Resources

My first sunburn of the year is always from teaching. I inherited my father’s skin, so it doesn’t take much sun for me to burst into flame, and that first warm day of spring I take all my classes outside, find a patch of grass to sit on, and hold lessons in fresh air for the first time in months. I usually forget to bring sunscreen. This year, because we had an unseasonably warm May, my Chaco tan was impressive before summer even began. Nice-day-outside classes are only the beginning. I hold office hours outside (a taped-up sign written in sharpie on my door tells students where to find me). I teach a 3-week immersion course in January or May called “Backpacking with the Saints” that includes a week of backpacking. At the request of one special class I taught a peripatetic lesson on the crusades in ten inches of snow, complete with “knight training camp” and deaths from dysentery. It’s even as simple as this: in the classroom I most prefer on campus—for its two walls of windows—I rely on the natural light and avoid turning on the fluorescents unless the day’s light is not cooperating. My wild pedagogy is a running joke-argument with my dean: I contend that class is simply better when nature is the classroom. For me, it’s simple. I learned to teach primarily by working as a wilderness guide at a children’s camp, so teaching outside, or teaching with nature as part of my classroom, just makes sense. The first day I stood in front of students in a classroom as a grad student adjunct, I looked at the faces before me in the windowless room and realized, “I think they think I’m in charge.” The second day, I took them outside because we were talking about Genesis. It didn’t occur to me that someone could teach the creation story anywhere but outside. Sitting on the grass with my students, I realized, “I know how to do this. This is how I am a teacher.” Nine years later, sitting in a canyon with some students in January, I thought, “Yeah, this is where I am my best kind of teacher.” So yes, my first reason for taking classes outside is simply that I like being out. I breathe better outdoors. I feel more myself outdoors. But the longer I do it, the more reasons I discover it’s a great choice pedagogically. Some of you are already with me; I’ll wave at you across the quad. If it’s more ideas for how to make nature the classroom you’re after, or ideas for immersive classes, stay tuned. Future blog posts will talk about those. This one is for those of you who are here because you know you love taking classes outside but haven’t thought about why it works so well, or you love it but need ways to talk about it with your skeptical colleagues. Or perhaps you are skeptical yourself. (If your skepticism is about how to make it work with student accommodations and opinions or technology use, look for my next blog in this series.)  So, hear me out: Why is wild pedagogy a good choice? Teaching seems more like a conversation outdoors. Students almost forget they are in class and actually talk with one another and with me, learning instead of worrying about whether something will be on the test. Students are less distracted—or at least distracted by better things. They reach for their phones less often. Outside, students feel like they’re getting away with something. I feel like I’m getting away with something. And when we feel like we’re getting away with something, we play more, which enlivens our discussions. Play also increases my students’ creativity, which they need as they work to understand the mysteries of God and human lives. Life feels more possible when we’re sitting in the sunshine feeling the breeze rustle our hair, and therefore my students feel that the work of learning is more possible, if only for an hour. Finally, that the world is wild and alive expands my teaching and the students’ conversations. We are all more alive as our spirits encounter the breath of the world. My teaching becomes more wild as I am in the wild world. More attentive, more responsive, more active, more unpredictable in the best ways. I invite you to ponder with me in this series all of these reasons for wild-ing pedagogy. I’ll be here every other month with a discussion of one of these reasons and how it plays out in actual classes. I’ll share some successful ideas and some failures. I’ll tell stories of canoeing with students and how they learn things in that setting that are hard to replicate anywhere else. Come join me around the campfire. I’ll save you a s’more.

