Agora Spring 2023

Agora

THE LIBERAL ARTS AT LUTHER COLLEGE

THE LIBERAL ARTS AT LUTHER COLLEGE

Martin Klammer, editor

SPRING 2023 VOLUME 35 NUMBER 2

Bonnie Tunnicliff Johnson, production editor

Agora, an interdisciplinary journal grounded in the humanities, is a project of the Luther College Paideia Program. The Luther College Paideia Program encompasses many activities and resources for students, faculty members, and the broader community. It includes an annual lecture series, library acquisitions, student writing services, a faculty development program that includes sabbatical grants and summer workshops, and Agora: The Liberal Arts at Luther College. All these activities receive financial support from the Paideia Endowment, originally established through National Endowment for the Humanities grants matched by friends of Luther College. The Paideia owl logo was designed by Professor of Art John Whelan.

LUTHER COLLEGE

PAIDEIA Seeking Wisdom in Community

The primary Agora contributors are Luther College faculty; writing is also solicited from other college community members and, occasionally, from outside writers. Agora was established in 1988

by Paideia Director Wilfred F. Bunge, Professor of Religion and Classics, who edited the journal from 1988-1998. Other editors include: Mark Z. Muggli, Professor of English, 1998-2004; Peter A. Scholl, Professor of English, 2004-2014; and Martin Klammer, Professor of English, editor since 2014. Agora is distributed to on-campus faculty and administrators as well as to off-campus friends of the college. Anyone wishing to be included on the print copy list or donate to Agora should contact us at (563) 387-1153 or email agora@luther.edu.

To see the current issue and archival issues online, go to www.luther.edu/paideia/agora.

Contents Essays Prairie Sinkhole Bluestem Sky: An Evening of Poetry and Readings Hayley Jackson, David Faldet, and Athena Kildegaard............................................. 3 Last Station Jenbach John Strauss............................................................................................................. 9

Sabbaticals Oboe in Community: Supporting the Next Generation of Oboists Heather Armstrong................................................................................................ 13 Geophysical Remote Sensing at a Pre-Contact Enclosure Site in Northeast Iowa Colin Betts............................................................................................................. 17 Further Adventures in the Collaborative Arts: Louis Jensen’s Square Stories Lise Kildegaard...................................................................................................... 20 Thinking Through Institutional Equity: Finding a GEM Charlotte A. Kunkel............................................................................................... 23

Chapel Talks Kwanzaa: Celebration of Community and Heritage (December 9, 2022) Wintlett Browne.................................................................................................... 26 Bold Faith (February 3, 2023) Ashley Benson........................................................................................................ 28 Why Luther? (February 8, 2023) Mychal Shed (’23).................................................................................................. 30 When Islamophilia Becomes Islamophobia: The Case of Hamline University (February 19, 2023) Robert Shedinger................................................................................................... 32 He Loved Them to the End (April 5, 2023) Martin Klammer................................................................................................... 34 Ramadan Reflections (April 19, 2023) Jaraad Afroze Ahmed (’25).................................................................................... 35 Other People Are Not Me (May 10, 2023) Anna M. Peterson.................................................................................................. 38

Cover: Vase (1971) Josiah Tlou

Josiah Tlou was born in 1935 in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) and came to Luther College after an eight-year career as a school teacher and principal in Zimbabwe, graduating with a history degree in 1968. After earning his MA degree in history from Illinois State University in 1969, he returned to Luther as a faculty member for three years, helping to establish what was then known as the Black Studies Department. Tlou earned his Doctorate of Education degree from the University of Illinois and joined the faculty at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, VA, rising to the rank of full professor in 2002 before retiring in 2005.

He received an honorary doctorate (humane letters) from Luther College in 2003 for his contributions to education in Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Malawi.

As an artist, Josiah Tlou took several classes in pottery at Luther, and during the summer of 1967 he studied with Marguerite Wildenhain at her Pond Farm workshops in Guerneville, CA. He later studied ceramics at South Bear School with Dean Schwarz. The vase featured on the cover was donated to the Pond Farm Collection by Edward (1939-2017) and Elizabeth Kaschins, emeriti faculty members.

Josiah Tlou and his family are long-time friends of the college and of Decorah. For another Tlou family connection, see page 31 of this issue.

Introduction

by MARTIN KLAMMER, Professor of English, Editor of Agora

Heather Armstrong writes of her time working with young musicians in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Minnesota, “exploring organizations whose mission is to help make the oboe more accessible to students who want to learn to play it.” Learning to play the oboe can be a challenge, Heather writes, because of the instrument’s high cost and the lack of knowledgeable oboe instructors, especially in less populated areas. In all three locations, Heather worked with oboe students through various education programs. She taught individuals and groups, presented oboe workshops, and helped with reed-making. In addition, she performed with Luther alumni Maria Morel-Pierrot (’97) and Ingrid Scott (’12) at the national conservatory of the Dominican Republic in Santo Domingo, and in an oboe/horn quartet at the Oboe Fest in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Heather hopes now to create a sense of community among oboe students at Dorian summer programs like that which she saw and experienced in her sabbatical travels.

Lise Kildegaard continued her work sharing the Square Stories of Danish author Louis Jensen, though her sabbatical plan of visiting with Jensen in Denmark took a sudden turn when he died of a heart attack at age 77. Saddened, Lise decided that “other collaborations could continue.” She made new plans to share Jensen’s stories in collaborations with the Museum of Danish America in Elk Horn, Iowa, and in Seattle at the University of Washington and the National Nordic Museum. Lise writes that a “particularly enjoyable and productive collaboration” was her student-faculty 2

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research collaboration with Jurgen Dovre, an English major and gifted cartoonist.

While Lise refined her translations of Jensen’s stories, Jurgen created illustrations to go along with some of the stories, three of which are included in Lise’s essay. Lise notes that Jurgen’s drawings “display a gentle yet lively humor that makes them a good match for Jensen’s stories.”

Colin Betts collaborated with Anna Luber (’19) and Linh Luong (’20) in 2018 on geophysical archaeological research that explored northeast Iowa’s “pre-contact enclosure sites.” A primary goal of Colin’s fall 2021 sabbatical was analysis of the data that Anna and Linh helped collect. And while Char Kunkel did not work directly with Martin Klammer reads a condensed version of the great Ameristudents, it’s clear that can novel with granddaughter Lana Maxfield, age 3. the Global Ecological Mapping (GEM) of equity she developed sabbatical essays in this issue are excelon sabbatical will be an important new lent examples of how Luther faculty are part of her teaching in sociology and formidlerne, sharing their passions and Identity Studies. knowledge with students, and receiving from students in turn their creativity, Perhaps the best way to describe the insight, and love of learning. value of faculty-student collaborations is with the Danish word formidler which, Lise tells us in her essay, means “a person who knows something of value or has access to something of value, and works to share it with others.” The

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

W

hen many Luther faculty go on sabbatical, they don’t seem to leave their students!

This is the case with the student-centered sabbatical reports in this issue.

Prairie Sinkhole Bluestem Sky: An Evening of Poetry and Readings

by HAYLEY JACKSON, College Archivist; DAVID FALDET, Professor Emeritus of English; and ATHENA KILDEGAARD, Honors Coordinator, University of Minnesota, Morris

Editor’s note: This series of three writings reprises an evening of readings on February 10 about the prairies and natural world of the upper Midwest. The event was co-hosted by the Luther College English Department and the Center for Ethics and Public Engagement (CEPE).

PHOTO COURTESY OF LUTHER SNOW

Choice, Not Chance: Preserving Prairies and Archives

by Hayley Jackson

W

hen Lise Kildegaard asked me to speak this evening, I had no idea what I would talk about. The prairie and the archives are two very different things, and I have far more experience with one than the other.

Initially, I thought I would talk about the history of Washington Prairie, a local prairie of great significance in the Norwegian immigrant community. When I couldn’t find the history behind why the prairie was named for Washington, I scrapped that and thought I might instead compare my journey to living in the Oneota Valley to the journeys of Elisabeth Koren and Linka Preus. I was going to make fun of myself. Growing up in the Chicagoland sprawl, my exposure and connection with prairies came from Laura Ingalls Wilder, the Oregon Trail computer game, and that one field trip to the prairie areas of Fermi Lab. Little City Girl on the Prairie. Several of Preus and Koren’s complaints about the cold and getting lost in the dark rang true to my early years here in Decorah. But that didn’t feel right either. Finally, at about nine o’clock this morning, it dawned on me what I really wanted to talk about.

Surprise surprise, it’s a topic I always want to talk about.

Moderator Lise Kildegaard with Athena Kildegaard, Hayley Jackson, and David Faldet, following an evening of readings about the prairie I want to talk to you about preservation, something that truly unites prairies and archives.

In the popular media, we love stories of dramatic historical discovery. Someone opens a box in grandma’s attic and finds a set of diaries. A metal detectorist in England goes out for a walk and finds a cache of Roman coins. Someone cleaning out a basement finds boxes of glass negatives. We love these stories. How amazing, we say, that these have lasted so long. How fortunate we are to have found them. Look how well it has been preserved. Isn’t it unbelievable they’ve survived this long?

These events do happen, and they are incredible. In 2014, right here in Decorah, Kate Rattenborg Scott’s family found a trove of letters written

by Elisabeth Koren to her father in Norway. I am grateful that Kate and her family donated those to the Archives.

That same year, a student cataloging the papers of Professor Orlando W. Qual-

ley located some ancient papyri pieces Qualley had purchased in Karanis, Egypt. These events are exciting! It makes us feel a little bit like Indiana Jones.

I want to stress, however, that much of the material we use to study the past was not preserved accidentally. It was done on purpose, first by the family or organization who set the material aside, then by the archivist, museum curator or librarian who placed the material in their collection. The collections are cataloged, organized in boxes, and stored in spaces designed to maintain their existence as long as possible. These are all deliberate choices made because we value the past. We think these records have something to tell us about the people who wrote them, and the time and place they were written in. We think that there is something left to be learned from these records. We think there is value in knowing where we come from.

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PHOTO COURTESY OF LUTHER COLLEGE ARCHIVES

in an attempt to find greater security from hunger and want. And as they moved, the traces of their existence were scattered and lost.

Sometimes their lives vanish from view, as if in a puff of smoke.

Main II with prairie grasses If we were to leave this all to chance, we would not have nearly the resources we have in the archives. Natural disasters, poor storage conditions, and a lack of care all contribute to the destruction of historical records. Every archivist and museum worker I know lives in fear of that 3 a.m. phone call that the pipes over the storage area burst, or of that well-meant donation of material so covered in mold we cannot save it. And to be fair, we can’t preserve everything.

(That’s a talk for another time.) But if we leave the preservation of our past to chance, our historical record would be much less rich.

But the Ingallses were not people of power or wealth. Generation after generation, they traveled light, leaving things behind. Looking for their ancestry is like looking through a glass darkly, images flickering in their obscurity. As far as we can tell, from the moment they arrived on this continent they were poor, restless, struggling, constantly moving from one place to another

So as we look back across the ages, trying to find what made Laura’s parents who they were, imagine that we’re on a prairie in the storm.

The wind is whipping past and everything is obscured. But there are the occasional bright, blinding moments that illuminate a face here or there. Sometimes we hear a voice, a song snatched out of the air.1 When I first read this book a few years ago, I was, as the kids say, shook. My archival training had taught me that the written records we have from ages gone by tend to be from the upper classes, often because those we have deemed to be significant hail from those classes. Thomas Jefferson liked to pretend to be a simple farmer but he was an aristocratic, wealthy man. But this passage touched me deeply because the stark contrast of care. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, cared about their legacies, their lands, what would be left behind. They had places to store their vast collections of papers, books, trinkets. When they died, these were

It is always a problem, in writing about poor people. The powerful, the rich and influential, tend to have a healthy sense of their selfimportance. They keep things: letters, portraits, and key documents, such as the farm record of Thomas Jefferson, which preserved the number and identity of his slaves.

No matter how far they may travel, people of high status and position are likely to be rooted by their very wealth, protecting fragile ephemera in a manse or great home. They have a Mount Vernon, a Monticello, a Montpellier.

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PHOTO COURTESY OF KIRK LARSEN

I want to read you a passage from Caroline Fraser’s 2017 book Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Anderson Prairie

IMAGE COURTESY LUTHER COLLEGE ARCHIVES

working to be more inclusive in what we collect so we can preserve a wider range of stories that reflects more of our society because we recognize this choice.

This cabin, near Washington Prairie, housed newly arrived Elisabeth and U.V. Koren as well as their hosts, the Egge family, during the winter of 1843-54. This 1955 photo shows it at Luther College. In 1976 it was moved to the Vesterheim Museum’s campus. seen as valuable enough to preserve. The same cannot be said for the possessions of those they enslaved, if, in fact, the enslaved owned anything at all.

We see this in our own collections here at Luther. The diaries and letters of Elisabeth Koren and Linka Preus are such valuable resources for us to learn about life on the Wisconsin and Iowa prairies. Elisabeth in particular loved nature and plants—there is a letter to her father where she tells him all about the prairie wildflowers. She writes in her diary about her husband, Vilhelm, bringing her new flowers he has found while out and about. But these women were not your average pioneer women.

They were well-educated and came from families of status in Norway. They married men who would become significant figures in the Norwegian Synod and the history of Lutheranism in America.

They were not Caroline Ingalls.

To be sure, Linka and Elisabeth gave up their lives at home, leaving everything they knew behind to come with their husbands to this strange new country, where rumor had it that the birds didn’t sing and the flowers had no fragrance.

Elisabeth later wrote to her father that rumors of American flowers having no fragrance was slanderous. While

they had help around their homes, they worked hard, making sausage from animal guts, scrubbing floors, ironing clothes, tending animals. They surely did not think their life story and legacies were as important as Jefferson or Washington did. And yet, they clearly thought their stories were worth writing down. I don’t get the sense that Erik and Helene Egge, the couple who shared their cabin with the Korens, felt their journeys from Norway were worth writing down. We know some of their story not from any writing they left behind, but from newspapers, government records, and later interviews with descendants. I’m not sure they would have had the time to write with all the labor it took to maintain their farm. We have no insight into the Egges beyond what Elisabeth writes, but I would be unsurprised if in the event the Egges had to leave and only had space for foodstuffs or letters from home, they chose the foodstuffs. The Egge-Koren cabin was not preserved because the Egges lived there, but because the Korens lived there. The history of the poor, and of other marginalized groups, is so often found by reading between the lines.

So what does this have to do with the prairie? That preservation, or perhaps conservation, is choice applies to our natural landscapes just as much as our historical record. Anderson Prairie, that beautiful patch of tallgrass prairie here on campus, is a deliberate choice we have made as an institution. We believe it is worth preserving, that it has value, that we can continue to learn from it.

Perhaps it is, as Athena writes in “Prairie Daughters 2036” only of “museum quality.” But it is there. We maintain it and run routine controlled burns.

Prairie fires have always been part of the cycle of maintaining grasslands. This is something the indigenous peoples and later the settlers on these prairies knew.

The prairie required deliberate choices to maintain it. This beautiful land we live on is here because of active choices we have made to preserve it. We do not, we cannot leave it to chance.

So as you listen to our readings tonight, think about preservation. Think about how the documents came to be that Athena was able to draw from for her poetry. Think about how David was able to experience the land similarly to his ancestors here in Winneshiek County. Think about how it is choice, not chance, that shapes so much of the world around us. Thank you.

NOTES 1. Fraser, Caroline. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

New York: Metropolitan Books, 2017, p. 28-29.

