A Season of Grace

What exactly is grace? It is not a single, easily-identifiable quality but a combination of many, with some elusive prerequisites that make it even more ineffable. We cannot experience grace when our hearts are anxious or stressed, as they often are in these troubled times. For grace to suffuse our soul, we must be at peace with ourselves and with the world around us as is, even if partially. That, and be open to new ideas and insights, be humble and patient, and have an instinct for the sacred and the transcendent.

I speak only for myself when I say that I find grace difficult to come by, either from others or from me. Yet when I experience it, I know I am having a transcendent experience. Recently I experienced it when a dear cousin passed away. I announced his passing to the congregation at my local mosque and sought their prayers for the departed. The way they opened up to me in sympathy afterwards, the way they consoled me and shed tears with me, told me that none of us need be alone, that when we express our vulnerability and seek solace from our fellow-beings, irrespective of race and religion, we have a chance to be touched by the Divine. We have a chance to experience grace.

Grace can originate from the natural world as much as it can from humanity. In fact, I will go so far as to say that it is easier to summon grace from birdsongs, from the way the wind ripples the surface of a pond, from the wonder of stars blooming like flowers in the garden of the night sky, from the way an agave leaf holds drops of rain.

Photo by Hasan Z. Rahim

But for this to happen, we need to be attuned to the natural world, to its rhythms and patterns, to its strangeness and, well, to its grace. It will never happen when we waste our time consumed by the small screen of our devices, when social media and smartphones, to paraphrase Wordsworth, are too much with us, awake and asleep, buying and selling, wasting our powers, seeing hardly anything in Nature that is ours.

So, for a change, take a walk in the woods. Behold the magic of the sprouting tulip or the first appearance of butterflies in your backyard. Stroll along the shore and hear the song and sigh of wind and water in the waves that break at your feet. Listen to a towhee singing its heart out in the rain!

Photo by Hasan Z. Rahim

As the year draws to a close, and as the times threaten to become even more trying, each of us need to find our North Star, to focus on that which matters in our lives, be it love, friendship, living with less stuff, curbing cruel desires, revealing the power of humility to the arrogant, filling the despairing with hope.

In other words, we need to experience grace in our lives, whether summoned or unbidden, and know in the depth of our hearts, as the prophets of olden times knew, that beauty, truth, empathy, humility and unconditional love will set us free.

Allow me to end with a poem by Wendell Berry that I find myself reciting more frequently than ever before in a world that seems to have gone awry in a hurry - “The Peace of Wild Things:”

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. 

Kinder, Gentler America of George H.W. Bush Being Obliterated by Trump

In April of 1991, a devastating cyclone struck Bangladesh that left over 140,000 people dead and 10 million homeless. In a country frequently ravaged by natural disasters, this was still in a category all its own. A United States amphibious task force comprising 15 ships and 2,500 men was returning to the US in May after the Gulf War. The then-president George H.W. Bush diverted this force as part of Operation Sea Angel to provide relief to millions of Bangladeshis. It eventually swelled to 4,600 marines and 3,000 sailors who were credited with saving about 200,000 lives.

Operation Sea Angel in Bangladesh

Operation Sea Angel in Bangladesh

Operation Sea Angel in Bangladesh

As a Bangladeshi American, I remember being moved to tears by the generosity driving Operation Sea Angel. Here was America fulfilling its destiny as a “shining city upon a hill,” with president Bush acting on his personal philosophy that integral to any successful life was serving the needy.

When the 41^st president passed away at 94, I found myself wondering about America’s descent into cruelty in the two years since Donald Trump took office. Trump recently deployed American troops at the Mexican border, not for any humanitarian reason but to prevent the caravan of migrants from Central America fleeing murder and mayhem for a decent shot at life in the U.S.

