becoming "normal"

I have been reading for my Masters in Education program, otherwise known as the MAT@USC. We talk about being sociotechnically literate, and the program is a good example of that, with all its multi-print/media sources and modes of conducting class online. An article by I would like to focus on by Miraca U. M. Gross introduces the central dialectic of identity construction for gifted students. She posits that there are two extremes for identity diffusion that many gifted students tend toward, but advocates a more integrated, socialized, and balanced view of gifted student identity (Gross, 1998). Gross contrasts George Bernard Shaw, who created a "dazzling array of masks" behind which to hide his giftedness, with Einstein and Cyril Joad, who seemed to remove themselves "gently but firmly from the obligations of social intimacy," believing that the "differences between [themselves] and the people with whom [they have] to associate are so much greater than the differences among them, that there is little hope of finding someone with similar values, or beliefs, or interests" (Gross, 1998, p. 8). I have often found myself straddling this line, and have been jealous of others who were better at role experimentation and creating glamorous masks for themselves, or who could get away with being reclusive and people were in awe of them for it. I always had a sense that there was something unhealthy in it, but I envied them because I wasn't any good at role playing or forswearing the company of people altogether. I envied them, but I didn't see a future for myself in their shoes, so I was stuck working out my identity in the context of the people left and right of me.

I was fortunate enough to have several schools and teachers who knew what to do with me, and I made friends with others who learned and developed much like I did in Honors, AP, and special elective classes. But there was always the reality in the hallways, at sports practice after school, even in orchestra or the school play, that not everyone was on the same page. In college it still surprised me to find that my genuine love of learning (I think we talked about the accompanying physiological arousal in the 518 class) was not shared by many of my classmates. I assumed that the love of learning was why you went to college, and yet they were surprised by my caffeinated persona following a good read or an essay test. Gross outlines this difference by saying that "one of the basic characteristics of the gifted is their intensity and an expanded field of their subjective experience" (Piechowski, 1991, p. 181 as quoted in Gross, 1998, p. 5).

Here is where the rubber continues to meet the road for me. In college, I became close friends with my roommate who by her own admission was not academically inclined whatsoever. We became close primarily because she was patient with me while I continued to be myself. I wove into our daily conversations about typical college girl things my reflections on what I was reading, listening to, experiencing in my classes and hobbies. I persevered when I noticed that she was losing interest, either by linking it to something I knew she was genuinely interested in or by giving myself permission to lose her interest--without taking it as a negative assessment of who I was. (I still employ this technique today with friends, bosses and coworkers in the Army, when our interests don't align.) To me, it was a better use of my "giftedness" than to cloister myself away from the women on my hall or prefer only fractured, pedantic relationships with other bookworms like myself. I had sought her out as a socially stabilizing force because I perceived, perhaps selfishly, that she could bring me into a world of relationships that I would otherwise struggle to cultivate on my own. In a sense, I sought her out because she was "normal."

As much as I loved learning, I wanted it to be relevant to the people I was meeting, and I did not want to be consumed by the isolation of my own academic ego and miss out on the pure, wreckless joy and adventure that college friendships could bring. My roommate did just that, introducing me to people I would have barely sought out or talked to otherwise. If I felt they were boring or shallow, it became my challenge to invite them into a deeper dialogue, which I instinctively knew they must have something to contribute to. That was when I stopped envying my more gifted friends and acquaintances who put on masks or withdrew from community. I was watching them become fit only for academia or niche interests, and I couldn't follow them there. I wanted my life to be lived in the arena, inviting others to realize their potential instead of entrenching or flaunting mine. I would like to say that at this point I was unequivocal about my self-acceptance and the social integration of my gifts; however, I recall on several occasions attributing my enjoyment of less intellectual company to the fact that I just wanted as intelligent as my more reclusive or flamboyant friends.

