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American Untouchables

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There are people in India who were known as the Untouchables. It was a caste. If you were born into a family of Untouchables, you were an Untouchable. You were the poorest of the poor and you weren’t even considered a person. There was no chance of ever bettering your lot – that was just the way it was. Nobody challenged this system for many years because the people who it bothered had no voice in the system, and the people it benefitted created the system.

We too have a system like this, but we don’t talk about it. If you are born poor in America, there is a pretty good chance you will remain poor. Sure, we talk about the American dream, that anybody can become anything. Through determination and hard work you can achieve your goals. We have as President right now a man who was born to a single mother and is of mixed race. That is pretty Untouchable by American standards. That start virtually guarantees poverty and being kicked around by the system. But he went to school and worked hard. He had drive and incentive and became a lawyer, and then a politician. I don’t really care what you think about his policies. What I’m impressed by is that he went from a very low position to a very high one.

Anybody can do this. But first, you have to believe in yourself. You have to put a value on yourself. And then you have to work hard towards a goal.

There are two ladies who have just started coming to the library. They are dirt poor. You can look at them and tell they are poor just by looking at them. Their clothes are ratty. Their hair is wild and unkempt. Their teeth are crooked and stained. Their speech is substandard.

I’ll call them Jackie and Diane. Jackie has to drive Diane around because Diane has an ID only. Diane’s husband is chronically ill and stuck at home. Diane picks up movies from him. It is always movies. Movies are the staple of the poor at the library.

We have a lot of DVDs at our library. Not all of them are movies. Some are TV series. Some are documentaries. The poor rarely get anything educational, and they even more rarely get books.

When they do get books they get romance if they are female, and it is usually low-end romance like “urban erotic fiction” and stuff like the “Grey” novels. The plots are the same in all of these. The story says that you, as a female, are nothing, and will remain nothing until you get a man, who will treat you badly and then leave you, so you will then be less than nothing.

These selections guarantee that the person will stay poor. They guarantee that the person will remain exactly where they are. They are escapism in name only. If they truly want to escape they will better themselves by getting material that is educational. But first they have to see themselves as worthy of escaping.

We may not have an official caste system in America, but we sure do have a self-enforced one.

Why is fake better than real?

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Why do women paint their real nails to look like real nails? A “French” manicure replicates the look of real nails, but they aren’t real. The colors are the same as unpolished nails, but enhanced. Most women who have this nail style pay a lot of money to get this done. None of this makes any sense. If you are going to go to the trouble of having fake nails, why make them look like real nails? Why not have real nails?

Why is fake better than real?

I knew a lady who didn’t even have her own nails painted to look like a French manicure. She used fake nails. Every week she would take off the fake nails and put on new fake nails. She felt she had to do this to look professional for her job. The chemicals she used for this were damaging her own real nails. Every week her own natural nails looked worse and worse because of the fake nails she was putting on.

What a waste of money and time. This is madness.

It reminds me of the makeup that is sold as “the natural look”. If you have to pay money to get the natural look, it isn’t natural. If it comes in a bottle, it isn’t real.

Imagine how many industries would go out of business if women loved how they look. We are taught that we aren’t beautiful with every advertisement. We are taught that we aren’t good enough, no matter what we look like. It is a game we can never win.

Our skin is blotchy or too light or too dark. There are concealers, creams, and foundations that even out skin tones and make them any color you’d like. There are bleaches that will lighten your skin if you are too dark.

Our butts are too big or not big enough. There are elastic bands that squeeze fat into submission. There are padded prosthetics that give you a rounded shape.

Our hair is the wrong color or it is going grey. If your hair is too dark, make it blonde. If it is blonde, then make it brunette. If it is going grey, cover it up. Once you start on that path you’ll forever have to get your hair done to keep up.

Our hair is too straight, too curly, to kinky, too flat, too textured, too much.

We have hair in places we are told we shouldn’t have hair. We tweeze, pluck, shave, and wax it away. Hairs on arms and faces are discretely taken care of. Hair almost everywhere else is removed or trimmed into submission.

Why do women shave? We are expected to shave off all (or most of) the body hair we gained when we hit puberty. To remove this is to reduce our appearance to that of a prepubescent girl. Something is distinctly creepy about this.

