Portland

The University of Portland Magazine

Amy

I am a Hard Worker

By

by Brian Doyle

We are in Iowa. We are near the Raccoon River. It is snowing gently. It snows more months than not, in Iowa. A girl and her brother are hiding behind a tree on the corner of Caulder and Seventh. She is ten years old. This is on the south side of Des Moines where most of the Italians live. Her parish is Saint Anthony’s. Her grandfather is Anthony. Her brother is Anthony. Her family is from Tuscany. She and her brother Anthony are making snowballs. They are plotting to attack cars and one particular car comes into view, a pristine meticulous beautiful 1967 Ford Mustang owned by a hot-tempered boy whose family runs the local Dairy Queen. His name is Francis. His family is from Sicily. They hear the car grumbling faintly through the snow and they take up their positions and when Frank Renda’s car thunders past they pelt it with snowballs and then Tony and Larree Moro take off running as fast as they can from the burly boy who leaps roaring out of his car, not ever imagining that someday, amazingly, incredibly, this girl sprinting into the whirling snow will be his beloved wife, the mother of their beloved children; but amazingly, incredibly, this will come to pass. More things are possible than we ever imagine are possible.

…

She went to Abraham Lincoln High School. She was a terrific athlete, a sprinter, a hurdler, a softball star. She was a terrific student. She thought about the University of Iowa. She would have been admitted in a heartbeat. She probably would have earned a scholarship. She thought about being a doctor. But her dad withered and faded and died. Cancer ate him from the inside and by the time he died he was half the burly sinewy man he had been. He never stopped being the gentle cheerful man he had been, though. She remembers that. Cancer could not kill the man inside the broken body of the man. She remembers that. He was buried on her sixteenth birthday. Her mother was gone. Her stepmother was cold and dark. Her stepmother sold the family house out from under the brother and sister. She graduated from high school at seventeen. She never went to the prom. She worked furiously to afford an apartment. She baby-sat and shoveled snow and raked leaves and worked at the Iowa State Fair frying chicken fourteen hours a day in the hot dense thick blanket of high summer in Iowa. One day she walked down Ninth Street in Des Moines knocking on doors and asking for work. I am a hard worker and I could start today. First stop: Dairy Queen. No. Second stop: Bing’s Stationery. No. Third door: the Safeway grocery store. I am a hard worker and I could start today. Answer: Yes. You can start tomorrow.

…

She bagged groceries for two days. Eggs on top. Fragile things on top, where the customer can see them and register that they are fragile. On her third day she was promoted to checkout girl. Four-hour shifts, eight hours on the weekends, Sundays too. Then she was promoted to the booth, handling checks and money. She stocked shelves. She mopped floors. She cleaned the windows and the toilets. She wrote orders and checked inventory and changed prices and flagged shoplifters. I am a hard worker. She was promoted to manager of the produce department. She was eighteen. Her friends went off to college. She was promoted to assistant manager of the store, and then store manager of her first store in Des Moines. I am a hard worker. She was twenty-one. One day she fell in love. He was dashing and handsome and amazingly, incredibly, he was Frank Renda, the boy with the Mustang, and the girl who had pelted his car with snowballs was now a very alluring and accomplished young woman and they laughed about those snowballs for the rest of their married life.

…

At age twenty-two she was promoted and sent to manage a store in Houston. Then she was promoted to a “show” store, and then to a gleaming new store, and then came The Test. You do not advance to district manager at Safeway unless you pass the grueling draining strenuous Test. Three days of judgment, decisions, grace under duress, behavior patterns, management style, knowledge of industry, intelligence, creativity. The woman who never got a chance to go to college nailed The Test. She earned the third-highest score in the United States. I am a hard worker. She was promoted to district manager. She and Frank married. They had three children, each one born in a different Safeway district. At thirty-three she was a vice president. Then she was in charge of 120 stores. Then she was a senior vice president. Then she was the executive vice president. Then she was named president of Safeway Health. And along the way, she founded and chaired The Safeway Foundation and right here is where Larree Renda’s face lights up and she gets passionate and tears come to her eyes, and the girl who walked down Ninth Street knocking on doors so that she could eat and pay the rent at sixteen, the girl who was the first woman ever in several different positions for one of the biggest and best corporations in America, the girl who dreamed of being a doctor but never got a chance to chase that dream — that girl starts to talk about what she is proudest of in her glittering career, what she truly loved, what would have made her dad proudest, what might help make cancer a faint dark bleak memory, something that you have to find in dusty history books. That might happen. More things are possible than we ever imagine are possible.

…

“It started because we felt we had a responsibility to help our employees be healthier,” she says. “Then the idea grew. We were not just selling groceries. We were in the community business. We were in the social responsibility business. You are a stupid company if you are not socially responsible. It saves money. You make more money. People want to work for you. The best people want to work for you. And we went for it. We pushed the whole industry. I am very proud of that. Free-range chickens, non-caged eggs, betterraised pork, fresher and more local produce and producers, smaller carbon footprint — we really pushed, and we changed for the better, and we changed the industry for the better.