It is only for God (and my employers, perhaps) to know where I fall on the spectrum of giftedness: others are more gifted than I, certainly. The essential thing is that I have known for a long time that I am different than many of the people I run into in life. My moral sense was perhaps the first thing I noticed was heightened compared to many of my grade-school peers, then other acuities followed. This is a classic nature vs. nurture debate as well, which I do not want to explore at the moment--I only know that who/whatever is responsible for my giftedness, I am responsible for revealing the greatest good out of what I was given, for myself and for others. That my roommate could begin to sense this impulse in me--where others wrote me off as nerdy, ostentatious, or even insecure--is half of the miracle of relationship for someone like me. (That said, it still wasn't much fun when, using my normal vocabulary in daily conversation, people often gave me a hard time about using "big words" or being "too excited" about how my theology class related to my Emily Dickenson reading that week.)

Eventually, my roommate began to realize her own unexplored passion for learning, and as her awareness of herself increased, we continued to enjoy the great potential of friendship. I watched her go through a stage of isolation and loneliness as she began to differ from established norms she had taken for granted, and then to flourish as she painfully began to reintegrate herself into our social context as an emerging thinker. She always had an acute moral empathy for others, and she had an exceptional drawing and painting ability, but she had not necessarily been characterized as academically gifted. School continued to be a struggle for her, but she was now aware that substantive learning could occur in many other modes, and that this was attractive and important to her. I think this demonstrates why it would be a mistake to assume that all gifted kids should be kept from interaction with their "normal" peers. Given the right impetus and encouragement, gifted kids can help their peers unlock their own potential, and also benefit from the social interaction that implies.

Finally, most of us will have to work with some "normal" people in the course of our adult lives. My life in the Army has given me painful examples of this, where my analytical, compassionate, and creative impulses have earned me negative social ramifications more than once. Yet I am consistently given more challenging jobs and encouraged to pursue a military career. Someone gifted in the arts and humanities might miss the value in military culture and leadership styles. This can be counteracted to a point through self-reflection, reading the literary works of military thinkers to develop a warrior-scholar paradigm, and appreciating the art-and-science aspects of martial skills. Soldiers will surprise you with their ingenuity, their sometimes beautiful lightning reflexes, their intimate knowledge of equipment, and their logistical sense of the material world by which they live or die. Even the conformist camaraderie of military culture takes on its own life and artfulness from unit to unit, until it can be rightfully called in some cases esprit de corps. (I was so nerdy as to quote the British Romantics to myself while navigating my way through night forests with only my compass and map, to keep from panicking. Similarly, as a cadet, I couldn't march well until I conceptualized the movement as a dance, for which I had prior experience.) If it were not for these kinds of investigations, it would be easy for me to conclude that the people around me were stupid, unimaginative, or base, autocratic literalists. What I have had to perceive over time is that there are many forms of being gifted, and out of sheer necessity some are more valuable in my job than others.

In sum, our definitions of "gifted" and "normal" begin to warp as we place them in close proximity to one another. One realizes that the aim of every human being ought to be social and personal integration, rather than isolation or conformity in either extreme. That each person learns at any age to appreciate solitude and individual pursuits as valuable in and of themselves is vital to identity construction for anyone. In compliment to this, each must learn to appreciate the value of human community as inherently worth the cost, recognizing of course that some communities will always suit her interests and personal growth better than others.

References

Gross, M. (1998). The “me” behind the mask: Intellectually gifted students and the search for Identity. Roeper Review Feb 20 (3).

(-) invective

tell me
without tremors
your sine qua non sobbing--
don't offer
with clenched fists
a cold blanket to wrap up in
against the hurricane
unfurling inside
to wreck all arguments
and make flotsam
out of buoyancy.
spare me
the harsh sand settling--
burying our so-called waterloo
with
finality.