One recent Saturday afternoon, I visit the Hindu Temple of Atlanta in Riverdale, Georgia, for a conversation with one of the priests about my current research. I spend time walking through both the Vishnu and the Shiva temples, appreciating the various deities and trying to embody a respectful posture as devotees and priests go about their ordinary acts of devotion. I feel both familiarity and discomfort. I recognize the rituals and much, if not all, of the iconography, and I am interested to see what has changed since the last time I visited. People are hospitable, welcoming me and my spouse without overwhelming us. At the same time, I am aware of my own identity, not being a practicing Hindu, or a South Asian person. In this space, I am aware of being hyper-visible, of being obviously a visitor, an observer rather than a full participant in the life of the community. What is to be learned from the experience of being a guest? Maybe the slight discomfort itself is valuable learning: the feeling of being uncertain, an interested outsider in a space that will never be my own. I recognize that the discomfort comes from not being “at home,” being a guest rather than a host. Of course, being a guest can be more uncomfortable than my temple visit.  As guests in other people’s homes, sometimes we are offered food that is not palatable to us. We may not receive what we regard as enough to eat, or we may be expected to eat more than is comfortable.  We may not be comfortable in the bed, or with the patterns of sleeping and rising. This discomfort of being a “guest” has helped me think afresh about the complexity of racial dynamics in institutions. Being a guest makes me aware of how difficult and how vital it is to make people welcome, to consider what is needed to be truly comfortable in a new place. In a recent blog, Lynne Westfield reflects on how BIPOC faculty do not always feel welcome in predominantly white institutions (PWI). She reports, “the majority of BIPOC colleagues who leave employment after less than three years report that their reason for leaving hinges upon experiences of being treated inhospitably.” How might my experience of being a guest help me to be more hospitable to colleagues who feel always like a “guest,” never quite at home? In my current research, I am asking: what does it mean to offer to and receive food from a deity in Hindu (particularly Vaishnava) and Christian contexts?  I am investigating the dynamics of offering puja (worship) and receiving prasada (blessed food) in Vaishnava practice, in comparison with the giving and receiving of food in Christian eucharist. In both cases, the guest/host dynamic is complex: for Vaishnavas, Vishnu is treated explicitly as guest, offered water and food and clothing to be comfortable and welcome.  Devotees treat Vishnu as a guest so that he feels loved and cared for. Yet underlying this treatment is the understanding that Vishnu is also the creator of all things, the one who is ultimate Host. On the Christian side, there is more emphasis on Christ as host at the table (thus the very term “Lord’s Supper” as one name for the eucharist).  God in Christ offers life, offers food to us, as the host of the feast.  Yet in the gospel narratives of his life, Jesus is always a guest in other people’s homes, and narratives like Luke 24:13-35 explicitly present Jesus as guest who becomes host.  In both cases, worshipers play the role of host, but not in an ultimate way. In both cases there is a delicious reversal of expectation of who is guest and who is host. How might such role reversals also be instructive?  After all, just as we need to learn to be good hosts, so also we need to learn to be good guests. In her poem “Sakhi” (“close friend” or “bosom friend”), Indian Dalit poet Hira Bansode describes her initial delight at hosting a high-caste friend for dinner. However, her guest “smirks” at the food on the plate and complains that Bansode failed to serve buttermilk or yogurt at the end of the meal as expected. “I was sad then numb,” says Bansode. “But the next moment I came back to life. / A stone dropped in the water stirs up things on the bottom.” Bansode tells her “friend,” “You know in my childhood we didn’t even have milk for tea much less yoghurt or buttermilk / My mother cooked on sawdust she brought from the lumberyard wiping away the smoke from her eyes.” She defiantly concludes, ‘Are you going to tell me my mistakes?” Being a guest (and learning to be a good guest) has also informed my reflections on being a teacher. In the classroom, I am usually the “host,” setting the environment and the plan for the learners. But if being a guest can bring discomfort, how might this also be true for students?  Does Vishnu, and does Jesus, offer wisdom in modeling what it means to be a good guest, allowing others to live into their roles as hosts? Perhaps this is exactly what collaborative learning processes help us to practice: taking turns being host and being guest in the classroom, so that all may feel truly welcome.

        They tell you that it gets easier.         They are damned liars.         Every single one of them. Each consecutive day is harder than the one before it, and it doesn’t start rosy. They arrive early. They don’t tell you that, either. Thirty-seven to thirty-eight weeks at the latest. Or twenty-nine. They don’t tell you just how small they are. Four pounds, one ounce and three pounds, two ounces in Nettie’s and Lucy’s case. They don’t tell you about how they’ll be immediately separated from one another in the NICU or the weeks you’ll spend there or how you’ll come to crave that coffee that tastes like it has been filtered through an old sock. They don’t tell you about forehead IVs. They don’t tell you about the nurses that are godsends and the doctors that are not. They tell you that you will eventually leave, but they don’t tell you when. They don’t tell you that you’ll cart around two vital sign monitors everywhere you go when you do. They don’t tell you about all the times that you’ll wake up panic-stricken at 2AM when the rhythmic beeping stops because the strap has slipped off their chest. Or about the time you will rush back to the NICU when it’s still on. They don’t tell you that there will be double the literal and metaphorical shit. Double everything: pain, joy, mess, love, difficulty. They don’t tell you that there will be two of them and they are each their own person. But there are and they are.          They tell you that that season will pass.         It will.         But that doesn’t mean it gets easier. I became a parent of identical twins early in my teaching. I didn’t tell my students when my daughters were born. I believed in caring for my students as humans—cura personalis and all that—but I was also advised that I was not to be their friend. That there should be a distance to the professorial relationship. I also became a doctor that eventful semester. I didn’t tell my students when I defended my dissertation. I didn’t request that they start addressing me as “doctor” for the remainder of the semester. I shied away from accolades and self-promotion. One day after class a student inquired about the patient identification wristband I was wearing. I explained that I had not been hospitalized, but the band allowed me in and out of the NICU, where I had been sleeping and where Nettie and Lucy were to spend several weeks. The next class I received a handwritten note of congratulations and well wishes. In that moment I learned that caring for students as people involves more than just recognizing their humanity. It means allowing them to see ours as well. Three years later when my partner was diagnosed with cancer, voice cracking and holding back tears, I told my students of the diagnosis and positive prognosis. They sent notes. Gift cards. Signed up for my family’s MealTrain. Beth has now passed her one-year anniversary of showing no evidence of disease. We teach real humans. We are also ourselves real humans. There is no prescriptive practice for being human. There is also no prescriptive practice for putting our humanity on display within a learning community. But I have come to learn that bringing less than my full self to teaching is of benefit to no one.