“And we pushed in so many other ways. We started a jobs program for veterans. Incredible employees, smart and honest and disciplined and incredibly hard workers. Why do companies not leap to hire veterans? Stupid. And we were raising money in all sorts of ways for all sorts of causes and charities that meant the world to our employees. We raised money to fight cancer, and money to fight hunger. Why are there so many hungry children in America? That’s sinful. That’s not acceptable. As a food company we were responsible to fight that, I thought, and fight we did. We raised money for education, and to work with people with disabilities, and for health and human services. We raised over a billion dollars. We gave away $250 million a year. Those are good numbers. Believe me, after forty years of studying numbers, I know good numbers. But it’s the money we raised for cancer that makes me the most proud, I think. It meant the most to me. My dad died of cancer, and my husband Frank died of cancer, and I was going to be a doctor to fight the cancer that killed my dad, but I never got the chance. That didn’t happen. But I played the cards I was dealt. I got a chance to start a foundation that changed a lot of lives, that meant a lot in healing, that might play a key role in beating cancers. My dad would be proud of that. Frank was proud of that. You know what’s worse than watching your husband die? Watching your kids watching their dad die. That was terribly hard. That was awful. All I can do is hope my work made that a little less possible for others someday…”

…

The girl who whipped those snowballs through the swirling snow, the girl who walked down Ninth Street desperate and brave and knocking on doors, the girl who never got to go to college, the woman who rose faster and higher through her company than any other woman ever, the woman who married the man of her dreams, that woman retired from Safeway last year, at age 56, after forty years of hard and creative work. I am a hard worker. She earned pretty much every honor her industry awards. She serves on several boards, among them, rivetingly, the International Speedway Corporation — “honoring my dad, who raced cars on dirt tracks on Friday and Saturday nights.” She might —might — take one more job running a big company, if the right one appears. Her children are out and about — Tommy (who pitched for the Pilots) with Safeway, Kristina (who also earned a degree on The Bluff) teaching third grade at the family parish school, and Tony playing pro baseball in the New York Yankees’ system (where he was the Carolina League’s batting champ in 2014). She’s building a new house. She’s figuring out the next steps. But she was on campus in May 2015, not only as a University regent (since 2008), but to receive an honorary doctorate, and to give a terrific Commencement speech to the Class of 2015. She was nervous before the speech. She had never given one like this. But she wrote her own — I am a hard worker — and she delivered it with eloquence and passion and tears, and when she finished there was a thunderous roar, and she got a standing ovation from the students and their families, five thousand people standing and applauding the girl from Iowa who never got to go to college. But that girl now has a doctorate, and from the way she clutched that document to her heart as she resumed her seat on stage, it may never leave her hand ever again.

“The girl who wanted to be a doctor,” reads her official citation, “the woman who was forced to watch as her father and her husband died from cancer, used every bit of her relentless energy and creativity not only in her profession, not only in her whirlwind of volunteer efforts, not only as a beloved wife and mother, but to better the lives of countless thousands of people. That is holy and remarkable work, and that is a prime reason the University today confers the degree Doctor of Public Service, honoris causa, on Larree Renda, of Hillsborough, California.”

Amen to that.

The University was the Best Decision I Ever Made

By

by Kunal Nayyar ’03 as told to Laurie Kelley

I got my start in theater at the University of Portland — that’s where Mindy Logan taught me to act, and I still use all of her acting methods to this day. Those were such formative years for me. I hadn’t done a play in eight years, being so busy on Big Bang. To do a play right you really have to have time to rehearse. I was honored that Jesse asked me to be in his play with him, and I jumped at the chance, feeling that the play was right, I had the proper time to prepare, and I could be on stage with Jesse. It was wonderful.

…

My new book is called Yes, My Accent is Real. It’s little snippets of my life. It’s about my journey from New Delhi to Los Angeles. It’s not a memoir; I’m too young to write a memoir. A lot of people know Raj Koothrappali from Big Bang Theory, but people don’t know that I’m actually from India. People call me an Indian-American actor or British-Indian actor, but I grew up in New Delhi. I wanted to tell my story so that it would inspire young people to realize that dreams can come true if you take a chance.

…

From the time I was 18 I really wanted to be in a college that was close to my brother, who was at Reed. I had looked at lots of colleges and the University of Portland really caught my eye. I got a good scholarship, and that was that for the decision. I never even visited or saw the campus. I just took a chance, and it ended up being the best decision I ever made. I lived in Corrado Hall, which had just opened. I remember so many things so vividly… I didn’t know what I was doing. I had a great funny roommate. I was always falling in love with girls who were never falling in love with me. I could never figure out what time to show up to parties. I didn’t understand the cadence of sarcasm. I would just laugh at everything even if I didn’t understand the jokes. Because some of the jokes are cultural, you know. But I would just laugh because I wanted to be included. People probably thought I was an idiot who just laughed at everything. I worked in housekeeping my first summer, cleaning a lot of offices, and then I became a computer lab manager, without actually knowing anything about computers. Or managing.

…

I majored in business, and never did actually get a minor in theater — too lazy. I’d have had to take set design and costumes and such but all I wanted to do was act. So every semester I just took my entire business classload and then I did as much acting as I could. My parents advised me to get a business degree, and I agreed with them — we wanted to have something I could fall back on in case my acting dream didn’t work out. I’m blessed to have parents who supported me in whatever I wanted to do. What they really cared about was the kind of human being I turn out to be. They’re happy that I’m financially comfortable and that I’ve worked very hard to achieve things, but those things don’t matter to them. I think they’re just happy that I’ve made a good life for myself. And that I have a good family and I work hard. I’m a decent human being, I think, and that is what they are most proud of.

…

I have been married for four years now. My priorities shifted radically. For the first time in my life I feel more responsible for someone else than just me. Plus it’s nice to have a partner in crime. My wife Neha is Indian also, and we get homesick, but we are very busy — Neha is a fashion designer, launching her own label, and I’m busy with the show. We long to go home to India, but when we go home we have to see a thousand people in ten days. We wish we could marry our universes and have our families in Los Angeles, but… Where do we live in the future? Do we raise our kids in India? Do we raise them here? How is that going to play out? But, you know, we’ll be fine. We just have to trust in the universe and it will all work out.