(Written as a perspective meditation from my husband's point of view. He has to put up with too many of my tirades about the Army lately. I think I saw this poem in his eyes this week, bent over the spaghetti he was making, as he asked if I could render the account of my horrible week "without invective.")

past tense: conjugating absence

Today I was talking to my masseuse, oddly enough, about some unpolished silver I have in a drawer, passed from my great grandmother through my mother, to me. We were talking about how tarnished silver has so many fascinating colors, it makes you not want to polish it. I think I feel some kind of compulsion to talk about meaningful, deep things with her because she represents a union of physical and spiritual well-being that can only be described as intentional and, of course, full of meaning. As a result I may force conversation sometimes, trying to appear integrated and whole, when I really come fractured, in knots, and adrift in the world. After all, what you pay a masseuse to do is clearly something you are at least partly missing in your normal daily routine. In my case, it is not a deprivation of human touch or visually appealing environment: I inhabit my office space like a home, changing the lighting and decor to suit, and at home my husband is a constant physical presence that comforts and calms. I come for relaxation, which is too easily left by the wayside even at home, where I can find things to work on and improve when I should be resting, meditating, praying, or otherwise integrating the spiritual and the physical. Talking about the unpolished silver, I started to say that "my mom always says" I should polish it before using it (she never did, because she rarely used it, of course). I caught myself, but didn't know how to conjugate the verb "to say." Clearly, she said it once, or maybe more. She does not say it any longer. Or does she? Every time I replay a memory of her speaking to me, does she "say on"? Does she have speech in my thoughts that continues beyond her lack of vocal chords? Certainly she lives in other capacities, too--in the thoughts of every one who ever knew her and calls her to mind from time to time. Can I say that she says anything--or is all her voice in the past tense, for me? Whatever life she now has is paradoxical: she lives and she does not live, speaks and speaks no more. Am I allowed to say that she still speaks to me, or is that admission insane? There are a handful of songs that reduce me to weeping on my knees in church, because I cannot hear them without her voice leading the singers. I hear it like an echo: faint, but undeniably present. I admit that I am still not very well acquainted with the grammar of loss.

lights go out

When I have had to go into the woods alone, especially at night, it has usually been difficult. The Army prides itself on building mental toughness, but sometimes just walking down that darkened hallway is hard enough for me. I have forsworn taking the garbage out at night, since the dumpster area reminds me of a scene from a horror movie. I let my husband brave the zombies. My fear of the "I know not what" in the woods, my "Pan-ic," (a great etymology from the mythical Greek god Pan, that whimsically dangerous forest-dweller) gets the better of me more often than I would like. Is it a function of loneliness--the feeling of vulnerability that comes of not having anyone in your corner? This might explain how hard I had to work to control my fear when the Army would send me into the night woods to navigate my way to various points during training. I would do anything--typically bribe a small dog on the premises with food, or mumble aloud to myself--to keep from remembering how alone I was in the woods. I tried to ennoble it by calling it an exercise in solitude: just me, my compass, my map, and the stars... I may have been deluding myself. After all, it didn't really help: I now will do anything to avoid walking the trash out at night! Or is it a kind of socialized laziness--the settled comfort of knowing I can send my husband out in the dark, allowing me to keep the luxury of my most vivid fears, rather than face them? I don't seem to be any less jumpy when it's just the two of us camping. The only time this night paranoia seems to take a back seat is when I am with a large group of people.

When I walk through the woods with my children at night, to help them find a place to pee or to show them the constellations, will they sense my shallow breathing and darting eyes, and wonder how on earth I used to be a Soldier? Or, will they think I am their Amazon protectress, and wonder why they themselves don't feel braver in the world? I hope they do neither. I often wish I were not so afraid of my own imagination.

