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☧ Doctor Cline ♰

Dr. Cline

Last Updated: 5/17/2009

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Gender: Male
Age: 33
Sign: Sagittarius

Country: US

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October 19, 2009 - Monday

I Miss Summer
Current mood:

nostalgic
Category: Writing and Poetry

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I Miss Summer

We sit around the campsite, not talking.
We watch the embers of our campfire glow.
We're tired and peaceful from work and walking
and while sleeping bags call, we will not go.

We lean into the heat from fallen logs.
The night is cool, but the warmth of our coals.
We're full of sweet s'mores and salty hot dogs
and even more full in our hearts and out souls.

"Let's put on one more," I hear someone say.
I add a new log and a few puffs of air.
Nobody here wants to end this sweet day
when we have a fire and silence to share.

Darkness takes all but our glowing orange dome
and so far from a house, we are at home.

2:57 PM

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October 14, 2009 - Wednesday

Sick & well
Current mood:

blessed
Category: Life

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........
For those of you not aware, I have been sick the past few days. I mean really sick. Friday I felt tired and worn down all day, but was just thinking it was the early winter. Friday night my wife and I went to see White Out (I give it a solid one star). Before we were even done with the movie, I was feeling pretty out of it. I went to sleep on the couch about the second we got home. I never take naps in the evening, and usually consider myself something of a night-owl. I really just figured it was just the end of a long week tiredness. We went to bed. The next day, I really couldn't do anything. I think the longest I stayed awake was about three hours between 6:30pm and 9:30 pm, and that was a struggle.

I knew I had a fever. I knew my throat hurt and I knew I was sick. Apparently, I looked pretty bad too, because Sunday after skipping church to sleep some more, my wife recomended we go to the emergency room. There was some debate about cost, but in the end we went. I guess I am glad we did. The doctor's and assorted other medical professionals drew blood, stabbed me with cotton swabs on stick, and asked a lot of questions. In the end, the diagnosis seemed a surprise even to the doctors; I had H1N1, Strep, and Mono!

[And no, I haven't been kissing anyone but my wife who does not seem to have the virus].

Of course, they put me on an antibiotic for the strep. The other two, they told me, I just needed to wait out. I was not going to wait patiently, however.

If it had been any one of these diseases, I would have prayed, maybe asked my immediate family to pray, drank plenty of water and stayed home. All three, however, seemed to me to require more drastic prayer action. So, I texted about everyone with the info. Mom & Dad got me on prayer chains and everyone started praying. In the meantime, I have rewatched all the Star Wars movies and would rank even my least favorite (Episode II, Attack of the Clones) far above Whiteout. My fever broke Monday afternoon. Yesterday I stayed home just to be sure. Today, I am back at work.

I don't want to give the wrong impression. I am still not 100%. I do know though that being at work again this soon, and not having a fever, is miraculous. I thank God for what he has done.

3:13 PM

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October 8, 2009 - Thursday

1st Snow of Season, 2009
Current mood:

cold
Category: Writing and Poetry

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❄1^st snow of season❄
It’s not really early, just thick too soon
covering the earth in a more pure skin
on broken bottles and candle-stained spoons
like a white robe used to cover our sin.

It tastes as clean as a child’s memory
before our hearts’ corruption was complete
when we sinned in partial depravity
before our image debased to defeat.

We should have poured out blood before it came
as a bleach, which would have laid white upon white.
Now it will melt and expose all our shame
when the sun burns through artificial night.

We’ll have a chance to halt our descent
and wash before dressing if we repent.

4:08 PM

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September 28, 2009 - Monday

Giving the Devil his Due
Current mood:

angry
Category: Writing and Poetry

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........

Giving the Devil His Due

I have seen his work

I have seen him sow dissension;

pitting one member of the body against another

putting noxious words in one mouth

and using that to plant anger in another soul.

I have seen his work.

I have seen him send sickness;

sidelining warriors with minor ailments

not enough to kill them,

but enough to take them out of the fight at just the right time.