We daily hear about Trump undermining America’s alliances and giving autocrats free rein in pursuing their illiberal ideologies. What is often overlooked is the naked cruelty seeping into our national psyche that is slowly but steadily changing us as a people. Considering others as less than human is becoming as blasé as posting a cat video on Instagram. If MAGA requires firing tear gas and bullets at women and children dying of thirst and hunger, why not? If coddling killers help grease the wheels of economy, what’s to complain? If demeaning women and encouraging anti-Semitism and Islamophobia can strengthen the base, what’s not to like?

People who knew George Bush used words like grace and kindness to describe him. He had his darker side, of course. He was eager to appease China’s leaders than in demanding justice for the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. He used his power to discredit Anita Hill to defend his Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991. He appeared aloof from the daily challenges faced by ordinary Americans. But even his detractors agreed that he was a fundamentally decent human being who tried to do right and focus on what was best for America’s long-term interests. It is difficult to imagine Donald Trump writing a letter of apology to anyone, or to Japanese Americans, as Bush did, containing these sentences: “A monetary sum and words alone cannot restore lost years or erase painful memories; neither can they fully convey our Nation’s resolve to rectify injustice and to uphold the rights of individuals. We can never fully right the wrongs of the past. But we can take a clear stand for justice and recognize that serious injustices were done to Japanese Americans during World War II.”

Time and again Bush transcended partisan politics when he felt America’s future was at stake. That’s why he was able to leave this note for his successor Bill Clinton in the White House: “There will be very tough times, made even more difficult by criticism you may not think is fair. I’m not a very good one to give advice; but just don’t let the critics discourage you or push you off course … Your success now is our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you.”

It’s useless speculating if Trump will leave a similar note for his successor when he leaves office but there are hints. When pipe bombs were recently mailed to former presidents Clinton and Obama, among others, Trump condemned the act as ‘despicable.’ When asked, however, if he will call the former presidents, he said, “I’ll pass.”

Cruelty, aided by social media, is coming down in such torrent that unless we are on guard, we are in danger of normalizing it. No one – not democrats, republicans, independents or the indifferent - is immune from cruelty and its attendant vice of greed. As we mourn the passing of George H.W. Bush, we should review the state of our hearts so that we don’t end up subscribing to Gordon Gekko’s modified mantra for Trump’s time: “Cruelty and greed are good. Cruelty and greed work.”

The kinder, gentler America of George H.W. Bush will disappear unless we demand accountability from our leaders and make our republic ‘a government of law and not of men.’

Hold Trump Accountable

Organized by Indivisible East San Jose, over 500 of us gathered in front of City Hall in downtown San Jose on a busy Thursday evening to proclaim that no one, not you, not me, and certainly not president Trump, is above the law.

We were part of over 1,000 emergency protests across cities and towns in all fifty states of America, a day after Trump replaced the spineless and robotic attorney general Jeff Sessions with a lackey and a certified hack and fraud named Matthew Whitaker to oversee the Department of Justice and the ongoing investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

"Nobody is above the law" was the unifying theme, protection of the Mueller investigation the focus.

Trump made his preemptive move just two days after Democrats regained majority in the House in the midterm elections. In his crude and demagogic way, he threatened democrats with "war" if they dared to investigate him for his complicity in the Russian meddling in the 2016 election and for his nefarious financial dealings. By appointing a crony, whose appointment as acting AG was unanimously declared unconstitutional by legal experts, Trump thought he could bend the law to his will and make the Mueller investigation disappear.

Before politicians could respond, people responded. From sea to shining sea, in sunshine, rain and snow, Americans of all ages and from all walks of life came together to tell Trump that his days of holding truth and law captive to his ego was over. There was going to be accountability. The Mueller investigation will continue and when its findings are revealed, the chips will fall where they must.

On August 9, 1974, at 8:35 am PST, Richard Nixon resigned as president of the United States to avoid imminent impeachment over the Watergate scandal. Thirty minutes later, Republican Gerald Ford was sworn in as president. “My fellow Americans,” he said, “our long national nightmare is over." He added, “Our Constitution works. Our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.”

Forty-four years later, we find our ourselves also confronting a terrifying truth: Our two-year-long national nightmare is still with us. But with people speaking boldly to power, and with Democrats claiming the House, we are filled with hope that our current nightmare will soon be over. And people power will again prove for generations to come that ours is, and will remain, a government of laws and not of men.

