Thoughts While Watching the Municipal Band Concert on my Anniversary

The Grandview Park Bandshell.  Lots of folks sitting
behind us and to either side of us.

- This is a PERFECT night for an outdoor concert!  It's the last concert of the year, and I bet it's the first concert they've had this summer where the temperature was under 90.  So glad hubby suggested this.

- A mother is sitting on a blanket right by us with the most adorable little baby.  Probably just under a year old.  Almost makes me miss the baby years . . . or look forward to the grandma years.

- I'm looking at the program -- I don't recognize a single song until the "Ultimate Patriotic Sing-along" at the end. Hmm.  Maybe I'll recognize them when I hear them.

- A couple just rode up in front of us on their bikes.  They lay their bikes down, got out their folding chairs, and the woman took off her shoes.  She's walking around in the grass in her socks.  I'm not sure why that seems odd to me.

- And speaking of that grass, it is so dead.  I'm grateful tonight for our sprinkler system, or we'd be trying to sell our house in the near future with a dead, brown lawn.

- I still don't know any of the music. It's all good music, but I don't know it.  And that baby is still dang adorable.

- I love this bandshell.  Everytime I'm here, I think about how awesome it would be to go to a Shakespeare in the Park production here.  Or to be in one.  A couple summers ago, I was in a Shakespeare in the Park evening in the Rose Garden, right behind this bandshell.  That was cool.  This would be cooler.

- Some poor lady behind us is having a coughing fit that won't quit.  I hope she's okay.  I wonder if I need to offer her a mint or something.

- My knees hurt.  I must be getting old if I can't sit through an hour long concert without my knees hurting.



The results of drought in Iowa.

- Aha -- a medley of movie music.  I know most of these.

- The host, Dave Madsen, told a Sven and Olie joke.  I think he tells at least one at every concert.  Until these concerts, I'd never heard a Sven and Olie joke outside of Lindsborg.

- The fountains spouting out of the front of the stage are very soothing.  A fen shui thing, I guess.  Maybe we need to invest in one of those little inside fountain things.  And oh my gosh, this baby is too adorable to stand!!!

- The Ultimate Patriotic Sing-Along ends with "God Bless the U.S.A.".  One image always pops into my head when I hear this song.  The gulf war started the last day of the first semester of my first year of teaching.  The next day was a teacher work day.  Everybody was listening to their radios, watching TVs, talking about the war while we finished our grades and got them in.  I vividly remember walking into a fellow teacher's quiet, empty room where she was sitting at her desk with the radio on beside her.  This song was playing.  And she was crying.  It's hard not to cry when I hear this song.

- And the concert's over.  This is a darn good group of musicians for a volunteer municipal band in a not-terribly-big city.  An enjoyable evening . . . a nice way to celebrate 23 years of marriage.

Endorphins -- Puh

What is this malarkey about exercise making you feel good?  How people get addicted to the endorphins and all.  Are you kidding me?

Do you know how I feel when I come home from a serious bout of exercising?  My muscles are tired . . . my heart is tired . . . my emotions are tired from the strain of forcing myself to keep exercising when I so desperately wanted to quit.  I’m sweaty and gross, which I hate.  I usually have just enough energy to drag my sorry butt into the house and sit it on the couch . . . then I don’t move for an hour or so because I’m miserable.

Endorphins.  Yeah, right.

It’s even worse when I am actually doing the exercise.  Not the pain, necessarily – I’m smart enough not to continue if anything seriously hurts.  It’s a mental thing.  Forcing myself to keep moving on that treadmill, headed to . . . where?  Accomplishing what?  Lift those weights over and over again . . . to what purpose?  Yes, yes, I know – I’m making my body stronger, more fit.  But in that moment, there is no point to the activity and it’s all I can do to force myself to continue.  The only way I can make myself keep going on the treadmill is if I’m completely mentally lost in something I’m reading.  TV doesn’t do it.  Writing probably would, but I haven’t figured out a way to walk and write at the same time. 

Dance class is different.  I wish I could take dance three times a week.  I still come home completely exhausted, but I at least enjoy it while I’m doing it.  Helping my friends load their moving truck the other day was better, too.  It worked my muscles and exhausted me, but I had no problem continuing because there was significant purpose to my activity.  Treadmill?  Bleh.

One of the primary principles I go by in education is to not require a student to use more than one difficult new skill at a time.  Working out at the gym defies this rule.  It tries to strengthen my body and my will simultaneously.  Maybe it’s efficient, but as with my students, it only serves to make me hate the stuff. 