I have seen his work.

I have seen him exploit weakness;

finding the little places where one fails

and using that to ruin them

or trip up another.

I have seen his work.

I have seen him deceive with flattery;

puffing up the workers with fine words

so that they are too bloated

to fulfill their mission.

I have seen his work.

I have seen him distract;

convincing students they are bored

and getting their eyes off the Teacher

who offers Truth, not entertainment.

I have seen his work.

He is a very hard worker;

skilled in what he does

careful and quick in his manipulations

tenaciously persistent.

I have seen his work.

I have seen it all come to naught

as it is thrown into the garbage heap

and all burned away until there is nothing

and no one remembers what he has done.

I have seen his work.

I have seen it all pass away

while the work of those who struggled against him

who were also skilled and persistent

survive the fire like gold

while his work burns away like sticks and straw.

6:20 AM

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September 23, 2009 - Wednesday

Better employment
Current mood:

cheerful
Category: Life

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For those of you who have not heard, I am employed at something a bit more toward my skill level. About a week ago, my wife got a call from the Alliance Public Schools. When we had first come to Nebraska to "stay for a couple weeks until one of the places I had interviewed called back"

, my wife thought maybe she could do some work for the school for a while. They had done nothing at the time, but called her this time for a job working as a job coach with special needs students. She had already taken a position at Head Start, but informed them of my qualifications and explained that I was not working. They gave me her interview time on Friday.

I went to the interview and we talked over the possibilities. As they perused my resume and talked to me, I began to get the sense that this was going to be much the same as my interviews with Burlington Northern, Sterling Engineering and all the other places where I have interviewed for jobs outside the academy. They kept telling me that they could not pay me what I was worth, my qualifications put me outside their price-range, I might not like it and would probably leave, etc. etc. I attempted to make the case that because of the layout of the academic year, it was quite unlikely that I would be finding professor gigs in the next few months. I really would be able to work with them. I went away with the feeling that I had lost another one.

On Monday morning, bright and early, they called me and more than offered me the position. Instead of a “job coach,” the position for which I was interviewing, I will be a “job coach coordinator,” more or less in charge of the entire job coaching program in the Alliance Public Schools. The program does not really exist yet, and was going to be headed up by one of the special education teachers in addition to her caseload and instruction time. Because of my qualifications, I have been given that position. My job this week has been to get to know the kids in the program. Some of them have obvious disabilities. Other students only have a disability that becomes apparent when asked to perform a mental task of some sort. Either way, their possibilities for employment after high school are limited. Unless they receive some sort of hands on training now, most of them will not be employable.

As coordinator, it will be my job to liaison with businesses in the community to find tasks which I could train the students to do which would allow them to gather some concrete skills to possibly be employable in some minimal capacity after high-school. Then I will work as job coach, teaching the students this job and supervising their work. As the program grows, I will also be supervising other job coaches who will not be contacting the businesses, but will be coaching and supervising the students. The job as “job coach coordinator” pays just a couple dollars more than the minimum wage (which is what job coaches get paid). Health insurance is available, but the cost of those benefits may put them beyond my ability to get. Hopefully I do not get sick!

Even though the pay and benefits are not great, I am so glad to have this job. It is the type of work where I can fulfill my life's mission. It is a job where I can use my analytical and pedagogical skills. It is a job that will be challenging and interesting and make the world a better place. That is way better than most jobs I could have.

Of course, my goal is still to get back into the college classroom. I will continue applying for positions for the 2010-2011 school year. I also plan on finding some way to attend the National Communication Association in November and selling myself the meat market there. Hopefully, this job is a wonderful experience for a single year and a nice interlude in my academic career. I have a much more pleasant outlook than I have had in months.

