Joni & Friends

Beacon Hill visited Joni & Friends in Agoura Hills on the way back from Our Lady of Angels Cathedral. Children and adults were profoundly impacted by the ministry's call to care for those in need; ironically, helping we who are "well" become active and socially outward.
Joni generously welcomed the students into her office, demonstrating her voice recognition software which enables her to write.
Touring the facility means showcasing specific individuals with disabilities. It's worth noting how groups move from being invisible - like minorities in the 1950s - to mainstream recognition. Conversely, orthodox Christians today feel invisible among our culture's powerbrokers, such as the university, media circles.

Refurbished wheelchairs are delivered internationally, for which the children collected a donation.

The center of the building is the "floating" chapel, where we sang the doxology after reading the words from Amos, "Let justice roll down like waters..." inscribed in the fountain below.

The design is lifted from Maya Lin's realization of the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham, which uses water as a temporal element, illustrating the timeline of the civil rights movement. She is one of my favorite 20th century artists, after her award-winning design - at 22 years old! - of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in DC.

We ended the session, making "gospel bracelets" which will be attached to every donated wheelchair, then listened to Joni give her testimony, raise disability awareness, as well as offer practical advice to the children: "Always swim with a buddy!"

Our Lady of Angels

Beacon Hill's field trip was a double-whammy: Lady of Angels Cathedral + Joni & Friends, a resounding success and rewarding on many levels.

First, we were going DOWNTOWN, such as it is; the original church bordering Japanese town, always stuck out as an anomaly to me. We boned up on Ojai artist, John Nava, and his vision for the Belgian tapestries which softened the cold interior space of CA mission-colored concrete.
Unlike other towns, LA was not previously anchored by a cathedral, not that OLA - its-next-to-freeway status - accomplishes this. But since my own church meets in a warehouse on the outskirts of Camarillo - bordered by a railroad, not highway - I let out a huge exhale, upon entering a sacred space, again.

The tapestries feature official saints and commoners alike

with a red marble slab bookending the entrance's baptismal pool.

The children were encouraged to climb, touch, feel almost everything, underscoring the tactile dimension to iconic Catholicism versus Protestantism's mental abstraction which Umberto Eco wrote of years ago now, comparing Mac computers to PCs. Touchscreen technologies only further the argument and, Apple, it appears, is dominating.
Erlinda, our able guide, is a born native and will be buried in the crypt space below - 5500 spots available, along with Gregory Peck. The children loved knocking on the hollow, unoccupied spaces.
Perhaps, my favorite spot was the chapel dedicated to St Joseph and the topic of adoption:
Really, Christ is the adopted son and "prototype" of a renew humanity - birthed at the cross; the water and blood of his wounds conjuring the birth of Eve via Adam's side.

Joseph above & the children below:

Reliefs from the original church

I asked Michael and Jack if this reminded them of the cathedrals in Europe. They replied matter of factly, "No." It did for me, however. Here and there, these are houses of worship doubling as tourist spots.

Our modern condition.

Jishin

Mountains fell
And filled the rivers.

The seas heaved
And flooded the land.

Boats along the shore
Were helpless in the waves.

Around the capital
Not one temple or pagoda
remained intact.

Dust and ashes rose
Like billows of smoke.

Caught inside
A house might crush you.

Outside, the ground was torn apart.

Without wings,
You could not fly away.
Only a dragon
may ride the clouds!

For a while right after
There was talk
of the vanities of this world,
and people seemd to be rid
of the sinfulness in their hearts.

But days and months went by,
then years,
and no one spoke of it again.

excerpted from the HOJOKI (Account of My Hut)
by Kamo Chomei, 1212 AD

Spring break

This past week we stayed home, rather than travel for Pepperdine's spring break. I took Michael and Jack to the bank to open savings accounts.
They proudly spilled their coins onto the banker's desk and began counting. The concept of earned interest was difficult to grasp and, given the current rate, difficult to take seriously, but deferred anything would be a worthwhile lesson.

Worked on home projects and visited Beacon Hill twice:

The school is doing well in its second year and we're tweaking the curriculum from cookie-cutter classical to learning that takes advantage of local resources and talent. The church has improved the play area - new swings, water fountains, basketball hoop - and there's a VAST area for exploring: Michael picked peppercorns last year and found swarms of ladybugs.

Devin structures PE sessions:

Compared to the asphalt wasteland of Gardena Elementary, this looked absolutely idyllic to me and lacked the harsher realities I grew-up with: a few roving thugs who would terrorize the kids, stealing their lunches (the teachers were afraid of them) and general anonymity. These children are surrounded by their moms who volunteer and remain a presence. We're coming up with our version of the "PTA," as well.