…

Neha and I did establish a theater scholarship at the University, yes. We wanted to give back. I know how much help the theater department needed. And I wanted to honor Mindy Logan, a truly wonderful acting coach. I didn’t know what I was doing when I started. I needed direction, and she gave me confidence. She taught me how much hard work it takes to really learn how to act, how much hard work and sacrifice it takes to be good at your craft. She laid the foundation of everything that I’ve achieved in my craft. Everything. When I was in Jesse’s play I consciously went back to her training. Whether you’re a singer or a dancer or painter or athlete or whatever you do, your foundational training is what you build on. You must have strong foundations to be able to build. Mindy was amazing. I remember how much I needed help when I was in college — maybe Neha and I can help someone else in the years to come…

We Cannot Afford to Walk Sightless Among Miracles

By

by Hob Osterlund

Recently the National Weather Service reported a bizarre cloud formation moving erratically over southern Illinois. The “biological targets,” as the NWS called them, turned out to be a huge swarm of monarch butterflies migrating south. Despite risks related to drought and dwindling milkweed, they were headed to Mexico. If you’re an insect that weighs less than a postage stamp, how do you even consider a trip across the border? What if your brain is no bigger than the tip of a pencil, then what?

Laysan albatross are gargantuan compared to monarchs. Still, you’d be hard pressed to get a radar image of them unless they’ve gathered to feed at some mass squid spawn or the smorgasbord surrounding a factory fishing ship. At sea there is nothing albatrossian that resembles flocks of finches, parliaments of owls, or murders of crows. “Colony” is a collective term, but it only refers to the time they spend on the ground during nesting season. In other words, about 5 percent of their lives.

To make an accurate map of meandering albatross, you have to be a scientist with permits and access to a sizable colony. You have to capture and release a few parents, then wait for the birds to return with data. The good folks from Oikonos Ecosystem Knowledge, Pacific Rim Conservation, and the US Geological Survey accomplished all these tasks in the summer of 2014. They taped temporary lightweight GPS tags to the back feathers of a dozen birds and tracked them over a time span of seventy-nine days. They assigned an individual color to each bird and superimposed their flights on a map. The visual result: bright multi-colored lines — each line depicting the travels of a single bird — extending over a vast expanse of ocean.

I showed the map to a few friends, and it turned out to be an interesting Rorschach. One person saw strands of candy, sweet and full of promise. Another person saw a frightening pattern of ocean depletion and pelagic plastic. One person saw the earth exhaling, another saw a fire. One Seattle artist saw an image of colorful streamers billowing in the wind. He was most impressed with how the birds’ origins and destinations were always the same. “What’s most mind-blowing,” he said, “is not the fact that they can fly such long distances but that they find their way home at all.” Like dozens of swifts diving down a chimney to roost, the streamers converged, swirled, and disappeared into a single point, signified on the map by a bright yellow star.

Of course, the birds’ real destination was minuscule, and much smaller than the yellow star made it appear. The actual geographic location on Kaua’i was a fenced bluff at the edge of a botanical garden with an area smaller than an American football field. About forty pairs of birds nested there, and dozens of subadults came and went, searching for the perfect mate. With such easy access to the trade winds, it was a great spot for a colony. There was no need for a runway. The birds simply walked to the cliff, spread their wings, and were summoned heavenward. Once airborne, they banked north toward Alaska.

If the distance from Kaua’i to the southern Aleutians is roughly two thousand miles, and the birds’ eastwest foraging range is about the same, the colorful streamers were billowing over an area of about four million square miles. Compare and contrast: the entire United States is 3.8 million square miles. In other words, to find food for their chick, a pair of Laysan albatross may search an area the size of the entire United States.

Talk about your hard-working parents.

Even though traveling such distances is unimaginable, the feat is trumped by the extraordinary fact that albatross can find their way home in such an empire. If a pyramid can be declared a Wonder of the World and a person can be anointed a saint, shouldn’t there be awards for nature’s most astounding achievements? The competition would be crazy, but if I ever got a chance to serve on that nominating committee, I would lobby for albatross navigation. Ask yourself if you could find a few tiny acres in so many millions, especially if you had no landmarks to guide you. Of course you couldn’t; none of us could. Even if you were a sea captain with a sextant and a feel for celestial guidance, Pacific skies are often layered with clouds, so steering by the stars would prove difficult anyway.

We humans are just starting to learn how it is we can find our way across town. The 2014 Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to three scientists who discovered the mechanism of our inner GPS. They described “place” and “grid” nerve cells that are responsible for giving us an idea how to get places without having to consult maps at every turn. Their first clue to the discovery came from studying a rat’s brain. If we can learn about wayfinding from caged rodents whose ancestors have lived in captivity for hundreds of generations, imagine what we could learn from the wild, long-distance travelers among us. Author and conservationist Carl Safina, author of Eye of the Albatross, spoke of their many talents. He described how dolphins and bats virtually image a high-definition sonic world, in darkness and at great speed. “Many creatures,” he said, “blow us away with sight, hearing,smell, response time, diving and flying capacities, sonar abilities, migratory and homing abilities.” The list goes on.

What if albatross don’t find their way home with their brains? Even if they steer by the earth’s magnetic field, magnetoception doesn’t tell the whole story. Even if they’re guided by what they smell, their olfactory expertise doesn’t complete the picture either. Plus there’s the matter of timing to consider. Not just time of year, but the rendezvous time coordinated with mates whom they presumably have not seen for months. How do they know whose turn it is on the egg, and whose turn it is to feed the baby? Even if we think “instinct” alone entirely answers the question, that doesn’t mean instinct itself isn’t a miracle.

Maybe the birds match each other’s frequency. Maybe they visualize the outcome they want and follow that vision. Maybe they just go with the flow, trusting wind, gravity, stars, smells and magnetism to guide them. Maybe they are swayed by stories they hear from other birds. Maybe they find their way home with all their hearts, guided by love. Who can rule out any of these possibilities?