Endorphins shmendorphins.  Give me chocolate.

Weeding

It is HELLISHLY hot in the Midwest these days.  And no rain where we are.  Farmers are losing their crops.  Gardeners are losing their gardens.  And families expecting to have to sell their houses in the next few months are working desperately to keep their lawns alive.  The heat and drought are killing everything.

UGH . . . the yard weed I hate the most

Except the weeds.

Fascinating phenomenon, isn’t it?  Weeds just grow the heck out of themselves no matter what.  Profitable plants – plants that give us food, plants that beautify our landscape – they require care.   They require water and sunshine and sometimes extra nourishment on our part.  We have to work to make those plants grow and prosper.  We have to fight to keep them alive.

But not weeds.  They will thrive no matter what the weather and despite our efforts to, literally, root them out.  Phil from church is a bean farmer.  Because they are now farming without herbicides (the New Age of farming), they are having to pull the weeds in his bean field by hand.  Daily.  In 100-degree heat.  Wow.

My friend Jana waxed philosophical on the weed issue the other day on Facebook.  “The ‘weeds’ in my life don’t require anything to grow, thrive and do just fine.”  Ain’t it the truth.  If I wanted to, I could sit back, relax, and let my sins and bad habits swarm over me – and swarm they would.  They require NO coaxing, NO nurturing, NO feeding.  They feed on me and will overcome me completely if I don’t do them daily battle.

The Christ-like qualities, however, require nurture and tending.  They don’t grow of their own accord; they must be cultivated.  Actively.  Daily.  None of this Carl Rogers baloney that we're all basically good inside and are just messed up by our environment.  No parent who really paid attention to their children could believe that nonsense.  We are born selfish, little snits.  We must be trained to be good -- cultivated to do right.  And the change only becomes a genuine change of nature when Christ gets involved.

Just another reminder I needed today. 

Sometimes, It's So That . . .

Sometimes we need reminders . . .

The sermon yesterday was about Lazarus being raised from the dead.  When Jesus first hears that Lazarus is sick, he says, “This sickness will not end in death.  No, it is for God’s glory, so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” (John 11)

A drama we are working on for the first Sunday in August is based on the blind man Jesus heals in John 9.  When his disciples asked him, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  Jesus replied, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

Sometimes, when bad things happen to me, it’s because I brought it on myself.  But sometimes not. 

Sometimes, we lose jobs so that the works of God might be displayed in us.

Sometimes, we go through serious health crises so that God’s Son may be glorified through us.

Sometimes, we experience failure and discouragement so that others see God’s glory in how we respond.

Sometimes, evil is allowed to show its ugly face (like, in a movie theater) so that God's face shines more brightly by contrast.

Sometimes, it’s about us.  And sometimes, it’s about so much more.

Sometimes, I just need a reminder.

CINOs Without a Shepherd

“You could say that many, many Christians are atheists unawares.” – Os Guinness

Ouch.

This is the great fear of many a believer.  We read Jesus’ words that narrow is the gate that leads to life and few there are who find it . . . and we fear that we aren’t one of the few.  Many books have been written to reassure people of their salvation.  And that’s all well and good, I suppose.  But I suspect there is more need these days to shake up those who should not be assured, because I fear there are a lot of us.

A huge number of people reject Christianity not because of its tenets but because of the lives of those who claim to hold to its tenets.  Folks look at “Christians” and don’t want to be one of those.  I wish those folks would understand this Guinness quote – that those “Christians” turning them off to the faith are actually atheists unawares.  They may claim Christ with their lips, but they walk atheism with their feet.

That may sound harsh, but understand that I direct the harshness to myself as well. My heart is increasingly heavy about CINOs – Christians In Name Only.  Christianity seems to be the default to check in the Religion box around here.  A lot of Americans think of themselves as Christians just because they grew up in America, and their parents went to church, and they go at Christmas and Easter, and they have a Bible . . . somewhere . . .

Of the masses of people who will be sitting in Christian worship services this coming Sunday morning, I fear that the vast majority are not on that road to the narrow gate.  They are happy to have Jesus as their Savior, but have no real intention of making him their Lord.  They love the god that they have created in their mind -- who gives them good things, smiles and forgives all their foibles, rushes in to save the day when life gets hard . . .  but they don’t want much to do with the real God – who actually has expectations of them and their time here on earth.

