Doug Thorpe

Blog # 1, January 21, 2008. MLK day, driving onto campus listening to King’s "Beyond Vietnam" speech on KUOW, Seattle’s NPR, one of the great prophetic speeches ever delivered in this country. Delivered at the Riverside Church in Harlem, New York, on April 4rth, 1967 — exactly one year before he was assasinated — and moving far beyond the particular issues of civil rights and beyond the particulars of Vietnam to the deepest questions that still confront us: the loss of our country’s soul.

Does a country have a soul? I believe so. I believe we are knit together as a nation; it is part of our human and creaturely identity, just as the salmon are part of our identity in the northwest, or cedar or douglas fir. It is not our ultimate identity but it is part of who we are — and we are all accountable for that soul and to that soul.

And King named our crisis: a spiritual failure, a failure to live into the truth we are called to, whether that’s as Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, atheists. We are called to truth –together, with each other, and with creation itself.

and we fail daily and deeply.

I needed those words this summer, and appreciate still the vision that King brought to us — a man who died at 39! Astonishing what still might have been had he been supported.

Blog 2

1/25 08

So it’s Friday morning, end of January, sun is shining in Seattle. I’m listening to the soundtrack to Juno and thinking that there are certain small pleasures that make one very happy just to be alive.

Yesterday I sat in my cluttered office –it was another beautiful day, blue skies, a Midwestern clarity to the air – with two students talking about Leslie Silko’s novel Ceremony. This was officially a class, an Independent Study. We took two hours and could have gone on forever – or so it felt to me. Such pleasure sitting with these two, enjoying their engagement with the text, with each other, just enjoying. Kingdom was at hand. There was nowhere further to go.

That, in part, was what we were talking about: this paradox of time that we live within, that we swim within, and the strong sense of needing to get somewhere, and enjoying that sense, at our best: that sense of the journey, being on the road and delighting with where we are, passing through the small towns of Iowa, of Minnesota or Washington or Oregon, on our way somewhere of course and yet loving where we are.

Somewhere to go and yet knowing that there’s nowhere further to go.

Small pleasures. A summer morning. A Beethoven sonata, or a moment in The Magic Flute. So much great music! So much to learn!

And thinking that it’s worth remembering them, listing them even, just like Woody Allen does in Manhattan (which would be on my list of small pleasures).

And I agree with him about Louis Armstrong, about Fred Astaire and a number of other things.

Screwball comedies from the thirties– The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, Holiday, His Girl Friday, It Happened One Night…. For those who want critical support read Stanley Cavell’s Pursuit of Happiness or James Harvey’s beautifully written Romantic Comedy in Hollywood.

Small pleasures do not mean trivial pleasures – usually in fact they resonate and stay with us because there’s something true in them. No grand statements – this is not U2 or Springsteen or Blonde on Blonde; more like Jonathon Richman or The Kinks in certain moods.

Little gifts. Small slices of mystery. Reasons to live.

Add your own.

dt

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