Just like they are rooted to their place of hatch, I am anchored to certain immutable truths: when and where I was born, who my ancestors were, what my primary culture admires and abhors, what wars exploded, who broke my heart. All these details sleep in my bed with me, beyond my awareness and more central to my life than I can possibly imagine.

Old friends of mine, a married couple, volunteered for a medical mission many years ago. They adopted two infants from Bangladesh and brought them back to the United States. One daughter did well, but the other was troubled. By the time Maria was fourteen, she was regularly skipping school, using drugs, and doing her best to get pregnant. To prevent her from running away, my friends had to sleep on the floor outside her bedroom. When she did manage to escape, Maria often mysteriously wound up at the city train station. Her exhausted parents ran out of viable therapeutic options, so they took her for a visit to Dhaka. They hoped her birth home would ground her and give her a sense of belonging. They sought counsel from the adoption agency. When the representative opened their file, my friends discovered an astonishing fact: their daughter’s biological mother died in childbirth. She had been living in a train station.

Maybe my primary job is not much different than Maria’s, or that of an albatross. Maybe I don’t have millions of square miles to navigate, but I do have countless judgments that keep me from finding my way home. Home: a place I belong, a place where I am forgiven and forgiving. A place where I am authentic, where I laugh, where ancestors visit my dreams. A place where there is justice. A place where swifts dive down chimneys and butterflies have all the milkweed they need. A place where birds lead the way.

In order to do my job, I’ve had to learn to be vigilant for predators. Some are human, some are mental. People have judged, manipulated, scared, and angered me. They have inspired guilt, caused me to lose sleep, blamed me, underestimated me, lied to me, wasted my time, hurt and betrayed me. But my own mind has been more than an equal co-conspirator: it has judged, manipulated, scared, and angered me. It has inspired guilt, caused me to lose sleep, blamed me, underestimated me, lied to me, wasted my time, hurt and betrayed me. If I want to stay above all that chaos, I have to lock my wings like a switchblade and fly steady — albatross style. Most days the task seems impossible.

But isn’t impossibility a crucial aspect of any pilgrimage? If it were easy, I wouldn’t value it. It has to be unfathomable. How possible is it for a monarch to migrate across a continent? For an albatross to find her chick on a tiny volcanic rock in the most remote island chain in the world? When I consider the challenges my fellow beings face, how can I not emulate their creativity and courage? As author Dani Shapiro says, “We cannot afford to walk sightless among miracles.”

Hob Osterlund is a nurse at Queen’s Hospital in Hawaii. This essay is drawn from the book Holy Mõlí: Albatross & Other Ancestors, published by Oregon State University Press. 

Francis & Francis

By

by Timothy Egan

The most popular figure on the planet — the only priest who’s ever been on the cover of Rolling Stone, National Geographic, The Advocate, and Time, among many other periodicals — is a 78-year-old man with only a single functioning lung. His birth name is Jorge Bergoglio; his chosen name is Pope Francis, a name he chose to honor his spiritual mentor: that half-starved ascetic, that pauper who didn’t own money, property, or even shoes — Francis of Assisi, one of Italy’s two patron saints.

Most of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics know something of Saint Francis, but he is revered by many others as well. You can go to secular Berkeley, or equally secular France, and find the stone bird bath of Francis. He’s the nature saint. The patron saint of the environment.

But he was much, much more. Choosing his name — surprisingly, the first pope named for this revered figure — says much about the lasting power and impact of the saint from Assisi. And just how did this scrawny figure, dressed in a filthy tunic, with sores and boils all over his skin, living in a hovel, become so powerful?

A few biographical notes: He was born in 1181, or 82. He was a nobleman’s son. A bit of hellraiser. A party animal. His merchant family had money. The path was set for Francis to take over the business. His life, an easy life, was set for him. Francis committed “every kind of debauchery,” an early biographer said.

Remember, this was almost 400 years before the Renaissance. The early era of the Holy Roman Empire — which was neither holy, nor Roman. Italy’s hilltop towns were always at war with each other. And Francis went to war, against the neighboring town of Perugia. At the age of 21, he was a high-spirited warrior. Ready for adventure! Pillage! Bloodshedding! The rah-rah didn’t last long. Perugia defeated Assisi. Francis was captured, thrown in a dungeon with rats and a cold floor. There he spent a year before his father came up with ransom money to spring him.

But something had happened to him in that dank, dark place. After his release, he didn’t return home. He holed up in an abandoned church and prayed. When he emerged, he was a different man. He refused his father’s pleadings. He said he wasn’t interested in wealth, or a career in the merchant business. He was interested in the lost souls, the untouchable lepers in the valleys, the poor, the passed over.

This greatly alarmed his father. At the age of 25, Francis was hauled into court by his dad, who claimed that he refused to accept his family responsibility. There, Francis is said to have torn off his nobleman’s clothes, and renounced family and wealth. He stood, nearly naked. You can see this stunning narrative in the Basilica at Assisi, the Giotto frescoes.

Thereafter, Francis devoted his life to the marginalized and the forgotten. He said the church had grown too wealthy, too complacent, too removed from Christ. The poor lived shunned lives in the malarial shadows below the sun-washed hill towns, while bishops and other clerics resided in opulent splendor.

…

Francis was a radical. A mystic. But he was a radical by example. As his mythic status expanded, he attracted many followers. He asked only that they sell all goods and give them to the poor. They dressed in simple tunics, usually shoeless like him. He felt, in order to get closer to God, you had to rid yourself of material distraction.