Why do we have to feel ashamed about something natural? Why are we taught that we aren’t good enough? Why are we taught that our natural beauty isn’t beautiful?

And more importantly, why do we believe these lies?

I miss church.

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I miss going to church. It has been 8 months since I have been to church. I miss church in the same way I miss my family. When holidays roll around I miss the warm fuzzy feeling of family that I never had. It is part of why Mother’s Day hurts so much. I miss the never-was, or the might-have-been. When the holidays roll around I miss going to church even more. I feel like I’m missing out.

I think a lot of people go to church because of those very same feelings. I think that church fills a hole in them that family couldn’t. It provides a sense of belonging. It is an artificial construction, but a good one, usually. Family is an accident. Friendships are chosen. Church, being (hopefully) a conscious choice, is more like the latter. It provides some of the same kind of support that family should provide but often doesn’t.

The problem is that I can’t go back to my old church. Even if the priest there leaves, I can’t go back. I’ve seen behind the curtain. I know too much. The magic spell has faded away to tinsel and mirrors.

I can’t go back to church as it is, because it isn’t what Jesus meant for us to be doing. But every now and then I have a hankering to go back.

I know three families who left that church before me (because of the same priest) and attend another one of the same denomination. I know that the priest of church A has called the priest of church B to tell him about those families. She told me this back when I was still on her side. She thinks she was “smoothing the path” and “building bridges.” If she was so good at doing that, then how come she couldn’t do that at her church with these families? Now I wonder if she has called the priests at the other local Episcopal churches to warn them about me? I wouldn’t put it past her.

I went to a “Lay Ministry Appreciation Day” at the Cathedral last year. It was the second one they had. I went to the first one too. I felt that something was wrong when I went to the first one, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. After the second one I figured it out. At the end we were asked to write our impressions. I wrote that I was very sad to find that we’d spent the whole day learning how to “do church” and not learning how to be better Christians.

There were classes on how to be an acolyte, a chalice bearer, a person who administers home Communion, a lector, and an altar guild member. There wasn’t a single one on how to serve Jesus outside the church. There wasn’t anything about building up the Body. If you wanted to know how to wear vestments or hold a candle or prepare enough Communion wafers for a crowd, they had a class for it. Everything else, forget it.

Here are some examples of things I saw at the Cathedral that opened my eyes.

These are kneelers at the altar rail.
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I wonder how much time was spent needlepointing them. Wouldn’t it be more Christ-like to spend that time visiting the sick and those in prison?

This column is one of many. The marble is imported from Scotland. They are at least twenty feet high, by my estimation.
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I wonder how much that cost? Wouldn’t it have been more Christ-like to spend that money housing the homeless?

Check out the stained glass window and the pipe organ.
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There are stained glass windows throughout the building. One is from Louis Comfort Tiffany. The tour guide says that the Cathedral paid for none of them – they were donations. He’s missing the point. If someone can donate 5 to 10 thousand dollars for stained glass, they can donate the same amount to feed the hungry and clothe the naked instead – you know, the stuff Jesus tells us to do?

God didn’t come down to Earth for us to spend time and money prettifying a building. Jesus didn’t die for us to debate over where to keep the reserved sacrament. The more I went to church, the more I realized that I wasn’t serving Jesus at all. I was serving the administration. I was serving the institution.

Sadly, there are a lot of us who are stuck in this hamster wheel. There are a lot of people who go to church who have invested a lot of their lives and their egos in what they thought was being a good Christian, and what they are doing isn’t Christ-like at all.

It isn’t un-Christian. It just isn’t what Jesus would do.

Breaking out of this mindset is very hard, especially for people who have spent a lot of their time and money in and on the institution that is church. It is especially hard for those who get paid to lead. They have the most to lose. Yet, the way I’m seeing it, they have even more to lose if they keep on following the wrong master. We can follow only one master – make sure it is God, and not the institution.

So yes, I miss church, but it is more like I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. I can’t miss what I never had. There are a couple of options I’m looking at that have a lot of the qualities I feel Jesus meant. I think they are a good start. But I’m wary. I’m wary of getting sucked in and fooled again, like I was last time. I’m wary of letting down my guard and getting really hurt.

