Crippled

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I opened a big heavy door last night. Behind the door was a tiny woman in a large wheelchair. I felt instantly that there was no way she could have opened that door on her own – her size alone would have made it difficult. Being in a wheelchair would make it near impossible. She looked like she had been waiting there a long time.

I asked her if I could open the door for her. A simple thing, and compassionate, I thought. I was trying to think of her needs.

She looked down her nose at me and said “I’m not a cripple.”

I was stunned. I felt as if I’d been slapped. Chastised. I hadn’t said or implied anything of the sort. I stammered that I open doors for everyone. I got nothing but a glare from her.

Storming down the hallway towards me was her male companion. He was very large – sci-fi convention large, and similarly hairy. He was rushing towards us, explaining something about how she isn’t a cripple, or doesn’t want help, or something like that. I got the impression that he has to excuse/explain her interactions with well-meaning strangers all the time.

I was speechless. I walked away, away from them, away from their issues, away from their backstory.

I wasn’t feeling very compassionate right then.

My thought when I walked away was a reply to “I’m not a cripple.” was to say, “OK, but you are a bitch.”

Perhaps she doesn’t want people to feel sorry for her. Perhaps she doesn’t want people to treat her differently. Perhaps she has a lot of baggage to this backstory, more baggage than can be accommodated on the average airplane.

But there has to be some word here. Something I’m missing to help unlock this. I open doors for everyone. For her to assume that I’m being, what? Condescending? Demeaning? Belittling? To her that is rude. It is like reverse racism where someone assumes that I’m going to treat them badly because I’m not the same race as them.

It is like being snapped at by a dog when you offer it food. She isn’t a dog, of course. But her behavior isn’t very human or humane.

I’m missing a word here that would explain this, that would define it. Perhaps a word doesn’t exist. Perhaps if I sketch out the shape around the word, it will fill itself in.

It makes me want to not offer to open doors for anyone, especially someone in a wheelchair. But then they may think that I’m being thoughtless and self centered.

I’m sorry for her, but not for her physical disability but for her emotional one.

And I know that feeling sorry for someone isn’t helpful, or compassionate, or desired. In a way, I wish I’d had more time to get to understand where she is coming from, but I don’t think she is in a place where she is going to share that. And I have to remember not to categorize every other person in a wheelchair the same way – they might not feel the same as she does, and they might appreciate someone being thoughtful.

Or – they might feel the same way. This will have to be played out on a case by case basis. I never want to offend, or to upset. I want to help. If my helping causes harm, I need to stop. More mediation, more prayer, and more writing will help me know more of this. I know that acting from a place of love is always a good start. It is hard to stand in that place when it is attacked. I want to learn from this. But I’m also concerned that this one bad interaction will cause me to stop, cause me to fear, cause me to be afraid that I’m going to get yelled at.

I want to open doors, but not if that steps on toes.

Get your way (get out of your way)

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There was a mom who came in the library recently. She picked out a bunch of books with her young son and then came up to the front desk to get a library card. Then she found out that because she lives in a different county she would have to pay a $50 annual fee to use this library.

She handled it perfectly. Some people get indignant. Some will shout “This is a free public library!” This is illogical. The books have to be paid for somehow. They don’t magically appear. Some think they are being clever and ask if they can use their relative’s address in this county. Or they ask to use the address on their license, which they have already admitted isn’t where they live.

Don’t try to get me to help you lie. It isn’t going to work. I’m not going to get fired for something stupid. I’m ok with bending some rules, but not the ones that I totally agree with. This one I agree with. You get what you pay for. Library funding in this state comes out of property taxes. You have to provide proof of current address to get a library card. It isn’t much to ask for to get to read all the books you want for free.

This lady not only took it in stride, she helped her son with it. He was distraught that he couldn’t get these books. He was sobbing, and his voice was going up in pitch and volume. In his mind, we were stealing from him. Some parents have not known how to deal with this strong emotion from their children and turn it back on the staff. Some have actually spun on us and said “you tell my daughter why she can’t have her books”. This is bad parenting.

We are strongly discouraged at work from saying what we want to say. Sometimes we are provided scripts for tricky situations. This is not one of those that we have a script for. I’m pointing out the ways this interaction has gone wrong in the past to illustrate how surprising this one was.