11:25 PM

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September 12, 2009 - Saturday

My Descent into Nothingness
Category: Life

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I suppose I owe my loyal readers, if I still have any, an apology for the time it has taken since I last posted a blog. As I came to the end of summer, and the end of my time as a professor at Culver-Stockton College

, I was not feeling that I had any real news. I had a few interviews to which I was to go, but I didn't want to post much about them because if I did not get a particular job about which I had written a raving blog, then I would be embarrassed. I told myself that the next blog I posted would be to announce to my friends, family and fans that I had another job and would be travelling to such and such a college in such and such a state.

Then life which was already a struggle got worse.

As September approached, I realized that the possibility of a life in the Academy was quickly dematerializing and it was encumbant upon me to begin to more seriously persue other employment options. I began to put myself seriously on the market in the corporate and non-profit sectors, sending out litterally hundreds of resumes, applications and letters of inquiry. Once again, I got a few interviews. The vast majority simply called me into their business to tell me that they could not hire me because I have a PhD. and would not be likely to stay.

Finally, I did get a job. I am currently a professional driver with RailCrew Xpress. The job pays an hourly wage, minimum wage, taking Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad workers from the train depot to their various jobsites in the Westen Nebraska, Eastern Wyoming and Southwestern South Dakota areas. I am on-call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, but have no regular hours. When they call I am to drop whatever I am doing and rush down to the train depot to pick up workers and drive them wherever in the country they are supposed to go.

It is not a hard job in most senses of the word. I just drive vans that are kept in pretty good condition. The hardest thing for most of my coworkers is not knowing when we are going to work or being able to make any plans. The hardest thing for me is not being able to teach or use any of my other knowledge or skills.

I feel like I am a valuable person. Yes, I have sinned, and all who have sinned deserve nothing more than Hell. Even still, a great deal has been invested in me. I have been invested in by my creditors, by the government and have invested a great deal in myself. Some of that investment needs to pay off.

4:23 PM

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June 29, 2009 - Monday

The Loss of a Soul
Category: Life

There is more to hate about moving than just the stress of packing everything up, the manual labor of hauling great boxes of possessions and the inevitable dilemma of a piece of furniture that fit through the door to enter the residence one is departing, but now seems to have expanded beyond the capacity of the door frame. In fact, all of that stuff can be kind of fun. We get to use those phrases like "it's not heavy, it's just awkward" or "we'll just sort of jimmy it through." No, it is not that which I hate about moving.

Perhaps a greater dislike is the miles of driving, negotiation massive trucks by folks like me who do not have our commercial driver's licenses down unknown highways while reading an atlas. One must fear for one's life in these instances. It is insane.

I think the real hatred of moving, however, comes from something more emotional. My sexy wife enjoys watching a genre of television which has become known as house porn. One of these programs, on TLC is a show called " Moving Up in which a person moves "up" from one home into another and another person moves "up" into the house that has just been vacated. Then the original owners go back and see what improvements the new owners have made. Inevitably, the old owner says something like "if the new owners were to change these cabinets, I would be very upset because they are very special to me." If I happen to be in the room when my wife is watching this show, I will inevitably say something like, "Then don't sell your house." As I prepare to move, however, I begin to resonate with some of those feelings expressed on the show. Now, we never owned this house; we only rented and we never made any "improvements' per se.

As I am moving out, I feel a certain amount of disappointment and anger.

For instance, in the room we have used as an office, I built a corner office desk. It was nothing fancy. The desk was home-made and looked it. The wood remained unstained and was held together with deck screws. None-the-less, I loved it and part of my love for it was that it was built in a custom manner for that room. It was made to fit in a particular corner at a particular house and wherever we end up living next, it is quite unlikely that the room will exactly match those of the room I left. It will not work elsewhere. As I dismantled my desk so that the pieces could be removed to our storage area until our real move (whenever I get a job), I felt this anger rise up in me. This is my desk that I made for this room and this is where it belongs! This is just one of the many areas where we have worked to make our house a home which have been dismantled and hauled off in boxes to storage.