All of this is to say that most preservation is not “natural.” It is a choice. A deliberate choice. Archivists today are Spring 2023/Agora

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Excerpts from Oneota Flow: The Upper Iowa River and Its People1 From “The Two Names of the River: Geological Beginnings”

by David Faldet

From “Unknown World: 1634 to 1832” In talking about repairs to stalactites on our hike through the subterranean waters of Coldwater Creek, Mike Lace uses a word that gives me pause. “Some of the speleothems we repaired a few years ago,” he says, “are already healing over quite nicely.” The cave is chiefly stone, water, and air. “Healing” suggests how much it is alive, a living system into which people have only recently pushed themselves. As we splash into the upstream edge of Pothole Country, Lace points out a perfectly circular depression, ten inches deep. At its center rests 6

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“MORTAR AND PESTLE” PHOTO COURTESY OF JORDAN KJOME-DECORAH, IOWA

T

he waters that feed Upper Iowa springs often enter the ground through a rock feature called a sinkhole. A sinkhole is created when water nibbles out a widening funnel as it descends into the rock below the surface. These funnel vents collapse under the weight of the rock and soil above them, creating pockmarks: the most visible intake pores of the underground circulatory system of the river basin.

The Upper Iowa may be fed by as many as six thousand of these. My childhood along the river taught me that sinkholes were repositories. Into the sinkhole on my family’s acreage, I dumped branches, leaves, lawn rakings, and grain sacks full of clinkers and ash. Over the biggest depression on our land, a previous landowner had parked an outmoded horsedrawn hayloading machine. It towered, rusting, over my sinkhole visits like the skeleton of some prehistoric reptile.

Having made deposits, I expected returns; some of the best cure-all bottles, animal skulls, and antique curiosities I found in my childhood ramblings came from sinkhole depressions. Because of the predictable effect on groundwater quality of dead pigs, chemical containers, and junked refrigerators, it is now illegal to use sinkholes as dumps: a diminishment of life for young explorers but an enhancement for everyone else.

Rounded boulder in pothole at Coldwater Cave a round black stone: a dark nucleus.

“Boulders like this get rounded as they dig their way down into these potholes,” he explains. Looking down at the cabbage-sized rock nesting in its pool of water feels like looking over an unexpected precipice. The geologic life of the cave unfurls before me. This round rock in its round hole started as a squared-off block of limestone in a tight, square bed.

Years of water, moving the rock, has dug out this new cave space. The pothole is like a single cell in a plant that has

spread its limbs sixteen miles, the flow of water essential to its continued life.

To gauge the climate of the world above over the last ten thousand years researchers have used the growth rings of stalactites in Coldwater. Groundwater seeps through the Galena limestone above the cave, absorbing calcium from the rock, leaving behind a microscopic film of calcium as it drips from the stalactites, new growth to cover the old, or to heal a break. The rate of growth and the mix of carbon and oxygen in

“ROCK RIVER FORMATION” COURTESY OF JORDAN KJOME

the calcium carbonate of the stalactites changes, depending on whether the climate is damp and marked by forest growth, or whether it is drier, hotter, and marked by prairie.2 While the life above ground grows and decomposes, passing from chill winter into blazing summer, the cave lives and grows in steady darkness and temperature. The cave began growing when ground sloths pounded the turf above. It grows with the steady interplay of water and rock, even as I slosh through it. It will still be growing with quiet slowness in the dark when our impatient species passes into extinction. Exploring the cave is arduous, but I realize as my friends and I slosh tiredly to the ladder, the cave is insulated from much of the world above: a sanctuary as well as a frontier.

Stalactite formation, Coldwater Cave

NOTES 1. Used with permission of the University of Iowa Press.

2. Denniston, Rhawn F., Luis A. Gonzalez, Yemane Asmerom, Richard G. Baker, Mark K. Reagan, and E. Arthur Bettis III, “Evidence for Increased Cool Season Moisture During Middle Holocene,” Geology, 27, no. 9 (1999): 815-818.

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To Unmake the Prairie

by ATHENA KILDEGAARD

B

egin with a long arrival, with stomach-hunger, prosperity-hunger.

Or begin with despair.

Take down the sky, anything unfamiliar, the land, light a match.

Take the land because your hunger sanctions taking.

Hitch whatever animal you have, yourself, if necessary, to your one plow.

Imagine the wheat you carried as seed in burlap grown tall as your first child LUTHER COLLEGE: BY ARMANDO JENKINS-VAZQUEZ (’21)

and do not rest until you cannot see just how straight and regular are the rows.

Years hence you won’t remember whether there were flowers, whether small mammals ran ahead or meadowlarks or swallows, whether the chorus chided or blessed, who you saw walking toward the horizon, your daughter, your husband, or who you saw walking the field as if they’d been there before.

You’ll forget this, too.

You won’t remember the bluestem bowing their precious and gullible heads.

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Anderson Prairie in the fall of 2022

Last Station Jenbach

by JOHN STRAUSS, Professor of Music

O

n the fifteenth of December 2005, Uncle Franz was laid to rest in the Morgenstötter family plot of the parish church (Pfarrkirche) in Jenbach, Tyrol (Austria). Born in Wiener Neustadt in 1922, he had survived the harsh economic realities of the First Republic, the Revolution of 1934, the “Anschluss” (as Hitler euphemistically called the annexation of Austria in 1938) and the subsequent break up of his family, the Second World War, and the slow post-war recovery. He was the last surviving grandson of the dried fruit and coffee merchant Salomon (Samy) Strauss (1845–1933) of Prague and his second wife Berta Jeiteles (1857–1907), and the last Tyrolean grandson of Peregrin Morgenstötter (1860–1930) and his wife Maria Müllauer (1862–1924).

The Morgenstötter family–farmers,

Franz Strauss in his early 30s

tanners, craftsmen, and innkeepers– were originally from the Zillertal, and the Müllauers were among the earliest inhabitants of the medieval town of Jenbach. Franz, who had assumed his mother’s maiden name to evade the Nazis during the war, was the last surviving member of the Morgenstötter/Müllauer clan to live in Tyrol.

IMAGES COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

Editor’s Note: The following is the final chapter of John Strauss’s book, published in German and English by Verlag Berger, Vienna (2022): Dr. Wilhelm Strauss, Kinderarzt: Eine Odyssee des 20.

Jahrhunderts (Dr. Wilhelm Strauss, Pediatrician: A Twentieth Century Odyssey).1

Franz Strauss (1922-2005) was the second of three sons born to the pediatrician Wilhelm (Willi) Strauss (1885–1970) and Therese Morgenstötter (1892–1978). The oldest son was my father Felix (Fritz) (1918–1990), and the youngest was my namesake Johann (Hans) (1930–1941), who died in Budapest during the war of a childhood ailment or, as my father would have it, of a broken heart. Ironically, it was Franz, impaired both physically and mentally by polio and encephalitis at an early age, who lived the longest life.

John Strauss

I first met Uncle Franz in spring 1965, when I was sixteen years old. At that time, Franz was the gatekeeper (Türhüter) at the monastery in Schwaz, one town up-river from Jenbach. The Inn River had flooded with disastrous results that spring, and roads were nearly impassable, not that there were many cars on the road. Even in Vienna, only a wealthy Austrian could hope to own an automobile. Jenbach in the middle 1960s was a small, drab and dirty town, strongly redolent of coal and wood-burning stoves. Time seemed to have stood still in Tyrol, and its denizens looked as though they had recently stepped out of a nineteenth-century Biedermeier Era painting.

Despite his infirmities, Franz was a handsome man: well-proportioned and broad-shouldered, with thick dark hair and regular features. There was something vulnerable and slightly haunted in his eyes, especially when he tried to speak: he both mumbled and stuttered terribly. He walked with a lurching gait and gave the constant impression that he was about to stumble. It was clear to me that spring when we met, that Mitzi accepted his presence on sufferance, and that Franz was uncomfortable.

Franz was to meet us for a family reunion at the inn (Gasthaus) of Alois (Loisl) Morgenstötter (1914–1992) in Jenbach. Loisl was the only son of the younger Peregrin (1886–1940) and Leopoldine Esterhammer (1899–1942),

and therefore a first cousin of Franz and my father. It had been Loisl and his common-law wife Maria Harb (Mitzi) who had sheltered Franz during the war.

The polite fiction was that Franz had helped out at the inn, although it was almost certainly remittances from his parents, then in Baghdad, which paid for Franz’s room and board.

There was another noteworthy family member present in the inn that day: Josef (Sepp) Morgenstötter, my grandmother’s only remaining brother, a barrel-chested, powerful looking gentleman of about eighty years. Sepp had held a high post in the Vienna police during the “Anschluss,” and Spring 2023/Agora

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had been instrumental in helping my father escape to France and eventually to the United States. Sepp sat with two companions in the corner of the common room, drinking beer and playing cards. The only conversation, as far as I could tell, consisted of the occasional “Well” (“Na ja;” the “ja” becomes a deep “jo” in Tyrol), delivered in tones that alternately expressed discovery, resignation, and absent-minded acceptance of the human condition. Sepp paid scant attention to the Americans–my parents, my sister Elizabeth and me–or for that matter to anyone else in the room save the other two card players.

Forty years after my first visit to Jenbach, when the Abbot of the Schwaz Monastery asked me to describe my uncle in preparation for the funeral eulogy, there was shockingly little I could tell him. Franz’s life had been severely circumscribed since early childhood. He had had a nursemaid and tutors, been given what we now call physical therapy, had learned to read, do elementary math and write with a shaky hand, had participated in family outings to the country: in short, he had been loved and cared for by his parents. The “Anschluss” must have been an unmitigated calamity for a highly dependent and sensitive sixteen-year-old: disability prevented his own departure from Austria, while his parents escaped to Baghdad, his older brother to America, and his younger to Budapest.

Franz’s education came to an abrupt halt, and he was forced into a tenuous and probably unhappy living situation with no relief in sight. As an old man Franz kept his pre-Anchluss photo album by The inn (Gasthaus) of Loisl Morgenstötter, 1965 his bedside and spoke almost exclusively about his childhood Loisl’s inn consisted of an entryway, and his parents.

He never mentioned a long, low-ceilinged and dark eatthe war years or the monastery. ing room with wooden tables and an Austrian tiled heating oven, a primitive kitchen, and a small guest garden in the back. There were cubbyholes where regular guests kept their napkins and beer glasses. The only amenity in the unheated toilet off the entryway was a nail with strips of newspaper, and the inn fare consisted of little more than beer, sausage with mustard and horseradish, and black bread. Loisl and Mitzi lived simply in rooms above the inn which, except for electricity, had probably not much changed in appearance or function since the time of Mozart.

They were generous hosts to their exotic American relatives, showering us with small gifts. Much later, after his death, I was astonished to learn that Loisl had been the owner of eight million dollars’ worth of real estate, and that he had died intestate.

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My grandparents were finally able to leave Baghdad and immigrate to America with the sponsorship of my parents in 1948. They revisited a greatly changed Austria for the first time since the war in 1959, and were able to place Franz in the Schwaz Monastery, where he worked for the next thirty years until his obligatory retirement. Upon Willi’s death in 1970, my grandmother moved permanently to an apartment near the monastery, in order to look after my uncle. He undoubtedly appreciated the attention, although he sometimes complained bitterly about having to eat bananas and keep to a strenuous exercise regime. My grandmother, by then a devout Christian Scientist in her late seventies, had a will of iron and was determined to make Franz physically fit.

Therese died in 1978, after establishing a trust fund for Franz, which first my father and then I administered. The so-called Strauss Trust Number One supplemented Franz’s meager state pension and permitted him to retire to the St. Josef nursing home (Altersheim), in Schwaz, a humane and well-run, managed care facility administered by the redoubtable Mother Superior (Schwester Oberin) Hilda, and supported by the Catholic church. Franz became “an institution,” as Sister Hilda was later to describe him, outliving all of the other residents who had preceded and many who followed him. Shortly after his arrival, and in spite of being relatively fit, Franz made it clear that he was going to eat exactly what he wanted (certainly no bananas), and that moreover, he wasn’t going to walk or exercise anymore.

Between 1990 and 2005, I visited Franz at least once a year, sometimes alone and sometimes with my helpful and lovely second cousin Dr. Gerda Kienesberger. (Gerda is the daughter of my father’s favorite cousin Lydia, and the grand-daughter of my grandmother Therese’s brother Martin.) Franz was always happy to see me and seemingly never surprised, although I sometimes dropped in unannounced. He was, above all, a stoic and extremely trusting person, perhaps because he had been dependent all of his life. He enjoyed playing solitaire, watching sports on television, doing crossword puzzles and arranging his ever-expanding stuffed animal collection. His ability to recall football (soccer) scores and recite the schedule of the entire Austrian federal train network by heart was truly astonishing. He also followed exchange rates with keen interest, in part because the Strauss Trust was denominated in U. S. dollars.

Gerda’s father, the psychologist Dr. Alfred Kienesberger, had been of the opinion that Franz displayed the intellectual and emotional development of an extremely bright fourteen year-old.

He was lazy about exercise and walking, writing letters and socializing with the other residents of the nursing home, and he had a kind of peasant slyness about getting the sisters to do his bidding. He had picked up a few words of English

and liked to display them when I visited. He particularly liked the expression “KO” (knockout), which he always delivered with a satisfied belly laugh. As he aged, he looked more and more like a Morgenstötter, his Tyrolean dialect became ever more pronounced, and his speech became less distinct, so that even Gerda had trouble understanding him.

I tried to time my visits to Franz so that I arrived in the morning when he was relatively fresh. Even then, a visit of an hour to an hour and a half was as much as either one of us could take.

A few days before his death, Franz suffered an infarction of the bowel which emergency surgery was unable to remedy. Franziska (Franzi) Kienesberger, the second wife of Alfred and stepmother of Gerda, ministered to Franz during his last days, just as she had ministered to Loisl thirteen years earlier. Franz accepted his impending death as he had accepted life, stoically and without surprise. It was a source of great joy to him, as he repeated to Franzi, that the Abbot himself had come to administer the Last Rites.

Franz, like my father, had been baptized and schooled in the rituals of the Austrian Catholic Church, an institution peculiarly filtered through the prisms of Hapsburg history and custom.

Sometimes described disparagingly as “Baroque Catholicism,” Austrian Catholicism is uniquely colored by Baroque architecture and its decorative trimmings, Viennese Classical music, bourgeois laissez-faire sensibility, and dramatic, often theatrical ceremony.

Only the shell remains of its Counter Reformation roots. Rome has, from time to time, tried to tame Austrian liturgical excesses, but to little avail.

As a result, even to religious skeptics, Austrian Catholicism can be deeply affecting and impressive.

Franz’s father Willi, on the other hand, had been what Austrians call an “assimilated Jew” (assimilierter Jude): a fourth generation beneficiary of Joseph the Second’s Edict of Toleration (1781). He had married Therese Morgenstötter in the impressive Catholic church, Maria Treu, in Vienna’s Eighth District, the Josefstadt. Nonetheless he was also a scientist and medical doctor, and prob-

leave of our dear uncle Franz ( June 25, 1922–December 10, 2005) who has departed from us after receiving Last Rites. We will celebrate a requiem on Thursday, the 15th of December at 2:00 p.m. in the Jenbach parish church. We will also accompany the dearly departed to his last resting place in the cemetery. We will remember him at an evening mass at 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday in the St. Josef nursing home in Schwaz.

Dr. Wilhelm “Willi” Strauss, age 63, in 1948 ably an atheist or at least a religious skeptic, far more in tune philosophically with the Red Vienna movement than with Catholicism.2 He certainly did not interfere with his wife Therese’s Catholic convictions: she was after all from “the Holy Land of Tyrol” (“das Heilige Land Tirol”), as the Austrians like to call it. Later in life, however, the onetime nurse, Red Cross volunteer and wife of a distinguished pediatrician became a determined Christian Scientist. My father, on the other hand, followed the time-honored practice of converting to his wife Isabelle Bonsall’s (1917–1981) Protestant faith. Franz alone remained an unswerving believer in the one, true, Catholic Church.

