UPDATE

So I went into these pretty swank offices on a recent trip and my bowels were knocking down the doors. After hurrying and running to a stall, I quickly realized I didn’t know what to do. Before me was a toilet at an ever-so-slight downward angle,  with something like a control panel attached to the right side of the toilet (when sitting down). My bowels didn’t care about buttons and I didn’t have time to waste so I quickly used a seat cover and sat down.

The first surprise was that I didn’t need a seat cover. In the winter, I normally cover toilet seats with toilet paper or use seat covers because the seat is cold and, just like losing your appetite, the cold seat makes me lose the ability to go. It’s like instant constipation.

But this seat was pleasantly warm, like using the toilet above a pleasant fire—the perfect advert. No more worrying about leaving the fireplace to go use the freezing toilet. We’ve taken the fireplace and put it underneath your commode. J

The second thing I noticed was that by pressing buttons, I could adjust the temperature of my seat. Surprise, surprise. But no need to do that. I was warm enough to read the novel “War and Peace” from cover to cover in one sitting, one literal sitting.

And just as I was about to get up, I noticed the other controls. One control button had a picture of a person that said “Rear cleansing High Pressure.” At first I was confused and thought I was in a woman’s washroom Then, I realized I was in a men’s washroom but some how this thing, this machine was offering to assist me in cleaning myself. Now, if you haven’t traveled widely enough, there are places and regions of the world where, instead of toilet paper you use a hose next to the toilet or when you go to the pit latrine, you carry a kettle of water and use that to clean yourself. It’s not my preference because of the issue of drying and the many animals that like to help you dry yourself. But it happens. Some of you have probably only ever used toilet tissue to clean yourself. Well, this machine, this toilet thing was offering to use water to do it. In Egypt many of the toilets have this, but . . . I have never been to Egypt.

For some reason, I didn’t see the other button with a picture of a person and a fountain splashing his bum with the words “Soft pressure” and so I pressed the “High Pressure” picture and was so unbelievably uncomfortable I screamed out “Aaaah!” And before other men in the restroom could throw strange looks to my stall I said “My wallet, I FOUND IT!!” all why being pummeled with water from somewhere inside my toilet. Thank goodness it was warm. I couldn’t tell if it had cleaned away bits and pieces, but I needed to stop it because I was quickly losing consciousness.

I hit stop. I decided not to try the button that had a picture of a woman above a fountain and said “Front Cleansing.” There was one more picture-button. It looked like a wave, and it was blue. I wasn’t sure but I thought I could see a little sign next to it saying “Stop killing our planet and save trees.” So out of guilt, I pressed it and immediately began to laugh from the air that was attempting to dry my bum. “Hee hee, hoo hoo harr.”

I realized that, through my stall walls, the men in the washroom had stopped talking, so I quickly said “Man that was a funny story. I’ll call you later.” Then I made a beep sound but realized phones don’t make beep sounds when you hang up. Mental note.

I quickly wiped with toilet tissue because I didn’t trust the air-dry system and walked out with confidence mouthing the words “important phone call.” I decided I’ll use the normal toilets next time. (Incidentally my friend John Knight has a show Macho Metro Man coming out this spring, and I think the toilets are perfect for one of his minority macho metro men.)

 

4 Husbands

The local news station was interviewing an 80-year-old lady because she had just gotten married for the fourth time. The interviewer asked her questions about her life, about what it felt like to be marrying again at 80, and then about her new husband's occupation. "He's a funeral director," she answered.

"Interesting," the newsman thought.

He then asked her if she wouldn't mind telling him a little about her first three husbands and what they did for a living. She paused for a few moments, needing time to reflect on all those years. After a short time, a smile came to her face and she answered proudly, explaining that she had first married a banker when she was in her 20's, then a circus ringmaster when in her 40's, and a preacher when in her 60's, and now - in her 80's - a funeral director.

The interviewer looked at her, quite astonished, and asked why she had married four men with such diverse careers.


(Wait for it)


She smiled and explained,

"I married one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go."

UPDATE

Not much is going on for me at the moment. I just came back from a trip to Iceland followed directly by a trip to California. It’s been a really good time of seeing people and reconnecting with people. I’m sorry I missed some really good friends (TJ, Jeremy, Omair, Praj, Stephanie) but glad I was able to see Kaitlin (my friend who is always thinking and forever pushing forward with her love for music), Teresa (my discussion buddy), Josh (step brother), Cheryl (kindred spirit but with more muscles), Angel (blood sister who is interested in exactly the same things as me).

