Monthly Archives: February 2007

About Rev. Keri

contemplation upon a natal anniversary

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Well. Yesterday was my thirtieth birthday. Natal anniversaries are interesting times, especially milestone days like the decade markers.
I have said goodbye to the long, exciting struggle of my twenties, and hopefully opened up a brave new world in my thirties. I think that reflection is important any time, but a natal anniversary is a good time.

Farewell, Twenties! What did I love and hate and learn and experience while within ye?

  • I learned to live on my own, to make my own money, to spend it or save it as I wished.
  • I learned to live with other people, from friends to total strangers. I learned never to leave my dirty dishes in the sink. I learned the difference between privacy and indifference.
  • I stopped living up to other people’s expectations and began to define my own.
  • I found a deep spiritual connection.
  • I learned to respect, endure, and even enjoy four full seasons of the year.
  • I lost people I loved; I found new loves and a spiritual family that endures despite distance.
  • I accepted that I cannot manage money very well.
  • I learned that I do not do well in a traditional office environment, working as an administrative professional.
  • I hated living in one of the most exciting cities in the world and feeling trapped by lack of funds.
  • I hated the lack of direction that came with hopping jobs and struggling to develop creative arts while surrounded by folks who made me feel inadequate.
  • I loved my circle of friends.
  • I loved being a regular at the pub.
  • I loved walking and taking the subway.
  • I hated living within easy distance of beaches and museums I never visited.
  • I experienced terror, rage, panic, therapy, recovery, anxiety, paranoia, and hope.
  • I learned to love my body.
  • I published short fiction.
  • I hated feeling such envy for friends, coworkers, and acquaintances who traveled, or did brilliant art, or published a book, or did something else that I wanted to do.
  • I learned to channel envy into action toward my own goals.
  • I stopped biting my fingernails.
  • I began to pay attention to issues of sustainability and environmental impact in my life.
  • I made a difficult decision to leave the places that I knew, the people that I loved, and the life I found increasingly stifling.
  • I found new opportunities to build the life I want.

Thank you for the lessons, the joys, the sorrows, the adventures, Twenties!
Hello, Thirties! What dreams can I build with you? What foundations can I build to reach my castles in the air?

  • I dream of a well-paying, creative job to which I am happy to go in the morning. (So far, so good!)
  • I dream of financial well-being, savings, and comfort enough with my income to do things I enjoy.
  • I dream of the ability to choose well-made, sustainable products, or to make my own.
  • I dream of increasing time devoted to crafts.
  • I dream of growing skill and development of style in illustration.
  • I dream of a home of my own.
  • I dream of a family of my own.
  • I dream of enjoying my friends’ families.
  • I dream of becoming a part of a local and international community.
  • I dream of travel, international and domestic, with friends and alone.
  • I dream of road trips.
  • I dream of finding a spiritual niche in which I can root and grow.
  • I dream of changing the world.

I’m entering this new stage of my life with a tremendous feeling that anything is possible. Despite the overwhelming weight of all the ills of the world, I see rampant joy, growing interdependence, and exciting opportunity.

Activism, Politics

Clinton on Global Interdependence

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Today the James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University presented the Shell Distinguished Lecture Series Presentation, “Embracing Our Common Humanity: Meeting the Challenges of Global Interdependence in the 21st Century” by The Honorable William J. Clinton, 42nd President of the United States.

I went to stand in the Faculty & Staff line at 1:30pm for a 3pm speech. The presentation was Rice community and invited guests only, but the lines were still quite long. While we sat in the bleachers (the speech was at Autry Court, where Rice plays basketball), the VIPs gathered in chairs on the floor. My coworkers amused themselves by identifying various Houston/Rice bigwigs. I didn’t get excited over any of them until we spotted John Glenn in conversation with someone. That was cool.

Clinton’s remarks were exceptional. I am not extremely politically savvy, but I fancy that I try to pay attention. This man had the events and people of the world at his fingertips; I wish we had more presidents as articulate.

I took some notes on the speech, although trying to recreate it would be folly. The man has a great presence, and it did feel very casual for all the security and VIP seating and whatnot. He concentrated on the idea of a worldview, which is a concept I’ve explored in other contexts, mostly religious, before. Here are my notes:

What is the fundamental character of the 21st century world? Interdependence.
Is it good? Yes, but… the world is unequal (that one is obvious), unstable (a new sense of shared vulnerability), and unsustainable (climate change, economic instability). He mentioned that while 70% of our oil is used for transportation, it’s the other 30% that is the real problem, because we have no viable substitutes for those products. (Hello, medical plastics…)

A solution? go from simple interdependence to integrated community, characterized by 1)shared responsibility, 2) shared benefits, and 3) a shared sense of genuine belonging, not just living on the same land.

This would involve revitalizing the military to be more efficient, but also revitalizing diplomacy. There are limits to how far anyone can impose their will. Building a world with more partners instead of more enemies is cheaper than going to war.

Paths to progress on these goals: relentless home improvement, here and abroad. Small governments cannot grow when they suffer corruption or incapacity. But also, the new world is dependent upon the American Dream being renewed at home, improving the lot of middle and working class Americans.

We, the Rice community and VIPs, represented a slice of the elite, and he acknowledged that several times. We, as a group of individuals, have more power to do than any group before… and there is a lot of doing that needs to be done.

After the speech Clinton took questions submitted by students. This was where I went all starry-eyed with admiration. The questions were sufficiently detailed and complicated that I had trouble even following the syntax for some of them. Almost all of them concerned foreign policy. Clinton took every question in stride, and answered them with clarity, sincerity, and knowledge – I’m sure he prepared ahead of time since the questions were pre-approved, but there was a big stack of cards and he only got about five of them. I was very impressed at the sheer amount of information he managed throughout the later part of the afternoon.

And at one point, someone asked him if he would comment on James Baker’s role in the Supreme Court decision on the Florida election in 2000. This was especially pointed as James Baker was sitting to Clinton’s left, having introduced the speech as Honorary Chair of the Institute with his name. Clinton laughed, and actually stomped his feet with what looked like glee as the question was asked, and Baker leaned over to Rice President Leebron and made a “whoo-hoo” sort of twirling gesture with one hand. That was just fun.

It was an entirely worthwhile way to spend a couple of hours of my day, even on the incredibly uncomfortable bench seating in the court.