Independent AND Interdependent

Independence. It's been on my mind lately, but not the kind of independence we celebrated this weekend.

I don't remember the article I read that got my mind cranking, but the cranking meshed with other things I've read and with personal experiences with loved ones. It was all about class -- our nation's economic classes and the cultures and values of the different groups.

The middle-to-upper classes, it seems, place a high value on independence. The ability to stand on one's own two feet, to take care of oneself. So they see education as important -- you need a degree to get a good job that will support yourself and your family. Money management is important -- you sacrifice and save money so that when an emergency happens, you have the resources to handle it, and so that when you're old and can't work anymore, you have resources to live on.

The poor, on the other hand -- the poverty class -- seem to place a higher value on interdependence. We take care of each other; we can rely on each other. When you need a place to stay, you can sleep on my couch as long as you need. I can drive you to work tomorrow, or you can borrow my car. Your kids can hang out at my house after school until you get home. I'll help you today because the day will come when I'll need someone to help me.

Of course, human nature being what it is, there are those in both cultures that warp these values into something sinful. There are people of means who become selfish and greedy and isolated in their independence, hoarding their resources to meet not only their needs but their luxurious desires. There are also poor people who take advantage of the generosity of others and become irresponsible, selfish moochers. Selfishness is no respecter of persons.

People from each class often see the sinful in the other and color the whole group with that color -- which results in their moving even further to the extreme of their own end of the spectrum. "See that free-loader? This is why you have to save your money. (And why we need to toughen the welfare system.)" Or conversely: "See that greedy rich man with the huge bank account? Money isn't as important as people are. I'd rather be poor and surrounded by people I love than rich and lonely. Come on; I just got paid -- let's spend it all on a fun weekend together."

We forget that this is not an either-or situation. It's a both-and situation. We need to be both independent and interdependent. They are not mutually exclusive, even though we think they are.

We have things to learn from each other. The poverty class can learn that sometimes, you need to pay attention that the way you help a friend in need is empowering them rather than enabling them. They can learn that sacrificing to save a little at a time not only means they have resources that keep them from needing to rely on others unnecessarily, but also gives them more resources to share. (Everyone "must work, doing something useful with their hands, that they may have something to share with those in need." Eph 4:28)

The upper-middle class can learn that sometimes you endure the inconvenience and the risk and simply give just because there is a need -- no strings attached, no judgments rendered -- and let God sort out the deserving and undeserving. They can learn that it's okay for us to lean on each other. That's how God made humanity: a body with interdependent parts. And they can learn that money is a tool, a tool to be used to build God's kingdom, not our own. (Jesus said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you." Matt 6:33)

I'm talking big-picture here, so don't yell at me about individual situations that don't fit this characterization. I just find that I'm learning much from those in my life that come from the other end of the spectrum . . . and I hope they're learning from me as well.

That Was One Weird Gift

My friend Julie gave me a surprise birthday party the summer before my senior year, and my friend Kevin gave me a weird gift. Kind of a cool gift, but kinda weird, too. Weird on many levels.

First of all, it was "wrapped" in leg of jeans. He cut the leg off of an old pair of jeans, put the gift inside, and sewed up both ends. I had to cut the jeans to get the gift out. Creative . . . funny! . . . but very weird.

Then, the item I actually fished out of the denim was a decorative wooden box, about seven inches square. Very pretty . . . but I wasn't sure what to think of this. I mean, yeah, it was pretty, but why exactly was he giving me this box? Was it, like, a jewelry box? Was there some meaning behind it? Was it a joke gift? It's not really the kind of thing a boy gives a 17-year-old girl that's his good buddy. I turned it over in my hand a few times wondering how to respond to this -- and getting no clue from everyone around me who seemed as stumped as I was.

"Open it!" Kevin said. Whew! I thought. There's something inside! Now it'll make sense. So I opened the lovely box and found, lying on a pile of potpourri, a sea horse skeleton.

Yes, an actual skeleton of a sea horse. And again, I was stumped.

