - it is a lot for sure.  And, with our particular school, we don't have a substitute teaching program in place, so if a teacher is out, one of us that is open will be scheduled to cover that particular class.  For the most part, coverage is not a bad thing - you don't do actual teaching (unless you know the subject area) and the regular teacher often leaves their instructions and all the students have to do is the assigned work they have.  While initially it seems like a pain in the neck, in reality it is not that bad, and it can be an opportunity for the covering teacher to catch up on some of their grading and other stuff they need to do.  And, that leads me to another discussion.

Last year, I came in during the middle of a semester, so I was sort of proverbially "thrown to the wolves."  With no textbook to work with, I had to pull off some meatball surgery that would make the fictional Hawkeye Pierce from the old TV classic M.A.S.H.proud.  The chaotic introduction of my first year teaching led to some problems to say the least - I was dealing with discipline issues and other things that frankly caused me sleep problems and other things.  A lot of it was an imperfect system and also having to go it alone for the most part.  Thankfully though, we ended up getting a very capable department chair, and she did wonders streamlining us - that lady doesn't realize what an answer to prayer she truly is!  Being she came into the picture later than I did, she had challenges ahead of her too, but she, to use the vernacular, "kicked butt and took names," and we are now a more cohesive department as a result. However, the one benefit of having to design my own curriculum is that I was able to essentially author my own study guide, and an idea occurred to me that I want to share here now. 

The Theology course I teach 11th-graders is called "Sacraments and Theology," and it focuses on two seemingly disconnected areas but that are fundamental to an understanding of Catholic theology.  Our courses at the school I teach follow a structure similar to many other conventional Catholic education curriculum programs - one year is Jesus and the Scriptures, the next is Jesus Christ and His Church, third is mine, Sacraments and Theology, and the fourth year is a course on Catholic social teaching. When we were in our department meeting on Thursday, a realization hit me - those four courses are designed around the four major documents of Vatican II.  Those four documents, known as Constitutions, are centered on these four aspects.  For the first course, Christ in the Scriptures, the focal document would be Dei Verbum.  For Christ and His Church, it would be Lumen Gentium.  For my course, Sacraments and Theology, it would be Sacrosanctum Concilium.  Finally, for the fourth-year Catholic social teaching course, the document Gaudium et Spes.  When you start thinking of Catholic theological education that way, then you see how it fits together.  This is actually a lesson I want to give my kids tomorrow as a matter of fact as a sort of introduction to the course.  Even as I write this now my wheels are turning as to how to present it, and it's actually kind of an epiphany moment for me.  The Dogmatic Constitutions of Vatican II, in essence, did not change Church teaching on anything - it just created a digestible framework that even the layperson could appreciate.  So, despite if someone is a TLM traditionalist or a more modern-thinking progressive Catholic, this is still the framework that is supposed to govern them theologically.  Now, I am ready to teach that tomorrow!

Those were just a few insights I had that I wanted to share from today, and hopefully for my fellow educators reading this - anyone from the volunteer parish catechist to the university professor - it will prove valuable in some way.  Perhaps some can even refine the idea a bit, and that may catch something I could be missing also.  Any rate, with a busier schedule now, I will not be writing as prolifically as I did during the summer, but perhaps a weekly insight will still be possible.  Thanks again for allowing me to ramble, and I will see you next time!  

Forgetfulness: Blessing or Curse?

 A trait of human nature is the tendency to forget things.  Let's face it - we have all forgotten something at some point, right?  As we get older and things slow down, forgetfulness becomes more frequent.  It is intensified with unfortunate conditions like Alzheimer's disease and dementia in elderly people, but even a perfectly mentally cognizant older person can have days of forgetfulness too.  What is this forgetfulness, and why do we have it at times? 

This is a multifaceted topic, as for one forgetfulness is a reminder of our own finite existence - we are not immortal in a physical sense, and being forgetful is part of the process of aging.  It is also a consequence of the Fall in Genesis 3 as well, and as such it is connected to concupiscent nature in humanity.  However, this does not make forgetfulness a bad thing, because in some ways it may actually be a safety mechanism God gave us to protect us.  Let me get into that a bit.