Elle will be teaching and incorporating a gardening rubric into all the grades next year. The possibilities for teaching (global economy, local stewardship, spiritual analogy) are endless and exciting and we are sad to miss out on next year!

All in all, there is an impressive community being established through BHCA. I am a believer in the neighborhood, community school which, curiously, is what studies have shown people want and choose over choice of charter schools (cf Diane Ravitch: The Death and Life of the Great American School System). It's an exciting endeavor for us to be involved in, to be contributing to.

***

Parting shots:

Jack with the Schneekloth boys during the recent L'abri conference. Jack and Michael (rt) performed a duet:

On take-offs and landings, Michael reaches out to hold hands - our little family ritual - sometimes crossing aisles, and this trip, behind rows!

Winter

Well, we've had some key events: Carolyn marked the big Five O, Michael and Jack's Coming Home Day, and the annual L'Abri Conference in Rochester MN.
Since Francis Schaeffer's lymphoma treatment at the Mayo Clinic in the early '80s, L'Abri established an office and residential work in Rochester - about 90 minutes southeast of Minneapolis/St Paul, that has grown due to conferences, medical ethics seminars, and a community (PCA, et al) surrounding the branch.

My college apartment mate practices psychiatry there, so we visit while the boys experience arctic weather:
Michael woke-up early to make ice candles. He LOVES snow and would throw himself onto mounds of it, always game for someone to engage in a snowball fight. Jack had an early bad experience with wet socks and refused to go out afterwards!

I gave two workshops:

"Homesick for a Place You've Never Known:
The Orphans of God and Spiritual Adoption"

"Images as the New Opium of the People"

also bringing 5 Pepperdine students. I made use of a MadMen clip, illustrating competing notions of nostalgia and homeland at work in modern culture, in stark contrast to Biblical linearity best represented, perhaps, by Abraham, who never looked back.

As stark contrast, Ozu faces crises non-nostalgically - war, dissolution of the family, modernity are faced head-on, without melancholy. Extended family photographs are taken in his films, but never viewed:

The house - its emptiness - is an actor in the family drama.

Wim Rietkerk, of the Dutch L'Abri gave a closing talk contrasting Reformed and Puritan conceptions of spirituality - sojourn vs pilgrimage - and Dick Keyes' tweaked the Tulip by preferring "Pervasive" over "Total Depravity."

The conference dovetailed with Valentine's Day, Michael's "Coming Home Day" 7 years ago; we celebrated Jack's, as well.



For us, this has largely meant - along with Chinese New Year's - eating a variety of our favorite take out dishes.
Carolyn involved the Beacon Hill children in a dragon puppet craft, then broke out fortune cookies.

Jack's coming home was met with considerably less fanfare - we just came home; only now working to correct the deficit in our rituals of the event.

Carolyn turned 50! We had a number of small events; David and Teresa threw a party after church. and Susan came over on the actual day for cake and presents. Then old college friend, Beth, flew into town a couple weeks later for her 50th and we held a joint celebration, going to Ojai for the weekend.

Knott's Berry Farm

Christmas break we decided to try Knott's, a more low key theme park counterpart to Disneyland which had a Western theme - chicken dinners, Pendleton apparel, old West town - and a measure of authenticity, built around an historical Walter and Cordelia Knott and their berry stand:
My family sometimes went to Knotts just for the famous fried chicken dinners and shopping, which you didn't need park admission to frequent.

The ghost town - former center of the park - was actually foraged from abandoned ghost towns and rebuilt in Buena Park as a backdrop for the Western spirit and Americana patriotism. This later melded perfectly with the '70s Jesus Movement, as a Knott grandson purportedly attended Calvary Chapel and, later, the Simon Greenleaf Law School - the explanation for the quality Christian bookstore on site. I used to attend the New Year's Eve concerts and bought some hard to find apologetics books there.

Now, it's morphed into Camp Snoopy, lending a cartoonish motif to the hotel and the Peanuts franchise everywhere.
I have mixed feelings about it all, but Michael & Jack loved it, especially the amusement park rides, much like pier arcades and roller coasters.

We panned for gold...

but Michael LOVED the thrills best

reminding me of pushing him in a swing upon returning from Guangzhou. He wanted to keep going higher, laughing hysterically

until he threw up.

Back to Knotts. The chicken dinner was a bust, bookstore gone, shopping mostly of cheap trinkets, the ghost town still there, but lacking any coherence standing next to Camp Snoopy. My memory has taken a bruising, as I realized I couldn't deliver the goods to my own children.