Franz’s final temporal appearance, as announced in a Parte (an Austrian death announcement) prominently displayed in the Jenbach town square, was to take place in the Jenbach parish church.

The Parte reads: “Release everything into God’s eternal hands, happiness, pain, beginning and end.” In silent grief we take

For this Parte, as for so many things regarding Franz’s last days and his funeral, I must gratefully thank the energetic and hospitable Franzi Kienesberger. Without her guidance, I would never have been able to avoid the many cultural pitfalls attendant on a Tyrolean funeral. It was Franzi who made the many requisite appointments for me with the funeral parlor director, the florist, the Jenbach priest, the Mother Superior, and other care-givers at the nursing home and the inn staff. We attended the Wednesday memorial service together, ate dinner together at the Schwaz Monastery, where I had eaten in years past with many longdeparted family members, and planned the Thursday funeral. I was instructed minutely in local forms and customs, and told how much money to slip the pallbearers, the choir director, the general organizer, the two priests, the Abbot, and the altar boy at the end of the ceremony. Local custom also demanded

The funeral dinner of Franz Strauss, December 15, 2005 Spring 2023/Agora

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that I invite all of the celebrants and other church worthies to a celebratory dinner at a local inn after the burial.

Franz was given a magnificent and very Catholic send-off, a ceremony, however, not without its surprises and anomalies. The Jenbach priest, whom I had first met at the rectory on Wednesday, turned out to be a young East Indian. (Few Austrians are willing to enter the priesthood today.) He used a cordless microphone to chant litanies which were broadcast, to my great surprise, from speakers mounted on the roof of the church. Two cloaked Muslim women in the florist shop provided another reminder that globalization and change had come, even to “the Holy Land of Tyrol.”

The Jenbach parish church is a tall, narrow, elegantly proporThe parish church in Jenbach tioned medieval structure with the liturgical clothing, the music, and simple wooden benches, an ornately the medieval setting all combined to decorated Baroque chancel, and postproduce a memorable ceremony, at once World War II stained glass windows. theatrical, solemn and timeless. Franz, I sat in the first row of the nave with whose life had been so simple and Gerda and Franzi Kienesberger. On the limited, was honored and eulogized as three steps leading to the chancel was a worthy member of an uninterrupted a simple wooden coffin, draped with stream of the family and the townsfolk flowers and wreaths from the Strauss, of Jenbach.

Fralick, and Eva Wagner families.

Behind me in insular groups sat the Nonetheless, as affecting as the ceremobrothers of the Schwaz Monastery; the ny was, I could not help but reflect that, sisters from the St. Josef nursing home, in this very church during the winter every one of them over seventy years of 1917, the congregation had been of age, singing and chanting in high exhorted to pray for the death of my cracked tuneless voices; and a sizeable grandfather Willi: “Better he should die group of anonymous habitual mourners on the Eastern Front,” said the priest from the town of Jenbach. Above and according to an oft repeated story, “than behind was an organ with a Baroque a Catholic girl should marry a Jew.” That façade, and a choir which sang in is how the good people of “the Holy perfect Viennese Classical harmony. To Land of Tyrol” thought in those times. the rear and left of the chancel was a Not surprisingly, several Morgenstötter high-backed wooden bench occupied by family members in company with their several well-dressed gentlemen whose compatriots became ardent Nazis durfunction was obscure to me. At the altar, ing the Second World War. Those times the Abbot with the assistance of the too, I reflected at Franz’s funeral, were East Indian priest, a novice, and an altar part of the pageant of Jenbach and the boy, performed a solemn requiem in parish church. which everyone was invited to particiAfter the requiem, the pallbearers, pate, and which lasted a bit longer than followed by the priest and his retinue, an hour. The lavabo, the consecration of the family, and the congregation, led a the host, the communion, the incense, 12

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serpentine funeral cortege through the churchyard, while the priest chanted into his cordless microphone and the altar boy swung and clanked his censer, filling the air with that most Catholic of all smells. The procession came abruptly to a halt at a small chapel where each person in turn was invited to shake the aspergil, sprinkling holy water on the coffin. Finally, my hand was solemnly shaken and condolences were offered by people I did not know and would surely never see again, while I dispersed gratuities and proffered invitations to dinner as instructed by Franzi.

Quite suddenly it was all over: the crowd melted away and I realized that the coffin had been removed.

I wandered alone to the Morgenstötter gravesite, where my parents’ urns are also interred, and was surprised to see the pallbearers lowering the coffin into an excavation precisely where I knew Loisl to be buried. The Abbot later explained to me that after ten years nothing remains of a coffin or its contents: So long as ten years elapse between burials, a grave site can be used over and over again. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust….

NOTES 1. The back cover reads: “This compelling biography traces the life and times of pediatrician Wilhem Strauss from his childhood in Prague and his late Hapsburg monarchy medical education in Vienna, to his practice of social medicine in Wiener Neustadt during the Julius Tandler era, beyond the 'Anschluss' and exile in Baghdad, to his unexpected conclusion in New York. Reproduced in the book are valuable documents in Strauss’ own words describing the state of pediatric medicine at the beginning of the First Austrian Republic.”

2. Red Vienna refers to the period between 1911 and 1934 when the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria (SDAP) maintained political control over Vienna and, for a short time, Austria as a whole. The SDAP pursued a program of housing construction and implemented policies to improve public education, healthcare, and sanitation.

Oboe in Community: Supporting the Next Generation of Oboists

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s a professional musician who has experienced the changing landscape of “classical (concert/ art) music” over the last few decades, I have also developed an awareness of how important it is for the classical music profession, and the musicians within it, to become more communityfocused, more outward looking, and more engaged beyond the concert hall, the music studio, and the practice room.

Young musicians are the future of music making, and when professional musicians actively nurture and support the next generation of musicians, they help to create a vibrant musical future. For my sabbatical project in the spring of 2022, I focused on this kind of musical engagement as an oboist, meeting people and exploring organizations whose mission is to help make the oboe more accessible to students who want to learn to play it.

Learning how to play the oboe comes with some unique challenges and barriers compared with some other instruments: a higher cost for a beginning level instrument (about $1,000 for a new, beginner instrument), the short playing life and high cost of reeds ($15-$30 each), and the lack of knowledgeable oboe instructors in many areas, particularly less-populated areas. In addition, the oboe is often (inaccurately) considered harder to learn and to play, so many band directors shy away from teaching it in band programs, which is where most U.S. students are introduced to instrumental music. If more young people are going to become interested in playing the oboe and developing the skills to play it well and enjoy it, oboe professionals will need to help develop new generations of oboists, especially those for whom finding and affording adequate musical equipment and training is more difficult.

When I crafted my sabbatical proposal in 2019, I planned to travel to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic to teach and perform, having no idea that the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic would greatly extend the timeline of my project and test my persistence and flexibility. My sabbatical was approved and scheduled for the spring of 2021.

However, as the pandemic continued into the summer and fall of 2020, I realized that planning international travel might still be very difficult when I hoped to travel. I was very excited by the opportunity to personally interact with musicians in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, and hoped I wouldn’t have to give up that part of my project, so I made the difficult decision to delay my sabbatical until the spring of 2022. While this delay did not ultimately mean completely revamping my sabbatical plans, it did present several significant challenges: maintaining connections with my overseas partners for several years (and hoping they would sustain interest in my project), along with facing considerable uncertainty, even into March 2022, about whether in-person musical events would be permitted in each location. It wasn’t until late March and early April, 2022, that I finally received confirmation that the events scheduled as part of my project were approved to take place. Lastminute planning and traveling during a pandemic were more time consuming and complicated than I expected, but all the preparatory work was well worth it once I arrived in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico to begin the true work of my project—interacting with young oboists and learning about different music programs.

My initial connection to the Dominican Republic was through Ingrid Scott, a Dominican Luther College alumna

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

by HEATHER ARMSTRONG, Professor of Music

Heather Armstrong (‘12) who plays flute and also studied oboe with me during her time at Luther.

Ingrid returned to the Dominican Republic after graduate school, and we have stayed in touch. I was intrigued and inspired by a program she created titled Flute Project, a several-day workshop in Santo Domingo that offers classes, performances, and other educational opportunities for Dominican flute players of all levels. While I had initially hoped to arrange a similar (but smaller) outreach workshop for oboe students during my visit, I discovered that I would need to let go of some of my goals for the trip because of scheduling challenges.

I visited Santo Domingo in May, 2022, and was able to meet and work with several oboe students studying at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Santo Domingo. They were eager and enthusiastic students! Before they played for me in a masterclass session, I asked each student how they started playing the oboe. Their stories were remarkably similar to those I hear from oboists in the U.S. One student, Spring 2023/Agora

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theme that emerged during my sabbatical and has inspired some of my postsabbatical work.

Jacqueline Huguet, the director of the Conservatorio Nacional de Música, arranged my masterclass with the oboe students and helped to schedule my performance at the Conservatory. In preparation for my recital, Jacqueline connected me with María Morel-Pierret, a collaborative pianist who turned out to be another Dominican Luther music alumna (’97)!

This additional Luther connection was an unexHeather Armstrong with oboe students at the Conservato- pected surprise, and María rio Nacional de Música in Santo Domingo, Dominican and I became fast friends Republic during our rehearsals at the Conservatory. Even before still in high school, started her musiI knew about María’s connection to Lucal studies on the clarinet, but after an ther, I had already planned to perform a oboist visited her school to introduce flute-oboe-piano trio with Ingrid on my students to the oboe (which at that time program.

It was especially meaningful was an instrument she was not familiar to play the trio with Ingrid and María, with), she decided she wanted to play two Luther alumni separated by about the oboe instead of the clarinet. She has fifteen years.

In addition, María and I been studying for about two years, and performed several songs that I arranged loves playing the oboe. The other two students were older—mid-twenties to early thirties. They too had played other instruments before the oboe (trumpet and percussion), but each of them had parents or mentors with musical backgrounds who encouraged them to switch to the oboe because it was less common and they might encounter more opportunities as oboists. These stories about how one begins playing the oboe are very common in the U.S. as well. Either someone discovers the oboe almost accidentally, or a more knowledgeable musical mentor guides stronger musicians to the instrument.

After working with each student on solo repertoire they prepared, we spent a very enjoyable time exploring some oboe trio music I took along with me. Playing chamber music together as oboists was a new experience for these students, so I encouraged them to arrange another time to play together, a time when they could support, encourage, and motivate each other as “oboists in community,” a 14

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for oboe by Dominican composer Julio Alberto Hernández, which were recommended to me by Tony Guzmán, director of Luther’s jazz program and professor of music. The songs we performed are well-known and wellloved in the Dominican Republic, and María had played them many times.

Through a family connection she is even related to the composer, and her enthusiasm and additional suggestions made them even more enjoyable. Many audience members approached me after our performance to express how much they appreciated and enjoyed hearing Dominican music on my program, and I am grateful to both Tony and María for introducing me to the music of Julio Hernández.

During my visit, Jacqueline and I had the opportunity to talk about how difficult it has been for her to find students to study oboe at the Conservatory and to play in the school’s orchestra. (The three students I met were the most oboists attending the Conservatory at one time in many years.) As in the U.S., many Dominican music programs, even in a large city like Santo Domingo, don’t have access to oboes or teachers qualified to teach young oboe students.

Oboes are expensive and hard to find and repair on the island, reeds are complicated, and, since the oboe is fairly uncommon, many students don’t even know the oboe is an instrument until they encounter it by chance (like the high school student I met). Just as the three Dominican students came to play the oboe under circumstances similar to U.S. students, Jacqueline’s struggle to find oboe players for a youth orchestra, school of music/conservatory, or another educational music program is very common in many parts of the U.S. as well.

Heather Armstrong, María Morel-Pierret (‘97), and Ingrid Eileen Scott (‘12) after performing together at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música

Frances Colón noticed these same difficulties in Puerto Rico when she moved back to the island after graduate school to play in the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and teach at the Puerto Rico

Introducing students to musical variations at Oboe Mobile Foundation’s Oboe Fest 2022, in Caguas, Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. Inspired to help educate and support young oboe players, she started Oboe Mobile Foundation, a nonprofit organization that holds oboe events and workshops around the island and loans instruments from an established “bank” of donated oboes to students who don’t have access to one.

I traveled to San Juan in June 2022 to visit with Frances and participate in Oboe Mobile Foundation’s three-day educational program, Oboe Fest 2022, which was held in Caguas, about a 30-minute drive away. I taught alongside Frances and two other Puerto Rican oboists, interacting with around 13 young oboists as they participated in oboe playing, group activities, and reed making. Because of the pandemic, it was the first in-person Oboe Fest in Puerto Rico in two years, so most of the oboe students had not had opportunities to meet each other. While many of them were shy and a little reserved at first, they bonded considerably over their three days together, a tribute to Frances’s intentional focus on building an oboe “community” with the students during their time together.

Many of the students who attended Oboe Fest were using oboes provided

by Oboe Mobile Foundation. Most students were 12-18 years old, but one older student from the Puerto Rico Conservatory participated as well. She had been at the Conservatory for a few years, and was using a professionallevel instrument, also provided to her

by Oboe Mobile Foundation. She explained that she grew up in a rural part of the island and had never had a quality instrument or an oboe teacher who could help her. By studying at the Conservatory, her goal was to become a music teacher and return to the place where she grew up (or a similar location), giving young oboe players better instruction as they learned to play. This cycle of investing in younger oboists, who then go on to teach and support the next generation of oboists, is at the heart of Frances’s mission for the Foundation.

I helped teach reed making during Oboe Fest, which was a brand-new skill for most of the students. The technical terms and detailed instructions about making reeds were well beyond my Spanish skills, so the Puerto Rican

teachers explained and described the various steps in Spanish, and I helped students with the hands-on activity of making reeds. Frances also invited me to present a musical/educational session for the students. I introduced them to the concept of musical variations by playing a set of variations for solo oboe based on the melody from Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (students knew this as Estrellita, ¿dónde estás?, which we sang together in Spanish). They were perceptive listeners and engaged participants. I ended my presentation by playing a short set of variations on the Happy Birthday melody, but started with the most complex variation first and worked backwards to the simplest form of the song. I tried this “backwards” approach to challenge students to identify the tune in a more embellished form and to explore what they had just learned, and partly to surprise Frances, whose birthday was a few days after Oboe Fest!

Oboe Fest ended with a program for family and friends featuring all the oboe students playing a traditional Puerto Rican folk song together. In addition, Frances and the other two oboe instructors, Abraham and Christian, performed several trios, also based on traditional Puerto Rican songs. They generously included me in one of arrangements to form an oboe/English horn quartet.

As in the Dominican Republic, I was excited to experience and learn about music deeply connected to Puerto Rican culture. At the end of the concert, Christian gave me the music for the oboe trio and quartet arrangements of

Oboe Fest 2022 students and faculty, Caguas, Puerto Rico Spring 2023/Agora

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Puerto Rican songs he had arranged, and the oboe studio at Luther explored this music together in September 2022.

By interacting with oboe students and teachers in other parts of the world, I observed that the barriers to playing and studying the oboe are remarkably similar across locations, although the magnitude of those barriers may differ: general lack of awareness about the instrument, lack of qualified teachers (especially outside urban areas), difficulty accessing an instrument in good playing condition (often for financial reasons), the challenge of finding reeds and addressing reed making, and the lack of persistence with the instrument when students feel isolated in their band programs and communities.