This mom picked up her son and hugged him. She patted him on the back. She made consoling sounds. And she totally took the blame. She realized that she should have checked about getting a card before she got the books with him. And she let him cry it out. She didn’t distract him. She let him have his emotion.

We are not comfortable with strong feelings. We are so afraid of them in ourselves and in others that we often try to cover them up or run right through them.

Breathe through them. Let them happen. If you push them down or shove them aside they will resurface in uglier ways, with terrible faces. Resentment becomes alcoholism. Being abused becomes incessant pain, stomach upset, or road rage. Feeling left out or ignored produces a bully.

It is ok to not get your way all the time. It is the mark of a well adjusted person who can handle that. It isn’t the feelings that are the problem. It is what you do with them. We’ve either forgotten that, or we never learned it. We want to push through the bad feeling straight to the good feeling. We shortchange our growth when we do this. Our society teaches quick fixes and instant gratification. Nothing good comes of this. There is no abiding sense of satisfaction that comes from this.

I remember once I’d spent the day hiking the dry riverbed at Fall Creek Falls state park with a friend. It was a bear of a hike. What would have been a 6 mile hike was more like 11 because it wasn’t a straight path what with climbing up and down the boulders in the riverbed. We were sore. We were exhausted. We hadn’t quite prepared for this.

When we finally got to the end, we went to the restaurant and had a fine meal. We were surrounded by people who had just driven there. We’d spent the day hiking, and they’d spent the day driving.

I have a strong suspicion that we appreciated our meal more.

The same is true with maturity. It takes the long path, and a lot of hard work. There are no shortcuts. And part of getting there is pain. But pain can be transformative. It can be alchemical. Work with it, and through it, and because of it. You’ll savor life more. Sure it hurts. But as Carl Jung says “There is no coming to consciousness without pain.”

Parasites

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Such a negative word. Parasite. You think of vermin and viruses. You think of slimy, gross things eating away.

This is such a human-centered way of thinking. If it doesn’t benefit us, it is bad. I’ve written along with others that our need to define things as good or bad is part of our undoing. We have this need to control in our need to define.

What is against us has to be bad. Of course.

But mosquitoes are what birds eat. Their song, their strength in flight, is fed by these insects that cause us torment.

Who knows about tapeworms and viruses? Who knows what purpose they play? Do we have to know?

When we take antibiotics, anti-life by definition, we are killing these very viruses. They are growing and thriving in an environment that is hospitable for them. Perhaps kinder would be to just prevent the environment in the first place.

Is it the fault of moss that it grows in a wet place? No. So if you don’t want moss, fix what is causing the moisture.

What about cancer? Cancer is mindless, but it grows and divides. Is it alive?

Part of the mission of Star Trek was to seek out new life.

They flew around the universe encountering countless beings that looked like people and countless more entities that looked nothing like life. Week after week we learned along with them to see value in these beings, these entities. We learned to see them as having a purpose, as having sentience.

The most important thing we can learn is that just because their purpose and sentience isn’t the same as ours doesn’t make it wrong.

We’ve heard that just because someone else is on a different path doesn’t mean they are lost.

So, does this mean that we allow the tapeworm to move in? Does this mean we show compassion to cancer and we don’t cut it out?

These are hard questions, and I’m not sure I have the answers.

I think there is something in there about boundaries.

I’ve heard one definition of jealousy is thinking that someone has something that is yours.

Surely your body is yours.

But if it is, consider this. A rabbi once said that “Is that your nose? Where is your receipt?”

We don’t create ourselves. We have some influence on our bodies by what we eat and if we exercise. We can somewhat shape ourselves. But for the most part our bodies are gifts to us. Unmerited.

Our bodies are temples. Our bodies house our souls. Even our souls are gifts. Consciousness is a gift of the Creator.

Who are we to refuse entrance to other members of creation?

Now, if we keep our bodies in bad shape we will invite more things than we might know how to deal with.

It is like having a small house and hosting a huge party. We might have a lot more party-goers than we know what to do with. We might run out of party food and they will start eating our staples. We might have to call the police.

But what happens when the party goers are cancer? Is the doctor the police? Doubtful, considering the nature of Western medicine. It treats the symptom rather than the cause. But that is the focus of another post, another day.

I don’t have the answers. I’m OK with asking the questions and living into the answers. Sometimes just asking the questions is a good start.