He was, in one view, the original hippie (very Oregonian), with his rejection of conventional life, his view that all living things have meaning and are connected. They called him, Il Poverello, the Little Poor Man. Fire was a brother. So was the moon. So were the stars. So, in the end, was death. Famously — though perhaps apocryphally — he charmed a wolf that was menacing the town. He preached to birds. By one definition, he was crazy. By another, he was brilliant.

He was not a priest, or even, by today’s measure, an evangelical. He was a life force, similar to Ghandi. But he was not a humorless scourge. Not a scold. Certainly not a statue. He was playful. Fun. Gregarious. He liked a joke. He would dance while preaching. Sing. Strip to his undergarments.

He felt he and brothers were inferior to all, superior to none. Humility — again, by example — gave him an aura, his power.

As his fame spread throughout Europe, he could have been like Martin Luther, and led a breakaway religion. Instead, he never directly challenged church authorities — except, of course by example.

One of the most daring things he did was go to North Africa, at great danger to himself, to meet with leading Muslims, this at a time when one of the crusades against Muslims and other infidels was going on. He walked much of the way, and it cost him.

Returning from Africa, in his late 30s, Francis got very sick. He had contracted malaria while in Egypt. Also had trachoma, a horrible eye infection. He seemed to wither away before people’s eyes, and yet, his power grew. Two years before he died, he experienced the stigmata — the wounds of Christ.

As his condition worsened, he retreated to even more austere conditions. He lived in a dirt-floored hovel, like his prison dungeon. Shivering with malaria. Vomiting. To him, it was liberating.

He died in 1226, at the age of 45.

And that should have been that. Remember: Francis had no army. His followers were poor and powerless. He had invented nothing. He had not written any great manifesto. But 800 years later, Francis is still immensely popular, perhaps more so than ever. He appeals to liberals and conservatives, believers and nonbelievers, all over the world.

…

Cut to 2013, and a conclave of cardinals, trying to pick a pope. From the Sistine Chapel, white smoke appears. Birds alight — a sign. An Italian immigrant from Argentina — Jorge Mario Bergoglio – who rode on the back of the bus through slums, washed feet of prisoners and AIDS victims, is named pope. He is the first Jesuit pope. The first non-European pope in 1,000 years. And the only pope who once worked as a bouncer at a club.

He takes the name of the pauper from Assisi. This new Francis, striding through St. Peter’s Square, bypasses the limousine waiting for him and climbs aboard a bus, with other clerics. He pays his own hotel bill before checking out. He decides not to live in the Apostalic Place, but reside instead in a two-bedroom guest house. He will get around in a Ford Focus, not the Papal Mercedes.

His first words are Fratelli and Sorelle, buona sera! “Brothers and sisters, good evening!” Instantly, people feel a whoosh of fresh air in Saint Peter’s Square. Then, to cardinals who selected him, he says, “May God forgive you for what you’ve done.” Humor! Another fresh air breeze. As before, he washes feet of the poor and outcast, washes the feet of women and Muslims. He dials complete strangers up by phone and offers them encouraging words, or just says hello. One man hangs up on him — three times; he can’t believe the pope is calling him. He eats in the Vatican cafeteria, wears a plastic watch.

All symbolic, yes. But like that other Francis, radical by example, following the admonition of Francis of Assisi: “Preach the Gospel, and if necessary use words.”

And also, like the earlier Francis, the pope is playful, exuding an unusual amount of joy. He likes books, soccer, tango music, and gnocchi. He appears not to take himself seriously. He knows how to seize a moment. He goes to Naples, the heart of Mafia, and in words that could only have come from a former boxer says, “Corrupt society stinks.”

The most astonishing thing happens on return flight from South America. He’s asked about gays in the church, long a troubled spot for Catholic hierarchy. The Church had called homosexuality “an objective disorder.” Francis looks at the reporters, shrugs and says, “Who am I to judge?” No more famous words have ever been uttered by a Pope.

But there it is — the simplicity, the humility, the lightness of being. His power comes from exuding powerlessness. He changes hearts by example. The church, rather suddenly, seems to be no longer about what it’s against, but what it’s for.

…

Like Francis the nature saint, this Francis emphasis our duty to creation. He issues an encyclical on the environment. In a speech before a joint session of Congress — the only pope ever granted such an audience — Francis challenges climate change skeptics. Think about that: the Church that put Galileo under house arrest for promoting sound science is now challenging the science deniers in power.

Last year, he was asked about his secret to happiness. He said, Slow down. Take time off. Live and let live. Don’t proselytize. Work for peace. Work at a job that offers basic human dignity. Don’t hold on to negative feelings. Move calmly through life. Enjoy books, art, playfulness.

Regarding money, he said, “I ask you to ensure that humanity is served by wealth, and not ruled by it.”

Has he changed church doctrine? Not really. Not substantively. But by his choice of words, his emphasis, he has moved mountains. He embraced unwed mothers. He embraced divorced Catholics, welcoming them back into the church fold, many of whom said they felt unwanted. He said those who’ve had abortions can be forgiven, a similar welcoming.

In the curia in Rome, the old line clerics scowl. One is quoted as saying, “He’ll be gone soon, but we’ll still be here.” That’s what they said about Francis of Assisi.

So, not yet three years into his papacy, has he changed hearts?

I consider myself similar to a lot of American Catholics — culturally bound to the church, but not to follow its dogma, particularly sexual dictates, on things like birth control. Europe has never had fewer practicing Christians. Their great cathedrals are empty — except for tourists. The United States, according to a Pew Center survey, is trending the same way, led by millennials, who are wary of pontifical certainty. But many people are giving the church a second look, or a first. So we have this paradox: as much of the world has become less identified with organized religion, the leader of the most organized of religions is the most popular man in the world.

