An Overcrowded Office

Please forgive how behind I am on this blog. The more I write the more I need to write. Currently a host of characters, ideas and images have my mental desk on overload. My mental desk is always overfull, so this situation desperately needs addressed. The problem is that it's not just my mental desk that's precariously balanced, my physical desk in my office is looking overdue for an avalanche as well. I don't work well in messy spaces. (Don't tell my mother.) The problem is I have five kids and a large house to keep in order, so my personal space has to come last. I'm afraid that my writing on this blog will be spotty until I get this office cleared out. I can work on my novel anywhere, but the blog requires internet which is at my desk. Sorry guys, but I'll get back to it ASAP.

just a general thanks

I just feel grateful today to the universe and the creator of it. Thanks to everyone and everything for being so good to me. Life isn't perfect, but it's good. This has been such a terrifying experiment. I still wake up in the middle of the night certain that the only thing to do is to run downstairs and delete all of this, but resisting the impulse is paying off. Thanks for listening so patiently and politely. I hope I have things to say worth hearing and that I can express them in such a way that they are a pleasure to hear.

Thank you for supporting my hope.

The Upside of Nuclear Proliferation

There are two important qualifications you need to know before you read this piece of writing. The first is I have no qualifications. I'm just a midwestern mom who thinks too much. I claim no expertise on this topic. The second is that if I ruled the world unilateral disarmament would be the only way to go with nukes. I'm not defying conventional wisdom, but I've found that if you look for the positive perspective on difficult situations you can often find positive solutions to the problems. I see three potential positives coming out of the terror of this growing threat.

We have to listen. Once a nation develops nuclear power we have no choice but to listen to their grievances and take them seriously. Many times problems that are festering solve themselves once they've been said out loud. Allowing a group of Islamic researchers to prove that the holocaust did indeed happen shouldn't be hard to arrange. We should draft a commitee of serious Muslim scholars with worldwide reputations for academic honesty, and let them make some of the easiest money of their lives researching the validity of the holocaust. Then we need to explain, why did we settle the Jews in Palestine instead of Montana? This won't change the position of the Iranian government, but it might change the hearts of the Iranian people. It may soften the hard attitudes of your average citizen in the Islamic world. What's-his-face wouldn't say such outrageous things so boldly if they weren't already in the hearts and minds of his citizens. We need to undercut his credibility by answering the questions even though the answers seem so obvious to us.

We have to help the underdog. For far too long, we've sat back and let the good, ordinary citizen of these nations suffer under the leadership of dogs. Now that they will have red buttons to push we have to get serious about who we let have the power to push them. We have to start making sure the guys getting run over by tanks somehow get the upper hand. We have to start fostering world-wide democracy.

We have to let go of our superiority. Pascal said that we authorize whatever is as right. Currently we've ordained our position as the most powerful nation in the world as right. As the develpment of nuclear power in underdeveloped nations progresses new relationships and power structures will have to be sanctioned. Inherent disadvantage will be levelled, and development in the world will become more even as the power distribution becomes more equal. We can't continue to allow immoral dictators to subvert their countries progress now that it threatens our own survival. In order to survive this growing threat we will have to allow these nations to mature and develop mature forms of government. We will have to stop paying lip service to world-wide democracy and start fighting for it.

I may be entirely wrong about everything, but I think this horror has a little seed of hope. We have to find the hope and we have to nurture it. We need to approach this deadly threat with vision and determination and courage. This problem may be the beginning of solving hundreds of other problems whose dire nature we have ignored in pursuit of pleasure in this time of false peace. As the mask falls off the false peace perhaps we will be motivated to develop the real thing. That's what this mother hopes for.

Solidarity

I stand on the treadmill working it out.

The chains, The bars, The walls,

Each step takes me nowhere, but someday

Without doubt I will excercise my own will.

A Valentine for Hellraisers Baptist Church

I grew up in a church founded by new converts, most of whom were still members. When I say I grew up in the church, I mean physically. I spent more of my waking hours in the church than I did in my home. No, it wasn't a commune, anything with associated with "commune" was suspect in a church full of God-fearing Americans at that time. The church had a school and my parents were both teachers. My mother had grown up in the church and my grandparents had "come to Christ" through the efforts of the founding members and their first pastor. My great uncle was one of the original hellraisers whose life was turned upside down at a Methodist revival along with a handful of his friends. He evangelized our entire family and a nice-sized percentage of the town.

The people in that little church were very ordinary factory workers and such, but the authenticity of their faith and the obvious difference it had made in their lives was powerful. The pastors who preached there when I was growing up were dull and so lacking in originality that one of them preached the same series of sermons every three years in an ever more bland cycle. The people who formed my faith were the people in the pews. On Sundays, I showed up having been decked out head to toe. The clothes were from my grandmother and the hair (and occasionally makeup) were from my mother. I tripped down the corridors to my Sunday School class where a woman who was usually just somebody's mother became my teacher. Those women were painstaking and creative in their presentations. No one read from the book. The handouts were always prepped. Some of them even set aside the purchased materials in order to present something they'd developed themselves that they felt was more relevant. I was taken to McDonalds as a reward for memorized Psalm 23. Picnics, sleepovers, trips to nearby parks and museums, all of it was given to me by people on ordinary salaries who probably had other things they could have done with the money.