Abstract: This is the second part of a collection of poems showcasing the personal exploration of a teaching identity grounded in grief experiences, one of the aspects of identity educators carry into the classroom. The use of poetry permits an open theological exploration in which the author examines aspects of his life through the lens of religious allusions and imagery including the creation narratives, Cain and Abel, and Hannah. Specifically, the author engages the experience of growing up in a family impacted by the death of his brother who died prior to the author’s own birth. The experience of being a “substitute” and a “teacher” is represented  within the poetry. The series begins with childhood encounters with loss and moves through life and teaching experiences marked by grief. Good and Evil: The Second Account of Creation When I first learned there were two accounts of creation, I was confused. Then, I was delighted. Maybe this one made more sense. I can’t remember if this optimism was a default disposition or a performance to please. Now it’s both. In the day that the Lord God made my family, no ambition was yet in my mind and no anxiety had yet sprung up– for I didn’t yet know what those words meant, and there was no teacher there to help. But a sinkhole would envelop the earth, and I couldn’t breathe enough to cry– Then the Lord God formed my faith from the ashes of the dead, and breathed into my nostrils the breath of new life, and I became a living being, well, living enough. And like Adam, such a miraculous origin story couldn’t keep me from ruining everything. But the Lord God kept busy, planting gardens and putting people in them. So I likewise kept busy, making more work for myself, too: a research agenda. I was never good at gardening, so when God went east to garden, I went west for my formation. Fortunately, God was there, too. I tried to be pleasant and good, like the trees and those worthy of affection, but the tree of knowledge always seemed more appealing to me than the tree of life. That’s why I ended up in graduate school— the rivers’ pull stronger than I expected. Now I teach ethics to teenagers and wonder if any of us were supposed to know the difference between good and evil in the beginning.   The Ordination to the Professoriate The Lord closed Hannah’s womb, and her rival mocked her. Hannah wept and wouldn’t eat. My parents wept but couldn’t stop eating. Hannah made a deal with God: “If you give me a boy, then he will be yours.” Dad told me his deal was the same. Eli said she was drunk, though she was intoxicated only by despair. I still shiver thinking of the time he was both. Sure enough, Samuel was born. And soon they ordained Hannah’s grief. Grief– the great teacher. Samuel and I – bargaining chips for the divine. What will they do when they find out they hired Anxiety disguised as achievement? Anxiety with a capital A. Untenable seeking tenure-track. Ordination is supposed to be a reordering, and I was always great at following orders, so it seemed a bit inevitable. Hannah dropped Samuel off with the priest, and the bus dropped me off at the megachurch. “Here I am,” we both muttered.