The Synagogue Slayings: Vote Democrat to Reverse Descent into Darkness

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/10/28/mosques-churches-offer-support-to-silicon-valley-jewish-film-festival/

“This cannot be who we are as Americans.”

That was my first reaction to the massacre in the “Tree of Life” synagogue in Pittsburgh where eleven Jewish worshipers, ages from 54 to 97 and engrossed in the remembrance of God, were killed on October 27, by hate and bullets. It was the worst instance of anti-Semitic violence in America’s 242-year-old history.

My next thought was, “This must NOT be who we are.”

But what could I, an American-Muslim, do to support my Jewish fellow-Americans? As the director of outreach of Evergreen Islamic Center in San Jose, I quickly put out a press release:

“We members of the Evergreen Islamic Center (EIC) of San Jose are devastated by the terrorism unleashed at the “Tree of Life” synagogue in Pittsburgh by a gunman that left eleven people dead and several wounded. We express our support for and solidarity with the Jewish community in Pittsburgh and throughout America following this deadly attack.

There is a horrifying outbreak of hate and bigotry across America today. Our schools, public venues and places of worship are under assault by the intolerant and the violent. Yet we must not give up hope. We must continue to build alliances with the majority of Americans to stop the violence and the intolerance that are ripping our country apart. We pledge to work unceasingly with our fellow-Americans in ensuring that people of all persuasions and color are safe from the lone-wolf terrorist or organized groups involved in terrorism. We also urge all registered voters to vote their conscience in the midterm elections on November 6, only a few days away.”

On Sunday morning, several of us from EIC attended a service at the Shir Hadash synagogue in Los Gatos, CA, and listened to a moving talk by Rabbi Reuven Firestone on “Pursuing Justice in Polarized Times.” He spoke of a God who was both a God of Justice and a God of Mercy. Among the believers of monotheistic faiths are some who only believe in a God of justice, he said. They suffer from religious chauvinism and often become extreme. There are others who only believe in a God of mercy. They are at the other end of the spectrum. The Rabbi exhorted us to become moderates, balancing justice and mercy, because “God is both.” “We cannot continue to see the world only in our own way. We must also see the way of the others,” he said. “I am right and you are wrong” only leads to violence. “Fear,” he cautioned, “causes you to hate. So, the question is: how do we get rid of fear?” The Rabbi challenged us to come up with solutions to this existential threat.

I made the point at the end of the Rabbi’s talk that we cannot come together only in the wake of a tragedy. “We should regularly get together over our daily life; music, poetry, food, and exchange ideas so we get to see all of us in the full light of our humanity.”

From the synagogue, my wife and I went to the Jewish Film Festival at the AMC Saratoga 14 Theater (running through November 11) in San Jose to show our solidarity with the grieving Jewish community. We acted as volunteer security guards, a small gesture no doubt, but one deeply appreciated by Mark Levine, board president of the Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival, and other members. Mark read to the gathering inside the theater what I had written to him in an email: “An attack on a synagogue is an attack on all of us, and on the foundational values of America.”

Mark Levine, board president of the Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival, and Hasan Zillur Rahim, director of outreach at Evergreen Islamic Center, pose together for a photo outside the AMC Saratoga 14 movie theater in San Jose on Sunday, Oct. 28, 2018. Rahim was one of several members of faith groups that reached out to show solidarity with Jews in the wake of Saturday’s shooting attack on a synagogue in Pittsburgh. (Joseph Geha/Bay Area News Group)

What contributed to this horrific outbreak of violence, first the pipe bombs, then the synagogue slayings? There is no denying that the toxic messages of hate and bigotry coming from the highest office in the land have emboldened extremists to act on their darkest instincts.