The biggest thing I want to get across is that just because something isn’t for us, isn’t part of our plan, doesn’t seem to have a purpose that benefits us – doesn’t mean it is bad. It just is. It is part of creation. Perhaps we don’t have eyes to see the purpose. Perhaps it doesn’t have a purpose, and perhaps we need to be OK with that.

We tend to want answers, and closure. Perhaps it is healthier just to observe without judgment.

Marriage license

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I would like to be able to marry people. I don’t mean I want to become a polygamist. I want to perform wedding ceremonies. In fact, I want to be able to perform all sorts of life ceremonies for people.

The problem is that I’m not a minister of any church in any official fashion. Sure, we are all ministers, but apparently that is just lip service. As far as the law is concerned, being a member of the Body of Christ isn’t good enough – you actually have to be ordained to marry people.

Now, I want to perform life ceremonies for people who don’t go to church. There are plenty of people who need ceremonies who aren’t members of church. The church has turned off and turned away people. The church has become irrelevant to many people’s lives. It has become hypocritical and hyper judgmental. People don’t feel welcome in church.

But they still need ceremonies.

We humans need ceremonies. We need to mark transitions from Then to Now. We need to indicate that something is different. Ceremony and ritual is part of what makes us human. We need closure. We use ceremonies to mark time and growth.

Ceremonies and rituals are like doors. We walk through them, and then we are different. It isn’t the door that makes us different, it is the act of walking, intentionally, through that door. It keeps us mindful and aware.

I simply don’t understand why the person performing the ceremony has to be credentialed. It isn’t like she or he is doing something complicated. A few words, said meaningfully, is all. There is no magic trick. There is no surgery, actually binding people together. It seems that it would make more sense to look at the intent of the people getting married more than the person doing the ceremony. Look how many divorces take place all the time these days, and they were married by credentialed people. So that isn’t working. It isn’t the people performing the ceremony that makes the difference.

Now, you don’t have to be a minister to perform a marriage ceremony. You can be a judge, or a captain of a ship for instance. There are plenty of non-religious people who can marry two people together – but I don’t fit any of those categories.

I wonder if there would be simply something to just going to the county clerk’s office to register (yes, you have to register) to be able to marry people. I don’t think there is any proof that you have to provide to be able to do this. I don’t plan on taking money for it – but I do want it to be legal. There are certain mail-order ministries that aren’t accepted as valid proofs of being a minister.

But again, we are all ministers. I would think that the simple fact that I want to be able to do this, to help out my friends who want to get married or have other ceremonies but don’t go to church, would count. That is a ministry.

I tutor ESL kindergartners. That is a ministry too. But I didn’t get tested or have to be certified. Sure, there was a criminal background check, but nobody asked for proof that I actually had a degree in English or had tutored before. That seems far more relevant.

But two people who want to get married? That is all them. They are doing the hard stuff. The words said on the wedding day don’t make you married. It is everything you do after that.

Stillness

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We are afraid of the stillness, the quiet time. We pack our days with things to do. We are terrible about allowing our bodies and minds to rest.

We can’t sit still. We have our phones out, checking in with the news, with friends whenever we have a spare moment. In reality we are checking out. We are divorcing ourselves from what is going on right there, right then.

When was the last time you just stood in line, just stood there?

So much for the mantra “Be Here Now”. We are nowhere and everywhere and timeless. We are either running late or planning ahead, but we are rarely right here and right now.

Stillness is healing.

Seeds have to be in darkness for a while before they can grow. The sun isn’t always shining. The rain helps plants to grow.

Stillness is a time of quiet energy. Look around you at nature. We have so divorced ourselves from the cycles of nature that we don’t even know what our own nature is. We sit inside, where we can adjust the temperature and light to our liking. We have confused ourselves, thinking that we are something separate from nature.

So when the crash comes, we fall hard. We fight against it, seeing it as a weakness. It is the simple inevitable result of not taking time out.

Our brains, our bodies, our souls must have rest.

We forget to schedule this. We work and push and stretch so much we wear out sooner than we should. Depression sinks in. Lethargy. Doldrums. We feel adrift in an empty sea.

We can fight it, or we can see the rocking of the sea as the gentle rocking of a mother, holding us in her arms, helping guide us to nourishing, healing sleep.

Children are often resistant to go to sleep. They feel they are going to miss something. We are the same way, for the same reason, as adults.