Just because something is forgotten does not mean it is necessarily lost forever.  Our memories are always part of us, and we can picture our minds and souls as being like a huge archive.  Some things may be buried, they may be faded a little, but they are there somewhere.  Often, a stimulus can cross our path which for some reason refreshes that old memory, and it is like an epiphany moment for us when we think, "Oh yeah, I remember that now!"  And, let's face it too, some things are better left forgotten, as they could also evoke some painful memories and feelings, so in that aspect it is a mercy we have to forget.  Also, God makes forgetfulness a virtue in some cases as well - even he "forgets" our past sins if we come to him in repentance and receive his grace to do that.  That is a key fact of the Sacrament of Baptism in the Church - it washes away our original sins, and it as is if we never had them.  Likewise, the Sacrament of Confession we should receive as often as we can does the same thing with subsequent sins committed after our baptism.  Grace, therefore, uses our own innate capacity to forget things as a tool.  So, when we are met with the old axiom "Confession is good for the soul," it truly is.  Even if a person is not Catholic, being able to confide in a trusted person about things on one's mind can bring a closure that person desperately needs, and it just helps getting it out there.  While that may seem contradictory to the virtue of forgetfulness, in a lot of ways they go hand-in-hand.  Getting closure and forgetting past disappointments and hurts is restorative, and although the memory is still there somewhere, it is not important anymore once we receive that closure, and therefore it lays forgotten where it should be.  That is virtue of forgetfulness.

Obviously, forgetfulness has its negative side too, like everything else.  For instance, if you forget to turn off the coffee maker when you leave for work of a morning, it can lead to a disaster like a house fire.  Or, if you forget to take vital medication, it can lead to a health emergency.   To counter that, this is why it is important to write everything down - keep journals, write in calendars, and although it can be a bit cluttered, even resort to Post-It notes if it helps. A journal is particularly good, in that often even writing down the bad stuff that occurs in our lives helps us to have closure too, and as I have talked about many times, often in retrospect we find the overall reason God allowed those things to happen to us. So, even negative memories are not necessarily bad, and if you document those too it can be a way of finalizing your freedom from them.  Being the fastidious bureaucrat that I am, I have meticulously kept records of everything over the years.  For the past 30 years I have kept a journal, for instance, and I also have kept tax records going back to my first paid job as well as bank registers, calendars I have had since high school, and other documentation.  While I don't keep every piece of paper that crosses my path - I do a cleanout every year of my files and discard receipts and other stuff I don't need that is over 2 years old, for instance - I do keep the important stuff, those records that can be used to know me after my passing at some point in the next decades.  So, I have put in place a safety net that if I forget something, I can easily reference it through a series of ordered records I have kept up for years.  There are a couple of takeaways now I want to note, and then we will wrap up the discussion for today.

As a normal person going through your routine of everyday life, it is not necessary to recall every minute detail of your life for every moment. If we did that, our brains would probably explode.  That is where documentation comes into play.  For those details we don't use every day and cannot recall at a moment's notice, we have a documented record of it to remind us when it becomes necessary.  With the increased availability of online resources now, it has become even more accessible as a couple of clicks on a computer screen can bring up any piece of information we have collected (provided it has been digitized) and that makes life more manageable.  However, in many cases, forgetfulness is also a good thing - putting things in our memory archive within us means that they can no longer affect our quality of life, especially the negative things.  The memories are still there for sure, but they are just tucked away and we live our lives without needing to recall them.  That again is a mercy that supernatural grace gives us with our own cognitive abilities and limitations.  

That being said, not everything we forget is necessarily a bad thing - sometimes it is for the best.  So, as we continue our pilgrimage of life on this earth, let us learn to document what is important, not worry about what is not, and even with bad memories we often have good retrospection.  Thanks again for allowing me to share with you. 