Our house is pretty empty now because if plans go right, we will be leaving in just a few days to stay with my parents until I have a job. The computer on which I am typing sits on the floor and the keys echo through the empty room as I write this blog. All the work my wife and I have done to make this our place is gone. It is no longer our place. Sitting in this room right now is like sitting with the dead body of a relative. It looks familiar, but what gave it personality is gone. This place has become just a place, not our home and it kills me to see it become that.

Maybe if this were a normal move, I wouldn't be as focused on this aspect, but it isn't. There is a move out this week, but we don't know where a move in takes place. In a normal move there is a sunset followed by the darkness of the move itself to the dawn of something new. Right now, there is only the evening twilight spreading on indefinitely as I wait to hear the voice calling me to my next place.

4:27 AM

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May 31, 2009 - Sunday

Twilight in the summer
Current mood:

luminous

No vampires here!

Earlier this evening, just after sunset, I mentioned to my wife that this was my favorite time: twilight in the summer. She asked why and I said something about the light and the temperature which was probably true. The more I thought about it however, the more I realized there was something more to it than that.

Summer, for me is always a liminal period.

In Communication Studies we talk about liminality as those points in our lives when the norms of behavior are relaxed because meaning tends to be more malleable. The word "liminal" comes from the latin word limin which means "threshold." It is those times when we are neither in nor out, so to speak. Sometimes we do what we call "communication" or "societal" work during these times to actually change definitions. For instance, Victor Turner, (1967, "Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage", The Forest of Symbols. Cornell University Press: Ithaca, NY) explains that we use this time in order to change the definitions of a person: e.g instance from a boy to a man, or two individuals to a couple. In my tradition of Christianity, a person undergoes the movement from being a non-Christian to a Christian through the ritual of baptism. A non-Christian goes into the water. Then she or he is under the water. That is the liminal state. It is difficult for that person to be defined. When she or he comes out, that person is a Christian. Of course, most Christians do not think that the water has any spiritual properties that change the person. It is a ritual reflecting a decision that one has hopefully already made and a relationship that has hopefully already begun. The liminal rite, however, gives the convert and the community a place to say, "you were this, now you are that."

Of course, not all liminality necessarily results in a new definition. Arnold van Gennep (2008, "Liminality and Communitas", The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure Aldine Transaction Press: New Brunswick)discusses the liminality that exists any time we engage in a departure and return. Whereever we go, we come back changed. For van Gennep, it is the relationships that we have during these liminal moments that are outside social norms that matter. To return to my own Christian tradition for an example, the Sunday morning Church service would be an example of a liminal space in this way. On Sunday morning, as we sit in our pews, the fact that one person is a manager at work and another is a peón is something that does not (or should not) matter. In this space, as the Apostle Paul writes, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28-29). Of course, that does not mean Monday morning the worker can ignore his or her supervisor. But for that space outside of space, all are equal.

There are many things that make summer a liminal time for me. In my occupation, the normal routines end for the summer. If there are classes, they are different; they're held at odd times, or in odd ways, such as online. Life doesn't follow the normal format. Certainly there are expectations for summer. Those research proposals we wrote during the Spring need to be completed now. One should read heavily during the summer to deepen one in the field. And classes should be planned for the next year. Still the work is different. Right now I can get out of bed pretty much whenever I want and go to bed pretty much whenever I want. There is very little accountability as to how I spend my time. This is not normal life. It is life betwixt and between Turner might say; life on the threshold. After passing through this threshold, the professor is expected to be better: more well read, a better writer, a keener understanding of the discipline and a more prepared teacher, but it is during the liminal time of summer in which the changes take place.

Of course, twilight has always been seen as a "liminal" time in that it is neither day nor night. When it happens in the summer, to me it symbolizes an intense liminal period. I like this moment because the liminal moment is always one filled with promise. When the shift ends, we could all be changed, and hopefully changed into something better.

For me personally, this summer is especially liminal. I went into this summer Assistant Professor of Communication At Culver-Stockton College. When I come out I sincerely hope I am Assistant Professor of something at some college, but I may not. No matter what, this summer will see a change in me. I hope it is a change for the better.