Now, there is also something to the idea of not being adrift too long. It is all too easy to stay out there forever and never get anywhere. I’ve written a lot about how to jumpstart your creative self, how to get past the self censor that lurks in all of us.

But it is also important to not see the down time as an enemy. You need some of it to regroup, recommit, restore. Balance is essential. So it is important to plan for quiet times. Schedule them in.

I’ve discovered that physical group exercise is a time out for my head. I don’t think about what is going on for 75 minutes. Someone tells me what to do and I do it, and meanwhile I get a workout. I also know that creative time is good. It is quiet yet productive. Sometimes it isn’t about making a specific thing so much as letting the Spirit work through me. In those times I step aside, taking a mental break.

If music is the space between the notes as Mozart says, then “down time” is more important than the up time. It shapes it. It gives it meaning. It provides content.

Try this meditation. It was provided to me in a recent class. Say each phrase out loud, or have someone do it for you. Breathe for several moments after each phrase. Let it sink in.

Be still and know that I am God.

Be still and know that I am.

Be still and know.

Be still.

Be.

Waiting. (on family, blood and otherwise)

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I’m at the Frist, a Nashville art museum. My husband asked to go this time. Plenty of times I’ve wanted to go and he has come along to humor me. I’ve asked him repeatedly to tell me if there is something he wants to do. It is important to me that he express himself. I want him to be the best he can be – to be the person he is meant to be.

I don’t want him to just go along with what I want because I want it. That is how he was raised. Just agree. Keep the peace. Your opinion doesn’t matter.

I’m trying to retrain him. It is kind of like getting a shelter dog.

This show is on Art Deco cars. There are actual cars inside this museum. I’m a little curious about how they got in here. The place is packed. I think it is smart that they timed this with the movie “The Great Gatsby”.

I’m bored senseless.

I’m glad there is a bench for me to sit on, because my husband has taken three times as long as I expected in the first room alone.

I remember a time when I was working in Chattanooga. A family came into the craft store I managed. It was the middle of the day and they were all a little tired and cranky. Naps should be built into vacations, but they aren’t.

The mom came in and her son, all of 4 or 5, came in just afterwards. He took one quick look around and, realizing there were no toys there for him, said in a loud voice “All right Mom, time to go!” Mom’s smile faded. Her shoulders slumped, and she started to leave.

Something struck me as very wrong about this. I decided to speak up.

As her son stomped towards the door, I said “Hold on, buckaroo.” That got his attention, and Mom’s. So far, so good.

You run a risk when you challenge people’s children. The parents tend to take it personally, as a statement against their parenting skills. Sometimes it is. But sometimes it does indeed “take a village.”

I continued. I made a pretty good guess about what they had been up to today to illustrate a point. I started with “I bet that you’ve been to the Aquarium and to the Creative Discovery Museum today.” Everything hinged on this being true. Yup. They had, he nodded. So far, so good.

I followed with “I bet your Mom waited on you while you were there, having a good time.” Also a guess, but a safe one. This looked like a self-sacrificing kind of Mom. Yup, another nod. The set up was complete. I continued. “This is a place that your Mom wants to see. It is your turn to wait on her. That is part of being in a family.”

Boom. He got it. He sat down in a corner, out of the way, and was perfect. He waited, patiently.

Mom and Dad were stunned. They stared at me. “Can we bring him back for behavioral training?” they asked. I explained that no, it isn’t about him. It is about them. They have to explain the give and take of being in a family. I explained that he wants to please them and not to just get his way all the time. He needs to learn about sharing. They have to explain it.

I’m reminded of the Hawaiian word “ohana” – nobody gets left behind. This is a concept some of us learned from the movie “Lilo and Stitch”. It is a word for family. In the biggest concept it means all family – blood, adopted, and intentional.

We are family, my husband and I. Family isn’t about blood. It is a feeling. We chose each other. We choose to be together, to look out for each other, to cheer each other on. We learned from the friend who married us that “Joy shared doubles it, trouble shared halves it.” That is part of what being in a family means too.

You can be blood kin to somebody and they aren’t very nice. You can have a better relationship with friends than your own kin. Family isn’t about blood but action. You have to make a family to be in a family.

Sometimes being in a family isn’t easy. Sometimes it isn’t very fun.