Getting Back to Work

 I am sitting in the combination gymnasium/auditorium/cafeteria area of the high school I teach at, and we are on an extended lunch today during our faculty orientation week.  It is a bit to get back into the routine again after a two-month break, and actual class starts next week.  However, I am optimistic about the coming year.

I spent the first part of my extended lunch procuring my textbooks as well as making a visit across the street to the little Polish market - very interesting little store, and they have some of the best chocolates and cookies there, as well as a delicious barbecue seasoning that I have come to use on almost everything. It is a small indulgence to visit that market on lunch hours during a busy class day.  We are spending the week this week in some talks, a bit of relational activities, and some general onboarding for the coming year, and for the most part it is low-stress and actually quite pleasant.  It is also a way for those of us who are faculty to bond and come together informally, and that is nice too.  I wanted to talk a little about one of the relational activities though that was of tremendous interest, and it was sort of enlightening as well. 

The activity was led by the 9th-grade science teacher, and it had to do with contemporary kids' slang terms that to be honest I was not really all that familiar with.  For instance, how did I know that the word "tea" meant gossip, with "hot tea" being good gossip and "cold tea" being bad (what does "iced tea" mean, I wonder - that is worth exploring).  There are some terms I have some familiarity with, such as "ghosting," which is essentially a complete block or cancellation of someone, usually within the context of social media.  However, many of these terms are like speaking a new language - I can understand my Filipino friends speaking Tagalog or Visayan better than that actually.  I thought it worth mentioning because every generation has its slang terms they use - for Gen-X the words "chill" and "crusty" were some of our most-utilized phraseology.  However, to previous generations the current lingo may be a bit of an adjustment to understand.  

With the maintenance guy moving some things around and doing things here, there is not much else I can say for today as it is a bit distracting with everything going on.  However, I will try to return soon with something more insightful.  See you next visit. 

The Story of Valentina's Uncle

 

When I was around 11 years old, I lived in a battered old blue-and-white trailer in the town of Kirby, WV, with my mother.  We were extremely poor, and during the summers in particular I had to find ways to occupy my time as there was not a lot of connectivity then with the wider world.  One of the things we got as a sort of blessing were a huge number of old magazines - Time, Newsweek, and Reader's Digest.  I was an avid reader then, and there were some especially good stories that caught my attention in Reader's Digest back in the day.  One of those features the magazine had was a lengthy book review of some new release that caught the reviewer's attention.  Many of these books were somewhat obscure to most - one particularly good one was Jacobo Timerman's book Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number. Timerman, a Argentine-born Jewish author, was a victim of the various factions of the Peron regime (it was one of the movements that had both a "right-wing" and a "left-wing," and neither were that great as far as ideology was concerned) and he was imprisoned at different times by both of those factions.  His book is a sort of journal of his prison experience, and it leaves nothing to the imagination - the man really suffered.  I now have a copy of that book behind me on my bookshelf, and I am actually encouraging my 11th graders I teach to read it as an extra credit project.  Another book of interest that was featured in a 1980 issue of Reader's Digest was published in 1981 by Gerda S. Mathan, a noted educator and photographer at the time.  Mathan took an interest in some accounts a colleague of hers by the name of Valentina Zavarin, a Russian emigre who had earned her Ph.D.,  at the university they both taught at.   Mathan initially proposed doing a photo essay of Valentina's five little children, but Valentina had another idea - she asked if Mathan would mind doing some photos of her aging uncle, a Russian immigrant named Vadim Shepkin, who at this time was 92 and lived in California if I recall correctly.  As Mathan got to know the elderly gentleman, her initial portrait project grew into a photo essay that she would later publish in book form, and thus that is how Valentina's Uncle became a published work.