Sometimes it’s funny seeing friends like that because I really forget that I went to school with a lot of movers and shakers. My friend Angel has just co-founded her own start-up, and to be honest, she has all the right skills and experience for the job. Kaitlin is one of the few people I knew who still inspires me; she’s pursuing her love of music and making it work via education with kids. I love that. I really forget that Josh is big stuff now. He is a director of international giving for a foundation, he’s the co-founder/mentor of an accelerator programme, and he’s now an author. On top of that, he’s one of those guys that downplays it all. That’s Josh. Cheryl still has a love for international missions work and is pursuing body sculpting at the moment. What impresses me most is that she becomes more herself each time I see her. That is hard to do in today’s environment.

At home, I am seeing crisis-pregnancy/miscarriage/post-abortion clients a majority of the time I work at the centre. I’m still helping advise a few non-profits and social enterprises, and I’m still working with ex-offenders and helping someone with a learning disability find gainful employment. My mentorship programme with 2 university students is ending but I will probably keep in touch with them both. They were great students. And just two days ago a student in India emailed to ask if he could work with me on his aerospace engineering thesis. I was shocked but was open to it; he happened to read a paper I wrote a few years ago. Now that I don’t have a lot of trips planned, I can start up my music lessons on the ukulele and work on the accordion (I have a kids one, and it’s really cool). I’ll keep you posted on all that.

As usual, I deal with lots of thwarted attempts. The North American Actor’s Guild here will not take me due to some professional requirements; I can work professionally at night but not during the day and that doesn’t work for them. So I have to revisit my plan on the acting scene here. The IDEO.org fellowship didn’t choose me, again, this year and only told me because I sent an email asking to visit their offices since I was in California. I haven’t heard from a lot of other people. When I was in California, however, a group called TechSoup Global has been interested in talking. I also tried to visit Khan Academy while out there but didn’t get any email contact with them until I landed back home. But it is nice to be in contact. I think I’d like to use them if I go back to the math classroom.

SUPER HEROES

There was a series on TV a few years ago called Heroes that a lot of my friends really liked. It’s one of those stories that you secretly wish were true, that there are people on this earth with superhuman abilities (like the ability of my bowels to tell me which country I am in). You wonder what day—maybe today—you will come to know of your powers. You wonder what those powers will be. You even wonder what you will do with those powers, which leads to the big question we all ponder—your purpose.

I guess the draw of superheroes is that they have such a visible and obvious purpose. They live for something bigger than themselves, they fight for a greater cause. And they win. They know why they are here and that single purpose drives their actions, redirecting them when they lose their way. That must be part of the draw of superheroes, why we like them, or part of the reason why movie after movie is made of the various DC Comics and Marvel superheroes.

Luckily, we have real-life superheroes. They’re called soldiers, the military—people who serve in the armed forces. Because they protect us and risk their lives, they are heroes. Because they serve our country we should honour them as real-life superheroes. Leaving behind the debate of the complexity of war and whose interests war serves, I’ve always been confused by the sentiment that the military serves our country.

It is true the military serves the country, but the way people say the phrase implies “the military serves the country whereas other people do not.” I’ve experienced that thinking as false. There is a host of ways to serve your country. Many people will immediately think police officers and fire fighters. Yes, they serve your country. But there are many more. A public official, elected or appointed, can serve your country. Doctors serve your country. Immigration workers, judges, journalists, and social workers serve your country. Most importantly, teachers serve your country.

The second problem I have with the implication that “the military serves our country” compared to others who do not, is sacrifice. I’ve been told that the military serves our country because they sacrifice their life to do their jobs. I agree; it’s true that many military women and men have sacrificed their lives in the line of duty.  To describe the manner of that sacrifice, I would like to quote General George S. Patton Jr.: “the object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other guy die for his.” I agree with him. Armed servicemen and servicewomen do die, but they are trying to avoid death and sacrifice in the hopes that the other side dies for its country.

Contrast that mentality with a willing sacrifice. Where do you find that? You find that in people who offer a living sacrifice. As powerful as the effects of the death of certain individuals like Martin Luther King Jr., I feel confident in saying that an alive Dr. King would have done more work and more good than the assassinated one. So, a death-based sacrifice does have some meaning, but the more powerful statement is someone who gives their life to something—a living sacrifice.

It is in this way that you begin to see how people like teachers can be a living sacrifice. Teaching when you could be doing something else with your time and degree, teaching in tough neighbourhoods, teaching underserved children, doing a job in which you work nights and weekends and are compensated comparatively less for doing that job, a job based on seniority when you are junior and excellent, or a job based on excellence when you are senior and respected. Doing a job in which the actual responsibilities of your job on day one are the exact same as the responsibilities on your last day of your final year but you’re still expected to achieve all the same duties no matter which day it is—doing such a job is tough. I would like to elevate teachers (among many other service professions both explicit and implicit) to the level of super-hero, for some teachers are super-heroes who serve our country.