Not one stone will be left.

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I read “Forward Day by Day” every morning. It is a quarterly periodical that has a commentary on every day’s Bibley readings. Sometimes the commentary adds to the meaning. Sometimes it takes away. I think today’s commentary got it entirely wrong and took it literally. The author took today’s reading to be about the literal destruction of the Temple, and of church buildings today that get burned to the ground.

The reading is Matthew 24:1-14, but for brevity I’m just going to quote the beginning and sum up the rest.

Matthew 24:1-2
1As Jesus came out of the temple and was going away, his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. 2Then he asked them, ‘You see all these, do you not? Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.’

He goes on to explain to his disciples the signs that they will see for how to know this. It is all pretty apocalyptic, with “wars and rumors of wars” etc. The author of today’s Forward Day by Day says that ultimately there is hope in the end, that God will prevail. Sure, that is in there. That is always in there. But I don’t think that the literal destruction of the Temple is what Jesus was talking about.

Remember, Jesus came to tell us that we are the temple. We are the Body of Christ. We aren’t supposed to build up our treasures on Earth and build buildings to worship God. We are to love and serve God, and if we are going to build buildings, we need to build them to house the homeless.

So Jesus wasn’t talking about the Temple, or modern church buildings at all.

Jesus was talking about the WAY we worship God. Jesus came to strip everything away – all the rules and regulations that kept us from seeing God in everyone and serving each person. Imagine how amazing our world would be if everyone saw God in everyone, and served them accordingly? That is the heart of the Sanskrit word “Namaste”. They had it figured out long before anybody else. God put a bit of light into each of us. We all have a little bit of God in us, and our goal is to recognize that and tap into it.

We can’t do that with the church structure the way it is. In fact, we can’t do that until we understand that “church” has nothing to do with a building or administration or ordained ministers. It means us, the believers. We are the Church. No stones required. Until we get that the Body isn’t a Building – we are still waiting for the end times. Jesus hasn’t come again until that time.

Resolutions

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It just doesn’t seem fair to start a New Year’s resolution in the cold dark winter. Going to the gym is hard enough. I’ve been going for three years and even I don’t want to go right now. It will be even colder in January.

It will also be packed. It isn’t fun to work out in a small place with a lot of people. In the beginning of the year the pool is full of new people. A lot of them drop out early, even though there is no refund of the sign-up fee. $100 is a lot to blow. How many of them quit because it is too crowded inside and too cold outside? When you are in your warm house, getting out to go to the gym is the last thing you want to do. Getting there, when it is full of people isn’t that fun either.

If you have a desire to make a change in your life, just do it. Don’t wait unto the New Year. Adopt one from another culture. There are some that have their New Year’s Day in the spring, and some in the fall. Pick one. Or make your own. Every day is a new day. You can have that fresh-faced, new chance, clean-slate feeling anytime.

Strip away all that doesn’t serve. In fact, strip away all that does serve you well, beside the more you do the same old thing, the less you’ll discover. When you keep doing the same thing over and over, even if it works for you, even if you think it is the best way to do things, it prevents you from discovering new options and new opportunities.

If you eat the same food at a restaurant, you’ll never find your new favorite. If you respond the same way to someone, you’ll never learn new ways of thinking. Challenge and change are great opportunities.

Make every moment new. Pretend as if each moment is your first.

Welcome to your new life.

Lifeguard

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Lifeguards have to know how to rescue you and not get drowned themselves. Not only do they have to be good swimmers, they have to watch out for the drowning person who is thrashing about.

Drowning people don’t do anything right to stop themselves drowning. They will hit the person who is trying to save them. They will grab at them, pulling them under the water. The more they thrash and grab, the worse things get.

Lifeguards are trained to approach the victim from behind to rescue them, and to look out for sudden movements. If drowning people relaxed they’d be a lot easier to rescue. In fact, if they relaxed in the first place they probably wouldn’t need to be rescued.

Try it the next time you are in a pool. Tense up, pretending you are anxious. Feel like you aren’t going to make it to the wall. You’ll start to sink. Relax and you’ll start to float. Let go, and you are fine.

