Kindergarten 12-18-13 – Holiday

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The order today that I was given was J, S, and V. I chose V first because I didn’t get to work with her last week.

She is missing her front two teeth now. This seems early. Doesn’t that normally happen between first and second grade? I’ve heard that children are physically maturing sooner these days. The theory is that it has to do with all the hormones they feed cows and chickens. We eat that meat, we get those chemicals.

V was a superstar today. She was very quick at finding the letters. She wanted to work with the Insta-Learn board that we had worked with for the past month but it wasn’t in my basket today. In fact, there was nothing I recognized in my basket today. I’ve been tutoring kindergartners for three years, so it is a big deal to say there was nothing I recognized. Half the time I have to figure out the goal of the supplies in the basket. Having familiar supplies makes this easier.

There is always a goal. There is always a purpose to the different bags and boards in the basket that the teacher prepares for me. If I can figure out the goal, then I can figure out how to get there. It is kind of like writing a sestina. If you know the ending words to the poem, the poem virtually writes itself.

V did amazingly well, and I told her so. She beamed. I love seeing her smile, and I feel that she doesn’t smile that much at home. I didn’t even ask her about her Christmas plans because I’m just not ready to hear the stories she was going to tell me. She makes up stories about her home life all the time, because the reality is just too much. Or, rather, it is not enough.

If the average everyday home life is hard, Christmas is going to be impossible. I can’t help this. I can’t fix it. So I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to remind her of the train wreck that was coming in a week.

It is like when I was taking care of my Mom when she was terminally ill. I was in college and I didn’t want anybody asking me how she was doing because it meant I had to stop and be real for a bit. It meant that I had to take off my “everything’s fine” mask and show how much pain was underneath. Sometimes the kindest thing was for people to not ask and just pretend along with me that all was normal.

Interestingly, she did talk about a holiday – but it wasn’t Christmas. She was telling me about her Halloween costume. (a pumpkin) J later told me about his Halloween costume as well. (Robin, and his Dad will be Batman). So they know something’s coming, but they’ve got it mixed up. Or maybe they have it better figured out than we adults do. Christmas done with costumes and lots of candy might be a lot better.

We played with the supplies, V and I, working with letters and colors and numbers. We had a few moments of normal, and it was nice. Even I forgot about how different and potentially awkward Christmas is going to be for me this year. Somehow we created a little oasis for both of us.

We went back to the room and J caught my eye and waved his arm to work with me. Sure – why not? Now, this means I’m going to make sure I work with S first next time. They all seem to want to work longer with me this year, so I’m not getting to as many students as in the past. I feel they are trying to monopolize my time, and that isn’t fair to the others on the list. I try to redirect but there is only so much you can get a 5 year old to stay on target sometimes.

Half of my time with J was spent trying to get him to be gentle and calm. He threw the letter dice rather than rolled them. He jumbled all the letter cards and tossed them like leaves. A lot of time was wasted with him having to pick items up off the floor that he had dropped by being so exuberant. Or is it manic? He was also a bit loud, and I had to remind him that there were other tutors just down the hall. The teacher tells me he hasn’t made any friends, so I’m trying to work on the most socially off-putting behaviors as well as teaching him how to read.

Not having ever had children, I’m sometimes at a loss on how to work with them. But, I’m learning, and the biggest thing I’m learning is that each one is different. So even if I figure it out, the next student will surprise me.

Sometimes I dread going into the school to tutor. I never know what I’m going to be doing and how it is going to go. Usually I remember to pray beforehand, and that helps. It reminds me that God is always in charge, and whatever happens is whatever is meant to happen. It also reminds me that God is always with me, even when I feel lost and alone.

Nativity pictogram

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I saw this little image of the Nativity yesterday and it started me thinking. It is kind of like a pictogram, or a Chinese written word. It has all the basics of the scene in a compact version. The idea is transmitted in a sort of shorthand.

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It shows Mary and Joseph with Jesus in the stable. It is a humble place, nothing fancy. It was probably drafty and simply put together. It wasn’t meant to be a holy place, but it became one.

Isn’t this like us?

The stable is our bodies, while our souls are inside. We are lit by the light of God.

God in us is the same as that image – Jesus being born in a stable.

Be that image. Let your body be that stable. Let it be that humble, worn, unexpected place where God gets in and makes everything different.

Nothing was the same after that moment.

God shows up in the most unexpected, unadorned, unusual ways. God shows up in the muck and mess of our daily lives. We don’t have to be special for God to come to us. We already are special. God loves us as we are – God made us this way.