Any statistician will tell you that causality is almost impossible to prove, but in this case, the correlation between what president Trump says and what his sycophants do is very strong. He uses fear to galvanize his base. He has aggressively promoted the idea that xenophobia is a better substitute for patriotism and violence and cruelty are preferable to negotiation and kindness. The unwashed barbarians apparently carrying deadly diseases and hiding terrorists among them are about to invade us, he said of the caravan of immigrants from Central America making their slow and painful journey toward the US border. He has dispatched over 5,000 soldiers to stop the “invasion.” He has also threatened to do away with the 14^th Amendment by denying citizenship rights to babies born in the United States.

When a definitive history is written a decade or two from now on the Trump presidency, he will be harshly judged. He has polarized the country, damaged its institutions and made hate mainstream among Republicans. His incompetence, malevolence, vulgarity, narcissism and mendacity are certain to mark him as the worst US president ever.

But the verdict of history is years away and by then permanent damage to the United States will probably have been done. The critical question is: What can we do NOW to reverse this descent into darkness?

There is only answer: Vote in the midterm elections on Tuesday, November 6, and vote for democrats. There is no other way to stop America from turning into a country of intolerance and inhumanity, a country where the pain of the poor translates into privilege for the rich.

Regrets of Inaction Longer-Lasting

According to a recent study, we regret more what we did NOT do rather than what we did. In other words, sins of omission weigh more heavily on our minds than sins of commission. The paper concluded: “In the short term, people regret their actions more than inactions. But in the long term, the inaction regrets stick around longer.”

I wanted to test the validity of this finding by querying my students. Granted, they are only in their 20's and 30's and are perhaps too young to lament what they have NOT done, since they have plenty of time to DO it, unlike most people in their 80's or 90's.

Still, I wanted to probe their mind to see if even at a relatively young age, the burden of inaction began to pile up and influenced their outlook on life.

This was the question I posed to them: What is the one thing that you have NOT done in your life so far that you regret the most and that, if you could go back in time, you would definitely DO it?

And this is what poured forth from most of them, that they should have traveled to other countries when the opportunity came and when they had the time, instead of opting to earn money through part-time jobs.

Brian’s response was typical: “I regret most not traveling overseas after high school when I had fewer responsibilities: France, Italy, China. But now I am too busy with all the stuff of life!”

Diana: “Wish I traveled. I wish I took a break just for me to have some fun, instead of working all the time.”

Karen: “Not going to Europe with my school friends when I had the opportunity. Now it’s too late! Already I have so much responsibilities!”

Leslie: Not traveling when I was younger. So many places, beautiful people, good food!

Kemala was born in Indonesia and studied in Germany before migrating to United States. Her plaintive regret is palpable: “I am really sad that I did not travel in the countries of Europe when I was in Germany. I always thought, ‘I can do it later,’ but now it seems too late. Caught up with too many things! I went back to Indonesia and now I am in the US and I don’t know when I can travel in Europe.”

Liz has the same remorse: “Not going backpacking with my sister last summer in Europe. She had such a great time and came back a new person! I was too busy working and making money. Bad mistake. The experience would have been so much better!”

Fred is a successful businessman but cannot shake off his regret:” I should have traveled to other countries when I was younger in my 20’s. Now I am older (37) and established and vested in my company. It’s harder to step away and take vacations. With age, we slow down physically. Now I am tired, something I was not when I was younger.”

Yvonne looks back with sorrow at the decision she made two years back: “I had an opportunity to teach English to children in Korea. I didn’t do it and now I am busy with life here. I wish I did what I really wanted to do. It would have made so much difference, more to me than to those children.”

Melanie also regrets not traveling: “The farthest I have been to is Lake Tahoe and Monterey. I am currently saving up money to travel to Mexico to see my grandparents.”

We have all met or read about people whose lives were transformed by travel. Take veteran actor Robert Redford, 82, whose latest movie, The Old Man & the Gun, has just been released to theaters around the country. In an interview (TIME, October 15, 2018), he disclosed how, while growing up in lower-working-class environment in Los Angeles, he hung out with his high-school crowd who often got into trouble. But a certain wanderlust always gnawed at him. “I wanted to be in Paris. I wanted to be in Spain. So when I was about 19, I saved up enough money to last me for a year.” Redford left the United States. “That experience is what really changed my life, because then I saw the outside world.” His time away changed his view of the world and of his home country. It saved him from a life that could have splintered into many useless fragments. “When I went to Europe, I understood more about politics and about human nature.” This
new perspective is what he attributes to his activism.