SQ - Spiritual Intelligence

It was the last night of my groups’ work hosting a weekly night at a rotating homeless shelter called the Robes Project. It was a night like any other and I was doing the usual overnight shift. I often arrive early and help work the dinner shift as well, cooking food, then eating and hanging out with the guests. There was the group of guests and volunteers who had finished eating and started playing Scrabble. Another volunteer was playing a guest in chess. There was the group of guests reading the newspaper. Some people were still eating dessert. Two guests were speaking in their native Sierra Leonean pigeon English. Music was playing in the background and laughter could be heard in the air as many of the books we brought for the donated library sat there, unread. Suddenly one guest, a very distinguished man with a nice black blazer, well-wrapped scarf, and reading glasses, stood up and declared, “Excuse me, excuse me, everyone. I have an announcement to make.”

He was a type of father figure in Robes. He could talk to and with anyone, and he could feel just as comfortable reading to himself in the middle of all our noise, like a father might feel at home in the evening in his favourite chair, drawing comfort from the fact that his children were happy, playful, and alive. This time he made a rare move and took centre stage before all the guests and volunteers.

“I’ve received permission from Olivia and Crispan to make this announcement. As you all know, tonight is the last night for the volunteers here. From now on our Friday nights will be spent at another hosting community. We have been so richly blessed by you and we want to say thank you. The food was amazing. The way you talked to us, laughed with us, played games with us, brought books for us—we were treated so well, and we want to say thank you. The conversation, the love, the joy—it was just amazing and overwhelming. Simply the best. Thank you so very much from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you. May the Good Lord, in all his wondrous workings, richly bless you this day for what you have done with us and for us. May you be richly blessed in all you do wherever you go in Jesus’s name.”

At that moment, the place erupted in applause. Applause is a weird thing to get used to. Some famous people do. I sometimes have to diffuse the energy, so I just jumped in and applauded as well, thanking the guests, too, and thanking the other volunteers who allowed me to participate in this work of learning to relate to the guests. It really was a beautiful moment.

Here is the strange thing: the guests were specifically calling attention to our work over and above the work of other church groups and community groups that host the shelter on other nights. This floored me and blew my mind. They were not saying “Thank you for caring for us when no one did.” No. They were saying “In caring for us, thank you for loving us over and above what was required.” They were saying, “we are cared for a lot by many others, but it is not like this. We are not always loved.” Do you see what I’m saying? I guess, I was surprised because most of the community groups hosting were church groups, and I stereotyped the churches and expected that they would all simply love all over the guests.

I was wrong. Apparently, we were the only people who created a library. However, instead of it being the kind where you return or swap the book, you could keep the book. We were the only ones who brought games. We were the only ones who actually called up the Robes administration (or other hosting groups) to find out what the guests ate throughout the week so that we could cook something original. When my group decided to do the Robes project this year, we decided one thing—we were going to cook the best food ever, food we would cook for ourselves, our families, and our friends. And it makes sense to me because the guests became our friends.

So every week, without a doubt or an aberration, multiple guests told me that we cook the best food.

“The food here is amazing.”

“This is just like home-cooked food. It’s so hearty.”

“We all look forward to coming here every week.”

“I’ve been waiting for Friday just for the meal. We always know it’s going to be good.”

“Uhhh, I’m so sick of pasta and apple crumble. I know I’m gonna get something good tonight! I can’t wait!”

Second helpings and plates were commonplace. I’ve even seen thirds and fourths. People really loved it, whether it was lamb stew, Moroccan chicken, vegetarian curry, or Belgian waffles. To them it was always good. Take it from me, it was goooood. The experience of doing that and the amazingly wonderful time the guests and volunteers had reminded me of why I like my group—they are spiritually intelligent. And just because you’re religious doesn’t mean you’re spiritually intelligent (this explains my surprise at finding out our night was seen as special among all nights of the week for the rotating shelter, even though they are hosted by churches). You can be non-religious and highly spiritually intelligent, and you can be very religious with little spiritual intelligence. This experience reminded me of that truth. This reminded me of that.

I should probably define or explain spiritual intelligence. But let me backtrack to emotional intelligence. We all remember or have heard of the traditional Western understanding of intelligence. I still see it in schools today. This person is smart. That person is dumb. For a long time rational or logical intelligence was the only recognized form of intelligence—IQ. Then Professor Howard Garner was the first person to explicitly articulate the still controversial idea of multiple intelligences in the 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Though some disagree, people began to realise you can be intelligent in many different ways such as kinesthetic intelligence, musical intelligence, social intelligence, linguistic intelligence, etc. Then another wave of ideas and books were birthed when Daniel Goleman’s 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence (the first use of the term is usually attributed to Wayne Payne’s doctoral thesis in 1985), argued that emotional intelligence (EQ) is at least as important as IQ. Emotional intelligence deals with being aware of people feelings as well as being self-aware of our own. It involves being able to “read” people and situations and enables empathy, compassion, and response to the pain or pleasure of others. You can cultivate and grow EQ throughout your life; it is not static.

