The Wisdom Of Carlos Santana

 

The Wisdom Of Carlos Santana

Most of my students have no clue of who Carlos Santana is. This is from April 28, 2014.

I find myself watching less and less television which isn't so surprising with its lack of offerings and my lack of cable. Most of what I watch is coming from YouTube and documentaries of which there are thousands. During the past week or so, I've been watching the TIME-LIFE History Of Rock'N' Roll, a ten hour documentary of the music genre it's named after. Last night, I was fascinated by some of the statements made by some of the best known names of rock. Bruce Springsteen said the world is made up of those on the outside and those on the inside. He elaborated that most rock stars start out on the outside and find themselves on the inside and fear what he called subversion. Joni Mitchell lamented how her fame took away her ability to live the kind of quiet life of going wherever she felt like going as an unknown; how she had no desire to ever be a star and yet became one. Jerry Garcia spoke of fame by stating, "Nobody wants to being in the center of the spotlight; maybe in your work but not in your life." My favorite quotation of all the musicians came from renowned guitarist Carlos Santana who put celebrity into concise perspective with one sentence:
"It's more fulfilling to be a person than a personality."  
Amen.

I asked several kids today in class if they would like to be a personality, someone whose name everyone recognizes and each one I asked said they would. When I asked why, the answer was identical: money. We associate fame with fortune and celebrity with contentment in spite of the myriad examples of just the opposite being true. (Several of those interviewed for the documentary believed that Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix were nothing like their on stage personas and that they had no family support system, contributing to their early deaths.) Public adulation, equated to endorsements and Twitter followers, is the yellow brick road to so many of our young people, even really good kids. I showed a clip in class last week from one of the movies entitled Jesus. In the scene, Jesus was entering Jericho, about to encounter Zacchaeus, and was almost crushed by the crowds. My students thought that kind of human obstacle course would get old quickly. I agree. It's telling that the Scriptures often record Jesus separating Himself to be alone and to pray. (My dad, a clinical psychologist as well as a minister of the Gospel was a firm believer in the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and just as firm a believer that the Savior was an introvert!) This generation and the one before it have bought into the thesis that the world's adoration will produce the joy we so deeply crave. It won't and it cannot. That joy can only come from the things that won't go on my Master Card or appear on TMZ- family, friends, fellowship with the Lord. I think it would be so difficult to be a personality of substance instead of a person of substance. But there's no shortage of those of us willing to audition for the role. 

Applicable quote of the day, # 1:
“The image is one thing and the human being is another. It's very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.”
Elvis Presley

Applicable quote of the day, # 2:
“A celebrity is any well-known TV or movie star who looks like he spends more than two hours working on his hair.”
Steve Martin

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Don't Call Us/ We'll Call You

 

Don't Call Us/ We'll Call You

Some people hate being called for jury duty, but praise the Lord, not everyone! This is from May 7, 2014.

It was our Mom's favorite Bible verse to quote to me:
"Many are called but few are chosen." I'm not sure why she quoted these words of Jesus, taken from Matthew 22:14, so often to me but it stuck. I thought about it again today as I was summoned for the fifth time to jury duty here in Houston. I would guess there were between fifty and sixty of us in the pool as we gathered in a Justice of the Peace courtroom for Precinct 7. But just as a pool needs water to make it a pool, so a jury needs a case to make it a jury. After waiting about twenty minutes past the appointed arrival time of 1:00 PM, the JP, a very nice lady, came out and explained why we would not be sitting in judgment today. At 8:30 this morning, the county had 146 cases lined up for hearing but 4 1/2 hours later, all had been settled and not one person charged with a crime had requested a jury trial so we were dismissed. They say the wheels of justice grind slowly- not today.

I wouldn't classify this two hour episode of my life a waste of time. I was especially blessed today with the assistance of my awesome teacher's aide, Megan Hill, as I prepared to be absent! It was test day in Bible 1 so two of my afternoon classes had to be covered by subs, Coach Okwuono and Coach Arguello, respectively. I was a little concerned about my 7th period ESL class as there are often definition questions but by all accounts, it went just fine! (Kind of hurts my feelings that they survived without me!) 