These are challenges noted by many players and teachers in the double reed community. Shortly after I returned from Puerto Rico, the most recent publication of The Double Reed (Vol. 45, No. 2) arrived in the mail. This edition of the international journal for double reed players and teachers included an article directly related to the focus of my sabbatical project: “The State of the Bassoon in Music Programs Across the U.S.” by Dr. Shannon Lowe, bassoon instructor at the University of Florida.1 Dr. Lowe surveyed K-12 music educators across the U.S. about how comfortable they are teaching the bassoon, about their access to bassoon reeds and bassoon instructors in the area, about their awareness of reed making and other equipment, and about the number of school-owned bassoons in their program and the working condition of those instruments. The results of her survey show there are “substantial underlying problems” related to bassoon instruction at middle schools and high schools across the U.S. While her study focused on bassoon, I believe a survey for oboe would show very similar results.

In July 2022 the International Double Reed Society annual conference hosted a workshop and conversation titled Broadening Access to Double Reeds. The description of the workshop begins: “Socioeconomic, racial, gender and locational barriers can restrict opportunities for double reed students, amateurs and 16

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Participants at the Oboe in Community workshop at Lincoln High School in Lake City, Minnesota professionals. How can we reduce or remove these obstacles?” This question continues to inspire me as I look to the future.

In January 2023, with the help of Luther College graduate Willy Leafblad (’14) and his colleague Erik Stashek, I presented a workshop for oboe students and music educators at Lake City Public Schools (Minnesota). More than a dozen oboe students and teachers from the surrounding areas attended, including some younger students who were trying the oboe for the first time and some educators who were brushing up on their oboe knowledge and teaching skills. Through activities and exercises I created for everyone to play together, we spent time reviewing the fundamentals of breathing, reed preparation, embouchure formation, tone production and development, articulation, healthy holding habits, etc. For our culminating group activity, we played a three-part arrangement of the theme from the Harry Potter movies, a selection that provided opportunities for students to learn new fingerings and expand their range, and which I encouraged them to take home to inspire their continued growth. I hope to repeat workshops like this in other areas in the coming years.

I am also exploring how to create a more focused double reed experience as part of Luther’s Dorian Music Festivals and Summer Camps. Currently, my time with oboe students and their time together as oboists is fairly limited dur-

ing these programs. I see some students for lessons and hold introductory reed making classes during Dorian High School Music Camp, but I envision a program where oboe students play more music together and spend more time making reeds together, creating an oboe community as part of their Dorian experience. Many students I encounter through Dorian programs are the only oboe player at their school and live too far from larger population centers to easily find a qualified oboe teacher. I have seen the Dorian experience light a spark of enthusiasm in young oboe players by giving them a brief opportunity to meet other oboe players their age and to encounter oboe instruction that can transform their playing.

Bringing young musicians together is inspiring and formative for their musical development. Bringing young oboe players together can help provide confidence and camaraderie that are difficult to develop when so many school programs have only one oboe player and when oboe teachers are hard to find for many students. As I continue to synthesize my sabbatical experiences, I am excited to explore new and deeper ways to foster community for young oboe players and to help create a vibrant musical future where they can thrive.

NOTES 1. Lowe, Shannon. “The State of Bassoon in Music Programs.” The Double Reed, 45 no. 2: 67-79.

Geophysical Remote Sensing at a Pre-Contact Enclosure Site in Northeast Iowa

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and defensive purposes. At the time of Euro-American contact, as many as a dozen of these sites once existed on the river terraces and bluffs of the lower Upper Iowa River valley in Allamakee County, a density matched nowhere else in the Upper Mississippi valley (Orr 1937; Wedel 1959; Whittaker and Green 2010). Sadly, due to the effects of agriculture only four have any remaining visible traces, and as a consequence our knowledge concerning their broader cultural roles is limited. However, geophysical archaeological research can play a role in bringing some of the more hidden vestiges of this landscape to light, while at the same time ensuring that these unique and fragile cultural resources remain intact.

IMAGES COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

ortheast Iowa’s rich archaeological heritage is most evident in the various earthen constructions that are the material vestiges of the ritual and social cultural landscape created over millennia by the area’s original indigenous inhabitants. In addition to the more abundant mounds, enclosure sites represent a central, albeit less well known, component of the cultural landscape. These sites are defined by the construction of earthen embankments in circular, ovoid, and rectilinear forms which were often paired with an associated ditch. The best estimates are that they were most likely constructed during the last two millennia and with functions as variable as their external forms, likely serving symbolic

Figure 1. P.W. Norris map of the Lane Enclosure (from Thomas 1894:100)

PHOTO COURTESY OF LUTHER COLLEGE

by COLIN BETTS, Professor of Anthropology

Colin Betts One of the remaining enclosure sites, known as the Lane Enclosure, has been subject to several investigations over the past 150 years (Alexander 1882; McDowell 2011; McKusick 1973; Thomas 1894). When originally encountered in the late 1800s, the site contained a paired circular ditch and embankment approximately 80 m (262 feet) in diameter (Figure 1). Plowing has largely destroyed any visible trace of the enclosure, although some subtle traces of it remain. Excavations conducted at the site in the 1930s and 1960s revealed dense habitation debris, indicating substantial occupations of the site in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with scattered indications of an earlier presence around C.E. 750. The habitations at the site were evident in both a large quantity of domestic refuse (archaeological jargon for garbage) including stone tools, broken pottery, and copious plant and animal remains. Much of this material was located within pits which had been used for waste disposal locations after their primary use-life for crop storage. Although previous investigations have provided some insights in to the form and possible use of the site, several significant questions remain. There are central inconsistencies in the reported Spring 2023/Agora

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Geophysical methods are well suited for conducting large-scale investigations in a manner either not possible or desirable with traditional excavation techniques, allowing for the rapid investigation of large-scale archaeological features (Kvamme 2003). At a site such as Lane Enclosure these methods have the added advantage of being non-invasive, avoiding the need to conduct timeconsuming and destructive excavation.

Geophysical methods detect variations in near-surface physical properties. The two methods used during our research, magnetic gradiometry and soil resistivity, are capable of detecting even the relatively subtle impact of human alterations to existing soil and sediment layers that are associated with the enclosure site—including the embankment, ditch, associated storage/refuse pits, as well as the traces of previous excavations (Gaffney and Gater 2010; Kvamme 2003; 2006; Somers 2006; Weymouth 1986).

Soil resistivity largely measures minute changes in the ability of an electrical current to pass through the soil, largely reflecting the changes in the ability of the soil to hold moisture. Magnetic gradiometry can detect different concentrations of topsoil/subsoil, accumulations of organic midden deposits, burning, or the presence of ferrous metal. Ditches and old excavation trenches should be revealed as areas of lowered resistivity

IMAGES COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

form of the enclosure, although all agree on the roughly circular form. The earliest accounts report an overlapping entrance on one end. There is also the unresolved question of the function of the site. Research intended to determine if the site was primarily defensive in nature failed to conclusively identify the presence of a wooden palisade associated with the embankment. Similarly, efforts to resolve the specific relationship between the documented habitations at the site and the construction of the enclosure have also been inconclusive. One of the most vexing elements of the history of research at this site was that the specific locations of the earlier excavations could not be accurately determined, precluding the contextual information needed to make full use of the associated data. A geophysical survey of the site was conducted in 2018 with an eye towards resolving some of these questions to prove better insights into the Lane Enclosure site specifically, and the Upper Iowa valley enclosures more generally. The data collection and initial analysis were conducted during the summer of 2018 as part of a collaborative summer research experience with Anna Luber (‘19) and Linh Luong (‘20) (Figure 2). The analysis was one of the primary goals of my fall 2021 sabbatical, culminating with the publication of the results.

Figure 2. Linh Luong (left) and Anna Luber (right) gather resistivity data at the Lane Enclosure site.

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and as negative magnetic anomalies.

In contrast, the embankment and refuse pits would likely contrast with the surrounding soil as areas of higher resistivity and enhanced magnetism. The application of these two complementary methods provides the ability to detect a range of features likely to be associated with the enclosure.

As hoped, our research provided important insights into the structure of the site and its relationship to the associated occupations (Figure 3). Perhaps the most encouraging is that despite a century of cultivation and the impact of multiple excavations of the site, extant remnants of the enclosure are evident as a combination of both resistivity and magnetic anomalies. The ditch, in particular, is well preserved and appears to be present for most if not all of its original extent. There are also additional elements of the enclosure form which were previously undocumented, such as the apparent presence of a smaller interior embankment and an enigmatic rectangular area of high resistance in the vicinity of the possible overlapping entryway. The ability to conclusively locate the excavation trenches from earlier work at the site, coupled with the presence of magnetic geophysical anomalies likely to be previously undocumented refuse pit features, show that the domestic element of the occupations occurs throughout the enclosure interior, on the embankment itself, and extends into the exterior, calling into question the likelihood that it served a defensive role during the latest period of occupation. As a result, it may be better to view the primary function of this particular site as largely symbolic or ritual in nature. Our results also provide multiple avenues for future research both at this site and at other enclosure sites in the region. At Lane Enclosure the ability to accurately locate the ditch provides the prospect for targeted archaeological excavations to recover datable organic or sediment samples from the base in an effort to resolve the temporal and cultural origins of the site. Further, the identification of novel features at the site deserve further investigation with a combination of additional geophysical survey and excavation. The presence of readily definable elements of the enclo-

Figure 3. Resistivity (left) and magnetic (right) results from the geophysical survey of the Lane Enclosure site sure ditch, even in places where there are no longer any surface traces, provides hope that similar traces of other previously destroyed enclosures may also be detectable. And in the broadest sense, when combined with similar studies at other enclosure sites in northeast Iowa our work offers an important foundation for understanding the role they played in the construction of the indigenous ritual and social landscape of northeast Iowa.

REFERENCES CITED Alexander, W. E. (1882) History of Winneshiek and Allamakee Counties, Iowa. Western, Sioux City, Iowa.

Gaffney, Chris and John Gater (2010) Revealing the Buried Past: Geophysics for Archaeologists. The History Press, Gloucestershire.

Kvamme, Kenneth L. (2003) Geophysical Surveys as Landscape Archaeology.

American Antiquity 68(3):435–457.

Kvamme, Kenneth L. (2006) Magnetometry: Nature’s Gift to Archaeology. In Remote Sensing in Archaeology: An Explicitly North American Perspective, edited by Jay K. Johnson, pp. 205–233. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

Orr, Ellison J. (1937) Sundry Archaeological Papers and Memoranda, 1937, Iowa Archaeological Reports, Vol. 6, on file, Effigy Mounds National Monument, McGregor, Iowa.

Somers, Lewis (2006) Resistivity Survey.

In Remote Sensing in Archaeology: An Explicitly North American Perspective, edited by Jay K. Johnson, pp. 109– 130. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa.

Thomas, Cyrus (1894) Report on the Mound Explorations of the Bureau of Ethnology.

Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1890–1891, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Wedel, Mildred Mott (1959) Oneota Sites on the Upper Iowa River. Missouri Archaeologist 21:1–181.

Weymouth, John W. (1986) Geophysical Methods of Archaeological Site Surveying. In Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol. 9, edited by Michael B. Schiffer, pp. 311–395.

Academic Press, New York.

Whittaker, William E. and William Green (2010) Early and Middle Woodland Earthwork Enclosures in Iowa. North American Archaeologist 31:27–57.

McDowell, Francis, Jr. (2011) The Sad Fate of the Lane Enclosure: Often Excavated, but Poorly Reported.

Newsletter of the Iowa Archeological Society 61(3 & 4):8–9.

McKusick, Marshall B. (1973) The Grant Oneota Village. Office of the State Archeologist Report No. 4. University of Iowa, Iowa City.

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Further Adventures in the Collaborative Arts: Louis Jensen’s Square Stories

by LISE KILDEGAARD, Professor of English

Jensen and I had exchanged email just a few weeks before. I was planning to travel on my sabbatical to Denmark in order to meet with him. I had several small translation puzzles I wanted to discuss with him. And I looked forward to being in his company. I was thinking we’d have the chance to share another evening like the one we once spent in his house just outside of Aarhus, singing old songs from the Danish folk school songbook. Or the one we spent walking through the streets of Copenhagen, talking about life and art and poetry, as the sun set and the lights in the harbor began to twinkle. I wasn’t done with him yet. And while Jensen at 77 had reached what my mother would have called an “opretstående alder” (upstanding or honorable age), it seems fair to say he wasn’t quite done yet, either. On his desk, his wife told me, he left behind a few manuscripts in progress—and a note that said he would be meeting with me in the fall.

Most of my translations of Jensen’s work have focused on the 1001 little microfictions he wrote between 1992 and 2016—the quirky and lyrical stories 20

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he called Firkantede Historier, or Square Stories. While Jensen published over 90 books, ranging from picture books for little kids to poetry for adults, his Square Stories project represented his most sustained and most complex artistic achievement. Published in ten books of 100 very short stories, each story formatted in the shape of a square, and a final volume with 100 pictures and one last story, Jensen’s Square Stories are his own invented genre. In their variety and their number, they give full rein to his exuberant imagination.

In Denmark, the Square Stories have gained a wide audience of children and adult readers. Scholars and journalists who don’t typically analyze children’s literature have written commentaries and criticism, including the literary critics Rikke Finderup and Max Ibsen, who claimed in the journal Passage that the Square Stories were “one of the most radical projects in all Danish literature.”

Jensen was proud of all his books—and ready to write many more—but he considered the Square Stories his major life’s work.

Jensen’s death shocked and grieved me.

As I suddenly struggled to rethink my sabbatical, I had to let go of some of my elaborate plans and cherished hopes for how my time would play out. But I also had the opportunity to reflect on what could still be done. I began to consider more deeply what endures in the face of loss.

I believe Jensen’s Square Stories will endure for their literary merit and for the insight they offer into Jensen’s creative mind. I value these gifts that the Square Stories will keep on giving, even now that Jensen is gone. But perhaps even more, I value how these little art forms have brought me into collaboration with students, artists, teachers, and others.

PHOTO COURTESY OF LUTHER COLLEGE

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n March 2021, as I was working on finalizing my upcoming fall semester sabbatical plans, I got the sad news that Louis Jensen, the celebrated Danish author whose work I have been translating for several years, had suddenly died. His wife, the artist Elisabeth Wegger, told me he had been out for a bicycle ride through the woods with friends. They were heading toward a café, where they planned to share a cup of coffee and a piece of kransekage to celebrate the arrival of spring. When Jensen was struck by a massive heart attack, his friends surrounded him and tried to help, but he was gone before the ambulance arrived. He was 77 years old.

Lise Kildegaard What’s best about the Square Stories?

Sharing them—and using them to create new art, new experiences, and new stories.

Before 2021, with the time and funding afforded me by previous sabbatical leaves, I shared the Square Stories in a number of ways. As a visiting speaker or an artist-in-residence, I brought them to classrooms in grade schools, middle schools, high schools, and colleges. I collaborated with teachers of drama, art, creative writing, and more. I gave talks and presentations at several scholarly conferences. And because of the generous time and funding I received in my two years as the Dennis M. Jones Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities at Luther College, I was able to participate in several projects on campus that leveraged the Square Stories for artistic and educational enrichment.

I collaborated with college ministers Mike Blair and Amy Larson, who brought the Square Stories into chapel series. Visiting artist David Esslemont worked with art students to print a gorgeous chapbook of illustrated stories.

Printmaker and Art Professor David

Kamm worked with students to create a gallery exhibition that paired stories with small works from the Luther College art collection. Theatre Professor Bob Larson devised a script using Square Stories for a marvelous Luther College production, with sets by Jeff Dintaman and costumes by Lisa Lantz.