jack the ripper houdini

Today I'm in awe of my fish. An African lemon cichlid, he is such a beautifully colored, inquisitive little predator. We can't agree on a name for him, so he is alternately Jack and Houdini: the latter because when he was smaller, he once got stuck in the neck of a green soda bottle in his tank, and went in and out of panic mode for almost an hour while figuring out how to escape. But any sympathy for him is short-lived when you consider that he has repeatedly attacked and finally eaten two other blue cichlids of a sister species, as well as a plecostomus. In every case, we were on vacation, and he truly "left no trace." We finally have a pleco who's bigger than he is, so I hope he'll be safe when we leave for the holidays. And then there is Buddha, a small, polka-dotted pleco who's been with him since the beginning, but who is always given over to a kind of trans-existential meditation. I think Jack thinks Buddha so strange and un-fishly that he leaves him alone. Buddha has been known to immerse himself in profound studies of otherness--transforming himself into a hermit crab, and then a barnacle for weeks on end. I can't put any more shells in the tank, or we'll never see him again: when I finally got him out of the barnacle last year, his face was kind of smashed and he didn't look right for a few days. We were hoping the other pleco would teach him how to be one, but no dice. He sometimes rummages around the back of the tank along the ground, but mostly stays totally still, having given up all worldly pursuits in favor of enlightenment. All the while his buddha-belly gets rounder and rounder. Maybe he has a tumor. I don't know, but I feel responsible for them--for their little world, which I in a sense created. I am their sustainer for all practical purposes, and I hate it when there is hunger and death and toxic chemicals and bouts of uneighborliness. I know that I anthropomorphize Jack, especially. He is so yellow and so stuck on himself, he's hard to ignore. He's been swimming up and down all day today, exploring the new dimensions of the tank after I gave back an inch and a half of water that had evaporated. There is a water lily I put in there that just won't grow beyond a few sprigs, because he constantly eats at its roots. Far from paradise, but oh, to be just a fish sometimes. Things are quieter by virtue of being louder, underwater.

bean counting

Just came back from a long bullshit session with a fellow lieutenant and my commander after work. It started out pleasantly enough, but by the end I was drained, and sorry I had stayed after work to enjoy the boots-on-the-table camaraderie. The subject of debate, which started with politics and moved to the deficiencies of the public school system, turned into both of them trying to convince me that math, as the "universal language," is the most important subject of all. If civilization ended tomorrow, they postulated, we could do without Shakespeare, but the Pythagorean Theorem would be indispensable. I responded that since mathematical concepts are usually predicated upon the use of characters whose meanings are derived from language, I considered both language and math to be equally important. Guffaws ensued, as apparently nothing could be allowed to share the stage with math. This particularly pissed me off, because from what I gather of our conversations about undergraduate study, I was the most balanced student of the three of us, consistently applying myself, excelling in and appreciating all of my classes--in high school, I can honestly say that trigonometry and statistics were a joy, even if they came a little less easily than English and Spanish, the subjects I later majored in in college. I suggested that they try to communicate one single mathematical concept, such as addition, without using speech. Neither even attempted to do it, but somehow I walked away as the one "without a clue." My husband, normally a bastion of literary and l'arte pour l'arte soapboxes, is off getting in touch with his bean-counting* side during Army Reserve training this weekend, and I couldn't find any like minds online. I just had to sigh and immerse myself in internet surfing. Ughh. I don't belong here! (By which I mean, I don't belong here longterm, of course...)

*"Bean-counting" is a phrase (I don't remember if I ever heard it outside the Army) that refers to painstaking accountability of people, equipment, training, and other resources. I would say that 90% of what I do all day, every day, is associated with some slide where we have to brief exactly (which is an art and science) what we have, how much we still need to meet the standard (by regulation or a higher headquarters' articulated standard), and exactly how we are going to make up the difference. For example, the silliest thing happened one month, when a tiny, antiquated piece of equipment almost became the subject of hot debate. It had been identified as missing several months prior, and was probably being phased out, as the Army decided to take our authorizations for it from a large number (say, 50) down to 0 very suddenly. Yet the equipment was still listed as required for our mission. Unless you read our MTOE (Modified Table of Organization and Equipment) very carefully, you would wonder why the numbers were suddenly showing us as less ready than we were the previous month to go to war. We had to scrub that thing inside and out before we figured it out. The issue ended up being that this tiny piece of equipment, which we had suspected for months as missing, had finally been updated in our property book to show the shortage. My commander and I scratched our heads, trying to figure out how to brief this, neither wanting to draw attention to the missing piece of equipment, which had already been paid for out of pocket, as per regulation. In the end, we decided (and this is the artful piece) not to even bring up the change, which was staring our commander in the face on the slide, unless asked. It worked--he was so preoccupied that he didn't even notice, which gives us time to try and order a replacement and work through other channels to get our readiness rating back to perfect. That, in sum, is bean-counting. I have to believe that it is a valuable skill, and I don't underestimate the human component to it: logistics are everywhere, and the ability to manage resources is something I've come to appreciate because of my worldview. I see people as stewards or managers of the world, responsible for its care, and when it comes to securing resources for my family, classroom, or school district, I think it will probably come in handy. It does force you to appreciate and dignify people around you whose work touches logistics --from the bus driver, to the chief custodian, to the maintenance guy... it is a beautifully complex world we live in. My only frustration with last night's dialogue at work was that I bend over backwards to access my mathematical, right-brain, and masculine sides every day at work. I just wish sometimes it were more reciprocated by my colleagues who seem at times to live in those hemispheres almost exclusively.