Nativity scene with Magi – I almost missed the best part.

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I saw a picture of the nativity that took my breath away recently. Maybe it was the size. The picture is maybe three feet high by four feet across. Maybe it is the colors. Maybe it is the composition. Maybe it is all of it together, and more.

I apologize for the pictures. It is framed behind glass and there are a lot of fluorescent lights at the store. But, something is better than nothing.

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The first thing that got my attention is the tender scene of the Holy Family. It is to the right of the picture, bathed in light. It appears that all the light is coming from Jesus. Then I notice the shepherds kneeling, holding a candle for light, admiring Jesus. They were the first to be told by an angel that the Messiah had been born. They are joyous and overwhelmed. What they have waited for has finally happened.

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A dove looks on. This is the dove of peace, the dove of the Holy Spirit, and the dove of Noah, all at the same time. Doves are powerful symbols.

Then I wondered where the Magi were. There is no logical reason for thinking this. They don’t appear until 12 days later. The shepherds and the Magi aren’t together in the story, so they shouldn’t be together in this image.

Then I pan over, looking to the left. There they are, just getting off their camels. There they are, just about to come in. The artist has shown a moment in time, just for us, the viewer to see.

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The Magi haven’t seen Jesus yet, but they know He is there. He is the reason for their long journey.

Mary and Joseph haven’t seen the Magi yet. They don’t even know they are coming. They are still overwhelmed with the miracle that has just happened to them.

It is just us, the viewers, who are privy to this scene. We see it all.

It nearly made me cry, to see this moment. To think that I am seeing this slice of history. And to think I almost missed it. The Magi were there all along.

We read from left to right in America, and we view pictures the same way. Once you learn a pattern it is hard to break. I almost missed the Magi because I jumped straight ahead to Jesus.

When I saw them it was such a surprise that I gasped a little. There they were, and I almost missed them.

How often do we do this? We jump ahead to the good part, forgetting that it is all the good part. We forget that everything counts, every character, every brush stroke. We only see a piece and we miss out on the big picture.

The Magi are coming. They are on their way. They are in the desert, wandering like the Jews did, but not for forty years. They are following the same God who leads us all to freedom. At the end of the journey lies redemption, and proof that God is here, with us.

Choice – not coercion. On defining women by relationship to others.

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Women are defined by who they are connected to. Meeting new people, you’ll hear these questions – “Are you married?” or “Do you have children?” Both questions seek to define the woman by who and how she is related to others. Women are rarely seen as valid citizens, much less as people, if they are not connected. A woman who tries to define herself on her own merit and ability is in for a hard time.

Romance novels teach women an overwhelmingly unrealistic life goal of finding and keeping a spouse. Men don’t get this script. Ever. Men don’t fill themselves with a diet of definition by relationship to others. Men read about adventure, and superheros, and strength. The characters, their role models, are strong and independent. Women read about being swept off their feet. Men are active, and women are passive. Women’s lives are things that happen to them, acted on by others.

There are countless books for women and young girls about how to find and keep a mate – whether it is a boyfriend or a husband. There are specialized ones if the woman is over 35, where it is seen as more difficult to land a choice selection. The books are framed in the language of strategy and the hunt. Women have to seek out men, because otherwise they will be left out, and left wanting.

There are no books for men like this, and there are no books telling women how to live a happy life without a spouse, thank you very much. If you are single you are seen lesser-than. “Spinster” is not equal to “bachelor”. It should be. Being single, of either gender, needs to be viewed as a valid life choice, and not a failure. It is better to be single and happy than married and miserable.

Single women who wish to remain that way often go into nursing, teaching, or library services. All of these jobs pay enough money that a woman doesn’t have to have a spouse to support her. Yet all of these jobs are nurturing jobs. They involve taking care of and helping other people. So a woman is still defined by her relationship to others, whether she is single or not.

It wasn’t that long ago that women who got married lost their names. They were described as Mrs. John Smith – never as Mrs. Jane Smith. It was as if John suddenly developed a female alternate persona. It was never that the woman gained status, it was as if she just disappeared. By removing her first name and differentiating her by just her title of Mrs., she lost her identity as a unique person.

How often are women who have children referred to by the children’s names? She is “Sally’s Mom” – Sally is never seen as Jane’s daughter.