Right now I’m feeling pretty bored. But I’m glad I’ve got a way to write in my blog while I wait. I’m glad we got to be here for free. And I’m glad that he asked to go to this, and is enjoying it so much.

I’m grateful for this funny little family we have.

Why I wear equal-armed crosses.

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I love equal armed crosses. They look like plus signs, rather than crucifixes. Sometimes they are known as Greek Crosses, but I’ve also seen the design in Tibetan double dorjes. There is something powerful about this image. I understand it as (from North to South) meaning “Heaven” and (from West to East) meaning “Earth”. Thus, when the two are joined, it means Heaven meeting Earth. It means God is with us, here, now. It means that God isn’t “up there” but “right here”.

I like this symbol far more than the image of a cross with a naked dead body on it. There is something really gory about using a dead guy as a symbol of faith. I get the whole “Jesus died for our sins” concept, but I’d rather think of Jesus being proof that God is real, that He cares about us, and that He wants us to live and love in this way – to serve all people in the same way that Jesus did.

I’m really wrestling with the idea of “Jesus died for our sins”. I’m not really a fan of it. We are human. We are faulty. We make mistakes. That is part of the package. The more I focus on the fact that I can’t be perfect, the further I get from where I need to be. I understand the Jewish concept of atonement – that you’d make some mistake and you’d have to pay for it by some innocent animal being sacrificed for you. So the idea of Jesus is the same. He’s the firstborn, unblemished male – just like what is prescribed for atonement. He was sacrificed – he took on the sins of the world.

Great. Now I have that to feel guilty for. My sins caused this totally innocent guy to get crucified. Crucifixion is a horrible way to go. Long, slow – you suffocate to death.

I feel guilty eating animals. I don’t see why they have to die so I can live. So why would I get some amount of peace from this perfectly innocent person being put to death so I can have eternal life?

This makes no sense.

I’d rather focus on what Jesus did. He stood up to the religious authorities of the day. He broke rules that stood in the way of what really needed to happen. He healed people on the Sabbath. He healed people who were “unclean”. He touched people who were considered outcasts. He hung out with the forgotten, the ignored, the “least of these.” He taught that God is real, not some story in a picture book.

He took away the authority and power from the educated authorities and gave it away to the street people. His disciples weren’t educated or special. He found them doing their jobs and asked them to follow him. They dropped everything they had and started to help him out. I know I don’t have that kind of discipline. Most of us don’t.

Here’s another reason I like equal armed crosses. Because they aren’t crucifixes, they aren’t immediately associated with Christians. I’m a little wary of that association. There are plenty of people who say they are Christian and they use it as an excuse to attack gays, women, immigrants – well, everyone who isn’t married, white, and American.

Jesus wasn’t American, and he wasn’t white. And he never married. Jesus tells us a lot about love and not judging, yet too many “Christians” forget this and focus on the words of Paul rather than Jesus. Anybody who quotes Paul to me as justification for their reason to exclude people just doesn’t get it. And I’m sorry for them.

Perhaps I should say I am a follower of “the Way” – the old term that the early Jesus followers used. Or that I’m all about the Tao of Jesus. That has a certain ring to it.

I’d rather have no church buildings and no ministers. We are told to build up our treasures in Heaven – yet we spend all this money on stained glass windows and altars and vestments. Meanwhile people are still homeless and starving. We are told to not call anyone Rabbi or teacher – because we have just one Father in heaven. Yet we do these things. How have we gotten so far away from the Source?

Something has to change.

I know I’m not alone in thinking this. It is like we have become addicted to the IDEA of Jesus. And we’ve put so much on him and around him that we’ve forgotten how simple it is to just let him work through us and in us and on us, to use us to heal the wounds.

I don’t feel guilty really for Jesus dying for me, I feel guilty that he died and it didn’t seem to make a lot of difference. People are still people, and still faulty. People are still using religion as an excuse to attack and kill other people.

Sure, there are some that get it. There are some that work in food banks. There are some that volunteer at shelters.

But remember the song “They will know we are Christians by our love”? Sadly, this isn’t true. It is hard to tell people you are Christian. They clam up. They get self-conscious. They stop being themselves. They think you are going to judge them – and with good reason.

We have to change this. We have to be the change in the world. We have to stop talking about Jesus and start BEING Jesus.