tension is to be loved

My husband and I went on Columbus Day weekend to Dallas, visiting with my college roommate, her husband, and family, as well as my dad who happened to be visiting his girlfriend. We heard Anne Graham Lotz speak on Sunday morning--a simple message from a complex passage surrounding the vision of the prophet Ezekiel. Anne drew from the supernatural beings of Ezekiel's vision--who are a composite of mythical creatures and who seem to defy description by their occupance of time, space, color--a picture of the characteristics of God. The appearance of winged man, lion, ox, and eagle are already well established christological symbols, corresponding to the nuanced portrayals of Christ in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. On many a church facade the writers of the four gospels are often depicted as these figures, so close was the correlation between Ezekiel's vision, these four pictures of God, and the accounts of Christ in the gospels in the mind of church tradition. A complete rundown of the allegory can be found at the following link:
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/reference/four-evangelists.htm

Suffice it to say that Anne conveyed, with a distinct blend of Eastern Seaboard and Southern Bible Belt sensibilities, a simple message from the passage: when we are at our most disillusioned, Christ comes in royal strength and power, offering himself as our intermediary, as one who has shared in our suffering humanity, as the one who is still sovereign, soaring over all of our circumstances, and toward whose purposes all of life still tends. What struck me in her exegetical approach was that, even though she was standing on rock solid ground when it came to church interpretive tradition of the text, she did not mention it once. I appreciated the connection between her interpretation and art that I had seen in Europe, along with the minutia imparted to me in my college Christian theology class, silently. The effect was that I was quickened, riveted--such aesthetic connections bring me satisfaction and pleasure in a way that I can actually feel physically, as if I had just had the first bite of a pie just taken from my own oven, or been given a kite to fly. The excitement these connections generate for me can only be properly called part of my worship experience.

Whether Anne also relished that connection is unclear to me; she can't have been totally unaware of it, with her education and exposure to the world. Though her father Billy always deferred to her as the better preacher of the two, I saw his influence in her decision not to make a show of erudition or "dropping names," so to speak, by making this longstanding connection in church tradition between the four heavenly creatures. Perhaps it is the American evangelical way to avoid "vain knowledge that puffeth up," or the need to distance oneself from all liturgical impulses within the church. I would have liked to hear her mention it, since the ability to recognize such patterns in old buildings, stained glass, illuminated manuscripts, poetry and prose, remind me that American evangelicals are not the first to try to bring the tenets of the faith and the person of Christ to the people--to make them come alive in allegory and color, making known the hidden knowledge of God. The effect her omission of this detail seemed to have on her message, however, was to add freshness and relevance that drew the whole hour toward a single insight: the presence of Christ on his throne. Anne's catchphrase and book title "Just Give Me Jesus" rang appropriately with the preeminence of the divine relationship and presence, even if I would have preferred to revel in the mystery of the otherworldy messengers, their movement, the rushing of wings, and the expanse "like ice" above their heads. I could get bogged down alternately in the symbolism of each description, or in creating a pictorial image of each. As I sit here I think I subconsciously must want to write a paper connecting this vision to Christ in each of the gospels, characteristic by characteristic. But what Anne did stylistically was to draw attention to her real theme: the consolation of a God who is enthroned, yet comes to speak into our despondency:

Then there came a voice from above the expanse over their heads as they stood with lowered wings. Above the expanse over their heads was what looked like a throne of sapphire,and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking.