Because again -- it was kinda cool, but kinda weird. Very delicate and fascinating, but also rather creepy. And again -- who gives this kind of thing to a 17-year-old girl that's your good buddy? Where in the world do you even find a sea horse skeleton anyway? And again, nobody around me was sure what to think of this gift either.

You see, Kevin was kinda like that -- cool, but different. He grinned enthusiastically and gushed about the thing: "See? It's a sea horse! Isn't it awesome?" I wasn't sure if he really meant that or if he wanted us to get the joke and crack up. If he was sincere, I didn't want him to feel bad that we thought his amazing, unique gift was a joke. But if it was a joke, I didn't want him to feel bad that it fell flat. I was totally stumped.

I'm still stumped. I have no clue why Kevin gave me a sea horse skeleton for my 17th birthday.

But you know what? I kept that thing for years. Kept it in the jeans for a long time, but after a while, I tossed the leg of jeans and just kept the box, on a shelf with other decorative items in the house. The potpourri dried up, but the sea horse still lay on it inside.

And guess when I needed that sea horse? When I was homeschooling.

During our study of the ocean, I pulled out that box and showed my girls the skeleton of the sea horse and they ooohed and aaahed to beat the band. For that morning, I was the coolest homeschool mom in the county to have an actual SEA HORSE sitting in a potpourri box on my shelf.

So, there you go, Kev. Thanks for that moment of glory! I'm sure that's what you had in mind way back in the summer of '85.

Lean On Me

A number of years ago, there was a family in a certain group of friends we were in who was going through some serious struggles. Major illnesses, job loss, hospitalizations, financial setbacks . . . serious struggles. Our group rallied around them in every way, providing emotional, spiritual, and material support as best we could.

Ultimately, there came a point where it was clear that their financial needs were going to continue for a while and were going to be beyond what we friends could help them with. That's when one of the group approached the couple, suggesting that they ought to look into some government assistance until the situation turned around.

They refused. They had no intention of being on welfare, they said. Their friends tried to change their mind – you would not be taking advantage of the system or of anybody. You've paid into the system over the years. And you are exactly the kind of people in exactly the kind of situation that these programs are intended for. Still, they refused.

This is pride, and not the good kind. This is not a demonstration of independence and self-sufficiency – this is a demonstration of foolish stubbornness. A person who refuses the help available when they are in genuine need of help thinks too highly of himself. He thinks he should be above the kind of interdependence that God has designed us to live in.

Yes, you just heard a conservative Republican say that: we are meant to be dependent on each other. The stereotypical self-made lone-ranger American is not a biblical model for living. On the contrary, the model we are given in scripture is that of a body, where each part does its job and subordinates itself to the Head, which is Christ. Arms need feet, and livers need eyeballs, and they all need the Brain . . . which interacts with the world through the other parts. As good as it may feel to folks to be able to say they don't need anyone else when times get tough (or even when times are good), they are distinctly out of the will of God when that is the condition of their heart.

What's more, such an attitude of self-sufficiency will send you straight to hell. Consider what this person is (consciously or subconsciously) saying to God. “Yes, Lord, I hear you telling me that I can't put myself right on my own, that you want to do this for me as a gift of grace. But see, I don't take charity. If I can't do it myself, I'd rather just do without. I'll muddle by as best I can on my own efforts. That's good enough for me. Give all that grace to someone else who needs it more. I'm good. Thanks anyway.”

You're not good. When it comes to your righteousness and salvation and eternal destiny, you're absolutely, positively not good. You're in desperate need of God's intervention, whether you realize it or not. And maybe creating us to be dependent on each other is part of the humbling process that brings us back to Him.

God, teach us that balance of interdependence and personal responsibility in our social realm . . . but teach us how to be child-like and completely dependent on You in every realm.

The Facebook Dilemma

Recently, a Facebook friend posted a video of a guy urging people to quit Facebook. (Yes, a bit ironic.) The final straw for him: apparently FB has added (or is adding, I don't remember which) a new feature where they can listen in when you post a status, determine from the background noise where you are and what you're doing, and add that to your status. Something creepy to that effect.

The video post also had a link to another post explaining how to permanently delete your Facebook account. And another explaining how to "quit Facebook without quitting Facebook" -- how to set-up your FB so that you're not unwittingly sharing info with the scary world that could take advantage of it but still keep a very limited presence there for the times you need it.