Sure, I don’t have all the answers. Sure, I’ve mentioned this before. But I think about it every morning when I go to put on a necklace that I want to be a good example of love, and that I don’t feel comfortable wearing a cross to do it. And something feels wrong about that. It isn’t the world’s fault. It is the Church’s fault. We are only as strong as our weakest link – and that is the WBC, that is Swaggart, Roberts, Osteen, etc. That is all the “ministers” who use Jesus as a moneymaker. That is all the megachurches that are so big they could house half a city’s amount of homeless, but don’t. That is us.

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Car. (prevention is cheaper than cure)

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Prevention is cheaper than cure.

We all know what is necessary to get healthy. Yet so few of us do it. What is the impetus that causes some people to take matters in their own hands and be active about their health?

Fear of disease motivates some, but for some that causes a return to old ways. They are worried about their health, but the only tool they have for dealing with worry is bad for them. So they eat the wrong things or smoke or drink. The reason for their ill health is from too much of bad things, and too little of good things. The things that they use for comfort are the very things that are causing the problem that they need comfort about. It is a horrible cycle.

Then some people have spent so much time being miserable that they are afraid of change. They would rather continue to be miserable than try something new.

Change is scary.

If you are walking on a road with no cars on it, you don’t realize that you need to move over to the side of the road. You’ve never seen a car. You might have heard stories about cars, and about how dangerous they are, but you’ve never seen one yourself, so you don’t know for sure.

They won’t run you down, certainly.

So then you walk along a little further. You see a person on the side of the road. She’s been hit pretty badly before, but she’s limping along. She’s got a cane, and she’s still walking.

She tells you about the car that hit her. She got away with just a broken leg.

You may think, boy, she is unlucky, but that won’t happen to me.

Then you walk a little further, and you see someone who is in a wheelchair. He tells you about the car that hit him. Maybe you start to think there might be something to this car thing that you should take seriously – but you still haven’t seen one yet.

Then you walk a little further, and you start to see someone on the side of the road. He’s dead. And you look ahead, and you see more and more people who are hobbling, and in wheelchairs, or dead.

Way up ahead you see people who are OK. They are not only walking, but they are running. They are enjoying this road. They are on the side, out of the path of the cars. They decided to take the warnings seriously.

You can’t get off this road. But you can stay out of the way of the cars.

The cars are cancer. Diabetes. Heart disease. They are coming. They are big, and they hit hard.

Our society suffers from way too many preventable diseases. We are number one, alright, in obesity. We eat too much, and too much of the wrong thing. We gorge ourselves on doughnuts out of our desperation. We drown our sorrows with our friend Jack.

We were sold the image of the Marlboro Man, all tough and rugged. He didn’t look so tough in the cancer ward, hooked up to oxygen and chemo drugs. He died, telling people that they needed to know how dangerous cigarettes are.

A car is coming. Get out of the way.

You know what is necessary. We know all the don’ts.

Don’t smoke, don’t eat too much meat (if at all), don’t eat fried foods. Drop caffeine and processed sugar. Avoid alcohol and drugs.

But what do you do? Those are things we use to comfort ourselves. We self-medicate with food.

Learn anger management. Breathe deeply and consciously. Take yoga. Go for a walk. Take up a hobby. Journal. Practice compassion and forgiveness – towards yourself and others. Eat vegetables. Have a rainbow on your plate. Get enough sleep. Make time to spend with friends.

This stuff that is stuck in your head has to get out somehow. There are safe ways to get it out.

Perspective is important.

There is a story about a person walking towards a town. He sees another man walking away from the town and asks him about it. He says it is terrible. The people are mean, the houses are small, and the food is bland. He walks on a little further. He sees another man walking away from the town and asks him the same question. The man says that the people are nice and the food is amazing. It is the same town.

This can be a wonderful journey or a terrible one. The choice is yours.

The car is coming. Choose wisely. You aren’t special, and you aren’t lucky. It will hit you if you aren’t mindful. Be mindful. Don’t wake up 10 years from now and wonder how you got so sick and out of shape. Take the time now.

It isn’t easy. It is OK to take baby steps first. Ease towards the side. Start walking a little. Start eating better. Nobody changes overnight. But head that way.

Car.

Get out of the way.

It takes two to tango (sluts and studs)

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What is the deal with demonizing women over sex? It is the girl who “puts out” in high school who is slut-shamed, while the guy she had sex with is a “stud”. It is the single mother who gets attacked by society – not the guy who left her.