We brought Louis Jensen over from Denmark to see that production, and he told the students he felt as though he had walked right into a fairy tale.

Now, as I prepared myself for my sabbatical, collaborations with Louis Jensen himself were brought to a halt, to my sorrow. But other collaborations could continue. I made new plans.

My remade sabbatical included collaborating with the Museum of Danish America in Elk Horn, Iowa, which decided to install an open-air exhibit of my translations of Square Stories on their Jens Jensen Prairie Landscape Park. Stories placed along the pathway through the prairie invite visitors to pause and take in the view as they experience one of Louis Jensen’s microfictions. This museum exhibit opened in summer 2021, and has since become an annual installation. To provide context for the installation, I wrote an essay for the museum’s America Letter magazine and gave a talk, which is available for viewing on the MoDA Youtube and Facebook sites.

My remade sabbatical also included collaborations made possible by travel— not to Denmark, as originally planned, but to Seattle, where I connected with the vibrant Scandinavian communities at the University of Washington and the National Nordic Museum. In this month away from home, made possible by my sabbatical time and funding, I gave invited talks, pitched further collaborations and projects, and found new communities of translators and artists.

The work I did in Seattle helped prepare me for a collaboration with Daniel Rabuzzi, a poet, author, and translator who once taught history at Luther College. Over the course of several lively and wide-ranging Zoom calls, Daniel interviewed me about my experience translating the Square Stories. We wrote up our conversation and gave it an

ungainly title: “Keep Danish Weird: Lise Kildegaard Talks About Translating Louis Jensen’s firkantede historier (Square Stories)— An Interview with Daniel A. Rabuzzi.” In May 2022, our interview was published in Hopscotch Translation, an “online revue dedicated to celebrating and discussing the complexity and diversity of literary translation.”

Luther student Jurgen Dovre’s (’22) illustration for a Square Story A particularly A twenty third time there was a short enjoyable and productive collaboralegged duck, who sold a horse, who tion during my sabbatical was the was disguised as a car, but since the student-faculty research collaboration I horse had not learned how to say beep conducted over four weeks in summer and honk like a real car, the whole with Luther College student Jurgen thing was called off, and the duck Dovre. Jurgen is an English major now was sent to jail, even though he wept completing his student teaching and sincerely and with real tears. preparing to be a middle school teacher.

In his illustration, Jurgen picks up the He is also a gifted cartoonist and story at its beginning, before the scheme comics writer. Together, we researched begins so tragically to unravel. Jurgen styles of illustration and the history foregrounds the clever duck, dressed of comics and sequential art. We read here in an ill-fitting business suit and and discussed dozens and dozens of wearing an innocent yet somehow susthe Square Stories, and selected ones for picious expression. The disguise Jurgen illustration. While I worked to refine imagines for the horse is simply the my translations, Jurgen, working in pen shell of a car, sitting atop the horse like and ink, produced sketches and doodles a big hat hiding a child. The improband drawings. We sought technical able nature of the scheme is highlighted advice about digital formats from the by the big billboard, which gives away Luther College Multimedia Center and the truth by denying the truth. And the Document Center, material advice Jurgen adds the hapless customer, whose about paper and pens from the owner spurred boots further emphasize how of the Decorah store Cardboard Robot, unnecessary all the duck’s efforts are, and artistic advice from a professional since this customer might find that a cartoonist. When our collaboration normal horse actually suits him fine. concluded, Jurgen had produced about 25 new illustrations. They display a In this story, Jensen describes how a gentle yet lively humor that makes them familiar fairy tale character, a dragon, a good match for Jensen’s stories. I’ll experiences a kind of cognitive disjuncshare Jurgen’s illustrations for three of tion as he reads a book about dragons. the Square Stories here.

A one hundred and seventy seventh In this story, a scheming duck tries to time there was a terrible dragon with pull a fast one: white cheeks and a red mouth. Its Spring 2023/Agora

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eyes were made of two green stones that shone in the night. It drank coffee out of a tiny little cup, while it waited a thousand years for a prince to show up on his white horse. To help pass the time, it read a thick book about dragons, but everything in the book was wrong, and when the prince didn’t come anyway, after two thousand years had passed, it began to write a more truthful book about dragons. But while it waited it had grown so terribly old that the book was never finished, for it died under its green tree, which had grown in the shape of a heart.

Jurgen’s dragon conveys a contemplative mood. Its shining eyes have become stars, and it gazes off into the distance, with the open book lying untouched.

Time passes slowly when the prince never comes and everything in the book is wrong.

Finally, in this story, Jensen imagines an infinite ladder: A two hundred and first time there was a strange and wonderful ladder.

The bottom step was missing. But there was always one more step on top. And so you could always climb

higher and higher up the ladder. And if you turned the ladder around, you could climb down as far as you wished to go. Think about it: you could go up on this ladder all the way out to the farthest star. And you could go down all the way to the inmost depths.

and schoolchildren. Each of us can share our treasures. We’re all on the giving end and on the receiving end. Perhaps that’s what makes our life’s work.

Jurgen’s illustration takes us out to the far reaches of outer space. The infinite ladder extends off the top of the frame, and its lower rungs seem to be inserting themselves right into the fabric of the universe. The ladder is curvy and vertiginous—yet it is still fully recognizable. It may be weird, but it is also simply a regular, plain old ladder.

Jurgen captures one of Jensen’s signature artistic moves—revealing how the most familiar objects can sometimes astonish and mystify.

The three square stories are from the first three of Louis Jensen’s Firkantede Historier series of books:

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Hundrede Historier (Gyldendal 1992) Hundrede Nye Historier (Gyldendal 1995) Hundrede Splinternye Historier (Gyldendal 2000) All translations are my own; all illustrations are by Jurgen Dovre To learn more about Louis Jensen, and especially about the installation of Square Stories at the Museum of Danish America, listen to my talk here: https://www.facebook.com/DanishMuseum/videos/818459725743714 https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=UUgoX9EadRw To read my conversation with Daniel Rabuzzi about the Square Stories and the art of translation, go to the online journal Hopscotch Translation at: https://hopscotchtranslation. com/2022/05/08/keep-danish-weird/ To read Rikke Finderup and Max Ipsen’s article about Louis Jensen (in Danish), go to Passage journal at this link:

Jurgen Dovre (‘22), illustrator of Louis Jensen stories in this essay Collaborating with Jurgen was a pleasure, and it taught me new insights into the Square Stories we worked on. But that’s what has happened with each and every one of my collaborations—with teachers, artists, actors, museum folks, schoolchildren.

The Danes have an excellent word that has no exact equivalent in English: formidler. A formidler is a person who knows something of value or has access to something of value, and works to share it with others. A formidler is a go-between and an ambassador. Sharing the Square Stories, I have shared the role of formidler with all my collaborators. I have come to understand that all teachers and translators are formidlerne, and so are artists and actors, museum folks,

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NOTES

https://tidsskrift.dk/index.php/passage/ article/view/1413

Thinking Through Institutional Equity: Finding a GEM

I

n the fall semester of 2021, I embarked on a journey to write a book manuscript. The project, long in coming, was to culminate in a proposal to publishers. All summer I ordered books to supplement my understanding, to cover every niche, to know what everyone else had to say. I read economics, business, self help manuals, and all the new anti-racism materials flooding the market since the murder of George Floyd. There was a lot to read.

Thinking as a sociologist is fascinating.

It requires one to think about the social environments in which individuals act, focusing on the daily practices that go unnoticed in structures that have become so normative as to be invisible.

It requires us to think about policies and systems that are both historical and present. It requires us to think about identities we claim and those imposed, and the many shades of gray in-between. As a sociologist interested and committed to social justice, I set out to imagine instruments or tools for institutional social change. I set out to change the world! (Yes, I know.) The hitch or unique approach, the sociological approach, in my quest was not to do it one person at a time, but rather to really capture institutional change.

In other words, instead of answering the questions that were plaguing us since BLM captured the social screen, questions such as “What can I do? Do you know a good book? Who should I read?”—or simply responding to folks who confessed, “I don’t know what to do…”—I set out to imagine, what can we do? What must we do collectively to create social justice and just institutions?

The first step was to grasp the myriad ways we have talked about injustice and the tools used to change it. By and large, the tools that we have used to create social change primarily capture the indi-

vidual notion of inequity or injustice.

Think about the old notion of a racist individual being more likely to have an authoritarian personality or to have implicit bias as evidenced in the implicit bias tests online at Harvard. Bias or racism is most often articulated as being something about an individual—thus what needs to change is that individual. Individuals need to become less authoritarian or to educate themselves about their implicit biases. I wanted to expose and articulate the problems with this type of thinking—individualistic thinking. Institutional inequity will not be solved with individual change. We have to change systems.

Systems do not change themselves however, individuals change them. So I first had to get a handle on how to articulate the complex interplay between individuals and social change.

The Vision What might an equitable system or institution look like? Who makes up that system? Many examples of equitable social systems or structures come from feminist utopian literature. Robin Silbergleid (1997) presents a model of feminist utopian citizenship wherein civil rights/civic duties are conceptualized much like social citizenship but not bounded by politics or identity, i.e., nation-state or gender. These feminist utopias present alternative social structures of civil society with a feminist or egalitarian citizenship. Many of these present alternatives to capitalism and patriarchy, for example, by challenging the patriarchal family structure. Critiques of white supremacy, heteronormativity, and religious dogma are also depicted by “a dismantling of racial and class hierarchies and an overt critique of capitalism and the assumptions of liberal democracy” (Silbergleid 170171). As Kathleen Jones explains, these

PHOTO COURTESY OF LUTHER COLLEGE

by CHARLOTTE A. KUNKEL, Professor of Sociology

Charlotte A. Kunkel utopian projects disavow “the individualist, rights-based, contractual model of citizenship” and replace it with “the virtues of commitment to relationships, love, and caring for others” ( Jones 1990, 810). Feminist utopias center “virtues which work against the competition and conflict associated with natural rights” (Silbergleid 170).

A feminist utopia constructs: [a] social vision which favors “egalitarian social relations, practices, and institutions” (Mouffe 1992, 380), asking what each citizen, as an individual in a raced, classed, and gendered body, needs for her or his welfare. In so doing, Mouffe recognizes both the inherently communal project of citizenship and the inevitable particularity of its manifestations, asking what it means to be a citizen in a multicultural world (Silbergleid 172).

The vision then is equitable both individually and structurally, with an eye to particularity (May 2015) and provisioning. Focusing on generating the basic Spring 2023/Agora

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necessities of life or human needs is what Beneria et al call “provisioning” (2016:62).

Interdependency and interconnection are “the root of civil society—a group of embodied individuals joined together for a specific political goal” (Silbergleid 174). And Steenbergen furthers our understanding by suggesting citizenship is more than economic ties, it is the responsibility of citizens toward each other, nature, and the earth (Steenbergen 1994, 151). Community participation in the creation of a radical democratic politics on the global level is a given in these texts. Participation and provisioning for basic human needs at the community and globally is the foundation of a global or radical ecological citizenship.

The vision of a radical ecological citizenship is by definition ecologically sound. Ecofeminism illustrates the lived relationship between humans and the “natural” world. Without balance in the ecology system, humans will not survive.

The necessity of cooperation with/in the ecosystem is echoed by Wahl (2016) in his proposed design culture of cooperation rooted in holistic land management and regenerative agriculture. Through mimicking healthy ecosystems we can create healthy social systems that are regenerative—encompassing the goals of synergy, collaboration, open source and dynamic responsive and emergent, adaptive mutualism (236).

A regenerative economic system, according to Wahl (239) emerges out of three imperatives: personal, trade, and capital.

Personal development suggests change begins with individuals becoming nature centered, intereducation, and regenerating your inner landscape.

Trade imperatives 24

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include supporting nurture capitals, living capital, and “to stop buying, selling, and trading in degenerative goods and services.” Capital imperatives stop the dominant flow of destructive policies in order to “repair, grow, and thrive” (4546). A regenerative organization is thus not only focused on its own growth but on interconnections and ecologies of our communities and cultures of ecosystems.

Empathy and cooperation are key to a regenerative structure.

Finally, we must actually change the institutions to achieve institutional change which foster radical ecological citizenship. A focus on policy is necessary, but we also need to recognize the practical or everyday enactments of culture.

Discrimination was outlawed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, but the culture of racism is still alive and well. So in addition to looking at the individual people and organizational policies, we must pay attention to their daily practices. We must recognize and acknowledge who are we, what we say we do, and what do we actually do.

People, policy, and practice.

I created a model for institutional change that sees systems as dynamic and fluid, and yet developmental. By creating a typology of current and imagined structures we can develop strategies to move from one stage to another. We can move toward a “more perfect” or just institution . . . at the levels of people, policy, and practice.

The Model The Global Ecological Mapping (GEM) model of equity, depicted here, is guided by the process of global ecological mapping. It conceptualizes social justice as not only equitable but a developmental process that is always becoming, or in process. Our state of being is not fixed but ever changing. There is no end or ultimate final formational structure, but an ideal stage that is always becoming. Thus, the end goal is a path of pursuing an imagined future of global ecological citizenship. What this means for us is that flexibility and adaptability are primary in the pursuit of a system guided by multiplicity, social provisioning, and ecological regeneration.

The underlying assumptions are that institutions that are just are not simple, but complex. They are always in transformation or always becoming. Thus, a state of fluidity, multiplicity, complexity, ambiguity, and openness is the goal. The world is not static, but changing and thus regeneration is the goal. Regenerative systems are constantly remaking themselves or striving to be better. In other words, we never fully achieve completion but must always be striving for change. Systems change and institutions must adapt. The GEM stages are not exclusive but are rather often gradations of characteristics that flow from one stage to the other. Organizations could also be in one stage on one level, or even on one issue within a level,

and in another stage on a different issue or in a different area. There may be characteristics of certain aspects of organizations that fit better in one stage or another; for example, your organization may be in the green stage of recruitment policies but be in the red or yellow stage of retention or advancement.

I call the model GEM to illustrate the multifaceted nature of organizational structures and the dynamic ways we can structure equity. The many facets of a gemstone reflect light distinctly and yet work together to create the whole. We want to acknowledge that gemstones are also objects that have been historically mined in “conditions of exploited labor, material expropriation, and environmental degradation” (May 2015:33). I employed the metaphor of gemstones to capture the multifaceted nature of equity work. The representative titles of our model stages also model the properties of gems as they distinguish both value and spectacle. Gems get their various colors from wavelengths of light the stone absorbs, as well as any trace elements that are added to its crystal structure (Fire Mountain Gems).

Similarly, institutions are guided by the cultural values and policies of the organization, but also by the individuals who engage in daily practices of the organization.

I focused on the structure and elements of organizations to distinguish between stages. These elements depict, guide, and influence the people, policies, and practices of an organization. The colors of the model move in the same direction as the colors of the rainbow: red and yellow to green and blue. These colors are also the primary colors of red, yellow, and blue. Primary colors are a set of colors from which all other colors may be derived. All other colors can be created by mixing combinations of red, yellow, and blue. Sometimes green is included as a primary color, and since I have four stages, I have included green as an intermediary color. Note that the green stage sits between yellow and blue acknowledging there are gradations of the stages such that you may have more or less of the characteristics of the yellow or blue components in the green stage.

The four stages move from a fixed organizational structure to a regenerative one and are represented by colored gemstones.

is universal. An ethic of responsibility abounds which means practices are guided by accountability, redress, and particularity.