I continue pondering about clowns and clowning as I try to figure out how to engage my classroom with performance and clowning. I continue to contemplate the song[1] that asks: What is it that you give me? That has no measure, nor ever will? The clown is the purest excess, the figure of the exaggeration. The clown’s actions are always too much or too little. They carry something more than what is human, that which we all lack, that we owe, that we hope for, that is known to be lost. The clown is life’s box of surprises, Pandora’s box, the lost key to our desires. The clown is the poet of Manoel de Barros who will irrigate the fields with a sieve. What will it be? What has no remedy, and never will? What has no recipe? The clown has the remedy for all the ills in the world, but always forgets the exact recipe for things. It is also a risk because the clown offers us a mirror of ourselves that can frighten us, that makes us revolt. And that’s how it is, either the clown has the medicine but forgot the prescription, or they have the prescription but didn’t take the medicine. A disaster. What will it be? What happens inside us That shouldn’t? That defies the ones who are absent? The clown always defies authorities because they don’t even know what authority is. In the world of clowning there are no real hierarchies. The ones shown are only for the performance. The clown is an anarchist, they make their own laws. The clown lives solely and exclusively on the joy they desperately seek and give. They live in disregard of every law, of every yoke, of all suffering, of all pain. As the comedian Leo Bassi said, “The buffoon respects nothing and no one, be it the president, the emperor, himself, or even God.” What will it be? What is made of brandy that does not quench? What is it like to be sick of a revelry? The clown’s joy is the shadow of all our sadness. Their show doesn’t want to change the world, but just to offer a laugh, like brandy, to make life more bearable, to be able to take another step, to believe once more. The clown is always sick from their revelry, since their revelry is a flame. What will it be? That not even ten commandments will reconcile Nor any ointments relieve Nor all the breakers all alchemy Nor all the saints Clowning is a covenant without promises, a faith without beliefs, a convent of stupid monks who live off in an animist world. When they pray, they get the order of prayers wrong, when they email the prayer they send it to the wrong saint. They confuse the Orixás, call Jesus “Genésio,” think Ave Maria is Maria Bonita, offer padê for Exu while praying to the Holy Virgin, not really sure if she actually is a virgin. They call Buddha “my king,” Jesus “my comrade,” and Muhammad “my partner.” With all due respect! But don’t doubt the clowns, those holy knotty monks! In their shows, some of them carried the magic of witches and learned alchemy from magicians, dances from shamans, and spells from Spirits. What will it be? What has no rest, nor ever will? what has no limit? The world is so complicated now that the task of laughter is an endless, restless task. Joy puts a limit on hate, debunks anger and undoes the knot of resentment. Only joy has no limits in all its immoderation. Only a happy people will engage the revolution! What is it that you give me? That which burns me inside, what happens to me? That which disturbs my sleep, what happens to me? Ask any clown what’s burning inside and what’s more than heartburn. What makes the clown lose sleep is the quest to find a new way to make somebody laugh: a new face, a new choreography, a new tumble, a new song, a new shame, a new trip, a new look. What is it that happens to me? That all the tremors come to shake That all the ardors come to fan me That all the sweat comes to soak me That all my nerves are begging That all my organs are cheering What a fearful affliction makes me beg Clowning, like poetry, is the art of wonder; of the unkempt, disorganized chest; of the incessant search for a fullness that, it seems, was promised to us somewhere. However, the clown never searches for things to fulfill their heart. A flower is enough to fulfill the clown’s heart and make their green nose happy! Clowning is the fullest acceptance of our glorious limitations and its full celebration. Clowning is feeling every organ of the body vibrating and making it all laugh. Clowning is the ability to be kin with other species, to see the earth as a glorious place where billions of other worlds live. Wonders without end! Clowns try to learn to laugh like the animals do. Clowning is the art of listening, of listening where no one knows how to listen. Clowning is knowing how to look where no one else sees. And making people feel heard, seen, and welcomed. The art of clowning is pointing to our broken and breakable hearts, to the most exact compilation of the index of our faults. Clowning is thus our most complete translation. What is it that you give me? That is not ashamed, and never will be That has no government, and never will That has no sense What makes a clown a clown are their mistakes, their faults, their scattered pieces, their stupidities, and their open view of themselves. They know, with the qoheleth, that trying to go anywhere is running after the wind. But they love the wind! They’ve already made so many mistakes, they’ve already tripped over their own feet, too; they’ve done a lot of nonsense; they’ve already hurt a lot of people, they’ve already saddened so many others. But clowns don’t carry the guilt or shame of what they are because they know they are incredibly imperfect, exuberantly limited. They learn along the way. They change! They carry within themselves the feeling we carry within us: a simple, vulnerable, malleable, and vertiginous matter, and it is from this matter that we are all made. Oh, those clowns… they are a joke. What a joke! [1] The conversation is with the song “O Que Será que Será” (“What Will Be Will Be”) by Chico Buarque.