Quitting Facebook without quitting Facebook. I've considered such a notion in the past.

Privacy wasn't my concern -- although now I'm wondering if it should be. I've always figured that I have nothing on my page that I want to hide from anyone, and I'm a pretty boring nobody in the world. Who would care about my life enough to stalk my page and go through the effort to find something there to use to against me?

No, my concern has been that Facebook has become far too much of a presence in my life. Especially since I got my phone that yells an ugly "DrroOOIId!" at me every time something of any significance happens on my account. I spend way too much time stopping to see who liked my last status.

I spend way too much time reading comments from people I don't know on things I've commented on recently.

I spend way too much time scrolling my newsfeed for the rare amusing or interesting item.

I spend way too much time reading articles my friends have posted that may be amusing or interesting, but most of the time don't add much of real value to my life.

But there are things I would genuinely miss if I quit FB altogether. Things that I really do think add value to my life. For one, my world on FB is much wider and more diverse than my world in real life. If I only interacted with the people I see face-to-face, I would for the most part only be interacting with other straight-laced conservative Christians in our own social class (especially since our move to Texas). Frankly, that may be very comfortable, but I don't think it's good for me -- not socially, not intellectually, not emotionally, not spiritually.

I would also have a pretty limited understanding of a lot of issues facing our country today. Hearing what my differently-minded friends think of what's going on in the world forces me to try to understand issues from another point of view and helps me solidify why I believe what I believe -- and sometimes change what I believe when I clearly need to do so -- and often have more compassion or respect for others with whom I disagree.

I would also miss the connection with scores of people around the country from multiple eras in my life whom I would never communicate with if it weren't for Facebook.

The other problem with quitting? The vast bulk of my blog readers come from the links I post on Facebook. Yes, I mainly blog for my own benefit, but it would stink to do all this writing and nobody read it.

I'm torn. Social media is like a drug. Even when I'm determined to only look at FB twice a day, I'm drawn back in by something that presents itself as important enough to be an exception. I can't partake in moderation. I'm afraid I need to go cold turkey or give up the fight.

Sigh. First world problems. (Note that I didn't put a hashtag on that. Thank God I never let myself even LOOK at Twitter.)

White Rabbit

White rabbit, everyone.  I know it's a couple days late, but this is my first post after the 1st of the month. And I don't think anyone on Facebook got me this month, so ppbblltt.

If you're clueless, allow me to explain.

When I was in college at Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma (good ol' PU), I learned this tradition. On the first day of the month, you need to say "White Rabbit" to your friends before they say it to you. I know -- it's weird. But people got serious about it. Some, on the first day of the month, would answer their phone, "White rabbit -- hello?" -- just so nobody would get them.  And of course, there was the guy who would call someone at 12:01am to wake them up and white rabbit them.

I told my then-boyfriend-now-husband about the game, and his remark was, as I recall, something to the effect of, "That's really weird.  And dumb." And I couldn't deny that.  Nevertheless, almost every single month since then, he has tried to white rabbit me.

After a while he got bored and changed it up. "Roger Rabbit . . . what? Oh, I thought you said it was Roger Rabbit!"  "Bugs Bunny . . . what? Aw, come on, you keep changing it . . . "  One month in Hutchinson, I woke up after sleeping in on a Saturday morning with a sign on the door that said, "LEPUS ALBUM".  I groggily tore off the sign and looked at him questioningly (because he was standing right outside the door waiting).  He said, "It's Latin for WHITE RABBIT!!!" I married a crazy man.

As the girls grew older, they caught on and got into it, too.  (Well, the youngest is into it. The eldest is of that teenage ilk who likes it if she wins. If she loses, it's dumb and she wasn't even playing.) Nobody has tried waking me up at 12:01am to white rabbit me yet. I think they know better.  That would not be a bright idea.

Once I got on Facebook and started reconnecting with old college friends, I found a lot of them still do this . . . so then the game became posting it before anyone else.  One friend tends to get us all every month because she's pretty regularly up at 3:00am every morning anyway.  Crazy woman.

