Seattle, Day 1: Above the Clouds

My Seattle trip, as told through my iPhone 3G's pics, videos, and my ramblings. I love clouds. I love when I'm outside and I can look up and see clouds. Huge, billowy clouds. Strange, wispy clouds. Clouds on a sunny day. Clouds on a stormy day. And one of my favorite parts of flying is being able to be, for once, above the clouds. The world-turned-upside change of perspective never ceases to make me press my face up against the airplane's window, just like the eight-year-old in the seat behind me.

I love the way that clouds never fail to awe me, to have me standing looking up at such a crazy paradox: huge, looming mountains of white that seem to dance with ease through the air, moving over me delighted like a prisoner being set free from the chains of the ground. Clouds can make me feel like a kid again, trying to decipher whether this particular cloud looks like an elephant or Bill Murray. They can make a freezing winter day feel, for a moment, like July again, like bright balloons at the summer carnival. They can remind me of a deadly tidal wave, raging toward me in an ominous, dark crest.

I had over 6 hours to stare at these clouds from above and remind myself that no matter how much I act like the universe revolves around me, I'm just a tiny bacteria in a Grand Canyon universe.

Rushmore.

The Starbucks I work at gets a steady stream of angry people. They're not angered over the millions dying from hunger every year.  They're not angered over the hundreds of thousands of women and children being trafficked in the sex slave trade.

They're just angry 'cause they're in a rush.  You'd be surprised at the depths to which people sink when they believe you are impeding the timely progression of their tight schedules.

When I first sat behind the wheel of a car at age 16, the first rule my dad told me was to never drive angry or in a rush.  Now that I'm 24, I realize that the rushing aspect of his rule is probably the most important.  The more you rush, the more angry you get.  The more you rush, the less you pay attention to the little details that are going to keep you from hurting yourself and other people.

Over the last few years, I've developed my own rule: Stop rushing.  Period.  Stop rushing when I'm  driving.  Stop rushing when I'm walking.  Stop rushing when I'm shopping, so I don't get home and realize I bought tomato paste, not tomato soup.  Stop rushing when I'm having a conversation with someone.  Stop overlooking the little details that are going to keep me from hurting myself and other people.

Stop.  Rushing.

The most practical application of which is still while driving.  Getting to my destination three minutes earlier is not worth the $100+ ticket and hit on my insurance, or $1000+ to fix my car because I didn't bother to see the car passing me on the left as I merged, or (as melodramatic as it sounds) the life that's taken because I was too rushed to see that kid crossing the street.

Not only that, that three minutes is not worth what being in a rush does to my heart and my mind and my spirit.

But as our culture is being swept by the avalanch of speed and efficiency, we're going to find it harder and harder to resist the rush rush mindset.  We are trying to squeeze every second dry, we're trying to make time for all our new gadgets and errands and hobbies. At some point we realized we didn't have enough time, so we've been moving heaven and earth to fix our problem.

We didn't have time to walk in and get our already fast food; we needed to be able to zip through the drive-through.

We couldn't wait to get to our computers again to check our email; we needed our email sent to our cell phones.

We couldn't wait to meet people and develop relationships; we needed to streamline partner-shopping on a website.

We couldn't even shoot people quickly enough; we needed our guns to kill even faster.

I'm afraid that even though we have built for ourselves expressways and Blackberries and drive-throughs to save us precious seconds to be able to do more, we have missed the point.  We've stopped savoring life's wine and instead have opted to just inject it into our bloodstream.

And we are less patient.

We are less kind.

We are less good to each other.

We are less faithful to each other, and to our values.

We are less gentle.

We are less self-controlled.

We are less alive.

I feel the fists are clenching.

George Pepper Middle School. This place is full of anger.

I've never seen so many people so angry so often.

Some of these students, and I exaggerate not, spend more time in a state of anger than they do in normal stability.  And nearly every student, even my best ones, have at least a couple of angry outbursts on any given day.  I break up fights and near-fights every single day.  I de-escalate verbal boxing matches every fifteen minutes (depending on the class....maybe every minute).  Every day I sit in my room and pray for peace to fill it, to surround my kids.

I'll continue to wrestle with what makes these kids so angry, what has created this culture of hostility.

But what I'm also saddened by is the anger of my colleagues.  Until you've spent significant time immersed in a place like this, it's easy to understimate how difficult it is to resist letting the hostility and anger  infect your core.  At the end of each day, I feel like I'm the only adult in the building who can still muster a smile.  Every person I pass on my way out is nearly mute with the exhaustion of fighting this battle, not against the kids but against the culture.

We don't realize that we are in fact simmering in this stew of anger and violence, immersed and cooking and soon coming to a boil.

Yesterday my heart broke for my friend who was hired with me.  A few weeks ago, she was peaceful, normal.  After the school day ended yesterday, I swung by her room ready to crack some jokes (man they were good too...) but found someone literally red with anger.  Even having to fiddle with the lock on the door had her ready to strangle the nearest person (which was me....I don't think she noticed me inching slowly backward).

I felt like I was in a zombie movie.  Every day we've been fighting our way through all these angry kids, trying not to let it get to us.  I couldn't help but look at my friend and think, "Oh no...not you too."

Campaigns for peace overseas are everywhere.  The news talks about it.  Bumper stickers display it.  People pray for it.  Never before have I understood the gravity, the essential nature of peace for our survival as I do now.  We don't just need to pray that bombs aren't being dropped.  We need to pray for people who every day have their peace stolen from them, in Iraq or in a bare-looking middle school in southwest Philly.

Without peace, we're sick.