After observing Francis in the first year of his papacy, I wrote a column for The New York Times called “Lapsed but Listening.” Not long ago, I ran into Father Steve Sundborg, my Jesuit friend from high school, now president of Seattle University.

He said: Which is it now?

And I said: Less lapsed, more listening.

Tim Egan is a columnist for The New York Times and the author of many remarkable books, among them the Northwest classic The Good Rain and the National Book Award-winning The Worst Hard Time, about the Dust Bowl. This essay is drawn from his visit to campus in Fall 2015, when he delivered the annual Father John Zahm, C.S.C., Lecture, honoring the University’s co-founder. 

Twila Sylvia

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Meet the estimable wry Twila Genevieve Sylvia, who has worked for eighteen years in Bauccio Commons. Job? “Washing tables and listening to students.” Age: “None of your business, although I have a great-greatgrandson.” Works lunches five days a week. Keeps a sharp eye out for students who are crying, sitting alone, who want to talk. “They get so homesick,” she says. “They get lonely. They like to see a friendly face. I listen a lot. A lot of them stay in touch after they graduate, sure. I get letters and cards and visits. One student wrote a paper about me for class. We forget they are just kids. They’re so tall and they seem so confident but they get awfully lonely. At least they have me, is how I look at it. I have the time for them. Sure I do.” How many kids has she spoken gently to and listened carefully to, in eighteen years? About 15,000, by our count. There are many quiet ways to do great things. Thank you, Twila Sylvia.

Not Without Love

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by Martha Gies

I ask theology professor Rene Sanchez one question: how does he teach Theology 105, the basic required intro course, now that there is such ethnic and religious diversity on The Bluff?

Because, he says, everyone who teaches it on The Bluff begins with the idea that every student, regardless of their tradition, asks certain questions: “Why am I here? What makes us human? What is the purpose of my life? Why is there suffering? Why do bad things happen? To us these are theological questions,” says Sanchez. “I use the Augustinian priest John Shea’s great line: ‘Faith is not believing in something that you cannot see; rather it is responding to something that you cannot deny.’ “I ask my students, ‘So what are the things we cannot deny? And my experience has been that students are fairly receptive. My experience has also been that other faiths — and I have a lot of Muslim students — are very respectful. The Muslim kids really understand religious respect.”

Long before he came to the University 5 years ago, long before many years teaching at Moreau High School in Hayward, California, he came out of El Paso’s notorious Segundo Barrio, an impoverished immigrant community squeezed up against the border, where his father picked cotton and the family lived in a house with no windows. He moved with his parents as they followed opportunities for work, to New Mexico, to Tucson’s Anita Barrio, where the family finally had running water. Here Rene began first grade at Davis Elementary, today a bicultural magnet school — but back in the late sixties, Rene and his friends were beaten for speaking Spanish.

In 1969, when they moved north to Santa Rosa at the invitation of his mother’s family, there was work in an apple cannery. Here his family at last made a true home. Rene thrived in school, but he has carried with him memories of the suffering he saw in those immigrant neighborhoods of the Southwest, the hopelessness, the drugs, the suicides. He has tenderly nursed his memories of the young men and women who never made it out of poverty’s despair, and he brings their stories into the classroom.

At Santa Rosa’s Piner High School, after arguing brilliantly in a student mock trial, Sanchez was offered a full ride to college and law school by a senior partner of the local law firm that mentored the classroom law project. But Sanchez no longer wanted to follow his older sister Alicia into law. “I remember looking at this man, face to face, and telling him no. And they were like, ‘Are you insane, kid? We’re offering you the world.’” But it wasn’t the world he wanted; he wanted to be a healer.

“I look back now and I think I was looking for some kind of peace or serenity, he says. He quotes St. Augustine: “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee.”

He became a youth minister at Resurrection Parish. He discovered Father Richard McBrien’s superb book Catholicism. “I would read a paragraph or two on a thinker, and if I really liked him, I would go to the library and check out a book. So I read Augustine and Aquinas and Rahner,” and then Marx and Jung and Michael Parenti, and Marie-Dominique Chenu, the French Dominican who taught Schillebeeckx and Yves Congar. Self-taught and theology-smitten, Sanchez didn’t go back to college until he was 27. At Holy Names College he earned a BA in history and religious studies, and then began teaching at Moreau High, which is named for the founder of the Congregation of Holy Cross, Blessed Basil Moreau.

Then on to Notre Dame and Boston College, where he “came to realize we don’t understand what love is. We tend to want to impose a kind of artificial one-ness, a unity through uniformity, and not look at distinctions and particularities. So as an example, let’s say a racial discourse: the idea of I don’t see color: That’s a problem! I understand where it comes from, but it’s a problem. Unfortunately the Christian mistake frequently has been to impose our view of love on the Other. In social ethics, which is what I specialize in, it means learning the history of the Other. If we are Christian and we say we love the undocumented migrant, but we don’t know about the history of the United States in relation to Latin America, we do not love the undocumented migrant. So we must learn that history. And then go back to our communities of origin and translate for our people the messages and the wisdom given to us by the Other.”

“I can’t tell you what justice is, but I can tell you what it’s not,” he says to his students. “If I’m just looking out just for Rene Sanchez, that’s not Christian. If I’m looking out just for Chicanos, that’s not love either. And Catholic justice can never be about just us Catholics. When I look at politicians now, I don’t ask what they’re going to do for Chicanos; instead, I ask, What are they going to do for women? Young people? Gay, lesbian, transgender? The elderly? I’ve got to care about the communities that I don’t belong to. I’ve got to worry about The Others. My teaching philosophy begins and ends, in a very real sense, with loving my students. I know it may sound simple, but it is an absolute necessity. Without love, everything else is of little value…”

The Falling Down Moments

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By Lauretta Frederking, from a forthcoming collection of essays by University faculty about how they are not primarily professors of their subjects, but of something else altogether, to be edited by Shannon Mayer and Jacquie Van Hoomissen.