But there was another reason this experience in citizenship was worthwhile. As I walked into the government building, I arrived at the same time as an older gentleman. Neither of us were quite sure where to go but  we figured it out and walked up the stairs together a half hour early. We were immediately ushered into the assembly room and sat together and I found out a great deal about him. He, like me, was born in Brooklyn and grew up in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of the borough. He met his wife of forty years in Acapulco when his cousin asked this girl he met to  lunch and dragged Jay along where he met the girl's friend and they got married seven months later. They have two daughters, one a speech pathologist in L.A. and the other a neurosurgeon at Johns-Hopkins. He told me how the younger of his two girls had a mistake on her passport with the date of birth being the same as the date of issue, causing confusion in a European vacation. His wife had been a teacher in the public schools in Houston and had retired several years back. Jay had worked for the US Government in Customs before it was taken over by, I believe, Homeland Security after the 9-11 attacks. Now he volunteers as a shop teacher in a summer program in Sugar Land, a suburb of Houston. Jay told me he had been called eight times before for jury duty but never seated, which he thinks was at least partly based on his government position. After our dismissal, we walked out to the parking lot together and shook hands. We actually live fairly close to each other in Houston-terms but I doubt we will ever cross paths again. If you can get to know someone waiting for jury duty, then I feel I got to know Jay.....except I never caught his last name.

Still, Jay said something I think will stick with me because his perspective is so different from mine. As we talked about our histories with juries, he made a statement which I could never utter, at least at this stage of my life. Jay told me, "I wish I could get selected for the jury on a really long trial." He's retired, he finds the topic of legal cases fascinating, and I think he must be dealing with boredom. But for me, at this time of year, being selected for even a two day trial could prove disastrous. I have one more section to cover in Bible, finals to review for, grading decisions that can only be made by me, let alone the few days I have left with my basketball team whom I dearly love. Jay and I have the same amount of time but we don't have the same amount of time. I feel like I have about 120 kids depending on me every day and while substitutes are very much needed and sometimes life savers, I would almost panic to leave my year's work in the hands of someone who is not emotionally invested in what we have done. In that case, I doubt I could concentrate as I should to be the kind of juror our legal system requires to function fairly. As we all know, Solomon in Ecclesiastes 3 speaks of the different times of our existence. I cannot perceive being where Jay is right now in his life but I bet he understands exactly where I am. I remind myself that Paul taught that a believer's citizenship is in heaven. That's a blessing- no jury duty up there! Also, no $6 stipend for just showing up but we can't have everything!

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Here Come Those (Green) Tears Again

 

Here Come Those (Green) Tears Again

This has only happened once as told in my entry on April 11, 2018.
In recent months, I've developed some blurriness in my left eye. Everyone's eyesight declines some with aging, as least as far as I know. In 2002, I had LASIK surgery and my extreme nearsighted since very early childhood immediately became 20-20. No more glasses/no more contacts! It really was life changing! But since Christmas, I've noticed some defects in the middle of the field of vision with the aforementioned left eye including straight lines developing a bend. I'm no fool so I turned to the  Internet for  medical advice. My symptoms didn't fit the symptoms of glaucoma, which Mom had, or a detached retina, even though my retina suffered childhood damage. With the help of Jean Adams, our WCS financial wizard and knower of all things insurance related, I was able to get an appointment with an ophthalmologist nearby with a good reputation this past Saturday morning at 8:15. I was the first one to the doctor's office!

After wading through the paperwork and the pre-exam exam from a wonderful staff, I met the doctor. It was mostly good news. My right eye is 20-25 and my left is 20-60. He said my eyes work well together as my right eye is far sighted and my left is near sighted with my better eye doing most of the work. We talked about the retinal scarring I had and while it's there, he didn't think it's getting worse. The doctor advised a test which would give a more precise reading of the retina situation. It involved injecting dye into my veins (YIKES!) and then taking a series of pictures of each eye. I hate needles but I love my vision, so OK! It was amazing to look at the photographs within my eye. The doctor walked me through the computer enhancements and explained everything. He recommended that I come in for a checkup in six months just to get an update but for now, I'm good to go. I can live with that!

As the nurse was fixing to inject my vein with the dye, she gave me a warning although not a very scary one. She told me that it would temporarily turn my urine bright orange. I kind of took that with a grain of salt but sure enough, it was like Orange Crush! As the day wore on, the Orange Crush turned the color of antifreeze- I'm sure you get the picture. I wasn't sure how much dye entered my bloodstream but I was surprised how long it lasted. But then something very weird happened. I was driving down Fondren Avenue,  about two blocks from my apartment, when my left eye started watering. I looked in my rear-view mirror and there were green tears rolling down my cheek!! I'm sure it was simply the remainder of the dye leaving my body but for a couple of minutes, I felt like The Hulk! It didn't happen again. One of my students asked why I didn't take a picture and I told them I didn't have my camera with me. She asked, "Why didn't you use your phone?????" If you know me, that wasn't a logical question!