Garnet is a fairly common gemstone and is usually red in color. Garnet represents the first stage of GEM and represents the status quo (patriarchy, white supremacy, capitalism, etc.). It sees people as individuals and is largely fixed in orientation. This is the organization where people are largely resistant to change and would say “this is the way we have always done it.” It is focused on personal profit and legal compliance, or the ethic of law. The garnet organization is conventional at best, and fearful at worst.

The GEM modeling paradigm offers a typology of organizational structures that depict varying stages of social justice in the organizing of people, policies, and practices. The goal is to identify where your current organization might fit so as to transform the current state of your organization to a more just one. Moving along the continuum is an active practice and constant struggle as the status quo is to stay toward the red stage, while the ideal is to move toward the transformative, adaptable, or regenerative stage that is always becoming.

Continual regeneration is the ideal of global ecological mapping, represented in the characteristics of people, policies, and practices.

Amber is the second stage of GEM modeling and is presented as yellow.

Amber has stones of several colors ranging from orange and yellow to light green. The Amber stage of GEM organizational modeling sees some changing of structures, is often fractured in that change, is liberally oriented, and recognizes group rights. The practices of the Amber stage are often reactive, siloed, and tokenistic. While the Amber organization is liberal in orientation, it often is assimilationist in practice.

Emerald is a green gemstone and is often considered as increasing in value over amber and garnet. Emerald represents our third stage of GEM modeling, which is fluid in nature. Emerald organizations are champions of diversity and holistic in orientation. They advocate inclusion and integration and practice an ethic of care. Many good things happen in this organizational structure, yet it is limited in organizational practice.

Blue Tanzanite is our fourth and final, even ideal, stage of GEM modeling.

Like the gem tanzanite, the organization is extremely rare, and is valued for its rarity. It is a blue or indigo color.

Tanzanite organizations are regenerative—in other words, transformative, adaptive, and thus constantly changing.

People in the Tanzanite organization see themselves as communal and interdependent. They value and share a critical multiplicity and multiculturalism.

Policies are ecologically interdependent and progressive, i.e. social provisioning

REFERENCES Beneria, Lourdes, Gunseli Berik, and Maria S. Floro. 2016. 2nd ed. Gender, Development, and Globalization: Economics as if All People Mattered.

Routledge.

Fire Mountain Gems retrieved at https:// www.firemountaingems.com/resources/ encyclobeadia/gem-notes/mbr?term= gemstonemeaning&hub=gemstoneme aning Jones, Libby Falk and Sarah Webster Goodwin. 1990. Eds. Feminism, Utopia and Narrative. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.

May, Vivian M. 2015. Pursuing Intersectionality, Unsettling Dominant Imaginaries. NY: Routledge.

Mouffe, Chantal. 1992. Feminism, citizenship and radical democratic politics. In Feminists Theorize the Political ed. Judith Butler and Joan Scott. NY: Routledge.

Silbergleid, Robin. 1997. “Women, Utopia, and Narrative: Toward a Postmodern Feminist Citizenship” Hypatia.

Autumn, Vol. 12, No. 4, Citizenship in Feminism: Identity, Action, and Locale (Autumn, 1997), pp. 156-177.

Steenbergen, Bart van. 1994. The Condition of Citizenship. London: Sage.

Wahl, Daniel Christian. 2016. Designing Regenerative Cultures. Triarchy Press with International Futures Forum.

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Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Community and Heritage

by WINTLETT BROWNE, Former Director of The Center for Intercultural Engagement and Student Success

I

ntroduction

One of the benefits of a long tenure is the history that you have been privileged to witness and be a part of.

Kwanzaa celebrations existed before I came to Luther. They were organized

by Dr. Lawrence Williams and the Africana Studies department. Neither Dr. Williams nor the department is still with us.

A short walk down memory lane My first Luther Kwanzaa celebration was organized by the Multicultural Center student workers and myself and celebrated in Marty’s in 1999. It was truly a multicultural event as students from different cultural backgrounds did all the planning and execution of the event.

I have many fond memories of the early years when students and staff cooked together in the Cafeteria and Peace kitchens and of our interactions with the dining service staff who had questions about the what, how, and why of our cooking. As we cooked together we shared stories about ourselves, our foods, and celebrations. We laughed a lot and for those of you who know me, this is not surprising. We created Americanized versions of many traditional food favorites typically found on the African continent and in the diaspora and which are part of the Kwanzaa observance.

I still remember the performances from the student led gospel choir that was a fixture on many Kwanzaa programs.

I remember some of the students who shared their talents, singing, dancing, drumming, stepping/strolling and reciting their own poems to name a few. I remember the years when students from 26

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Upper Iowa University joined in our celebration because their school did not celebrate Kwanzaa. I remember the professional performances from the South African group 29:11 from their first performances with the Luther gospel choir and then by themselves sharing their gifts of music with us.

I also recall when there was money in the budget to pay for speakers. One speaker whom I still remember is Dr. Rochon who at the time was a professor at UW La Crosse. He was very surprised and impressed with Luther’s multicultural Kwanzaa. Dr. Guy Nave explained that “the celebration of Kwanzaa on predominantly and historically white college campuses provides an opportunity for students of various racial and ethnic backgrounds to understand the principles of worth, value, and human dignity promoted by Kwanzaa.

Kwanzaa provides an opportunity to use African-American cultural experiences as a lens through which to examine and reflect upon the values and practices of our broader society—especially when such practices devalue the lives of certain groups of people.”

I also remember conversations about whether Kwanzaa was still relevant.

The question raised was whether or not the diversity of African cultures was being erased and ignored with the reductive and essentialist list of seven allegedly universal African principles of Nguzo Saba. Initially, I agreed with this sentiment but as I have continued to celebrate Kwanzaa, and as I continue to learn more about anti-blackness racism in America, I have come to realize that the principles are neither reductive nor essentialist as they may first appear to be. Instead, they have allowed me to use African-American cultural experiences as a lens through which to examine and reflect upon my values and practices as

PHOTO COURTESY OF LUTHER COLLEGE

Editor’s note: Wintlett gave this chapel talk one week before her retirement from Luther College.

DECEMBER 9, 2022

Wintlett Browne well as those of our broader society. My understanding of the principles is more nuanced and complex and each year they provide opportunities for me to create new meanings.

I remember having conversations with students, including African Americans, explaining the what and why of Kwanzaa and having to reassure the ones from certain Christian backgrounds that this was not an attempt to replace Christmas, that it was okay to celebrate both in keeping with the principle of “multiple belongings,” a term I learned from Dr. Gereon Kopf. Multiple belongings is the idea that we have different connections with different things and ideas, and how understanding this brings us closer to those who may initially seem different to us.

I also have some not so fond memories of times when recruiting student participants was a pain, in you know where, for a variety of reasons, and of the very limited engagement of faculty and staff colleagues with the event.

A few thoughts on the principles Unity. One of the challenges of working in the field of DEI is getting the marginalized and the allies who are on this journey to understand the importance of uniting in the face of various forms of systemic oppression, and in spite of conflicting values. This type of unity requires, among other things, the ability to tolerate ambiguity, to manage cognitive dissonance, understanding the other, and practicing cultural humility while pursuing what we at Luther call the common good, provided we can decide on a working definition of this concept. Obviously, there is much work to be done.

Self Determination. Who am I? Just think about the power we have when we use our freedoms, thanks to the work of our ancestors, to define ourselves, name ourselves, and speak for ourselves especially in whatever context we find ourselves. Easier to say than do. Two points I would like to make here. First, my mother was most influential in my early years in helping me to develop this ability. In spite of her conflicting messages, especially about gender roles, one constant remains: “Make sure you take advantage of every opportunity to educate yourself so that you will be independent and be in a position to make your own decisions and life choices.”

Second, one of the things I have learned from living in the US is to play with my identity, depending on the people I am with and the situation. Playing in this way is my way of naming, defining, and speaking for myself. I consciously and deliberately choose which identities are salient and when.

Ujima (collective work and responsibility). This principle reminds me of a Jamaican proverb: “Wan finga cyaan ketch lice/wan an cyan clap.” I grew up in rural Jamaica, the sixth child of eleven siblings. With such a large family each of us had individual tasks and were collectively responsible to each other and to our parents. This is where I first learned that we have inherited the benefits that our parents and fore parents created and that we too must contribute for our own and others’ benefits. My family experience is not unique, but as families get smaller, more scattered

geographically, as our world becomes more materialistic and individualistic, we are losing some of the benefits that come with Ujima.

Ujamaa (cooperative economics and justice). I am not only a country girl but I am also a first-generation college graduate. The main occupations of the people in my village were small-scale farming, shop keeping, household help, and casual labor—the ones who went around offering their services to anyone who could pay them for their work.

My parents were crop farmers and they exchanged some of our crops with the animal farmers who provided us with milk, eggs, and meat. The people in my village also engaged in swop labour, a practice of helping each other build their homes, a room at a time, without using the formal banking system. For me, this was both Ujima and Ujamaa in action. It was equitable, it was just, and everyone’s needs were met. This glimpse into my early life may help you understand the story of the book fund now called the WTB resource fund.

My name is on the fund but it was the brainchild of Michelle Boike and me.

It was our small attempt at economic justice for our students in need.

Nia (purpose). “Whatever your hands find to do, do it with all your might; for there is no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom in death” (Ecclesiastes 9:10). This was one of my mother’s favorite Bible verses and maybe you can guess why. I am blessed, very blessed to have found a career that combines my experiences, knowledge and passions, one that brings me joy and fulfillment. It was and still is purposeful work and that strong sense of purpose is what prevents me from tearing out my hair in frustration when things go awry or from giving up. Purpose allows me to laugh heartily and often, to share with others what I know, have learned, and am learning in this journey called life.

Kuumba (creativity). This principle too reminds me of another Jamaican proverb, “Tek yuh hand tun fashion.” Use what you have to get what you need. It also led me to thinking about my top strengths, especially the first two, learner and ideation. This is kind of a chicken and egg situation for me. By this I

mean, did I begin with these aptitudes and then my education, work, and life experiences made them more prominent, or vice versa. I believe it’s a “both and” situation. One task you have when leaving a job is to clear out your rubbish to make space for the new person’s rubbish. While doing this there was much evidence of my past creative endeavors, for example, the Jamaica J-term courses that faculty colleagues and I developed and taught from 2009 -2019; working with seven female students to create the Beta Theta Omega Women leadership organization and with three students to create the Model United Nations Club and of course the book fund. These and many others are examples of how I tried to live into this principle. I am amazed that my brain used to work in these wonderful ways. Hopefully it will continue to work for at least the next two decades.

Imani (faith). Belief in self, in others, and in the rightness of the struggle to create a more just world. I moved to Decorah with two teenage children, no job, and no idea of what we were getting into. I cannot say if I saw myself as a female Abraham going off to a new land although, in his case, he was obeying God’s instruction. I on the other hand, was listening to my 14-year-old son.

I was either a fool, a person of faith, or both. The jury is still out on this but I am going with foolish person of faith. Why else would I have chosen to remain in this community and college for more than two decades? Clearly, I had things to do in this place although I didn’t know it then. I have faith that my retirement will provide other opportunities to make a difference. Everyone needs faith no matter how weak. Faith engenders hope and hope keeps us moving forward working for the common good. One lesson I learned very well from my personal and professional life in Jamaica is captured by this proverb, “Whe nuh ded nuh caal ie duppy.” In English, “As long as there is life there is hope.” My 23 years sojourn here has repeatedly reinforced this lesson for me.

Walk good my friend, everything still irie!

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Bold Faith FEBRUARY 3, 2023

by ASHLEY BENSON, Dean of Student Engagement

Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a sleeping mat. They tried to take him inside to Jesus, but they couldn’t reach him because of the crowd. So they went up to the roof and took off some tiles. Then they lowered the sick man on his mat down into the crowd, right in front of Jesus. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the man, “ Young man, your sins are forgiven.” But the Pharisees and teachers of religious law said to themselves, “Who does he think he is? That’s blasphemy! Only God can forgive sins!” Jesus knew what they were thinking, so he asked them, “Why do you question this in your hearts? Is it easier to say ‘ Your sins are forgiven,’ or ‘Stand up and walk’? So I will prove to you that the Son of Man has the authority on earth to forgive sins.” Then Jesus turned to the paralyzed man and said, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and go home!” And immediately, as everyone watched, the man jumped up, picked up his mat, and went home praising God. Everyone was gripped with great wonder and awe, and they praised God, exclaiming, “We have seen amazing things today!”

Can you imagine the boldness it took to display this kind of faith? Can you imagine this type of friendship acting so boldly on your behalf ?

These men, I assume friends but the Bible doesn’t say specifically, waded through a crowd in unison with one goal in mind: healing for the man they carried. The Bible doesn’t say they spoke a word outwardly or made eye contact, 28

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but it clearly describes a group with bold intentions. They would not be denied their goal. When they couldn’t make it through the crowd, they found a new way. They instantly realized that the path they planned wasn’t going to work so they moved swiftly into plan B. Plan B required additional work, entering a building, climbing to the roof of that building, visualizing where Jesus was located, removing roof tiles, and then lowering the paralyzed man to simply be in the presence of Jesus. That bold faith brought about healing. Then Jesus called out the judgment of the Pharisees and teachers who were considered prominent leaders in the kingdom and told the paralyzed man to get up and walk. He walked out praising God. The message is important and bold because everyone can’t see your calling and won’t understand your faith. I can only imagine the many people who passed by the paralyzed man each day and failed to see his value. But it only took a few men to believe with him.

As a believer in Christ I know the word declares, “For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20).

These followers not only gathered but they carried their friend. They bore this man’s circumstance and were bold enough to believe he would be healed.

The importance of this message relates to the theme of the semester because these men were seeking something– healing–and received it because of their bold faith. Recognizing their path was not going to be straight through the crowd, instead they changed their route with the same end goal in mind.

You may be trying to work through a situation that people around you don’t understand. That is their problem, not yours. Let your bold faith guide you as

PHOTO COURTESY OFTHE AUTHOR

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ood morning. Happy Black History Month and welcome to a new semester. Today’s message comes from Luke 5:18-26 (New Living Translation):

Ashley Benson you seek the path you should follow.

You may be struggling with deciding a major, buying a house, paying off debt, mental health, loneliness–whatever it is, most people will not understand the struggle. Most people will lack the faith and ability to pray you through.

But there are one or two people, maybe three, who see the vision and have some bold faith like you. They are willing to get in the trenches with you to bring about change. That is a blessing to have.

I pray you recognize those people in your life, those who believe with you and those who are going against you.

These men sought God while he could be found. That is scripture–Isaiah 55:6.

See, I’ve experienced bold faith while also needing to be lifted up by others to see the path. I made it. Sometimes it will be hard to see the path because it is crowded; other times money or location may get in the way. There are times when the issue is your position in an organization or community. Age, race,

and gender have been known to get in the way of bold faith as well. Don’t let those factors dictate how your faith operates. We live in times where bold faith is needed to bring about change in the world. Bold faith led Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and others to boycott in Selma.

Bold faith guided Harriet Tubman as she worked to lead slaves to freedom.

Bold faith was used by a little-known senator named Barrack Obama who ultimately became president of the United States. Bold faith is used by those fighting for the rights of others around the world. Bold faith can be used by you.

Bold faith is not attention seeking, it is God seeking. Bold faith involves making sacrifices to bring about your desired result. Be bold in your faith to correct injustice. Use bold faith to declare your relationship with God. Use bold faith to speak up about the wrong you see and hear. Your bold faith will give others the permission to be bold.

Don’t let people talk you out of your boldness because they lack vision. Write the vision, and make it plain. That’s scripture too: Habakkuk 2:2. Be bold.

Do it for you. Bold faith means you are seeking greater for yourself. Do that proudly. Ask God how you can be bolder.

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Why Luther?

