James Derkits

One of the gifts of working at a church with school, is that I get to learn from the children!  When I see them being creative, imagining, and playing, it reminds me that I too am created to be creative, imagine, and play.  In the adult world, we can forget that because of the many real demands on our time; but creativity is key to living a healthy life. TS Elliot wrote, "The Lord who created must wish us to create." Our children know that in their hearts and remind us daily.  

I finally remembered to count the steps it takes to walk from the front door of my house to the back door of my office: 64 steps. It isn't even far enough to consider my walk to work exercise. I was joking with someone about my 64 step commute, and then started to wonder if it could even be considered a commute. The common American use of the word commute comes from the changing of a daily train fee to a single annual train fee. That would earn the buyer a "commuter pass." Think "mutate." It is about changing from one to the other. It once referred to the change of a type of ticket, but in present common usage, it has come to mean a change in location from home to work, work to home. I was singing the word along with the Roches' " The Train " long before I understood what a commute was. The Roches were probably reflecting on a train commute into NYC. A very different commute than what I'm experiencing each morning and evening. When I dro...

Cardboard is really an amazing thing. Forgive as I reveal my ignorance here, but it seems that it is just three pieces of thick paper, with the center piece corrugated and clued in between the other two. Make some simple origami folds with overlapping lids, and suddenly you have the ability to contain everything you own. Once it is contained, you can put it in a bigger container on a truck and haul it anywhere. For a time, everything is hidden. When we went to the moving company to pick up "boxes," they instead gave us what they call "cartons." I stand corrected. We got way too many wardrobe cartons, and got pretty creative with how we filled those. We supplemented with empty copy paper cartons and liquor cartons. We got here, with lots of help.  We did a half pack for this move to Port Aransas. We asked the professionals to pack our more breakable items (crystal, tv, that ceramic pot I made in high school, etc.), and we packed clothes, books, tools, etc. We ...

Yesterday I was listening to radio coverage of the recent shooting in Colorado. The host was taking calls from across the nation, inviting people who had had similar tragedies in their cities to call in and share stories of their experience, and the short term and long term learnings. One caller was a journalist who was on the scene at Columbine, releasing the first reports of the shooters. He along with many others initially described the shooters as unpopular loners who were taking revenge on "jocks" at their school. On the phone call yesterday, he said something like, "I was wrong, we were all wrong, but that's what he world remembers about those guys." I was caught up in the stories I was hearing about other tragedies, about communities coming together in the aftermath of such shootings. I heard a woman say that in one case when the criminal received the death penalty, the town and victim's families lamented that it was just one more death, and didn...

Confession: before Sunday night, I had never been to Fitzgerald's (nor Zelda's, downstairs.) I've been to quite a few music venues around town, and sadly, seen a few close up shop. Fitzgerald's recently reinvented itself, renovating the interior, and reigniting the spirit of the place (so I'm told.) Laura Derkits spent her fair share of time there when she was in High School. She has history with the place, so when we showed up Sunday night during the opening band ( Lost Lander ) she was giddy with anticipation. We were there to hear Blind Pilot . We got a couple of their CD's from some friends for Christmas, so I knew a little bit of their music, but didn't realize how much I would enjoy the show. Wow! For the first band, we stood on the floor, and we enjoyed their music enough to buy a CD. Then we made our way upstairs and found a great perch where we could peer down from stage left. It is a powerful experience to watch people make music. Th...

I have been blessed to be part of some wonderful communities, beginning with my biological family: four older sisters and two parents, all loving. St. John's, Silsbee comes next: my first church community, where I learned the spiritual practices of the Episcopal tribe. But those two were part of me before I was conscious enough to know I was part of a community. Camp Allen was the first community I was conscious of entering . You've heard plenty of my Camp Allen stories, but here I'll mention that when my parents were ready to leave after dropping me off and getting me signed in, they had trouble finding me to say goodbye because I was helping another camper get moved into the cabin. I jumped into that welcoming community with no hesitation. I was 8. I even found transitioning to college life in San Marcos fairly easy, not only because I went there with one of my friends from camp, but because so many other freshmen were moving there looking for a new community as w...

I wanted to be in two places at once on Sunday evening. I wanted to be sitting at the bar and experiencing what it was like to hear bits of the verses of "Halleluia, we sing your praises" drifting in from the next room. I wanted to catch glimpses of bread and wine being lifted up and words being spoken in unison by a community. I wanted to see what it was like to be a regular at the bar, and wonder what was happening in the next room. But I couldn't be in two places at once. Tuesday night Charles Bishop set up the projector and already had  Wasteland  playing when we showed up at Liberty Station on Washington. This was our second "Sustainability Series" movie night and brought out about twenty people, once again. And, like the first one there were only a handful of churchy types there. Word went out through Urban Harvest's newsletter,  Pancho and Leftey's  blog, fliers  at Liberty Station and Catalina Coffee, and most importantly word-of-mouth. T...