But I also found friends who were NOT from PU who played this game. Or a variation of it anyway. Somebody insisted to me once that it should be "Rabbit Rabbit", which I snickered at. Get it right, people.

But then a friend posted a Wikipedia article yesterday -- "Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit".  Apparently this is a long-time superstition that came from Britain. For decades at least (that's how far back they can find evidence of it), people have said "Rabbits" or "Rabbit Rabbit" or "White Rabbit" or some such variation first thing in the morning on the first day of the month for good luck.  (We didn't do it for luck -- just for bragging rights.) FDR himself was a rabbit-er. 

"Even Mr. Roosevelt, the President of the United States, has confessed to a friend that he says 'Rabbits' on the first of every month—and, what is more, he would not think of omitting the utterance on any account." – Newspaper article, 1935

And Nickelodeon promoted the idea for a while in the mid-90s, which was before I had children watching the channel.

So, it's not just a PU thing. How about that?

And so, white rabbit, everyone. Gotcha. Try it again next month. (But no middle-of-the-night phone calls . . . I'm warning you . . . )

We, Like Sheep, Are Not All That Bright, You Know

A couple years ago, I wrote a play for the younger homeschoolers in Sioux City that was about sheep and the Good Shepherd. Basically, I made a list of every sheep reference in the Bible -- and there's a LOT of them -- and pulled them all together into a storyline. It was more of a challenge than I was expecting when I conceived the idea. I didn't like the script at first, but in the end, I had several people tell me it was one of their favorite of my plays.

All this to say, I am well acquainted with the Biblical discussion of sheep and have developed a fondness for the analogy. So when I read in Matthew in our BSF lesson that Jesus told the disciples he was sending them out "like sheep among wolves", I perked up.

Amy, our teaching leader, noted something about sheep last night. They're dumb. Really, they're not all that bright. In fact, they are not even able to forage and find food on their own, like a goat would. Sheep have to be taken to places where food is readily available, or they will starve.

They also, I learned in my own research for writing the play, can't distinguish a safe plant from a poisonous plant. A shepherd has to go ahead of them and pull out any grasses that would be dangerous for them to eat. This is actually what is meant in Psalm 23 when it says, "You have prepared a table for me."

Sheep NEED a shepherd. Sheep literally can't survive on their own; they only survive when they depend entirely on a good shepherd to take for them. (Which makes one wonder how they ever would have evolved and continued to propagate before humans were around to care for them . . . but I digress.)

In my play, I had one rebellious character, Felicia, who insisted that there was no such thing as a good shepherd and kept "crawling the fence", trying to find a way out of the sheepfold. When she finally got out, she immediately got herself lost and stuck in a ravine. And that's when she discovered that her shepherd was truly a Good Shepherd -- he sought her out, rescued her, bound her wounds, and lovingly brought her back to the fold. Because he loved her and knew her for what she was: a dumb, dependent, but beloved sheep.

And WE are sheep. We are made to be dependent on someone else. Dependent on God, of course, in the greatest sense. But I think we are also supposed to be dependent on each other -- our families, our neighbors, our churches . . . the American Way aside, we are not meant to live individualistic lives.

It's not coincidence, I'm sure, that in Jesus' analogy of the sheep and the goats, the self-reliant, independent goats are the ones sent to damnation, while the dumb, dependent sheep are welcomed into the kingdom. Pride is the root of all sin, after all. Not only is God unimpressed with the work we do on our own apart from him (even if we're doing it FOR him) -- but we simply prove that we have missed the point of the gospel completely.

One should be cautious of any value being promoted to us that begins with the word "self": self-reliance, self-esteem, self-actualization, self-worth . . . you can't ever get to genuine relationship or community -- with God or anyone -- if you begin with self.

Thoughts While Playing Bunko at the Neighbor's House Last Night

- How do you play bunko again?

- Dang, women are loud.

- The evening's theme is PJs and breakfast food. I think this is the first breakfast event I've been to in San Antonio that didn't include salsa.