Abstract: This is the first part of a collection of poems showcasing the personal exploration of a teaching identity grounded in grief experiences, one of the aspects of identity educators carry into the classroom. The use of poetry permits an open theological exploration in which the author examines aspects of his life through the lens of religious allusions and imagery including the creation narratives, Cain and Abel, and Hannah. Specifically, the author engages the experience of growing up in a family impacted by the death of his brother who died prior to the author’s own birth. The experience of being a “substitute” and a “teacher” is represented  within the poetry. The series begins with childhood encounters with loss and moves through life and teaching experiences marked by grief.   In the Beginning: The First Account of Creation Orientation: As the students and their families file into a multipurpose room somehow simultaneously drab and new, I allow my mind to wonder about the myths these students carry about their families’ creation. Without meaning to, my mind falls backward, remembering how in the beginning, when God created my family, I must’ve been somewhere in the formless void as darkness began to cover the face of my parents, while a wind of grief swept over the face of my community. I recall the darkness hiding them on his birthday, the anniversary of his death, and the holidays.           I wish there weren't so many holidays. Then the great Teacher said, “Let there be Zachary,”           and there I was. And I saw that I was supposed to be good, and so I separated myself from the darkness…           or at least, I tried.           My teachers loved how hard I tried. I called the light ours, and I called the darkness mine. And there was anxiety, and there was laughter:           my childhood. I come to my senses. Anxiety and laughter linger as I pick up the microphone and welcome my new students to the end of their childhoods. “Today is the beginning…”   Accidental Cain Reading my course evaluations, I realize I may be too sensitive. “This reading was impossible.” one student wrote.           “Literally impossible.” I begin my investigation and piece together the evidence for why my textual selections           missed the mark. But then I get lost in another long-winded lecture to an audience of one, thinking about how we are here, together, right now, on this floating rock, in outer space, something that’s always seemed impossible to me.           Literally impossible. Why am I here? It’s impossible that I killed my brother. I was born two years after he died.           Literally impossible. Yet until the age of twelve I asked myself the questions the Lord asked Cain,           “Where is your brother?”           “What have you done?” I listened, and I heard my brother’s blood crying out from the ground.           It was sad music that I could barely hear, but it left a ringing in my ear. So I became a wonder-er and a wanderer, and I made my way to the land of Nod, east of Eden,           But even after I turned twelve, and then seventeen, and then thirty           the ringing never went away. I was too scared to ask to watch the home movies so I could know what he sounded like. I wondered what his embrace would feel like– would he have been the kind of big brother that hugged his baby brother, or would he have withheld his affection to toughen me up? Maybe I wouldn’t have been so sensitive, then. I pictured the car crashing again and again. Did he die upon impact? Did he know he was dying? Was there part of him that ever wanted to die?           Mom wanted to die, so maybe that’s why she loves him so much.           Maybe they had that in common. I don’t think we’d have much in common at all. An unnecessary worry, but such worries are my currency. Why wouldn’t God just accept Cain’s sacrifice? Maybe Cain was too sensitive, too. Maybe I’ll find a video for next semester.   Sonny In moments of solitude, I stare intently at the strange wooden case of what’s left of your life, a child playing secret agent, but feeling like a detective who is also the lead suspect. I examine the trophies and books and what I think is your wallet, with a note your teacher confiscated. You never were a fan of teachers, Dad said. I’m too afraid to open the case. I’m as trapped as your belongings: a carefully curated catastrophe. Now you show up in dreams and nightmares, and people chase you But you shush them, or you turn to mist. And I sit in a strange kind of envy, an outsider among those who miss Sonny.