Vadim Shepkin was a man who had lived a pretty amazing life overall.  He was born when Russia still had a Czar, but later he became part of the October Revolution and for a time was an enthusiastic Leninist until he was later disillusioned by the sheer cruelty of Stalin and then immigrated to the US in 1950. In his later years too, he also became intensely religious as a devout Orthodox Christian, and his pride and joy was the herd of cats and his numerous fruit trees he planted in his yard.  The sad part of the story came when Vadim was no longer able to care for himself, so he had to leave his beloved house and became a resident in the local nursing home.  Not long after, he passed away, but thankfully his legacy lives on thanks to this book and also his great-nieces and nephews, who are all probably in their late 40s and early 50s now, as some of them were younger than me. It is this last part I wanted to spend some time talking about, as it sort of goes along the theme of my thoughts as of late.

Vadim's demise was sad, and Mathan did such an amazing job on the book that you feel that melancholy when he is no longer to live independently.  She documents how the empty house deteriorates, and even how a small child living next door said "who will pick the fruit now?"  It is really a powerful documentary of the life of a unique man who otherwise would have been forgotten as just another old immigrant in California.  Vadim Shepkin is the type of person I wish I would have known, as I feel there was a lot of wisdom contained in that old man's mind.  Reading stuff like this always has a certain level of resonance with me, as we can all see ourselves in him if we look close enough.  Especially as many of us get older ourselves.  I know for a fact that after age 50 I started thinking about things I never gave much thought to before - after losing both my parents within 5 years, experiencing a divorce, and even losing a home recently, it made me think more about legacy - what legacy will I leave?  Vadim Shepkin was blessed to have a niece who had the foresight to enlist a friend of hers to document some precious moments of his life, and also who was there for him when he needed people to care for him.  As it seems that he had no children of his own, the mantle of preserving his legacy fell upon his niece, and now it falls upon her children, who as I mentioned would be close to my age now.  Hopefully they passed this on to their kids and grandkids, so that Vadim Shepkin will have immortality in the best way that can be done - tell his story.  

There is a lot more that could be said about this book, but it is definitely worth a read.  Copies of it are quite rare to find now, although I have had success on both Amazon and Ebay.  I have with me now the second copy of it I ever owned, and even as I write this now I am thinking of ways it could be used to create other discussions.  It pays sometimes to look in unexpected places for the rarest treasures, and I thank God for bringing that issue of Reader's Digest to me when I was an 11-year-old kid stuck in a poverty-stricken home in a small West Virginia town.  Although over the years I had forgotten the story, it was maybe about 10 years ago a thought of it had crossed my mind, and it took a while to remember the title but I did find it.  It now keeps a good place in my library, and maybe something in it can be used to inspire others.

Thank you for allowing me to share yet again, and will see you soon. 

Loving When A Plan Comes Together

 For folks of my generation, the 1980s was an interesting time for television.  At the time, many houses either got reception from a local cable provider (the "struttin' in high cotton" upper-class option then) or they were forced to wrestle a 30-foot monstrosity on the side of the house called an aerial antenna.  With the latter, if you were lucky you could pick up three local stations, which ironically were the three major TV networks of the time (ABC, NBC, and CBS).  So, prime-time TV was a big thing then.  For most of us, it consisted of some classic shows - The Dukes of Hazzard, MacGyver, and sitcoms such as The Golden Girls.  One particular show that was considered the most popular show of the decade was The A-Team, which centered around a quartet of four soldiers-of-fortune who were hired guns inadvertently protecting the "little guy" who was terrorized by a formidable antagonist.  The "team" was made up of handsome front-man "Face," eccentric former combat pilot Murdock, hulking muscle B.A. Baracus (played by Mr. T), and their leader, a cunning, resourceful former military colonel named "Hannibal" Smith, played by the late actor George Peppard.  Always with a smug self-assured and cocky grin with a cigar hanging out of his mouth, Hannibal always directed these operations with the efficiency of a well-armed guerilla leader, and at the end of every episode, when his team had successfully defeated a potential societal threat, Hannibal would nonchalantly grin and say "I love it when a plan comes together."  That phrase came to mind today as I considered my own situation, as looking back on a lot of things a lot is now unfolding to make perfect sense.  