My richest learning and teaching haven’t happened in the classroom, or in the formal places of intellectual exchange. What I really teach has happened at those in-between places, the falling down moments, when I purposely shed my expertise. What I really teach seems to have happened when I am not teaching at all, just living a relationship of communion with students.

A few years ago I was introduced to the word ‘sophrosyne’. There is no precise translation of the Greek word into English. Really it can be explained only by a run of complexities, a balance of contraries: success and failure are equal imposters; everything matters for who we may be becoming and simultaneously nothing matters in terms of who we are. When pressed, it can be described with simplicity as “temperance” or “wisdom” though neither fully captures its essence. Sophrosyne is what I teach students during those in-between places and falling down moments. Things are often not as they appear on the surface or in the moment. Be cautious with good news because it may not be what you hoped for and be open to bad news because it may be the first carving out of a path of self-discovery.

I remember the long arc back to my college years when life appeared in binary terms — success/failure, acceptance/rejection, love/loss — and I vividly remember the stings and ecstasies of both. I see that similar disposition in students. A ‘C’ grade ruins them, a heartbreak destroys all future possibilities of happiness, and then on the other track an ‘A’ grade glorifies them, and a triumph affirms their superstardom destiny; and again and again, I try to be the sandpaper that reminds them an ‘A’ is a challenge, just as a ‘C/D/F’ may be an opportunity. Success and failure are equal imposters.

Most often, this teaching happens outside the classroom. One of my students came to me in the process of, and then in the final stage of, being dismissed from the university. He was devastated and also entirely to blame for the actions that led to his dismissal. I assured him that this might be the most defining moment of his life, not at all because of failure but because of its opportunity. “This could be the moment when you discover who you want to be and not be. Seize it. Wallow in it. But don’t ever forget that life is long enough and grace is powerful enough that this horrible moment may be your great opportunity.”

I have caught more than one student in the midst of cheating on a quiz, a test, an assignment. Certainly the University has a protocol for cheating. However, more important to me than the administrative steps, I ask a student if he or she is a cheater. Almost always, they respond no, no way, this was an accident, a mistake, etc. My response is simple and always the same: ‘If you cheat, you become a cheater. If you aren’t a cheater, don’t cheat, not even once. This is your time to figure out who you are. Let me know when you have figured it out.’ Often I see the outcome. He or she declares the turnaround to never cheat again, and they don’t. I believe them. Sometimes there is silence, or the student drops out of the class. While troubling, maybe those students have figured out who they are as well. I trust that our students’ roads extend beyond their time here on The Bluff, and each student carries the experiences and conversations and moments of reflection with them. Grace rarely happens in an expected way.

The University of Portland invites students and professors into relationship. I accept that a lot of my job is sharing information and expertise; but after 13 years here I realize there have been students who, for whatever reason or spiritual mystery, reach out in a way that invites me into being part of their life journey, figuring out who they are. We can keep it clean and transactional — you give me a paper and I give you a grade — or we can open it up to be a potentially meaningful place of growth. In so many ways, our students come to us socially hard-wired to think like strategic calculators when it comes to teachers and academic environments, and I want to tear down that assumption. We are different here, where teaching is more than being the most learned person in the room. Being there when students are overcoming adversity, and penetrating their authentic purpose, puts us at the center of who they are and what they will bring to the world. I hope our students have many successes and many failures — not to learn how to avoid the latter and win more of the former, but rather to learn that who they are is the same good and growing person regardless of what society gives them. Living from a place of who we are, less driven by illusions or expectations of where we think we need to be going, takes practice. We provide a safe place to figure it out. Sophrosyne.

Jean Paul Mugisha

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Now here is a most interesting sophomore: the shy brilliant Jean Paul Mugisha, whose family fled war-battered Congo for a refugee camp in Rwanda, where Jean Paul and his family lived in a mud house, no electricity, no plumbing, one meal a day. Studying math, physics, and chemistry on his own, he got a perfect score on the Rwandan national high school exam — but as a refugee he was banned from scholarships to Rwandan universities. But the nonprofit These Numbers Have Faces discovered him, the United Nations settled his (ten strong) family in Portland, and Jean Paul spent last year studying at PCC and interning at Allison Engineering. By chance he met University president Father Mark Poorman, C.S.C., who was so impressed that he offered Jean Paul a scholarship; and today he is an electrical engineering major, a Villa Maria resident, and a soccer fanatic. His ambition: somehow, someday, bring electricity to his Rwandan community.

Fanatics Do Not Speak for Islam

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by Michael Berdine ‘ 68

As-salaam-u alaykum, peace be to you, we say in Islam — much as in the Catholic Mass we say the peace of the Lord be with you, and the responses are similar also: and with your spirit in the Catholic Mass, and wa alaykum as-salaam, and to you be peace, in Islamic culture.

I start with the word peace because I wish to say bluntly and clearly and loudly that Islam is not the twisted creed of the malefactors who perpetrated heinous crimes on September 11, the thugs who have distorted the true meaning and teachings of Islam ever since. The root of the word Islam is silm and salam, which mean peace, and Islam is about living in peace with the Creator, with yourself, with other people, and with all the creation that we have been granted by the One. “If anyone kills a person — unless retribution for murder or spreading corruption across the land — it is as if he kills all mankind, while if any saves a life it is as if he saves the lives of all mankind,” says the Al Ma’idah.