- And I've never drunk wine with my breakfast, either, but that and water are the only beverages available this evening.  Oh, wait!  Someone just brought in a pitcher of orange juice.  Awesome!  I love orange juice.  Wait . . . this isn't just . . . sigh! Glad I walked here.

- I got a bunko and a boobie, both in the first round before I had any idea what I was doing and understood the significance of either.

- Our new neighborhood seems to have a nice mix of ages.  We haven't had opportunity to meet many folks yet, so this is nice to see. All lily-white, though -- which is surprising in a town where anglos are in the minority. And a little disappointing to me, because part of the appeal of coming to San Antonio was that I might hook up with someone willing to talk Spanish to me and help me learn (Panama is still in the back of our minds).

- I love breakfast food. I wish my tummy wasn't acting up so much. What did I eat for lunch that's coming back to haunt me . . . ?

- Bunko's an interesting phenomenon. A friend in Sioux City invited me to a bunko night, so this is my second go at it. The game seems to be created simply as an excuse to mingle and chit chat. Frankly, it almost feels like speed dating.

- Dang, women drinking wine are LOUD.

- And these drinking women are not fond of Obamacare. One lady just found out their insurance is being cancelled -- the suggested replacement policy will have an $8000 higher deductible and cost them $3000 more a year.  Three women in the group work in healthcare (one's an occupational therapist, don't remember about the other two, if they said). They all say they knew this was coming from the moment Obamacare started being discussed. And they all say they are losing doctors at their places of employment (I want to ask if those doctors quit or were let go, but I'm not drinking enough wine to be loud enough to get a word in).

- Finally starting to remember how this game works. Not that it matters -- there's no skill involved whatsoever. But at least I can keep up with the competitive ladies who are really into this, of which there are a couple.

- A former first grade teacher in the group (who's expecting her third son in a couple months) and a mom of a first grader are talking about money and math. The mom's daughter is anxious to learn how to count money, but the first grade teacher tells her she won't learn that until second grade. That was her biggest frustration teaching, she says; she had some kids who were ready to move on to counting money and beyond, and then other kids who couldn't even name the coins. So many levels she had to accommodate . . . and the ESL kids mixed among them.  Yep. We give public school teachers an almost impossible job.

- And the hostess decides she's done with bunko after eleven rounds; time to stop and just drink. (These women aren't drunk or anything, I should clarify; it's just clear that some of them are really only here for the wine and the talk -- maybe they had rough days.) So, I end the night with six wins, five losses, one bunko and one boobie. Which wins me nothing out of the $5-a-lady pot. Oh, well. I didn't come to win money. Or to drink wine.

I came to meet my neighbors. And that's why I'll be back in December . . . with a $15 white elephant and a plate of hors d'oeuvres. Maybe I'll bring the salsa this time.

#childhoodfriendsforever

Laura and Amanda go home today.  They are my eldest's two best friends from New Jersey, and they've spent the last week with us.  Yes, sleeping on the floor or in crowded beds in our small apartment, driving around with us to run errands and take kids to and from school, listening to my griping about last minute moving details.  That's how good of friends they are.

We did the sightseeing stuff with them -- took them to the River Walk, the Alamo, the Japanese Tea Garden and the Botanical Gardens, the very cool outdoor La Cantera Mall -- and last night we ate at Texas Pride BBQ, a place we saw featured on a Food Network show right after they got here.

They also spent a lot of time at the apartment pool.  And they watched "High School Musical 3", kind of for old time's sake (even while they complained about how unrealistic it is . . . didn't bother them five years ago!).

They joked all day yesterday about the waiter at the fondue place telling them when they left to "have a good strip . . . uh, sorry . . . I was thinking 'have a good stay' and 'have a good trip' . . . um, yeah." Silly boy.

But mostly, they talked, as only teenage girls can.  They've been friends since our family started homeschooling and joined a co-op -- my eldest's second grade year (she's a senior now, remember).  They've kept in touch through texting and Skype for the five years we lived in Iowa.  Last spring, Amanda chose a trip to visit Leslie in lieu of a graduation party . . . and Laura begged her parents to let her come along.

That's how good of friends they are.