We as human beings are noted to make plans, strategies, and objectives in our personal lives - it is part of the creative ability God gave us to distinguish us from the rest of creation, and the reason why in the earliest chapters of Genesis he bestowed Adam and his descendants (us) with dominion over the earth. However, in Genesis 3 a catastrophic thing happened - Eve ate of a fruit she was coerced by a supposed serpent into doing, then she gave it to Adam, and it was a flagrant act of disobedience against a God who had already given them all the hollow promises that Satan, in the form of that serpent, used to manipulate mankind into rebellion against God.  This led to the Fall, and human beings in subsequent generations paid for that with the attribute of concupiscence, and it made us limited.  Therefore, another consequence of the Fall is our glaring imperfections, both as a race and as individuals.  This means that sometimes, despite how detailed and failsafe our own plans are, they fall short.  That is God's reminder that he is there to guide us, and we would do well to rely on that.  Looking at Hannibal Smith's closing affirmation at the end of every A Team episode, I am reminded of something else I learned very recently that relates to it - often, when we rely on God's guidance, there may be some rough terrain to navigate, and when it seems like things are falling apart, they are actually falling into place.  A lot of times, it will only be through retrospection we see it, as our fallen state has made us rather dense when it comes to seeing the obvious sometimes, and if we had seen the obvious, it would have saved us a lot of trouble.  Thing is, the obvious is usually there, but our own blinders of concupiscence blind us to it.  This is where we need God more than anything.  That little devotional lesson prefaces what I wanted to talk about today.

My own plan, to use Hannibal Smith's rationale, has been coming together before my own nose without me even seeing it yet.  There were signs - there always are - about the direction we need to take, but often we dismiss them as the after-affect of spicy pepperoni on the cheap Little Caesar's pizza we had for supper out of the desire of not wanting to cook.  In a very specific case in my own life, I have seen signs for things for years, and only recently have they started actually making sense.  Let me tell the story.

The city of Baltimore has had a connection with our family that stretches back at least four generations. It started with the Appalachian migrations of the late 1940s and still is relevant today, although less so now.  Many poor West Virginia families came here to seek opportunity, since Baltimore was the closest urban center (well, there is Pittsburgh too, but for some reason it never had the attraction for our folks like Baltimore did) and offered many opportunities.  As a result, a subculture blossomed in this city that we created, and even when some of the older generation, financially secure enough to retire, returned home to the small towns in our state, they brought this Baltimore experience with them.  My family was no different in all honesty, and Baltimore played a big part in our collective family history as well as in mine personally.  Our family became so ensconced here as a matter of fact that many of my cousins were born and raised here, so we have a sort of sanguine beachhead in the area.  While many of the third- and fourth- generation cousins I have are now comfortably settled in suburbs outside the city in communities like Elkridge and Cockeysville, they all started here, and that start was due to their West Virginia grandparents coming here and settling in areas like Irvington and Pigtown in the western reaches of the municipal limits. Like many of my cousins, I too had some roots here too - I wasn't born here or anything, and in all honesty my stay here as a child was brief, but it was still a part of my story.  50 years ago at around this time, Mom and I traveled up from Georgia after she and Dad had a very intense separation, and in Dad's old white van Mom had taken, we traveled until we found a place to stay with my aunt Ruth and two of her younger kids, my cousins Greg and Gayle.  Ruth, who we all affectionately called "Aunt Pip," was at the time not in the best of health - she had multiple sclerosis and was largely bedridden and communicated in almost unintelligible words.  Often, if she was trying to get someone's attention - either Mom's, my cousin Greg's, or the visiting nurse, a kindly older Black lady we called Ms. Patrick - she would become frustrated as her brain didn't allow her to form the words she needed, and she would cry - looking back on that, I really felt bad for her, and I remember as a precocious 5-year-old asking Mom, "Why is Aunt Pip so sad Mom?"  During our sojourn in the city, we lived in three different rowhouses - all of them looking somewhat similar to the one I am sitting in now writing this - and I had begun my formal education as a kindergarten student at Steuart Hill Academy over on Gilmor Street, about a mile and a half west of where I am at now.  Even after moving away a time later, we still visited family here for many years. Baltimore was a part of the story now for me, but had been for at least a good 20 years prior to me being there. Like many things in our subconscious mind, Baltimore added itself to my memory bank, and over the years many dreams about being here have been part of my sleep experience.  A lot of times I just dismissed them as nice but insignificant things that probably consisted of my mind cobbling a lot of different and unconnected things together to create something, but then came the deja vu moments - I have had several of those.  And, beginning as early as 1997, Barbara and I were actually looking here to move and re-establish our lives, a choice we finally sort of acted on in 2016 as we began planning to make it happen - it did on New Year's Eve of 2016, our last day after 27 years in Florida, and within one week I was living in Maryland again, the first time in about 42 years.  At that point, it was just Hagerstown, but I was back where I believed I belonged anyway.  Dismissing those old Baltimore dreams as being somewhat satisfied by our move to Hagerstown, I didn't think more about them until I realized I was still having the dreams.  Then came 2024, when a culmination of things thrust us into moving here - losing our house, getting a new job in the city, and earning my long-sought Ph.D.  Almost a year later, here I sit, in the midst of eastern Baltimore, in the heart of the city, and that leads to more pertinent observations.