I held up this example to my students and told them to seize the next opportunity that came along to travel and just go!

While not traveling was their biggest regret (some are determined not to repeat that mistake), there were other regrets of inaction too.

Amanda regrets not opening her own business when she could, her own fashion store. “But maybe I can still make my dream come true.”

Gutierrez regrets not completing his Bachelor’s Degree right after high school. “I decided to focus more on money, so I dropped out of San Jose State University. It is difficult returning to school later in a life of career and child.”

Cheryl regrets not completing her education and getting a career when she was 25. “By now I would have had my own house, called my own shots. Instead, I got married right after high school. I promised I would return after a few months. Did not happen. By the time I returned to school, seven long years have passed! I am now a mom with babies and both my husband and I work and there is no time or fun for anything, with babies around!”

Perhaps the most poignant response came from Jonathan. “Even though I am young, the one thing I haven’t done in my life is give my parents some stability, like buying them a house or helping them retire. My parents work extremely hard and growing up, I gave them a very hard time. I just want to be able to pay for their hard work and show them how much I care for them. They are older, and I don’t want anything to happen to them before I can help them.”

I was compelled to tell Jonathan: "You still can!

But for the most surprising response, the one that was at once baffling and filled with bathos, this one beat all other entries. Clark wrote: “I should have dated more. I waited until I was 25 and the first person I dated, I ended up marrying her. Because of my lack of dating, I never learned to kiss properly and be romantic enough, because I had no practice. My wife dislikes that about me. I wish I dated more!”

Raising Student Success Rate in California's Community Colleges

You can also read the article in the San Jose Mercury News. 

The dropout and failure-to-graduate rates in California’s 72-district, 114 community colleges serving over 2.1 million students are unacceptable. A study by the Institute for Higher Education Leadership at Cal State Sacramento found that 70 percent of community college students fail to graduate or transfer to a four-year institution. These students typically drop out without any degree but with considerable debt.

One strategy used to redress this grim reality was to pour resources into remedial math and English courses, populated disproportionately by African-American and Latino students. It failed abysmally. Only 18 percent of elementary algebra students completed transfer-level math to CSU and UC systems in three years, and only 6 percent of pre-algebra students.

Something radical had to be done. Enter Assembly Bill 705. Introduced by Jacqui Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks, it was signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown on Jan. 1, giving community colleges a deadline for full implementation by the fall of 2019.

The two revolutionary aspects of the bill are: a) colleges must maximize the probability that a student enter and complete transfer-level coursework in math and English within one year and b) colleges must use high school coursework, high school grades or high school GPAs to place incoming students into transfer-level courses, providing concurrent support as needed.

To appreciate the radical nature of AB 705, consider what I have witnessed with heartbreaking regularity in my years of teaching math. Joe, a high-school graduate with a 3.0 GPA, enrolls in his local college as a springboard for admission to UC Davis to major in sustainable agriculture. He expects to spend at most 3 years to accumulate enough units to transfer. Without delving into his aspirations, however, the college gives him an impersonal placement test where he falters with fractions. He gets trapped into a three-semester sequence of non-transferable basic skills classes of pre-algebra, algebra 1 and 2. He manages to pass the first two but algebra 2, with complex conjugates, quadratic equations and such, proves insurmountable. Overcome by emotional and psychological problems, Joe drops out and accepts a low-wage job below his potential.

AB 705 recognizes that it is the structural problem of under-placement and long sequence of classes that prevent students like Joe from graduating. Under AB 705, Joe is placed in transferable statistics in his very first semester, with help in math provided as just-in-time or co-requisite remediation. Excited by the relevance of the predictive power of statistics to his major, Joe aces the course. In a year, he completes transfer-level math and English requirements for a four-year institution.