How much of this is like everything in life? Just tensing up makes an already bad situation worse. Freak out and you’ll need to be rescued. Then, when someone comes to help, you fight them. The smart helper knows how to approach you so they too don’t get dragged down.

Drowning, finances, drugs, dependency- whatever. It is all the same.

People have to get certified to be lifeguards. There are manuals to study and a test to pass. Kids in high school can do this.

Too bad that helping people not drown in other ways requires more advanced training. Maybe if it could be simplified and destigmatized it would be easier for everyone. If we can help people before they are really going under we will be doing very well.

Anti-Christmas Guide 2

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I used to think I was alone in thinking that Christmas was terrible. It felt like there was a conspiracy of silence. Don’t talk about it, and it won’t be so bad. Don’t admit that you aren’t having a great time. Christmas was the elephant in the room.

It was like the Emperor’s New Clothes, but instead of clothes it was Christmas. Nobody wanted to admit that what they were experiencing wasn’t matching up to what everybody else said they were experiencing.

People are just now starting to talk about how hard the Christmas season can be. It has grown from a beautiful time where God has show how much we are loved by coming down to be with us, into a huge monstrosity where we spend all our money and energy and are worn out. It has grown into the exact opposite of what it was supposed to be.

Here are three things that let me know that I’m not the only one who is getting mixed signals about this time of year.

Barenaked Ladies Christmas album – “Barenaked for the Holidays” – It has Hanukkah and Christmas music done their way, and some manic bits about snow and murder.

Denis Leary’s “Merry F#%$kin Christmas” – 2005 TV special. Think Donny and Marie Osmond variety show, but done by a bitter New Yorker.

Augusten Burroughs’ “You Better Not Cry” – book. It makes your Christmas look like “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It is a collection of tales of horrible Christmases he’s had over the years. I find it cathartic and redemptive.

The Anti-Christmas guide – or, how I celebrate with as little stress as possible.

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Before I got married, I read a book called “The Anti-Bride Guide”. It told me all the rules I could break when planning my wedding. It let me know I didn’t have to put on a big show. It let me know I certainly didn’t have to spend the equivalent of a car loan for an event where the main part of it takes ten minutes. Why start off your married life in debt? I’ve never been one for spending a lot of money when there is nothing to show for it, so this seemed right up my alley.

The basic idea was to strip it all down to the essentials and add from there – if desired. What do you need to make you feel married? Do you need bridesmaids? Do you need a fancy hall? Do you need tulle, really?

So now that I’m reassessing Christmas, I’m doing the same. I’ve not found and “Anti-Christmas Guide” so I’m making my own. It is a work in progress.

What do I need to make it feel like Christmas? What distinguishes this time of year from all other times that are just as cold and dark?

The sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating part of getting married is that you have to figure out how you are going to celebrate the holidays. Even if you are both of the same religion, this can be tricky. I can only guess how complicated it is if you are of different traditions.

There are plenty of things that we have decided on, it turns out. Here are some.

Rankin-Bass Christmas videos. You know, those claymation videos from the 80s. Titles like “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” and “The Year Without a Santa Claus” are mandatory. I usually don’t like musicals, but I sing along to every song on these.

Stockings. I love Christmas stockings. I love stocking stuffers. Scott and I made our own stockings our first year together and we still use them. Why we made them of wide wale purple corduroy is beyond me, but we like them, and it was important to me that we made them ourselves. Remembering the stocking was one of my favorite parts of Christmas when I was growing up. It was like a second Christmas. We’d usually forget about them until an hour or so after all the presents were open. One of us would glance at the fireplace and see them and everything would stop. The stockings always had an orange in the toe. There wasn’t anything special about an orange – it just fit well in the toe.

Christmas presents have to be something you want- not something you need. Christmas is not a time to buy a new string trimmer.

We went without a tree for many years. I have come to realize I need something, just not a large something. We tried a rosemary bush for a while. I made little ornaments out of beads and earring hooks. It had the right shape and a good smell, but I am not very good at plant maintenance, so it died. We tried the next year with another one and had the same results. I felt that it was sad to kill a Christmas tree, even if it was just a rosemary bush, every year. It wasn’t its fault that I’m terrible at house plants. We went without a tree and I’ve found I need it. Scott constructed a small artificial one for me and it does us just fine. I have a candle that smells like a real tree, so that helps with the illusion.