I'm not sure why I was tickled with the green tears. Maybe because it was just so different than anything I've never seen. Helps as well that there was no sadness involved, just the byproduct of having my eyes dilated six hours previously. Maybe it was just the relief of knowing I'm not going blind in the immediate future! From the beginning of time, tears have been tied into  human emotion but mine were not of that nature. The tears of Jesus were. He wept over Jerusalem and He wept upon the death of His friend, Lazarus. In Hebrews 5:7, we're told, 
"During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission."
Why did the Son of Man/Son of God shed tears? For Lazarus, for His people, and for you and me. He cried for me; that's so hard to grasp. My tears four days ago were essentially meaningless, an act of biological cleansing. Praise God His tears had the deepest meaning, the significance that I take for granted. I should cry tears of joy daily for the ones that wet His face for me. Those kind don't require an injection.

For my former FCS students:
Coach Hawley's four favorite songs about tears:
1. Lonely Teardrops- Jackie Wilson
2. Tears Of A Clown- Smokey Robinson And The Miracles
3. Tears On My Pillow- Little Anthony And The Imperials
4. 96 Tears- ? And The Mysterians

Applicable quote of the day:

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.     

Washington Irving

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

V Is For .............

 

V Is For .............

Google changed my life and my teaching. The following story, from April 10, 2007, explores the roots of my love!

What did we do before Google? When I wrote my book several years ago, I was not computer savvy. Besides writing out the text in ink on legal pads, I had to spend considerable time at the nearby public library looking up quotes and finding information. Not anymore! With a click of a mouse, the world is at my disposal...and everyone's disposal. To sell my book, I have a website, www.hawleybooks.com. There is a link in conjunction with my site that I check every morning. This site gives me the details and statistics of who is visiting and hopefully purchasing a copy of this undiscovered best seller. For example, it told me when I got out of bed that there were seventy-nine hits yesterday. It also breaks down the hours of the day which are the busiest and what pages are opened the most. I can compare this month to other months and find out where the interest is coming from. One section is the most intriguing to me; Search Keyphrases (Top 10). This listing details words typed into search engines, like Google and Yahoo!, which lead to people going to my website. Most are what you would expect: my name, the name of my book, the name of my school, Honduras (where I go on yearly mission trips), etc. The latest phrase which led to my website door, though, baffles me.Valium.The prescription drug, at first prescribed to treat epilepsy but more commonly recognized as a relaxation medication, apparently has something in common with my website. I can't fathom what it is. The word is not mentioned on the site or even in the book. There is scant passing mention in the book of drugs, period. But somehow, there is a connection between Valium and Steve Hawley. I may need some help here.

Too bad they didn't have Google back in Jesus' day. He accused the religious leaders of combing the word of God to find out about the Messiah but were blindly overlooking the truth:
"You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about me;" John 5:39 (NASB)
The revealed word of God was readily available to them. Maybe with a search engine, they could have focused their hunt more effectively. What were they associating the Messiah with? Certainly not what was right in front of their eyes. I got linked with Valium by the Internet, a most inaccurate connection in my drug-free book. Jesus was linked to sinners, a designation he happily accepted but which would lead men to search in another direction. Sinners and saviors don't go together. Neither do basketball coaches and Valium...... at least in this case.


Applicable quote of the day:
"Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant."
Mitchell Kapor

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

On Death And Disaster

 

On Death And Disaster

The news hasn't been good lately, has it? Maybe the unrelenting news cycles exaggerate the effect but it is unnerving to the kids in my classes. This is from May 6, 2007.

We had a record when I was a child, a collection of great moments in radio history. Mostly, it was classic programs but there was also a section on historic news broadcasts. I only remember one. Seventy years ago today, the Hindenburg, a state of the art German dirigible, exploded as it prepared to dock in New Jersey. Cameras were rolling as was the radio play-by-play of Herb Morrison. I still recall his horrified cry from the record; "It burst into flames!" Morrison kept broadcasting as the largest aircraft ever constructed was incinerated in a minute, ending the lives of thirty-six passengers and spectators. Morrison's haunting wail of, "Oh, the humanity!" could be a synopsis of the human condition. 

In recent weeks, there have been reminders that little has changed in the seven decades since the pride of the Nazi air fleet was destroyed. In March, the Bluffton College baseball team was decimated in a spring break bus accident while driving through Atlanta. Three weeks back saw the rampage on the campus at Virginia Tech. Two nights ago, a mammoth tornado obliterated the village of Greensburg, Kansas, killing nine and flattening 95% of the town. It makes you nervous just to turn the television or computer on. What next?