I bring these points up because sometimes you have to see injustice and imbalance before you can fix it. There is nothing wrong with being married, or having children. There is everything wrong with making those choices no longer choices, but mandatory. There is everything wrong with overt and covert social pressure to make women define themselves by getting married and having children. These are not life events that should be entered into lightly. These choices will affect a woman’s entire life. Women should marry or have children out of choice, not coercion, and know that they will be accepted if they choose not to do either of these things.

Are you ready?

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People are asking me one question right now. It is the same question they always ask this time of year. “Are you ready for Christmas?”

Are we ever? Really? Even if you’ve cleaned your house to the impossible standards of your mother in law, even if you’ve bought every relative and friend a present (or two), you aren’t ready.

You aren’t ready for Christmas, and you won’t ever be, and that is just fine.

Even if you think you are ready, there will always be something you missed. There will always be something that you forgot to do or a present you forgot to buy. Someone will always show up that you didn’t prepare for, and something will always happen that you weren’t ready for.

That’s part of Christmas.

We aren’t ever ready for Christmas, because we aren’t ever ready for Christ.

Christ is always more than we can handle, and always exactly what we need. Christ is the cup spilling over, an extra blanket on the bed, a second helping of your favorite meal, a friend there even before you pick up the phone. Whatever you have, Jesus has more of it and is giving it to you, with no questions asked.

And you can’t ever repay it. And that is OK.

You don’t have to pay it back. You have to pay it forward.

You pay it forward by being kind, by giving, by forgiving. You pay it forward by smiling at a stranger. You pay it forward by tipping the harried server extra at the buffet. You pay it forward by letting someone cut in line while in traffic.

The real meaning of Christmas has nothing to do with presents, and everything to do with presence.

It has to do with being real, and being kind, and being awake to the moment. Every moment is Christmas – every moment is a chance to serve Christ by being Christ to someone else.

So are you ready for Christmas? I’m not. And that is OK.

Christmas washes over you and pulls you down. You start to drown, your arm up, waving, begging for help. There you go, down for the count, and Jesus steps in.

Drop everything. Drop all your plans. Don’t buy a thing for Christmas. Don’t wrap anything.

Christmas isn’t about the gifts you give. It never was.

Christmas is about the amazing gift you get. You get God, right here, with you. You get God every day, in your heart, loving you – yes you – right now, as you are.

Are you ready?

Why have a happy childhood?

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What is the purpose of ensuring a happy childhood?

It is like Hollywood films. They always have happy endings. Then when you get to your own real life, you get miserable.

It is like women reading romance novels. They read about this amazing man who sweeps her off her feet, and then in reality, every man she meets doesn’t match up. He isn’t ruggedly handsome, he is rather plain. He isn’t a Duke, his hound dog is named Duke. He doesn’t have a six-pack belly, he drinks a six pack nightly.

So to try to create this false happy childhood isn’t fair. It sets children up to become miserable adults. They will learn the world does not revolve around them. They will learn that nobody thinks that everything they do is cute. They will find there are no special accommodations for them.

Bad mood.

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People try to blame women’s bad moods on their hormones, or the moon, or that they didn’t get enough sleep, or exercise, or healthy food. They never do this to men. It is that they are saying women can’t be anything other than happy and content and placid all the time. If they are upset or angry it is the result of something they did or didn’t do.

It never is the result of being talked down to, being belittled, being ignored, or overlooked.

Women are treated like children. We are treated as if we are incapable of making decisions, running households, running our own lives.

A female scientist is seen as an anomaly, a showpiece. She isn’t taken seriously. She is a woman first, a scientist second. Trade the word scientist for engineer, diplomat, doctor. It is all the same. Her gender is more important than her ability. Her hairstyle and clothing choices are questioned more than her skills.

How much of women’s anger comes from being treated as women, and not as people? How much from not being allowed to be who we want to be, but instead forced to fit into a socially acceptable mold?

A lot of anger comes from pain, and a lot of pain comes from being repressed, suppressed, oppressed.

I dare any man to go a month shaving half his body hair off every day, wearing hose that always bunches up in the wrong places, and shoes that destroy your feet and make it impossible to walk confidently.

And that is just taking care of the physical pain.

We need a “Black like Me” but for women. If men understood what it was like to be women, they’d get it. They’d stop blaming our moods on stupid things.

How much of women’s anger comes from dealing with men who treat them as less than OK? Who treat them as sexual objects? Who treat them as things?

Sure, we are in bad moods sometimes. It has little to do with what we have done, but what has been done to us.

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.