FEBRUARY 8, 2023

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ood morning and blessings to all.

My name is Mychal Shed. I am a senior from Teague, Texas. I am the captain of the men’s basketball team, I am the Black Student Union president, I serve on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee for athletics as well as the Student Athlete Advisory Committee, and I am a Lead Ambassador for admissions. But above all these titles I am a Christian, and I am honored, humbled, and blessed to be here speaking before you on a topic near and dear to my heart: “Why Luther?”

As we may or may not know, the theme of this series is “Seeking: Asking Honest Questions.” Four years ago, “Why Luther?” was an honest question for me as I was struggling with my decision on where to attend college.

You see, I come from a religious upbringing. My mother was a preacher’s kid, my pops grew up in the church, my grandparents basically lived in there, so it only made sense that I would follow suit. However, my relationship with God is not theirs so I had to ask questions to figure out who He was to me and what our relationship entailed.

Throughout my faith journey I have noticed how these questions have become more personal and meaningful as I grow stronger and stronger. I have also noticed how God’s will has been revealed to me time and time again through the answers He’s provided me with.

This brings me back to that emotionally striking question that places me here before you today: “Why Luther?”

I’ll never forget I was in church Sunday, May 12, 2019 and I was an emotional wreck. I told myself the only reason I even visited Luther in the first place was to miss school and to see if Iowa was even a real state, as nobody from 30

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my hometown even knew where Iowa was located on the map–to this day a lot of my friends still think I go to school in Ohio. Nonetheless, two weeks had passed since I had visited and had fallen in love with Luther and Decorah, but I was an emotional wreck that day because I just could NOT see myself living in Iowa for four consecutive years–sixteen hours away from my family, my beautiful dog that everyone knows I love, and the oh so lovely Texas heat. But that Sunday it seemed like every song sung was specifically speaking to me and my internal struggles. The message from my pastor seemed as if it were specifically constructed for me as well. In short, my spirit was conflicted.

“Why Luther?” was all I could silently pray as tears flowed down my cheeks to the song “Worth” by Anthony Brown.

In that moment, clear as day, the scripture Revelation chapter 3 verse 8 came to me: I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.

When describing the theme to me, Ms. Kate Matth in College Ministries shared that “We are seeking many things: clarity, connection, balance, our calling, and purpose” among many other things. I indeed was seeking all of these at that exact moment. In John chapter 5 verse 30 the Bible states, I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of God who sent me.”

I’ve learned throughout my journey of seeking that God’s will is the perfect will in my life and trying to do things on my own–straying away from His

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

by MYCHAL SHED, ‘23

Mychal Shed voice and calling never ended well for me. I knew God was calling me to commit to Luther, I just didn’t know why at the time. But I was not about to make the same mistake Jonah did in the Bible when he tried to run away from God’s voice and calling over his life. If you don’t know that story I strongly advise you to look it up. The book of Jonah is a short, but very meaningful read.

In closing, I will share this with you all. I have learned that it is okay to ask God questions. We are humans, it’s in our nature to be curious and seek understanding. Speaking from my own experience, I have found that asking questions has strengthened my faith in and relationship with Christ, my Savior.

He knew that Luther was the place for me to not only grow, but to thrive as a young Christian man, and even though I couldn’t see it, initially, I prayed and simply asked, “Why Luther?” His response has been shown in the service that I humbly partake in concerning this community and the genuine love that overwhelms me from the people of this special community. In my final

remarks, I’ll leave you with this scripture from Proverbs chapter 3 verses 5 and 6, “ Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek His will in all you do, and He will show you which path to take.” Me seeking God’s will brought me to Luther and Luther has changed my life forever. There’s no coincidence in that correlation.

Thank you, and blessings to all.

Editor’s Note: In March, Luther College awarded the inaugural Joy Tlou Memorial Award to Mychal Shed ’23. The award was established by Hla Tlou, daughter of Josiah and Litha Tlou, in memory of her brother, Bonolo Joy Tlou (’86). The award recognizes students whose character, leadership, and participation in the campus community enhance the quality of campus life and encourage a “community of joy.”

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When Islamophilia becomes Islamophobia: The Case of Hamline University

by ROBERT F. SHEDINGER, Professor of Religion

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ast fall, Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota contracted the services of Dr. Erika Lopez Prater, a 2003 Luther College alumna, to teach an online course called World Art. Prater informed the class that she would be showing images of religious figures in the class including Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, and the Buddha.

Knowing that there were Muslim students in the class, and knowing that some Muslims object to having the Prophet Muhammad portrayed in images, Prater made clear that students could absent themselves from class, without penalty, in cases where they might find certain images objectionable.

In October, Prater showed the class a famous painting produced in the 14th century by a Muslim artist portraying Muhammad receiving revelations from the angel Gabriel. Again, she warned the class prior to showing the image, but all the students chose to remain in the class and view the image.

After the class, a Muslim student expressed concerns to Prater about her decision to show the image. It wasn’t so much that the student did not want to view the image (though she obviously found it objectionable), but that Prater had disrespected the Muslim faith by showing the image to anyone. Prater explained to the student the historical significance of the painting and her pedagogical goals in showing it. But the student took her concerns to Hamline’s chief diversity officer, who then sent an email to the entire community emphasizing the importance of sensitivity to the religious sensibilities of students (though not mentioning Prater by name). This led to a campus-wide conversation in which it became clear that Prater’s decision to show an image of 32

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Muhammad in her art class was at the center of this community controversy.

Eventually, the Hamline administration withdrew a verbal commitment to rehire Prater for the spring semester, and branded her actions of showing a painting produced by a Muslim artist for a Muslim audience as Islamophobic.

It is this charge of Islamophobia that I want to focus on in this reflection.

The Hamline administration’s decision to support the concerns of the Muslim student against the academic freedom of Dr. Lopez Prater, while not defensible, are at a certain level understandable.

Islamophobia is a real phenomenon, and people have used images of Muhammad in intentionally harmful ways to stir up Muslim anger. We need only recall the Danish cartoon controversy and the Charlie Hebdo affair to see how images of Muhammad have recently been used by those bent on treating Muslim sympathies with contempt in order to provoke Muslim anger in support of Islamophobic agendas. Given that this Muslim student represented an often-vilified minority group, Hamline’s embrace of this student’s religious sympathies was likely motivated by a well-intentioned Islamophilic attempt to combat Islamophobia. Unfortunately, in their rush to support the student, they unintentionally and ironically reproduced a harmful Islamophobic stereotype themselves.

Hamline University administrators could have saved themselves an awful lot of trouble if they had only possessed some basic religious literacy. In evaluating the student’s complaints, they appear to have been accepting the student’s framing of the issue as, “Islam prohibits the creation of images of the Prophet Muhammad.” If Islam prohibits this, then by showing the images, one could argue that Dr. Lopez Prater

PHOTO COURTESY OF LUTHER COLLEGE

Editor’s note: This reflection was given at Decorah Unitarian/Universalist Fellowship on February 19, 2023.

FEBRUARY 19, 2023

Robert Shedinger was acting in such a way as to disrespect the student’s religious sensibilities. But this reified “Islam” in the framing is a mere abstraction; it does not exist in the world. No Islam exists in the world with the power to prohibit anything.

All that exists in the world are Muslims, people who ascribe to the Islamic tradition. A more religiously literate framing of the issue then would have been to say, “Many Muslims believe that Islam prohibits the creation of images of Muhammad.” This framing makes clear that while many Muslims believe this, not all do, and points to the internal diversity within the Islamic tradition, raising relevant questions about why some Muslims believe this while others don’t. By taking the student’s position as representative of the entire tradition, Hamline created an essentialized view of Islam, a common ploy of Islamophobic actors within our society who ignore the internal diversity of the tradition in order to paint Islam with a broad brush—all Muslims are then portrayed as anti-American violent extremists who want to dominate the world with Shariah law. A truly Islamophilic approach to the Islamic tradition then would be to accept that no one person speaks for the entire tradition, and that voices who

may completely disagree with one another must both be understood as valid representatives of the tradition. Let’s look at some specific examples.

Western Islamophobic images of Islam focus on groups like al-Qaeda and the Taliban, organizations that interpret Islamic sources as calling for the West’s destruction. As much as we might not like to admit it, these movements are valid representations of Islam. But so is Malala Yousefzai, the Pakistani girl shot in the head by the Taliban due to her activism for girls education, and who won the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17. Malala’s education activism is just as much inspired by her interpretation of Islamic sources as are the actions of the Taliban. Malala has just as much a right to speak for Islam as do they.

Of course, the West loves to point to the Iranian regime as demonstrating the problems with Islam. Through the actions of Ayatollah Khomeini in fomenting the Iranian revolution in 1979 up to today, the fundamentalist Shi’ite theocracy’s human rights abuses are presented as the true face of an Islam that must be resisted. But once again, the protestors we have seen recently marching in the streets of Tehran are Muslims too, as is Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights lawyer and 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been battling the Iranian regime for two decades at great personal cost to herself. The street protesters and Ebadi have just as much right to be seen as valid representatives of Islam as do the mullahs in Tehran. Islam indeed is diverse.

One of the most persistent stereotypes about Islam is that it is inherently patriarchal and misogynistic. And there certainly is evidence to substantiate this claim in the form of honor killings, female genital mutilation, and other forms of oppression that do occur in Islamic countries. But then there is Amina Wadud, an African American woman who grew up Methodist, converted to Islam as a teenager, and then earned a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1994, Wadud published a famous book, Qur’an and Woman, in which she took upon herself the authority normally only accorded to men to reinterpret the

Qur’an as a book that supports gender egalitarianism. Twice in her life, once in Cape Town, South Africa, and once in New York City, Wadud again subverted expected gender roles by leading prayers in a mosque. Wadud’s gender activism, as is the gender activism of so many other Muslim women too numerous to mention, organically arises out of their respect for and understanding of Islamic sources. They have just as much right to be viewed as representatives of Islam as those who interpret Islam patriarchally.

Islam is a diverse tradition full of robust internal debate about many issues.

opened since 2011). As in all the cases above, Abdullah’s LGBTQ+ activism is deeply informed by his Islamic faith, and he represents Islam just as much as any Muslim who holds homophobic views.

Islam is a diverse tradition full of robust internal debate about many issues. Some Muslims certainly believe that images of Muhammad are prohibited in Islam.

But other Muslims have themselves painted these very images for Muslim audiences. We do well to remind ourselves of this rich diversity whenever we hear the word “Islam.” Had the Hamline University administration done so, they would be in a much better public relations position today.

One of the Islamic terms that Islamophobes love to throw around is jihad.

And to be sure, there are militant Muslim groups who view jihad as a violent struggle against the West. But there is also Imam Ibrahim Saidy. Imam Saidy is a Nigerian Muslim who moved to Norway and is Imam of the Daru Salaam Islamic Centre in Oslo. In 2015, Imam Saidy spoke at the famous Paris climate conference where he framed jihad as the struggle against climate change. Once again, Saidy’s framing of climate activism as a form of jihad is just as much inspired by his grounding in Islamic sources as are the actions of those who view jihad as a violent campaign against the West. Both speak for Islam.

As one final example, we do have to wrestle with the reality that Muslims have been slow to accept LGBTQ+ people as normal and natural. Homophobia, unfortunately, continues to run deep within the Islamic tradition.

I can still remember when a former president of Iran was quoted as saying that homosexuality was not a problem in Iran because there were no homosexuals in Iran (to obvious giggles!).

But even on this issue there is diversity of opinion. Imam Daayiee Abdullah opened the Light of Reform Mosque in Washington, D. C. in 2011. This was one of the first openly gay-friendly mosques in the world (more have Spring 2023/Agora

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He Loved Them to the End

by MARTIN KLAMMER, Professor of English, Editor of Agora

it means for someone to die out of love for others and an abiding commitment to justice for the oppressed.

Biko was handcuffed, put into leg irons, and chained. He was interrogated for twenty-two hours, tortured and beaten, and struck repeatedly on the head. By 7:00 a.m. the next morning he had sustained five brain lesions, later shown to have caused severe brain damage. He was left shackled in leg irons and handcuffs for two more days. He lay helpless.

Four days later, he was taken in the back of a Land Rover to Pretoria, 700 miles away. Lying naked and unconscious, somewhere along the way, he died. He was 30 years old.

Biko’s commitment to justice was through a series of Black Community Programs that emphasized “self-reliance . . . and liberation through the development of the whole person.” These programs included a community health center; a trust fund to help those who had been imprisoned find jobs; selfemployment opportunities for women in sewing, knitting, and leather work; a bulk food cooperative; and a day care center. After his death, Biko according to one scholar remained “a life-giving force” as the Black Consciousness Movement helped bring down the apartheid system.

I begin this chapel talk with Steve Biko because his life and death help me answer an important, indeed a vital, question: What is the meaning of Jesus’ suffering and death, which we remember this week? For many Christians, the meaning of Jesus’ death is encapsulated in John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

But for me the life and death of Steve Biko provides a different way of finding meaning in Jesus’s death—that is, what 34

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Steve Biko loved people. One friend said, Steve Biko “felt great joy at being among people. This seemed to inspire him . . . to give him energy . . . Under a relaxed atmosphere we were able to explore a whole lot of very complex issues . . . with Steve presiding.”

Biko even wanted to relate to the white security police who harassed and detained him. He said shortly before his death: “If they [the police] talk to me, well I’m bound to be affected by them as human beings. But the moment they adopt the rough stuff . . . I button up. I tell them: ‘It’s up to you.’”

In all these ways Steve Biko seems to me like Jesus. But Biko would be the first to say he was no Jesus, that he was a flawed human being.

And yet when I think of Steve Biko’s self-giving life and death, I can’t help but think of that wonderful passage from the gospel of John: “[W]hen Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own, he loved them to the end” ( John 13:1).

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

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n September 6, 1977, I was enjoying the end of my summer break before my junior year at the University of Oregon. Half a world away in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Stephen Bantu Biko was taken by the security police of the white apartheid government to a sixth-floor room in an office building. Steve Biko had gained an enthusiastic following as the leader and voice of Black Consciousness. Biko had become a threat to the white regime, simply by empowering Black South Africans to live with pride and dignity and to resist any attempts by whites to diminish or dehumanize them. Steve Biko, the white regime felt, as an opponent of apartheid, needed to be contained and silenced.

APRIL 5, 2023

Martin Klammer “Having loved his own, he loved them to the end.” That to me is the meaning of Jesus’s death. On the evening before his death, Jesus told his disciples: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his live for his friends . . . This I command you, to love one another” ( John 15: 12-13, 17).

And even in his very last moments, while on the cross, Jesus looked down and said to his mother and the disciple known as the Beloved Disciple: “’Woman, behold your son!’” And to the disciple, “’Behold your mother!’” And “from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.” Jesus bound them together in a commandment of love. After this Jesus said, “’It is finished’; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit” ( John 19:26-27, 30).

In remembering Steve Biko’s life and death, we remember his love.

In remembering Jesus’s life and death, we remember his love—and his glory.

Ramadan Reflections APRIL 19, 2023

by JARAAD AFROZE AHMED ‘25

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Let us begin with some context, Ramadan is the ninth month of the Hijri Calendar. It is the month that commemorates the Islamic Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) first revelation.1 During this revelation that took place in 610 CE, in the cave of Hira of the Jabal an-Nour mountain near Mecca, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was visited by the angel Jibril who is said to have descended the first teachings of the Quran from Allah. The night of the revelation is upheld as the night of power, Laylat al-Qadr. I, myself, have heard many renditions of its holiness. Most notably, my maternal grandfather who would gather all the cousins to tell us how one night of worship during Laylat al-Qadr would be granted as 80 years of worship.