It is this speaking that most captivates me about the passage now, though it took me too long to pay attention to it. Wading through the images to get to the words:

He said to me, "Son of man, stand up on your feet and I will speak to you." As he spoke, the Spirit came into me and raised me to my feet, and I heard him speaking to me.

And later in the passage:

"The people to whom I am sending you are obstinate and stubborn. Say to them, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says.' And whether they listen or fail to listen—for they are a rebellious house—they will know that a prophet has been among them. And you, son of man, do not be afraid of them or their words. Do not be afraid, though briers and thorns are all around you and you live among scorpions... You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen, for they are rebellious. But you, son of man, listen to what I say to you. Do not rebel like that rebellious house; open your mouth and eat what I give you."

As intimidating as it is to have God put words in your mouth that must be spoken to others, regardless of their receptivity, I love especially that God uses disillusionment here as a catalyst for his cause. Into the vacuous space of disappointment and even resentment, God can speak his solution, his Being into the not-being of our unrealized hopes. I find this so comforting, because in my nascent professional life of nearly three years, I have never been so easily frustrated, embittered, or disillusioned. These moments for me rarely possess that epic quality of unrest portrayed by the protagonists in the movies, where sorrow comes only for a few scenes, and joy comes bursting through--just in time for the overcoming chords of a triumphant musical score--to resolve all the pain and trials before the credits roll. My frustrations are of a more persistent and thereby corrosive nature: the longer I spend with them, the less I feel like an overcomer, and quotidian pressures often keep me from rising above my own disillusionment in a way that feels resolved or accomplished. Nevertheless, I have found that God visits and speaks, if not with flashing and sapphire, between the dishes and the dust of the morning commute. If we take what he puts into our mouths during such visits, chew and digest them, and speak them out to the intended audience, we in those moments become co-creators with God, co-intercessors, co-heirs, and co-restorers of the broken world. Hearing Anne speak reminded me of this reality, once very natural to me, but now more awkward with age and the knowledge that often, the intended audience will not receive the word that God has given you for them. That is the risk, I suppose, of joining in any divine venture this side of heaven.

The primary cause of our trek to Dallas--the U2 concert itself--was also well worth it. I felt as if I hadn't missed out on decades of listening to them, because they played some of the old stuff and some of the new. Bono, as is his wont, got preachy about fighting injustice and hunger, and Rev. Desmond Tutu addressed the audience in a video presentation...it was all meaningful. I about lost it--no, wait, I did loose it, thinking of my mom and grandma, and the throbbing sea of humanity around me--when they played Where the Streets Have No Name. I knew it wasn't quite church, or heaven on earth, that we were experiencing, but there were shadows and glimpses of it enough. It was a very good concert, in the sense that you couldn't really say that it was all a vanity. They were realizing their vocation as spiritual creatures--artists, at that--by making the most exquisite music. Bono remind me of David dancing before the ark, a comparison made by my husband's college roommate that has stuck with us.

And then, afterwards, ears throbbing, the onset of a headache coming on, I was lost in a dreamworld, like Mary, treasuring what I had seen and heard in my heart. I was reaching for my husband's hand (he was a zombie, too), and walking past some floor-level boxes when a row of middle-aged, wealthy-looking men, leaning over their box rail said something to me and started laughing and whistling. I didn't register it at first, but my husband Z later confirmed that they had, with the drunken camaraderie of nostalgic fraternity brothers, offered me $20 to see my "titties." I had not even worn a shirt with a low neckline, as I wanted to be comfortable, and I burned with anger for hours after hearing him repeat what I thought I'd heard them say. Z got mad, too, and had either of us not been so distantly preoccupied with nobler, more heavenly things, we both probably would have cussed them up and down and caused a scene. But it was like that space between a dream and waking up where you fight to stay asleep--we couldn't rouse ourselves enough to be angry or even make eye contact in the moment, and just kept walking. So, as I was rudely reminded, it was not church--not even close. But if that concert was like heaven, then they were like the fool who, having been invited after the first string of guests refused to come, came to the wedding feast in the wrong clothes, and for being so out of tune, was thrown out "where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 8).