Motherbrain

January 17 2016 Sunday 12:34 PM We went up to the Living Desert for Maggie’s Birthday.  When we got to the top of the hill by the bathrooms, we looked over the edge and I got four pictures of the horizon.  I stitched them together to make one lovely picture, and here it is.   Gotta love living in the west, where you can see for absolutely forever.  It doesn’t even have to be a completely … clear day.  

There are several kinds of waiting. There is the anticipation of a new experience, the rush of joy at the possibilities open to you. Another kind of waiting is the white - knuckle,  nail biting fear that grips you when you think of all the things that could go disastrously wrong.  A third kind is an angry impatience, a toe -  tapping rush of fury as you start to catalog all the things done to you and done to the world by the one you're waiting for.  There are hints of all three kinds of waiting in the Advent Season.  We wait happily for the wonders of the season and the promises that  Incarnation brings. We also feel a little of the fear, wondering what the next year will hold, afraid of hidden terrors and the darkness of the unknown. There is sometimes also the anger of a promise seemingly forgotten, the fear transmuting into a quiet,  simmering rage.  How we wait is a choice we make every day of the season.  We decide whether to embrace...

No, third graders, not all pictures are selfies. Just as your question cannot be answered in the exact moment it begins to percolate in your brain, no matter how many times you call my name. The world is a strange and beautiful place. Sometimes more beautiful, sometimes more strange.  I worry about how my protective urges could affect the worldview of the small people in my care. Am I creating a  mob of angry minions who demand their every whim be fulfilled?  Or are my students learning to live wildly and freely in a world that won't give them more than a possible push in a direction that mi ght be right? There is a fine line between security and freedom, and I am seeing that line is drawn when the children are small.  They'll push that line either way sometimes, and complain about the direction they pushed it.  I'm learning there are so many more lessons than reading, writing and arithmetic that we teach, and most of them are never on the syllabus, even when ...

I'm seeing a dangerous trend. On several issues, the pendulum is passing through the middle and headed to the other extreme. I won't name the issues themselves, but there are many.  I live in a country that considers itself the land of the free. Freedom is a balancing act, one that we haven't always achieved well. The disenfranchised gain footing, but instead of merely holding place, they go on the attack, in the name of protecting themselves from ever being hurt again. However, it's impossible to protect ourselves from ever being hurt. Even the boy in the bubble felt pain. If he didn't, he could have been seriously injured and not even realize it. Pain is not a good thing to endure, but it is a sign of things going wrong.  Even in large groups such as a society. If people are willing to let the pendulum swing that far, we end up with John Brown and Robespierre.  Lit fires and Madame Guillotine. The pendulum is a gut response to being hurt. It's a reaction of...

Religious ministry is very different from business.   One of the major ways it is different is its goals.   A ministry exists solely to educate people in the ways of faith.   This includes teaching, doing (outreach and spiritual formation), praying, and preaching.   None of these things require a ‘gatekeeper.’    In a business, a gatekeeper is a person who is there to make sure the information gets to the right person, and make sure that the person who makes the decisions has the time and energy to make the right decisions for the company.   It is a viable method of making sure that the people at the very top don’t exhaust themselves trying to micromanage every part of their business.   A business is there to provide goods and services, and to make a profit doing so.   For example, I work at a school.   There is a ‘gatekeeper’ there.   The school secretary makes sure that every person who walks through the doors of the scho...

So, husband and I were talking to a friend, and another friend pulled them away.  My husband said, "[Friend 2] is just doing her job. She's been told to separate [anyone in the same group as Friend 1] from anybody who says they're wrong or tells them no."  Kah-bllink....  Really? That makes me furious on three levels. Firstly, everybody needs someone to tell them when they are completely and utterly full of it. Seriously, even the Pope, the one man I would historically expect to have this attitude, has said that he is a sinner, meaning he's wrong sometimes.  Secondly, the concept that humans, especially as a group,  are infallible has caused any number of wars.  People cannot see new information, nor understand that they may be wrong. This makes them cocky, angry, and ready to fight.  Usually their ideas are not hills to die on at the least, and at the most, outdated and dangerous.  Several conflicts come to mind, including a good po...