I had some ornaments that meant a lot to me when I moved here. They were from my family and there were a lot of good memories attached to them. Some were handmade, some were antique. When I first came to Nashville I lived in an apartment and there was no room for a tree. I had some friends who let me store the ornaments at their house. They have since moved and lost the ornaments. I’m still very sad over this. I can buy new ornaments but I can’t replace those memories.

A nativity set. I had one that was hand carved out of olive wood from Jerusalem. Again, lost. Perhaps it was in with the ornaments. I found a new set at Goodwill made of pressed glass. It was cheap and it does the job.

I like to play the interactive nativity set game. My husband looks at me funny. The Magi move a little closer every day, and don’t get really near until Epiphany – twelve days after Christmas. I keep baby Jesus out of the scene until Christmas Day. It looks a little odd with Mary and Joseph staring down at nothing for a month.

Advent calendar. Scott comes from the Catholic tradition and I come from the Episcopal tradition. Advent calendars are part of both. I found one a few years back that is amazing. Brace yourself – Lego. Star Wars. Advent calendar. Too much awesome all together. It has a new minifigure to assemble every day for a month.

To visit family or not? These days, not. It is, as I like to say too much, and yet not enough, all at the same time.

There are reasons that police and nurses dislike working on Christmas. There are a lot of domestic disturbance calls those days. There is nothing about “peace on earth” that guarantees peace in your family. If you all can’t get along during regular days, then it might be best to stay home for the holidays. Domestic unhappiness and alcohol are a bad mix.

Sometimes we decorate the outside of the house. Sometimes not. We appreciate the bright lights this time of year and feel it is good to do our part. It isn’t much, but it is cheery.

Christmas cards. I like getting them, so I send them. We divide up the list, his and hers. Both of us write them up together. I always get Three Wise Men cards, and often some basic “happy holidays” ones for our non-religious friends. I’m considering sending cards to offices and restaurants we like to visit. It hasn’t happened yet. We’ll see.

We make cookies on Christmas eve. We leave the best ones out for Santa along with a glass of milk, along with a note. He always eats them. We even bought a special plate and cup for this. It has a penguin motif.

Midnight mass. Usually a good idea. This year, it probably won’t happen. I like the idea of staying up late to celebrate the first moments of Christmas Day. I love singing Silent Night in a darkened church, lit only by candles. But, it has been six months since our old church and I parted ways, and we haven’t been to a replacement yet.

Last but not least – I donate money to the first Salvation Army bell-ringer I see/hear.

So Christmas is what you make of it. It is kind of like a jigsaw puzzle. I keep moving the pieces around to see what looks good. It certainly isn’t about buying lots of presents and dealing with stress. It has a lot to do with being willing to invite Jesus into every moment, and for that you don’t need a special time of the year at all.

Homework – to help, or not to help.

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I’ve never understood why parents will worry over their children’s homework. So many parents seem to think that “helping” their child with their homework means actually doing the work. The more that parents do for their children, the less the child is doing for himself. The less he does for himself, the less he is learning.

At what point is helping your child with homework just assisting, and at what point is it enabling? At what point is it flat out cheating?

Sure, you want your child to do well. Who doesn’t? But if you do the work for your child you are teaching him that he doesn’t have to do any work at all. The “A” that he gets isn’t really his “A”.

When your child comes up to you the night before an assignment is due and asks for your help, don’t. He got that assignment way before today. He has had time to work on it and has chosen not to. If you rescue him and do a lot of the work for him you are teaching him that waiting until the last minute is OK. You will teach him that failure to plan is fine. You will teach him that it is ok to make his procrastination other people’s problems.

Whatever behavior you want to see in your child when he is an adult, you should encourage it now. Waiting until the last minute to do your work, whether it is for school or for salary, is a bad idea and will result in less than perfect work. Expecting others to drop everything they are doing to help you with your assignments is bad too.

Expect better of your children. Encourage them to do their own work. If they get a low grade, at least it is their grade. Hopefully it will inspire them to get motivated sooner on their assignments.

Sure, help them with their homework. Take them to the library. But let them choose the books. Instead of answering a question, show them how to look up the answer. If you do all the work then they aren’t learning anything.