Pipe dream? No. Pilot projects at San Diego’s Cuyamaca College and San Bruno’s Skyline College among others have shown that placing students in transferable math and English courses based on high school GPA quadruples the completion rate.

AB 705 has its challenges and detractors. Some claim it is too draconian. Others, that it was forced down from above without adequate faculty consultation. These are legitimate concerns, but the overriding factor for embracing AB 705 is that through proper placement and emphasizing acceleration over remediation, it can lift students from failure to success.

The Golden State has the fifth largest economy in the world, after the United States, China, Japan, and Germany. Its demand for a skilled, innovative workforce is skyrocketing. California’s community colleges must play a significant role in nurturing and educating this workforce. Faculty, counselors and administrators must work together to help students reach the high bar set by AB 705. Knowingly or unknowingly, we have been guilty of the soft bigotry of low expectations, with minority students bearing the brunt of our casually cruel mindset. We wrongly focus on what our students don’t know rather than what they know. The pilot projects have shown that students rise to the challenge of higher expectations. By demanding more, we can not only help our students succeed academically but also guide them toward a life of meaning and purpose.

To Refresh the Soul, Became An Islander for a Week

Escaping from smart gadgets, social media and the incessant outrages of a poisonous presidency, became an islander for a week this summer. Victoria, capital of British Columbia in Canada, is a nature-lover’s paradise. A day after arriving, headed for Butchart Gardens. Among the floral wonders of the world, surely this one must rank among the top five. Driving past picturesque farms and placid lakes, I finally enter the garden of my imagination. 

On the way to Butchart Gardens

It was everything I thought it would be, only more. The rose garden alone has over 2,500 plants, comprising 250 varieties. Their names and the year they were planted add to the romance of the roses: Winter Sun (Germany, 2001), Gold Struck (France, 2012), Always & Forever (USA, 2011), Sunshine Daydream (France, 2006), Opening Night (USA, 1998), Candella (New Zealand, 1996), All My Loving (England, 2011), Bride (England, 1995), Lasting Love (France, 1993), and many more. And the waterfall in the sunken garden? Must savor it to believe it!

About 10 miles away is the Butterfly Garden where I counted about 30 species of iridescent beauties fluttering around me and teasing me as I tried to get the perfect shot in my camera. They fly tantalizingly close but at the last moment veer away. Two hours passed in two minutes. It’s true: When you are spellbound by transcendent wonders, time sprints.

Next day, it’s the Abkhazi Garden in a leafy residential section of Victoria. It’s the garden that love built, result of an unlikely romance between a Russian prince, Nicholas Abkhazi, and Peggy Pemberton-Carter, adopted daughter of a wealthy British couple living in Shanghai. They crossed path in Paris and became friends. World War II intervened and the pair lost track of one another. Decades later, they met in New York after the War. In Peggy’s words: “We met again, we married, we lived happily ever after (40+ years!), and we created a garden.” If you visit, don’t miss the classy Afternoon Tea in the Teahouse, after a leisurely stroll past the rhododendrons, water lilies and the baby-blue hydrangeas.

Took a ferry – more like a cruise ship – to Vancouver one day and to Salt Spring Island, one of the many Gulf Islands around Victoria, the following day. Vancouver is just like San Francisco, another big city with congested traffic and harried tourists. But Salt Spring Island, well, that’s another story. This quaint island, home to about 12,000 hardy but contented souls, is full of charming boutique shops and eclectic restaurants serving food that only islanders can: Out of this world. There was also humor in front of a restaurant at Fulford Harbor, giving a spin to Einstein's famous formula.

One mystery that baffled me: The river Ganges flows through India and assumes the name Padma when it flows through Bangladesh. So what exactly is "Ganges Alley" doing in Salt Spring Island, 7000 miles and several oceans away from Ganges-Padma? Oh well!

Why travel to bask in the wonders of nature? Found the answer in downtown Victoria, in the splendid Beacon Hill Park.