And today, they go back.  I felt bad that we weren't more settled here so we could give them a richer San Antonio experience.  But really, they weren't here to see Texas.  They were here to see my daughter.  (Although they liked Texas, too.)

All the hashtags Laura's been putting on her FB pictures kind of sum up the trip:  #wearealltogetheragain 
#mygirlies 
#childhoodfriendsforever 
#texaslovin

#lovelovelovethem

Kim

I have a friend named Kim.  I don't remember exactly where we met, but I remember where we became friends -- at a park by Sunnyside Elementary watching our kids play Ultimate Frisbee once a week the summer of 2009.  (Well, her daughter played -- my daughters mainly hung around for the social time.)

We sat in our lawn chairs at the side of the "field" and talked.  And somehow our talk turned to drama.  And somehow we came up with the idea of trying to do a play with the homeschoolers that fall.  I'm still not sure where we got the chutzpah.

Thus began four years and eight plays worth of collaboration.  And it has been a God-ordained collaboration.  I never cease to be amazed at how well we mesh in this endeavor.  I write the plays and run the rehearsals -- doing the things I enjoy and do best.  She gathers costumes and props, manages set building, collects money, makes and copies programs -- all the things that would make me insane, but apparently she enjoys (well, I don't know that she enjoys hunting down people for their money . . . ).  This drama program would never have happened if I'd had to do it alone, because her job would have made me cry on a regular basis and I would have been too stressed to go on after the first year.

And yet, despite our different roles, we think so much alike.  I look at the emails she sends out to the parents every week (and just the fact that she sends them, methodically, every week) and think, "That's just how I would have done that.  Yay!"  When we sit down together at my kitchen table after every audition to cast the show, we both come away awed at how God used our separate perceptions of everyone to pull together a perfect cast.  It never fails about halfway through a season that we make some comment about how there's simply no other way this show could have been cast.

God consistently has taken the fish and loaves we each offer to him and multiplied them to feed a multitude.

Kim never gets the credit she deserves for all this.  Because I'm the loudmouth in front of everybody, I seem to get most of the kudos.  And yet she never complains.  She said last Friday that I was the "face" of the program.  But she is the heart that keeps the blood pumping to make it live.

A mutual friend told me once that she was praying for God to bring me a Kim in my drama ministry at Sunnybrook.  I told her I could use a Kim in every aspect of my life.  My Barnabas.  Thank you, friend.

"If Good Friends Were Easy to Find...."

My daughter has been badly mistreated lately by some of her friends.  They weren’t necessarily being malicious, just thoughtless, immature, and stupid.  They had no idea how rotten they were.  Even now, after many explanations from her, they still don’t get what they did wrong.

She has decided that they will just never get it and has let it go.  She understands them better now (actually, she understood them before – she said she really should have seen this coming), and she has a wall of protection up.  They’re friends again, kind of, but it’s not quite the same.  And she’s content with that.

I’m not.  Frankly, I’m concerned about these girls.  When I look at the thoughts and beliefs that ultimately must have prompted this behavior from them, I see fertile ground for much greater wrongs.  I see a self-absorption and attitude toward relationships that, unchecked, will lead them to greater abuse or make them vulnerable to being abused themselves.  And the fact that they can’t even see the wrong when it’s pointed out to them worries me even more.

My daughter is convinced they will never understand.  I insist that they MUST understand.  And I don’t know which of us is the wiser.  I could certainly be over-reacting – a mother bear with a wounded cub tends to do that.    

My other daughter has been having friend issues, too.  (Actually, I’ve been wondering if God isn’t allowing all this to make the girls more ready to move when it’s time.)  It’s very distressing to me.  Teenage girls need good friends so badly.  I was bemoaning it all in the car driving the eldest to school this morning.

“Well, if good friends were easy to find, they wouldn’t be worth so much,” she shrugged.

I stared at her, thinking that was pretty profound for a 16-year-old at 7:45am on a Monday morning.  “Did you just think of that yourself?”

She wrinkled her forehead.  “I dunno . . . I may have read it somewhere . . . “

Reading’s good, too.  I’ll take that.  (Even though she probably read it on Facebook, which doesn’t really count…)