The older folks in that church impressed me. Mrs. Rhineheart, whose heart was larger than the rest of her, tackled the kid's Christmas pageant every year. Her intensity was enough to keep something like 60-100 kids from SS organized and relatively quiet. We were going to produce something to glorify God and that meant we had to do our absolute best. Then there was Mr. Armstrong who carried a toolbox as long as he was tall. He'd come any day at any time to repair the water fountain at school and anything else that got broken. When you're a thirsty third grader such instant service is deeply appreciated. Mr. Summerfield kept patiently ministering to my grandfather until he came to Christ four years before I was born. Mrs. Walters let me help prepare Communion. Mrs. O'Wade not only put the bandaids on extra tight so it wouldn't hurt so much, she redecorated the church and designed a restaurant style kitchen in which she prepared delicious food worthy of the restaurant she had started after putting bandaids on had gotten a little old. Mrs. Hare and Mrs. Wilson put up with all my endless shennanigans trying to get out of schoolwork and Mrs. Rizer took pity on me and taught me how to properly form a q and a g in cursive so that I could finally pass handwriting. All of it was done out of genuine love for Christ and for me.

These were people who were "formerly known as" people. Unlike Prince they didn't go from weird to worse, they went from notorious to notable. They were transformed. We has no idea when we were children, but as we grew older and various and sundry started taking the wrong path a former Dirty Harry or Harriet who'd already been down the road would take the wanderer aside for a chat. We'd all be shocked to discover that Mr. X had done Y, and Mrs. B had done C. These were people deeply grateful for a new life and they lived that gratitude everyday. I used to stop singing in church in order to listen to their off-key joy. We only ever sang old hymns. The unspoken motto was no music from after 1960 and no books from before. Special music was more flexible, especially when Young Mr. Abe came to sing, but congregational singing stuck to the red hymnals. I don't think anything could beat the sound of all those grateful hearts pouring their praise at Christ's feet. If dancing hadn't been the vertical expression of a horizontal desire I'd have been dancing every Sunday.

They weren't perfect. They were passionate and whatever you are passionate about you argue about. They argued vigorously that we kids should be sheltered in the church school and the other half argued that we should be out in the public school evangelizing. They argued about policies. They argued about hiring and firing staff. They argued about whether or not the teen evangelists could go to the prom. Sometimes I just sat back amazed at the minutia that could swallow them up, but I could tell that they really cared about getting it right. They wanted to be sure that they were being obedient. They were passionate people, and I'm a better person because of it.

The Schedule is Ticking

I am a scheduler. An early experience with death made me the sort of person who counts the minutes. I thought that that meant devising a schedule and sticking to it. The thing is, it's hard to know how long some things will take and you can't legislate life. The result of my scheduling has been constant anxiety and low productivity. The impossibility of maintaining a strict schedule didn't come home to me until I was attempting to pull it off with a family of seven. Something had to give, and it turns out the schedule was it. Not that we aren't scheduled anymore, come on, we're a family of seven, but now we are more task driven. If it isn't done on time, well, so what.

The amazing thing is that we are actually way more productive, and our speed is picking up. It is possible that we will eventually be able to accomplish the original schedule, though I'm never going back to that method of management. The kids are finally internalizing the necessary self-discipline to accomplish the tasks assigned them. This means I can get all the tasks I have to do done.

The schedule was killing us. We had to throw it out in order to survive. Don't pick it up. It's ticking.

Distance

Time goes by at a furious speed
We never have what we need
Standing gap-mouthed at its power
Stealing our breath hour by hour
Stealing our breath hour by hour

Fan Fen Fin Fon FUN

This little easy reader was inspired by an older Japanese gentleman at a Japanese Steakhouse. He had my children eating strange vegetables with chopsticks and telling little jokes in Japanese. I'm hoping that these five gentlemen can get beginning readers to practice their long and short vowels.

Mr. Fan is the man.
His fine cane can tame the rain.

Mr. Fen is a ten.
He treats his team like a dream.

Mr. Fin has to win.
He'll cross the line in lots of time.

Mr. Fon has got it on.
His home will glow in the snow.

Mr. Fun is like the sun.
Up in the blue his smile grew.

Fan Fen Fin Fon Fun is lots of fun for ten or one.

Aurora

Quietly resting under a shade tree
Knowing the voices will whisper away.
Straining and struggling to hold the last phrases
Refusing to see the end of today

Where is tomorrow, shining and hopeful?
What keeps the fingers of daybreak close furled?
A girl resting quietly under a shade tree
Listening to voices gone from the world

Let go of today so tomorrow may brighten
The darkness of sorrow, the depths of within
Reach out to take hold of the morning's bright birthing.
New life is stirring beneath the taut skin.




*****I recognize this poem is a bit of fridge art, but it is my first little adult poem. I wrote it to celebrate the easing of my grief over my grandmother's death through the joy of my daughter's birth. I play around with the idea of rewriting it, but it holds a memory I'm not in a hurry to let go of.*****