For the past seven months I have been immersed in storytelling. My small project grant, Black Women’s Storytelling as Healing Pedagogy, has taken me on a journey of wonder, insight, wisdom, knowledge, revelation, and so much more. I had conversations with eleven Black women storytellers who are living their vocational calling at the intersection of the church and academy. Their definitions of story and personal practices of storytelling inform their individual and collective approaches to healing pedagogy that inspires human flourishing. The culminating event of this project was a storytelling excursion to Washington DC, to visit the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. This experience propelled me to the mountaintop of storytelling centered on the African Diasporic experience. Let me share one of a multitude of stories that expanded my worldview. Jim Crow Laws and lynch mobs were a common part of the landscape of the United States prior to the civil war. They continue in a variety of ways beyond the strange fruit that hung from southern trees that Ancestor Billie Holiday sang about. Now unarmed and nonviolent Black men, women, and children serve as target practice for those commissioned to serve and protect. Remembering the 1920’s to 1930’s in Marshall, Texas, and at Wiley College in particular, Professor Melvin B. Tolson confronted racist attitudes and actions to establish a debate team which he knew would be equal to any white teams during that time. The students’ have been given the name “The Great Debaters” and competed in the first inter-racial debate ever held in the history of the south. The film, “The Great Debaters,” was introduced to the world in 2007. The story centered around the young students and their coach, Tolson, played by the film’s director, Denzel Washington. “The Great Debaters” is one of my favorite movies because of its historical significance and embodiment of Black Excellence. During my tour of the museum, I marveled as I thoughtfully and carefully viewed the exhibits and artifacts. One exhibit in particular caught my eye. It was a flier depicting the original Great Debaters from Wiley College. I found myself drawn to the photos of these young men and women, recalling the struggles and obstacles they had to overcome as they sought to establish themselves as just as good or better than their white counterparts in the field of forensics. As I stood there reflecting and paying homage to my Wiley College ancestors who faced the realities of domestic terror in the south, I heard the word “RESOLVED,” in my heart, mind, soul, body, and spirit. During a debate, a resolve is a specific statement or question up for debate. It is also a determination to do or refrain from doing something. Resolve is to come to a conclusion. I asked God, what is the RESOLVE, or what is to be determined, as I engage, explore, and experience the museum? I was led to Psalm 118: 17. BE IT RESOLVED: “We (Black people) will not die, but live and proclaim what the Lord has done.” This is the story of MY people throughout all generations. We will not die, but live, and will proclaim what the Lord has done. Ancestor Maya Angelou with her soul’s conviction said it poignantly in her world-renowned poem, “And Still I Rise”: Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.   Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.   RESOLVED—We will not die, but live, and proclaim what the Lord has done.

The mother noticed the boy tenderly. She said: My son, you are going to be a poet. You will carry water in your sieve your whole life. You will fill voids with your naughtiness And some people will love you for your nonsense -Manoel de Barros[1] If you have followed my two last blogs, I am adventuring into new forms of scholarship and for that I am entering into the realm of performance, clowning, and ecology. The play I am putting together is about a clown called Wajcha (Quechua for orphan) who is searching for Pachamama, his ultimate belonging. Since I am turning Wajcha into a clown, I need to understand the life of the clown. A note about Wajcha will come later in the process, but what is a clown? The figure of the clown has always enchanted me. My father was a clown, without paint, red nose, or big clothes. He had the Buddha’s smile. And he made everyone laugh. Because of him I learned to like the circus, which was cheap to go see, and I fell in love with the art. He loved cinema, did theater, and was a writer, poet, and musician. He played the violin, guitar, and harmonica. It was from him that I learned to laugh. With him I learned to like Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, and the Three Stooges. In Brazil, the clown that most marked me was named Arrelia. He always started everything by asking, “How are you, how are you, how are you?” And everyone said, “Okay, okay, okay.” It was the beginning of many laughs. Then I grew up, became an adult, grew stupid, and forgot about clowns. It was during COVID that the clown that inhabited my father his whole life came to visit me. There was so much sadness in the world that I needed joy and laughter. In this search, I had to wrestle culturally: to be a clown and to laugh are both cultural expressions. Living in the United States has changed me in ways I still don’t know. But what I know is that I found my voice here. Strangely enough, living here made me bigger, extravagant, multiple, and shameless, to the point of naïveté, and bold. It was through my immigrant persona that I found a deeper part of myself. On the other hand, living here also made me quieter, suspicious, and more serious, not knowing exactly who or what to trust. It definitely made me more fearful. And it is in between these two worlds within me that my clown showed up. My name should be “Clowndio”! The figure of the clown holds a multiplicity of selves: extravagance and exaggeration, silliness, lack of shyness, and excessive