Though scholars may argue the validity of these cultural incentives, I still go the extra mile to ensure I pray for my grandparents during this time.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

ood morning, everyone. My name is Jaraad Afroze Ahmed.

I go by he/him/his pronouns.

And along with being a sophomore biochemistry major, I also hold the titles of the Senate Representative for International Students and Allies Association, Campus Betterment Chair, and the Curriculum Committee Student Representative. It is an honor to be able to speak at this Wednesday’s chapel as we reflect upon the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. I would like to personally thank Pastor Melissa and Katrina Matth for assisting me through this process. I would also like to affirm the dedication of Alejandra Cruz, Jon Lund, Provost Chamberlain, Dr. Robert Clay, Wayne Tudor, Heather Williams, Leah McCrea, and most importantly our students, among several others who have facilitated the observation of Ramadan here at Luther College.

Jaraad Ahmed’ (’25) and his brother Samar Ahmed Sawm, which translates to the fast in English, is the pillar of Islam that is encapsulated by Ramadan. Along with Sawm, the five core values of Islam include: Shahada: this is the declaration of one’s faith; Salat: this is the ritual of praying five times a day; Zakat: this is the act of supporting those of us who are underprivileged through charity; and Hajj: this is the requirement of Muslims who are able to undertake a pilgrimage to Mecca.

Ramadan is a time of spirituality, reflection, discipline, and community. It is a

core aspect of a Muslim’s relationship with their faith and community, and one’s role in the intersectionality of the two. Growing up in the Muslim majority country of Bangladesh, I perceive Ramadan as a time of self-improvement and community engagement through discipline, reflection, and empathy.

As you may know, during this month Muslims all over the world abstain from food, drink, and other physical needs from dawn until dusk. The fast is broken each day at sunset with a meal called iftar, and starts with the early morning meal of suhoor. Whilst observing Ramadan is integral to Islam, staying healthy is of utmost importance, and thus, not everyone must partake. Those of us who are pregnant, breastfeeding, menstruating, young and growing, of Spring 2023/Agora

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old age, ill and on medication, or traveling are not required to fast.

In the intercultural setting of Dhaka city, embodying spirituality, reflection, discipline, and community became second nature. I remember the annual box of Medjool dates that our Hindu neighbors would bless us with at the start of the Holy month. This would be followed by the community coming together to buy groceries for the local orphanage and mosque, both of whom would then host iftars that were welcome to everybody. Along with our parents supporting families with new sets of Sarees, Panjabis and Lungis, my brothers and I were taught to offer from what we had in gratitude for our abundance, and this would mean sorting through our closets and inspecting our clothes and shoes for holes and scrapes.

Those deemed in good condition would join the new clothes pile for donation drives to our parents’ hometowns. It seemed as though the whole city was fasting, with water bottles weighing down the improvised drapes of outdoor tea stalls, and the local Chinese restaurant chain being closed for the whole month with their employees on supported leave. Regardless of their faith, everyone exercised mutual respect in both their dialogue and activities.

Ramadan allowed people to cultivate the need for respectful engagement, through patience and gratitude for what they had. As an impressionable youth, this meant coming back from soccer early to shower and help my mother prepare iftar. And yes, regardless of what we had for suhoor, after the midday sun had passed you could not keep us away from going to the field. The communal Maghrib prayer right after iftar taught me to exercise discipline. It reminded me that no matter how hungry I may have felt at the time, the holy month was to be commemorated through the expression of my devotion to Allah.

Funnily enough, it also taught me the practice of eating slowly, as gobbling down too quickly right before Maghrib meant a strenuous prayer time. After Maghrib, we would gather around and hold up our hands in Munajat.

This would be the time during which I would form my most interpersonal connections with Islam and my identity 36

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as a Muslim within my community. As customary to Bangladeshi munajats, I would dedicate this time to pray for my family and friends and ask Allah for guidance in achieving my goals in life.

A bit later in the evening after the Isha prayer, we would visit the local mosque for Taraweeh, which is the voluntary prayer performed every night of Ramadan. During Taraweeh, the Imam would lead the prayer and recite extensive verses of the Quran. This is where I learnt to cultivate my patience, through devotion of my young mind to refrain from deviating thoughts during the long hours of prayer.

It is a time to renew our commitment to God and to the values of compassion, kindness, and generosity that are central to both Islam and Lutheranism.

Most certainly, it takes a village to raise a child. The practices I have garnered from my community, especially during Ramadan, have followed me into the person standing in front of you. And I see these shared values in the people of the Lutheran community I find myself in today. To draw a comparison, I will quote chapter 4, verse 32 of Ephesians. It reads: “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.” Here forgiveness is seen as a way to emulate God’s love and mercy, and Lutherans are encouraged to forgive others as they have been forgiven by God. Furthermore, in Lutheranism, self-discipline is important as it helps individuals develop their willpower and resist temptations that may lead them away from their faith. Similarly, Ramadan encourages Muslims to practice self-discipline by abstaining from food and drink during the daylight hours.

This act of self-restraint helps to cultivate inner strength and resolve.

Another shared value is community. In Lutheranism, community is an essential part of faith. Members of the Lutheran

church come together to worship, support each other, and share in the joys and struggles of life. Similarly, during Ramadan, Muslims come together to break their fasts, pray together, and engage in acts of charity and service to others. This sense of community helps to strengthen the bonds between individuals and build our sense of identity within community.

The value of charity is also important in our community. In the Lutheran faith, giving to others is seen as an important act of service and a way to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. Similarly, during Ramadan, Muslims are encouraged to give to charity and help those in need.

This act of generosity helps to foster compassion and empathy for others, and reinforces the importance of helping those of us who are underprivileged.

Finally, both during Ramadan and in Lutheranism there is emphasis on the importance of reflection and selfimprovement. In the Lutheran faith, self-reflection is a way to identify areas for growth and to strive towards becoming a better person. Similarly, during Ramadan, Muslims engage in reflection and introspection, taking time to evaluate their actions and seek forgiveness for any wrongdoings. This process of self-reflection helps to cultivate humility and a desire for self-improvement.

As we reach the end of Ramadan, we near Eid al-Fitr. This year, Eid is expected to fall on Friday, April 21, or Saturday, April 22, depending on the sighting of the crescent moon.

Eid al-Fitr is a holiday that marks the end of the month of Ramadan. It is a time when families and friends come together to celebrate the blessings of Allah and to express their gratitude for the spiritual growth and renewal that they have experienced during Ramadan.

On this day, Muslims gather for an early morning prayer and listen to a sermon that reminds us of the importance of faith, community, and charity. I remember being woken up and taking a cold shower while half-asleep as my parents got us dressed in our new Eid clothes.

Following the Eid prayer, we would do pit stops for sweet treats at our family and friends’ homes. This was a time I felt especially appreciative for those

in my community that I did not get to see as often. We exchange gifts and greetings with each other, and partake in festive meals that are traditionally enjoyed during Eid al-Fitr. It is a time of great happiness and celebration, but also a time to commemorate those of us who are underprivileged and to share our blessings with them. It is a time to renew our commitment to God and to the values of compassion, kindness, and generosity that are central to both Islam and Lutheranism. Eid al-Fitr places emphasis on the act of Fitrana. It is a requirement that all Muslims with food in excess of their means make a charitable payment. Historically, people would measure whether they had food beyond their means in a unit called ‘Sa. This is the equivalent of around three kilograms of basic staple foods like wheat. This is a standardized model through which every Muslim individual can partake in the act of service.

Lutheranism values the importance of faith, community, and service to others.

There is emphasis on the power of love and kindness to bring people together and to make the world a better place.

The celebration of Eid al-Fitr serves as a reminder that these values are shared

by Muslims and Lutherans alike. As part of my dedication to the community here at Luther, I have collaborated with those mentioned at the start of this talk to improve upon Ramadan meal provisions. And, in collaboration with the Islamic Society of Postville, we have organized a drive for Eid al-Fitr prayer.

fact, it is the practice of establishing the framework of livelihood which facilitates the liberty of individuals to lead their lives how they want to lead it. It is the structural implementation of respectful engagement through community. It is our lives formed by connection, and devotion to one another. Thank you for your time, and Ramadan Kareem!

NOTES 1. As an act of respect, Muslims follow the name of Muhammad by the Arabic benediction sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam (meaning “peace be upon him”), sometimes abbreviated as “SAW” or “PBUH”.

To conclude, I would like to quote the final lines of Senator Aisha Wahab from the 2023 California Senate Concurrent Resolution 38 Title Ramadan: “The hunger encourages reflection, compassion, and empathy towards the needy, and how our lives do or do not align with what is important. In turn, breaking the fast with friends and family in the late hours reminds us of what we should treasure and enjoy, each other.

With Islam being the third largest religion in the United States, we should celebrate our diversity.” I would like to extrapolate upon Senator Wahab’s words and call specifically upon our idea of diversity. Diversity is not merely the physical congregation of people with various identities and ideologies. In Spring 2023/Agora

37

Other People Are Not Me

by ANNA M. PETERSON, Associate Professor of History

I

spent the month of January co-leading a course abroad with Gereon Kopf. We taught a course for 25 students on Japanese Buddhism.

Starting in the north—Sendai—we made our way south through Japan to Nagasaki, stopping at stunning temples along the way. There were places on our journey that felt very thin to me—times and places where the veil between the physical world and the spirit world are permeable. It was breath-taking.

I also deepened my knowledge of Zen and Zen teachings throughout the trip.

On January 12, I had the pleasure of hearing Professor Ishii at Komazawa University in Tokyo speak on the history and practice of Soto Zen Buddhism. As someone who is relatively new to practicing Zen Buddhism (five years) and as someone who has always had more of a personal connection to it than an academic one, I found this lecture fascinating. Professor Ishii went over the history of Zen, including foundational figures such as Bodhidharma, whose dedication to his practice led to his infamous 9-years of wall sitting and, as legend has it, even cutting off his eyelids to stay awake during his practice. Ishii also introduced me to some of Dogen’s teachings from the Tenzo Kyokun (Instructions for the Tenzo, or temple cook) that have stayed with me, and it is those teachings, and the ways in which they’ve informed my thinking, that I want to share with you.

Dogen writes in the Tenzo Kyokun: When I was staying at Tiantongjingde-si, a monk named Lu held the post of tenzo. Once, following the noon meal I was walking along the eastern covered walkway towards a sub-temple called Chaoran Hut when I came upon him in front of the Buddha Hall drying mushrooms in the sun. He had 38

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May 10, 2023

a bamboo stick in his hand and no hat covering his head. The heat of the sun was blazing on the paving stones. It looked very painful; his back was bent like a bow and his eyebrows were as white as the feathers of a crane. I went up to the tenzo and asked, “How long have you been a monk?”

“Sixty-eight years,” he said.

“Why don’t you have an assistant do this for you?”

“Other people are not me.”

“Venerable sir, I can see how you follow the Way through your work. But still, why do this now when the sun is so hot?”

“If not now, when?”

There was nothing else to say.”

The Tenzo’s responses are crucial here.

“Other people are not me.” And “If not now, when?” I want to give you a minute to think about these two statements: “Other people are not me.” And “If not now, when?”

These are central teachings in Zen Buddhism, and I want to explore the “other people are not me” a bit further.

When the tenzo replies that other people are not him, he is saying that the work of drying the mushrooms is his— other people cannot do it for him. In other words, his practice is his alone and others cannot do it for him. Nobody can take his place. In this, Dogen encourages people to simply do their practice, without comparisons or being caught by ideas, just seeing what is around them, just doing what is needed. The story begs the question of “if I don’t do what I need to do, who will?”

This story of the tenzo stayed with me after we left Komazawa University and

Anna M. Peterson went on to a monastic stay at Hokyoji, a practice temple of the Soto school of Zen Buddhism in Japan. Hokyoji is nestled in the snow-laden mountains outside Ono, and had been founded

by Jakuen, a Chinese Zen monk who trained in Zen with Dogen.

Upon arriving at Hokyoji, our 25 students and we were quickly introduced to the practice of Ōryōki, a meditative form of eating using a set of nested bowls and other eating utensils that emphasizes mindfulness awareness practice by abiding to a strict order of precise movements. You unpack your bowls and utensils in a particular manner, unnesting the bowls, placing them in a particular order, and you ask for your food in a particular way, eat it with care and in concert with those around you.

As you conclude the eating portion of the meal, you clean your bowls at your place carefully with hot tea and water, scraping the sides of the bowl with your satsu utensil, drinking the water that you cleaned the bowls with. This practice of eating is not just about ceremony

and etiquette. It reflects the belief that that all living things are precious and through the act of eating we have taken life in order to sustain our own lives— we must respect this and savor every last crumb (including those floating around the “dishwater” we’ve created with the hot water and satsu).

To say the students struggled with eating meals at Hokyoji is to put it mildly.

They not only had difficulty with the ceremony and ritual of oryoki, they disliked drinking their own dishwater and many had aversions to the food itself. Most meals consisted of plain white rice, pickled vegetables (not only to eat but to also help with cleaning the bowls), miso soup, and various tofu dishes. The tofu proved most unappetizing to our students. And the pressure to participate and show respect for our hosts and the religious traditions they represented weighed heavily on the students. Remember in oryoki every last crumb must be eaten. Some students could not stomach a bite. The first night I sat across from one of these students.

They had previously self-declared their aversion to vegetables and vegetable products. At a vegan monastery this posed a real challenge. They sat with the food, attempting to overcome their aversions with physical revulsion and tears running down their cheeks.

Meanwhile, the person next to me struggled to remember the order in which to put the bowls back into their places, which corner of the furoshiki, or linen wrapping, to fold first, and which direction to place the chopsticks.

I wanted to reach out, break the rule of silence during eating, and help my neighbors with their practice.

But the tenzo’s words in Dogen’s story came back to me: Others are not me.

And also I am not others. Others’ practice is not my practice.

As an empath, someone who takes on the feelings of others perhaps a bit too readily, I found it a real struggle to let the others find their own way in their own practice of oryoki. But I did. I kept the silence, I focused on what was right in front of me and I left others to their practice.

The tenzo’s words continue to stay with me. As a wife, a mother, a teacher it is tempting to take on others’ work for them—to interrupt and take on their practice as my own all in the name of helping. But the tenzo reminds me that Others are not me. I am not others.

But it can’t be so simple, right? I have tried to reconcile this teaching with the emphasis I know Buddhism places on compassion. How can we leave others to struggle in their practice while focusing on our own practice? How is this compassion?

Carl Bielefeldt writes about the four ways of the Bodhisattva Dogen in the Shobogenzo, and I want to outline the four components he mentions in regard to ways of the Bodhisattva for you.

The first way is that of generosity (fuse), which Dogen interpreted broadly to include having “a position in society and to act on behalf of society.”

The second way is aigo—kind speech.

Thirdly is rigyo—beneficial action— which means that in our concerns and activities “we take care of every kind of person, no matter whether of high of low position.” Lastly there is doji—compassion and empathy—“Not to differentiate self from others . . . when we know doji we are at one with ourselves and others.”

How do we reconcile this with the idea that “Others are not me”?

Also in the Shobogenzo, Dogen explores the idea that self and other both share a commonality and possess a uniqueness at the same time. We’re all pursuing the way but through different expressions of it. We all have Buddha nature, and are struggling to find the proper way to express the true Buddha Dharma. We can have empathy for one another while we each pursue the way, and we can recognize that we are interconnected in our pursuit of the way through our practice while still recognizing that we each must practice our own practice.

Others are not me.

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The image at left illustrated early issues of Agora. The journal was established by the Paideia Program, and paideia translates as education. The image shows a teacher with his tablet on his lap and stylus in his hand.

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