It isn’t about the grades. It is about what the child learns.

Plenty of parents feel pride if their child gets good grades in school. Why feel proud of your child’s grades if you have done the majority of the work?

Plenty of parents will say that “we have all this homework to do” It isn’t “we”. It is the child’s assignment. Let them do it. Teach them how to be responsible for themselves by making them be responsible for themselves.

Kindergarten 12-11-13

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What a difference a little time makes. My order this week was J, S, and V, but V was out because she had to go to the doctor’s office. That is too bad because I wore the necklace that she inadvertently designed.

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It is all stars and hearts. They are sparkly, too.

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Not my style, but I think I need to get back in touch with my inner kindergartner. Maybe I’ll wear it again next week. I am a little concerned that she will want it. If I give a present to one, the others will get jealous. It is bad enough that some of the kids are upset that I don’t work with them. Today S asked me if I would buy him a Christmas present and I had to explain the concept of being fair to the other kids.

Plus, it is rude to ask for presents. But then, if you don’t ask, you won’t receive.

I had J first and boy was he excited. Maybe his enthusiasm is part of why other students ask me if I’m going to work with them. He pumps his arms and whoops when I call him to go to the tutoring desk. He acts like he just won a huge prize. Maybe he did. Who doesn’t like a little personal attention? Sometimes the teacher will assign a student to me who doesn’t need help with schoolwork. Sometimes all they need is a little one on one time with a person who cares.

It is too bad that J’s enthusiasm didn’t last long. He did very well for a while but then wanted to go back to class soon because they were working on math. Now that I think about it, numbers have been his favorite since the beginning. It is good findings something that can build up his confidence, but he has to nail reading too.

There are workarounds for not being able to read at all, but he doesn’t show signs of needing them. He does show signs of neglect, however. I get the impression that his parents don’t spend time with him. His hair always looks dirty and unbrushed, and he is a little wild. He seems to have a hard time controlling his reactions – they are a little over dramatic and agitated. He also is noticeably behind on his speech. It is very hard to understand him. He has been going to a speech therapist but I’m not seeing improvement. At times it seems like it is getting worse. I wonder if he acts like he needs specialized help because he just wants attention – since he isn’t getting it at home.

I worked with S for a while too. It is amazing to see a child who is being raised in a non English speaking home do better than one whose parents speak English. He does well with vocabulary and his letters, and it is heartening to see how confident he is getting. His speech reminds me of another Hispanic child from last year. It isn’t quite English and it isn’t quite Spanish, but he is very enthusiastic about it.

I finished early because V wasn’t there so I stayed to help with the math centers. They had a bunch of fun ways of learning about numbers and shapes. If math had been that fun when I was in school I might have liked math more. The students had to work with partners and one of the girls asked me to work with her. She has asked me to work with her every week, and remembers that I was there helping her the first week of school. That is pretty amazing for a kindergartner. Usually they don’t remember very well.

It is part of what makes the books hard for them. They can’t get the pattern. Page one. “See the bear. The bear can climb.” Page two. “See the squirrel. The squirrel can climb.” After we have gone through all the other animals that can climb I’d think they would get that the only word that changes is the animal, and there is a picture of it on the page. Nope. It is all a surprise every time. Books for five year olds are very short on purpose. I wonder how much of that is to keep the reader from pulling out her hair because they are so simple.

There was a bit of a wrestling match over who would get to have me as a partner. J wanted me, but I pointed out to him that we had already worked together so I needed to work with someone else. He was having none of that. Now, I’m not going to be monopolized, and I actually do want to see how the other kids are doing. I’d like a sense of perspective.

The teacher came up with a good plan. I could go around and check their work, instead of pairing up with them. She’s very good at plans like this. I think part of what I go there for is to learn these lessons. I think I might have missed some life lessons when I was five. It is a good idea to fill in the gaps.

Soon it was time for them to get ready to go out to play. It was a little cold but sunny, so they put on their costs. I put on my coat as well because it was time to leave. S saw me with my coat on and asked if I was going outside to play with them. I said I was going to lunch and he looked sad. I’m a little sad too. Why don’t adults get a regularly scheduled playtime?

I think that and a nap would do us all a world of good.