However, few of my friends have ever talked to me about spiritual intelligence. The idea started popping up around the late 90’s and one 2001 book, SQ: Connecting with Our Spiritual Intelligence by Danah Zohar and Dr. Ian Marshall, considers spiritual intelligence the most important intelligence. While IQ and EQ mallow you to play within the boundaries, SQ allows you to play with the boundaries and question and criticise the status quo, why things are the way the are, or the meaning of our ways. It allows you to imagine new creative possibilities—the way real faith should be. Spiritual intelligence looks at the big questions and asks them. Why am I here? What is it all for? What should I do with my life? What purpose can I serve? It asks the tough questions about values, existence, meaning, and purpose, allowing you to transcend, at least in thought, the physical and material. Spiritual intelligence deals with the sanctifying of every day experience and the inner life of the mind and spirit and its relation to the world. It’s really just the adaptive mental capacity to deal with nonmaterial things like purpose and meaning, reflect on it, and integrate it into your life such that it affects your understanding of meaning, your awareness of things (whether causes or purposes) bigger than yourself, and peace.

Did you catch the recurring theme in there? It’s the use of reflection and questioning. Unfortunately many religious groups or institutions stifle this type of questioning, criticism, or imagination allowing for little spiritually intelligent growth. Because of the importance for reflection and questioning of the status quo, you can be an atheist with a very high SQ; on the other hand, you can be a staunch religious person and have a very low SQ.

What I love about my group that works to host a night at the rotating shelter is that they are so spiritually intelligent. Though it’s rare that they reference God or Jesus in a meeting, every thing we do—whether a type of service, a pub get-together, or a meal—is pushing us to develop our spiritual intelligence. It’s one of the few experiences I’ve had of being in a group in which people are not encouraged to believe the same things. And for all the critics who say this is untenable or impossible, let me tell you—it works. The only foundation we share in common is love. And love is not a belief.

I have some amazingly spiritually intelligent friends who are not religious, and I’m thankful for them. They care for the sick, host weekly community dinners, give money they don’t have, live in uncomfortable places and spaces for the sake of someone besides themselves. They serve in the military, they teach, they clean buildings, they quench fires, they do a myriad of tasks, and their lives (not just their jobs) are infused with spiritually intelligent actions.

Spiritual intelligence is living and thinking with your soul. Everyone can do that regardless of having a religion. But what does that mean? Dave Tomlinson talks about spiritual intelligence in his book How to be aBad Christian. Some of the qualities he lists are below:

Self-awareness

Principle

Spontaneity

Empathy

Humility

Curiosity

Flexibility

Resilience

Being centred or grounded

Receptivity

Dave lists three ways of cultivating spiritual intelligence. First just make a commitment to go on this inward-outward journey (he calls it an inward journey). I always remind my friends that spiritual intelligence is an outward intelligence as well. The journey starts with questions and reflections but it doesn’t end there. First, you have to commit to start.

The second important thing is to participate in spiritual practices.

To yourself – what are you feeling but ignoring, what thoughts are you pushing to the back of your mind

To other people – friends and family whose concerns or needs you tend to bypass or overlook, strangers who pass by unseen by you

To situations – circumstances in your life that may be saying important things to you or about you

To the world – big things, little things, things of beauty, things you may not have noticed, details that pass you by, unawares

To God – who is present in all these other ways seeking to enrich you and guide you

Last is a hugely important step without which the first two steps don’t mean anything: you have to find a community to go on this journey with you. I know people for whom leaving their church was a spiritually healthy move. I have a friend for whom leaving her church did her faith well because she was in a place that was toxic for her faith. I wish all religious places were about the business of growing spiritually healthy and intelligent people, but we are not. Still, I never want to make the mistake of thinking that it’s a journey that can be done alone. If you venture out from a tough community, find another one that you can work with, one that welcomes and accepts you in love, one that honours and respects you, and one that is concerned about you and your spiritual growth. You have to travel with people that will affirm you and encourage you and also speak truthfully to you, empowering you and enabling you to grow.

No church or religious group or institution is perfect. And there are some amazing examples of church groups that do help to cultivate your spiritual intelligence. I travel around and go between religious groups, but I can tell you that Borough Common, my group that hosts the rotating homeless shelter is a wonderful community of people. They let you ask any question you want, critical or unchallenging. They let you probe who we are as a people, where we are going, and what we are doing. Most importantly, they let you believe what you would like and in the process they love you unconditionally. They are not perfect in any way and you’ll see that when you visit. But I love that I, first, belong. First and foremost, I belong.