naïveté. How can one be a clown in a prudish, moralistic, and tense society? Or how can one be a clown in a very proper, serious, rational, academic world that also creates so much fear? While humor thrives in so-called proper places, humor does not survive fear. When humor is done with love, it stretches boundaries and casts out fear. If humor is connected with love, then as Saint Augustine says, “Be humorous and do what you want.” For humor is not “anything goes,” but rather a very careful craft of attending, paying attention to, and caring for those around you. Still, humor is not that simple. Humor is cultural and most of my Brazilian sensibilities do not fit here. My family here will say how embarrassed they often are with me. To find humor in another culture is to find its heartbeat and it is so difficult to get when you didn’t grow up in that place. And yet, humor is also universal in its specificities. I hate how clowns are portrayed on Halloween in the US. They are terrifying! I hate this relationship between clowns and horror. But after studying the history, I understand that it includes the the terror-striking clown. This helped me understand the Halloween clowns even though I can’t stand them. It is said that Stephen King wrote It, about the horrifying Pennywise the Dancing Clown, after he found out that clowns are what scare children the most. I couldn’t believe it! However, King was right to portray a clown as a shape-shifting monster dealing with a void, and with its own “macroverse.” That’s true! The clown is not just a sweet person; they carry within themselves abysses and monstrosities. I, however, want something very different! I want my clown to touch the horrors of the world and return them as laughter, lightness, and silliness. I want a clown who pays close attention to the disasters of the world but interprets these disasters in a way that people can engage with and not shut down. I am fine with boredom, but I can’t stand boring things. There’s nothing worse than boring people. I want to be funny, at least for a few! Funny, joy, laughter, silliness: these are all forms of power against capitalism, which is the most potent producer of sadness in our time! The current demand for happiness everywhere is a symptom of this very sad society. No, happiness is not the measure of a good life, but to laugh is an antidote to the forces of death that keep pressing us down into places lacking joy and energy.  My clown emerges as an anti-capitalist character wearing flowers and a green nose as he searches for Pachamama. Sure, Wajcha doesn’t know what he is doing, and in that way we are very similar! All he wants is to make someone laugh and pay attention to the land. The clown is a person who feels a lot, who feels more than they should. They feel something, as the song[2] says, That springs forth from their skin And they ask: What is it that happens to me? The clown knows that they need to go where the people are, where children (small or big) are. Then the clown may even paint their face and do some tricks and, if you ask why the clown does it all, they’ll say: I don’t know, I don’t know what this is springing forth from my skin. What is it that happens to me? that rises to. my cheeks and makes me blush? The clown receives the heart of someone and carries it with care. The clown blushes with joy, never with shame. Holding life is a unique event; the clown blushes with the charm of the simplest things. What is it that happens to me? that jumps out at me, betraying me? The clown sees too much but doesn’t realize that what they see multiplies and remakes itself into other things that no one else sees. The clown is naïve. The clown doesn’t work in linear ways, but keeps looping in symbiotic moves. The clown betrays systems of profit. Fully present in the place, the clown doesn’t have much need for anything. A little flower becomes the clown’s whole world! The clown follows a bee around the world. The clown falls in love with a cactus and makes their life in the desert. What is it that happens to me? that squeezes my chest and makes. me confess? The clown is a confessor of their own stupidities, mistakes, limits, naïvetés, disappointments, sadness, and loneliness... And as a confessor, the clown opens to the confession of all the frailties of the world. The clown is a collector of peoples’ stories. As Zuca Sardan said, “The clown is the ultimate priest.” A disguised prophet, a compassionate one, a coyote trickstering communities, an ambassador without citizenship, a foreigner without a country, the clown despises nations. What is it that happens to me? What can no longer be concealed? The clown is incapable of hiding; what you see is what you get. The clown is so honest that they can’t help but be a tremendous pretender. “He pretends so completely that he even pretends that the pain he really feels is pain.”[3] And he also pretends that it is joy that makes everyone laugh. What is it that happens to me? That's not right for anyone to refuse? No, the clown does not understand the refusal of a smile and is stubborn until they succeed. With their annoying galoshes! For the clown has only one law: It is declared that everyone is given not only the right, but fundamentally, the duty, to laugh! What is it that happens to me? That makes me a beggar? makes me plead? The clown leaves their home, paints themself, dresses in strange clothes as if begging for a smile, even if only from the corner of someone’s mouth. Every clown lives off the crumbs of other people’s happiness. And it is this joy that makes them beg for any smile. [1] Manoel de Barros, excerpt from the poem “The boy who carried water in his sieve,” in Exercicios de Ser Criança (São Paulo: Editora Salamandra, 1999). [2] This is a conversation with the song “O Que Será que Será” (“What Will Be Will Be”) by Chico Buarque. [3] Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems (New York: Penguin, 2006).