This part of Baltimore I am sitting in now - it is a neighborhood called Harwood, approximately 30 blocks from downtown and also 5 minutes from the main Johns Hopkins University Campus just to the west of here - was not my ideal location.  I had to take it because of time constraints.  First, I was living at a Motel 6 in October of last year and needed a house fast as my options were dwindling.  Second, I landed what was essentially my dream job, as a teacher at a very prominent Jesuit high school over in Fells Point (1.5 miles away) and needed to be closer to get the job.  The neighborhood we are in is not by any means the best - a couple of blocks south is an area known for drug trafficking, and the urban blight in this part of the city is like a foreign country almost.  The rowhouse we live in is also not my dream home - it is over 100 years old, and it really needs a lot of work, especially after a car slammed into the front of it a month ago.  Also, my job has its challenges too - I have had a well-earned three months of paid vacation, but frankly the previous school year was intense and I am a bit apprehensive at what I am going to have to deal with when the new school year begins a week from Monday.  However, on the positive, I have a good position overall, and it provides me with perhaps the highest salary I have ever earned, and financially I am in a good place.  And, as of late, no actual dreams about Baltimore itself as I am actually here now.  The pieces are falling into place - or the plan is coming together, if you will - for a new chapter here, and I am about to move into the next phase of the plan but have learned to let God guide my steps as I am at a point where one misstep could lead to catastrophe as things are still a bit fragile. However, there are ideas, and I want to briefly share them.

The Baltimore dreams I had were never about this inner-city area where I am sitting now - most of them entailed a suburban home somewhere but the settings of the area were inescapable; it was definitely Baltimore.  For the first time in my own life, I can start to contemplate home ownership, and am beginning to look into that.  Much like my cousins had astutely done, I am looking to get out of the city and move to a nicer area that is more conducive to my personal lifestyle, and it looks like I can start to make that happen.  At this point, I am in touch with both a realtor and a mortgage lender, and they are helping me to get the wheels turning to make things happen.  Getting into a nice place of my own like that would be the fulfillment of those dreams, and that is why as I look at the house listings the realtor gives me, I am looking for that house.  This also calls on God's taciturn direction as well, as I really want to do this right too.  I know this will not be an overnight process, but I think I can make it happen, so we will see what happens.

In conclusion, I believe that getting my own home here in a place that has haunted my dreams for years will be an example of the plan coming together, and things falling into place for me.  I know some reading this are facing similar situations.  You may be scared out of your wits and not have a clue as to what to do, and that is where you rely on God even more for the answer.  Your plans are not falling apart, but God is looking at them, tweaking them here and there a bit to line up with what he wills, and in no time your doors will open too.  So, be encouraged by that today, and I will keep you updated on how my plan is coming together, with all the pieces falling into place as they should.  Thank you until next time.