Even those of us who are very sincere in our desire to worship and serve Christ, if we really looked at our lives closely, don’t act on what we say we believe.  We live essentially like the rest of the world – we just vote Republican and stick a fish on our car.  On a day to day basis, we don’t act on our faith.  We don’t believe this stuff strongly enough to really risk much by it.  We are atheists unawares.

This is about more than our eternal destiny . . . this is about all we’re missing here on earth.  I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly, Jesus says in John 10.  But read the rest of that chapter carefully -- the promise only applies if Jesus is your Shepherd.

The Cost of a Blood-Letting

The interim health insurance we have until hubby gets another job has a very high deductible.  This means that in the case of regular doctor visits and minor situations, we essentially have no insurance at all.  This means that I am getting a small taste of what it is like for folks who have no health insurance. 

My Pravachol prescription ran out a little while ago (that’s a cholesterol med, if you didn’t know).  My doctor wouldn’t call in a renewal for the prescription because he said I’m due for more bloodwork to check my cholesterol.  Well, maybe so.  But I explained to his office folk our situation and asked if he could extend that prescription a little bit longer, just until we’re covered by someone again.  He graciously called in a 90-day extension.

However, those 90 days are now up, and I’m guessing he’s not going to do that trick for me another time.  So, I called the office again, asking if they could tell me what it would cost to get that bloodwork done.  About $55 for the bloodwork – plus a $9 “letting fee”?  (That may not be what they called it, but that’s the image I got in my head . . . a medieval blood-letting.)  Oh, and then the regular $129 office visit.

Wow. 

I really do like my doctor.  He’s kind, gracious, and attentive.  I genuinely enjoy my visits with him.  But 10 minutes to hear him say, “Yep, the stuff still works,” and have him hand me a signed half-sheet of paper to take to the Target pharmacy – I doubt that’s worth $129.  And frankly, knowing my doctor, I bet he would agree with me. 

If you were following our Panama trip adventures, you read that we each got our teeth cleaned in Boquete for $40.  $120 total.  That $120 would have paid for one cleaning by our dentist (whom we love) here in Sioux City without the insurance coverage.

Yes, folks we need health care reform.  But before my liberal friends start their victory dance, I’ll clarify that I still don’t believe Obamacare is the change we all need.  Obamacare strikes me as trying to kill a fly with a Hummer: it may get the job done, but not without causing a lot of other damage that would be a lot worse.  I just heard a statistic that some 70% of American physicians are considering leaving the profession once Obamacare goes into full force.  Now, granted, that number may be skewed high for political purposes, and most of that 70% wouldn't actually end up leaving anyway.  But if even 20% of them leave, we're screwed.

I give the man credit for forcing the country to deal with the issue – Congress had kept it on the back burner for too long – but this was not the way to do it.  How should we do it?  Sorry, I don’t have that answer.  But I pray we will have the sense to recognize a cure that’s worse than the disease.  In the meantime, I guess I’ll be finding out what my cholesterol is like these days without Pravachol.  I've been wanting to know anyway.

 

Three Lies

Three lies we tell kids about education (or at least let them believe):

1) Education is about your future.  It is not.  Well, yes, it is, but not entirely. It affects your future, but it’s more than that. Education is about your NOW. 

Those communication skills you’re learning in English class are what help you convince your parents that you’re ready for the responsibility of a car.  That science you study may keep you from killing yourself or someone else on the 4^th of July.  The history you now know will explain why this year’s Presidential election matters so much.  The literature you’re reading is opening your mind to how people work so you can make decisions about the relationships you involve yourself in today.  What you learn prepares you for the future, but the future starts now, if you’re paying attention.

2) Education is something someone else does to you.  Oh, no.  Education is something you do to yourself.  Teachers, books, classes, internet, universities . . . these are merely tools for your use. 

Don’t accept an education – demand an education.  Join the Great Conversation. Find those classic books out there that have changed the world and make them divulge their wisdom to you.  Look at your teachers and say, “I need this skill.  You can teach it.  Do it.”  Don’t allow society’s low expectations of teenagers to keep you content with the commonplace – imprisoned in the mundaneness of fashion, celebrity, trends, entertainment.  Grab the world by the nape of the neck and say, “You have more for me than this!  Hand it over!”

3) Your education is complete when you graduate.  Absolutely not.  Your education has just begun.  You will be learning until the day you die.  The amount that you learn . . . the quality of what you learn . . . the way you use what you learn . . . that’s up to you.  Learning stuff is a given.  A quality education is not.  It is a battle -- a victory over lethargy and mediocrity.  Fight for it.  You deserve it.