None of the women in my motherline drove a car regularly before the 1970s. To get to where they were going next in their lives, when they left where they were born, they navigated saltwater roads. They moved house; whole villages, islands, and continents receding in their wake. They lived as the newly arrived outsiders in other Caribbean islands, the United States, England, and Canada as they gave birth to us, the next generation. Before she got on the boat that would cross the Atlantic to England, my mother walked her island world just up the road from the deep-water harbour. My work as a teacher, scholar, and writer focuses on the religious lives of everyday folk in communities in the African Diaspora in North America and the Caribbean. The oeuvre of anthropologist and writer Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) helped me hone some essential items in my toolkit. Key among these is Hurston’s recognition of the centrality of oral traditions in southern US black communities. Her brilliance as a scholar and writer is based on her keen observation as an anthropologist and on her self-reflexivity as a member of the communities with which she worked. Her stance was unusual for the 1930s and prescient of the call for research reflexivity in anthropological and other social sciences and humanities which emerged later in the twentieth century. Hurston was also a traveler. She journeyed throughout the US South and the Caribbean including Haiti, the Bahamas, and Jamaica, to record the stories, songs, and folklore of black communities. She drove a car on her trips through the rural US south conducting research. In a memorable episode recounted in her 1942 autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston tells readers about her escape from a conflictual situation in a work camp by leaving late at night and driving away. She also wrote about a road trip and her drive across the Canada/US border from the state of Michigan into the city of Kitchener in southern Ontario. I was intrigued to learn that Zora Neale Hurston had driven through, or possibly even stayed, in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. I teach at a university in what is now called Kitchener-Waterloo. For years, I have tried to retrace her steps in the Kitchener end of town imagining where she may have stopped for a meal or an overnight stay. Did she park her car on Duke Street in downtown Kitchener close to where Canada’s first black lawyer, Jamaican-born Robert Sutherland (1830-1878), operated a law practice decades earlier? Did she stay at any of the inns or on the outskirts in nearby smaller towns? Perhaps she rested in a rented room with a black family using the informal word-of-mouth shared information which helped black travelers navigate racially segregated landscapes. Hurston enigmatically notes in her observations that life on both sides of the border looked very similar from her vantage point. What did she mean exactly? I interpret Hurston’s comment as referring to social as well as geographical landscapes. It is a sly indication that de facto racial segregation existed across the border in 1930s Ontario. Racialized segregation shaped her experiences on both sides of the US and Canada border. Hurston’s strategies of navigation as a black woman driver and traveler would have been needed in both places. Indeed, the Canadian historical record supports Hurston’s assessment. After all, Herbert Green’s Green Book, a handbook for black motorists on road trips published from 1936 to 1966, provided references to safe places not only in the US, but also across the border in Canada, in the province of Ontario. My search for Zora in the local and regional African diaspora is not only through textual and visual records but also literal as I walk the streets of small towns and drive rural roads in my very old car trying to match place names from old maps and memoirs with current locations. Sometimes I meet an empty field or a church building now repurposed as a home but on occasion I have visited buildings which are still standing and church communities which are vibrant even though their locations have shifted. Surrounded by rural farmlands and smaller towns, Kitchener-Waterloo is located on the traditional unceded territory of the Haudensaunee, Anishnawbe, and Neutral Indigenous peoples. As a British-born black woman of Caribbean heritage living in Canada, I have thought about how my own complex identity has been shaped by forced and chosen migrations of previous generations. In courses that I have designed, I ask students to read, think, and write about the local in connection to regional, national, and international historical and contemporary contexts. In doing so, they are encouraged to consider studying religion and culture beyond static notions of historical dates and immobile structures and fixed figures. This approach challenges ideas of “history” and “religion” happening to abstract, far away actors while the current local context remains unexamined, safe, and uncomplicated. Citations: Hurston, Zora Neale. Dust Tracks on a Road. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991

writing about teaching means that i begin with thinking about teaching and why it has always been a part of my life. both of my parents were college professors, and the worlds of books and classrooms were a part of my life for as long as i can remember. some of my earliest tangible memories about teaching are walking from my grade school—fayetteville street elementary—to the biology building at north carolina college at durham for negroes (now north carolina central university) and sitting outside of my mother’s classroom and listening to her biology lectures. she had no idea that i was there until i talked about it in my installation address at union theological seminary when I was in my late 40s. i loved listening to her teach as she was in command of the material and the classroom, and her diction was impeccable. i knew a little about some of the topics she was teaching in those intro biology classes, but not always. and it was the not-always times that caused me to lean in more closely—what i now thing of as learning. writing about teaching means that i put myself into the classroom—either an imagined or tangible one—and think about why working with students in a teaching and learning environment is an honor and can be big fun. it’s also a challenge and i find that there are times when the pain or the joy that is being shared is also a time of both spiritual and pastoral prayer. logic and reason take somewhat of a back seat for a while as the humanity of the person(s) in front of me or seated around the table comes to the fore in visceral ways. writing about teaching helps me remember why i chose it as a profession and how, although i have been in administration since 2008, i never stopped teaching in its broadest sense as being a dean is, for me, about teaching as we learn together how to be a faculty, how we shape a curriculum, how we engage the worlds around us, how we must be as present as possible to the known and the unexpected, how we work with the churches and communities around us, how we hold ourselves together by tending to our spiritual as well as physical selves. and i am reminded, once again, that teaching is about caring and love.