I believe that much of the reason behind my need to change is related to the changes that are going on in our country and our world right now. There has been a lot of change (I remember when the radical Muslims were our allies against the evil Communists and when you needed to find a pay-phone if you were out and about and needed to call home). More seems to be coming. We lived in an economy based on manufacturing and debt. We are moving into an economy based on something else. I am part of this shift across the country searching for a new place to work. Global climate change has caused the animals and even the plants to join us in this mass migration to wherever we are going next. It is scary, because as the whole world redefines itself, there is always a chance that one may not like the new definitions. I hold on to the idea, however, that it may be better.

I pray it is better.

4:07 AM

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May 29, 2009 - Friday

Statement of Faith
Category: Religion and Philosophy

I. I believe there is one God: Although God has manifested Himself in three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, there is only one God who I worship. He created everything that is for His own pleasure and is Sovereign King over all. His nature is one of perfect love, perfect holiness, perfect justice and perfect mercy. My heart's desire is to have a closer relationship with God. As that relationship grows, I become more godly. As I become godly, my nature becomes increasingly like God's nature.

II. I believe God the Father is God: When I speak of God the Father I am referring to God in his omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), omnipresent (everywhere) Person. It is in Him that all things live and move and have their being. Nothing in the physical universe, or Heaven or Hell or any other place that might be happens without Him knowing and allowing it to be.

III. I believe God the Son is God: When I speak of God the Son, I am referring to Jesus Christ. Jesus is a man: flesh, blood, bone and mind. He is also completely God. Although He existed before his birth, He was born in Bethlehem to a virgin woman named Mary. He lived a perfect sinless life and trained people to better understand and serve God (and He knew pretty well, because He IS God). He was crucified on the Friday following the Jewish celebration of Passover and died completely. On the Sunday after that, His body fully returned to new life, thus conquering death. It was through this death and resurrection that the rest of us can be brought into right relationship with God. After spending some time on Earth, Jesus ascended in His bodily form into Heaven where He continues to live to this day. He will return to Earth, however, and when He does I will be raised into a new body as He was and I will live with Him forever.

IV. I believe God the Holy Spirit is God: When I speak of God the Holy Spirit, I am talking about God as He is manifested in my own heart and life. He lives in me and works in me. These works are visible in the form of the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control. They are also visible in the form of the gifts of the Spirit which are special supernatural tools God has given me for the building up of His kingdom by bringing myself and others into a closer relationship with God. The Spirit comforts me and translates my prayers and helps me to be godly.

V. I believe the Bible is the Word of God: The Bible is a book written over thousands of years. It contains accounts of some of God's dealings with human beings. It was written by the hands of many people, but contains the exact thoughts that God chose. Because God cannot lie, the Bible is completely true and completely factual and when this does not seem to me to be the case, it is because I am misreading it or wrong. It is useful for helping me get to know God better: instructing me, correcting me and helping to train me to become more godly.

VI. I believe God acts through His Church: One of the primary tools that God has chosen to use to accomplish His work in the world is His Church. God has organized His church so that Elders, Pastors and Deacons, all people who have strong relationships with God, oversee the rest of God's people and help them to come to know Him more completely. None of these people are perfect, and sometimes I even think someone has a close relationship with God who does not! Even still, I submit myself to God's Church and allow God to work through me in His Church because this is one of the means He has given me to get to know Him better.

VII. God acts by His Ordinances: God gave us a couple of rituals to help us get to know Him better. These rituals are baptism and communion. Baptism is a means by which we symbolically allow our bodies to be buried and raised to life with Christ by being dunked under water and coming back up. I have been baptized and believe that all believers should be baptized. Communion is a time when I drink juice or wine that symbolizes Jesus' blood and eat unleavened bread which symbolizes Jesus' body. I try to take communion at least once a week. When I do, I symbolically take Jesus into myself and watch others do the same. At the same time I remember His painful death and how that was necessary to bring me into right relationship with God.

7:06 PM

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