And yet, it isn't new. In Luke 13, Jesus was confronted by the news that the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, had savagely mixed the blood of some of Jesus' fellow Galileans with their animal sacrifices. Maybe those that brought it up were trying to dissuade the Messiah from going to Jerusalem where Pilate was ruling or perhaps they were trying to get Jesus to publicly bash the barbaric Roman. Jesus did neither. He made no political statement and he was not dissuaded from his ultimate fate which was linked to the main city of Israel. What he did was speak of the condition of men's souls.
"Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish." (Luke 13:2,3)
Jesus then introduced the tragedy in Jerusalem where eighteen Israelites lost their lives when a tower at Siloam collapsed and fell on them. He repeated his you too will perish warning verbatim as he discussed what the crowd probably considered an Act Of God. His listeners were disturbed about attacks and calamities to the body while the Savior focused on the condition of the soul. The only solution was repentance. That hasn't changed. Horrific catastrophes have been unfolding since the clock began ticking. Good people and bad people have suffered alike in seemingly random assaults on God's favorite part of creation. The body dies; the only question is when. With no expiration date, the soul is in it for the long haul. We need to have ours ready. There is no guarantee of tomorrow. The next disaster is right around the corner.

Applicable quote of the day:
"Only after disaster can we be resurrected."
Chuck Palahniuk

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

Oddly Awed

 

Oddly Awed

Love our international kids! This is from April 18, 2014!

We had no school today due to this being Easter weekend. As with most holidays, it came at a very opportune time! This is an extremely busy time of the year for me. I am in charge of three school chapels next week and working on plans for my summer mission to Can Tho, Vietnam. Additionally, our Honduras/Haiti collection goes into high gear in about ten days which is fun but very demanding on my time and energy. There are lesson plans to be finalized and regular life errands to run and blogs to be penned. On top of that, I gave tests in all my five classes two days ago and by school policy, they must be graded and recorded on RENWEB, our communication system with parents by this coming Monday morning. So, I spent three plus hours today grading Bible exams. AND I FINISHED!

Grading the tests today, I found something that was fascinating. I have quite a few Chinese students spread out over four of my five sections. A number of them on Wednesday wrote down a completely wrong answer to a question and yet I counted all of the replies as correct. Perhaps I should explain. Part of the test covered the raising by Jesus of the widow's only son in the village of Nain as told in Luke 7. We discussed some particulars of the story and finished with the response of the crowd and how this fantastic news went everywhere in that part of Israel. The question in question was, What was the reaction of the crowd to the raising of the boy? To my amusement, quite a few of the kids from China put this in the blank: 
odd
Instantly, I realized what had transpired. When we took notes, I told them the crowd had been awed. Well, if English is your second language and context is not your strength, that answer made perfect sense! (I should say here one of my American students put Ahhhh!) You know, come to think of it, odd and awed sound almost identical! I can say with certainty those kids had their listening ears on!

As I thought about the mix-up in vocabulary, it occurred to me that there was some irony in the answers. The raising of the dead in the scriptures is an exciting concept to the believer, culminating with the resurrection of Jesus and the promise that His followers will live again, hopefully filling us with the sense of wonder and leaving us awed. But to those who don't believe, that foundational tenet of our faith is strange or bizarre, even odd. Paul, in 1st Corinthians, used the term foolishness in describing the world's view of the crucifixion while the Christian connects it to the power of God. Truthfully, I'm glad we had the glitch. It makes me aware of my responsibility in sharing the good news with teenagers from all around the world and even from different religious backgrounds.  Odd or awed? We all have to decide. It will be the most crucial choice of our lives, no matter our native tongue.

Applicable quote of the day:
"If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers."

Doug Larson

God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1

It's All In The Wrist

 

It's All In The Wrist

I still swim constantly but now at my fitness center. This is about something I found on a previous swim at my apartment. It is from May 29, 2010.

During the summer, I still get up early to run in our apartment pool. This morning, I hit the water at 6 AM, the perfect time weather-wise and crowd-wise. After completing my thirty-five minute run, I climbed out and was walking toward the gate when I found a little bracelet on the concrete. It was one of those WWJD? bead wristlets that were so popular several years ago. Apparently, a swimmer did not want want to wear it into the water and so laid it down...and forgot about it. I put it on one of the circular tables covered by umbrellas that decorate our pool area. I hope whoever it belongs to- and I'm guessing it's a girl- will come back and retrieve it. I would hate for it to end up discarded in the trash can.

In his epistles, Paul makes use of figurative language. We know about his admonition in Ephesians 6 that we should put on the full armor of God so we can withstand Satan. What's interesting to me is that he never mentions taking it off. To me, it's implied that once we put on the armor of God, it's permanent. We need it and it becomes part of us. In actuality, I think we sometimes wear our Christianity like that WWJD? bracelet I picked up this morning. We wear it when it's convenient and doesn't get in the way. But when it's not comfortable or popular or easily explainable, we slip it off, fulling intending to slip it back on at some point in the future when it's not quite so cumbersome. Maybe that's the point about armor- it's difficult to put on so it's not so easy to remove at a moment's notice. And, you never find it laying around the pool.

Applicable quote of the day:
"Jesus is God spelling Himself out in language that men can understand.''

S.D. Gordon

God bless,
Steve

Luke 18:1