Nowhere in the Qur’an (which Muslims believe to be the exact word of God revealed to the Prophet Muhammad), or in the hadith (the teachings of the Prophet himself), do we read that the ends justify the means. Nowhere. Moreover, if we mistake our motivation and values, attributing false righteousness to ourselves, we will have lost our cause and, perhaps, our souls. So to those who claim to speak for Islam, who claim that terrorism and the murder of innocents is a right path, I say: you do not speak for the faith, and you should beware the loss of your holy soul.

In the Hadith al-Qudsi: “The first of people against whom judgment will be pronounced on the Day of Resurrection will be a man who died a martyr… He will say [to the Almighty]: ‘I fought for you until I died a martyr.’ [The Almighty] will say: ‘you have lied: you only fought that it might be said: ‘He is courageous. And so it has been said.’ Then he will be dragged on his face to the Hellfire.”

The cold fact of the matter when we talk about “Islamic” terrorism is that the murderers, for that is what they are, are not true Muslims. They are mere actors. They commit crimes for effect, to make an impression. They seek to gain their objectives through the manipulation of an audience. But these actors use real bombs, assassinations, murders, rapes, and mayhem to manipulate others to their will. Their agenda is political change, and no matter how assiduously they insist that their motives are religious, they are not the motives of Islam. Do not grant them that which is not theirs to claim.

Even their use of the word jihad is false. There is no such thing as a holy war in Islam. Only God is holy in Islam. The word jihad has a root verb — jahada — which in Arabic means exerting maximum effort or striving. The theological connotation is striving for betterment. Its major form — the “Greater Jihad,” jihad alkhabir — is the struggle within oneself for self-improvement, elevation, purification and getting closer to God. In short, it is a spiritual struggle to do good and avoid evil so one will attain heaven in the afterlife. Another form of jihad is using economic power to uplift the condition of the downtrodden and to finance the struggle for justice and liberation. The last, but not least form of the word, known as the “Lesser Jihad,” or jihad al-Saghrir, is the physical form, where people actually fight against oppression. The principles of that form are stipulated clearly in the Qur’an and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad: Fighting is only to defend against those oppressors who attack Muslims to force them to convert away from their religion or to drive them out of their homes. Fighting is limited to combatants. The Prophet commanded that the lives of civilians are to be protected. The word jihad is an Islamic-Arabic term that has been incorrectly translated and largely misunderstood. There is no equivalent to the term “holy war” in Islamic terminology. There is no mention of “holy war” in either the Qur’an or Hadiths (teachings of the Prophet Muhammad), which are the primary sources of Islamic teachings.

Every aspect of each Qur’anic mandate is aimed at nurturing an environment that will allow peace to emerge and prevail. Recognizing that humanity is flawed and will err, Islam provides a system to eradicate injustice and allow peace to flourish. In the spirit of its universal message of peace and respect for diversity, Islam’s goal is not to impose itself by force or declare war against non-Muslims. For a believing Muslim, specifically one who practices his/her religion according to the Qur’an and the Sunnah, the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and justice are always superior to war for those who are conscious of God.

As-salaam-u alaykum, peace be to you.

Michael Berdine ’68 was the first director of the Cambridge Muslim College in England, where he is now a research fellow.

A Tangle of Bearberry

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by Brian Doyle

My mother is driving me through the rain to the beach. I am applying for summer jobs. The rain is thorough and silvery. We do not speak. The trees along the road are scrubby and gnarled and assaulted by reeds. I am huddled in my jacket. No one else is on the road. You never thank your mother enough. The road is so wet that our tires send up tendrils and spouts of water behind us. I can see them flaring steadily in the mirror on my side. My mother is intent on the road. She would like to say something gentle about the interview I will have in a few minutes but she knows that I will not hear what she says. I will hear what I thought she said, which is not what she said. I heard a lot of what was not said or meant then instead of what was.

My mother woke me that morning, and fed me, and handed me clean folded clothes, and handed me the plethora of forms I was supposed to have filled out but had not filled out and of course filled out hurriedly scribbledly scrawlingly as she drove me through the rain to the beach. We drove along silently as I scribbled and she maybe thought about all the things she would have liked to say but was too wise to say.

This would have been a perfect time for me to say or whisper or even mumble my gratitude to my mother for eighteen years of extraordinary love and care. This would have been a great time for me to say something like I see your hard work, mom, and I see your weariness with all these kids, and I see how quietly worried you and dad are about money, and I can only faintly dimly imagine what it must be like to bear and coddle and raise and protect and educate and love children and have them be rude and vulgar and dismissive and contemptuous and worse. That would have been a great time for me to say something gentle for once. Rarely were we alone together for thirty minutes as we were that morning in the rain on the road to the beach. That would have been a great time for me to say quietly I see you, mom, and I love you, and I never say that, and I should say that every thirty seconds every blessed day, and I should touch my head to the holy earth every dawn and say thank you for you to whatever it is that we mean when we say The Mercy and the Coherence and The Imagination. That would have been the perfect time, alone in the quiet car in the quiet rain on the silent road among the gnarled little trees.

By the time we got to the state park headquarters it was too late for me to say anything, and I hurried off to the interview, and I don’t know what my mother did for the next few minutes. Probably she went for a walk along the boardwalk, or sat in the car writing letters; she was always in motion, always quietly doing something even in moments when nothing needs to be done; that was how she was and still is, though now she moves very slowly indeed and does not drive at all. Now I drive, and she sits in the passenger seat, and we talk freely and cheerfully and deeply and avidly and eagerly and every time I talk to her I say I love you. We don’t say that enough. We don’t. After a while I came back from the interview and she started the car and we drove home through the ranks of the bent twisted little trees. There were pitch pines and salt cedars, and here and there beach plums, and thickets of sumac, and I thought I saw a tangle of bearberry but I could not be sure.