It takes two to tango.

It makes no sense that if it takes two to have sex, one should be praised for it and the other should be attacked for it. Guys can’t get a “good” reputation unless they have sex with girls who get a “bad” reputation because of it.

This is totally illogical.

Let’s think about what happens if she gets pregnant. You’d think that a single mother was the worst member of our society by the support she doesn’t get. She at least chose to stay. In a way, she couldn’t leave. She’s the one who is pregnant. She can’t leave the situation as easily as the guy can. She can’t pack up in the middle of the night and get out of town. But she chose to stay the course. She chose to try to handle the situation on her own.

She could have had an abortion (also demonizing her in our culture). She could have chosen to put up the child for adoption (possibly the only socially acceptable way out).

But no matter what, she is considered damaged goods from then on. Whatever choice she makes she is considered lesser.

The guy? He’s free to go. Nothing on his record. Get out of jail free, and in fact, he might even have a reputation as a “bad boy”, which conversely is a good thing. Way too many romances are written about the “bad boy” as a desirable thing. Way too many women read this perverted “script”, which is even more strangely, written by women. Women are teaching women to seek their very undoing.

So women are taught over and over to seek something that isn’t good for them. Go for the “bad boy”. Go for the one who will love you and leave you. Well, there might not be a whole lot of love there. Sometimes he isn’t Mr. Right, so much as Mr. Right Now.

This is the modern witch trial. Any woman who deviates from the norm, from what is expected, is seen as evil. She isn’t burned. But she is essentially excommunicated. She is excluded from society, is seen as lesser-than. Her value as a woman, as a person, is lessened.

And the guy’s value is increased.

Something is profoundly wrong about this.

If it takes two to do the deed, how come there are two different results? How come one is attacked for it and one is praised for it?

Easy (schooled by a kindergartner)

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I have tutored ESL kindergartners for two years now. I participate in a program that is sponsored by the Mayor of my city. He allows Metro employees to tutor in Metro schools on work time for an hour a week. Since I have a degree in English and I’ve tutored students with learning disabilities before, I thought this would be a great thing to do. I paired up with a ESL kindergarten teacher that I knew from my work who is fun and enthusiastic. I wanted to support her in her mission.

The first year I was tutoring ESL students from as close as Mexico and as far away as Uzbekistan. There were some students who were from America that needed a little extra help as well, as the class has a mixed skill level. Many of these children had never been to school or been away from their parents before. There was a lot for them to learn, and it wasn’t all letters and numbers.

But there was also a lot that they taught me.

I remember one time it was raining very hard. I had two girls, one after the other, who wanted easy work. There was something about the rain that made them want to retreat, to not push. It is like comfort food, the easy work.

I had a range of tools to work with. The easy stuff was a board with magnetic letters. We could make words with it or just write out the alphabet and sing the song. I needed it for some of the other students on my list that day, but I was surprised that Mariela and Maftuna both wanted this easy work. They had gotten past that level a month earlier. But today they both insisted on working on the ABCs and singing the song.

I was amazed, and a little frustrated. I wanted them to work, to push, to grow – not to take it easy and go backwards.

I expressed my frustration with Maftuna, the second girl. Why do you want this? This is easy. You can do more than this.

And this tiny girl, this 5 year old who had just learned English this year, looked at me and thought about it. She figured out how to say her mind with the few words she had so far.

She said “It’s easy for you” with the emphasis on the last word.

True. You got me. It is easy for me. But it is hard for her. I’d forgotten. I wasn’t seeing it from her perspective.

This tiny girl with the dark eyes and serious face schooled me.

Maftuna reminded me that not everything is always easy for everyone. Sometimes we need a break. Sometimes we need to retreat to old standbys. Sometimes we need the simple stuff. And sometimes we forget that just because it is easy for us doesn’t mean it is easy for someone else.

We forget how much work we had to put in to get where we are. The marathoner may not know how to encourage the starting runner. The master gardener may not remember how hard it is to get the mix of fertilizer right to keep the plants alive. Sometimes you have done something so often and for so long you don’t even remember how you got to where you are.

Part of compassion is seeing things from other people’s viewpoints. Sometimes that means literally getting down to their level. That day I was put in my place by a 5 year old from Uzbekistan. And I’m glad. She gave me a gift that day.