Jesus and Girly Tea

There is a pile of little girly things on my living room floor right now. As in little things that are very girly.

We're babysitting a little girl this week, so my daughters got out their old toys. Mini Barbies . . . mini princesses, of every type . . . mini tea sets . . . mini vanities . . . mini carriages and horses . . . and there's probably a unicorn in there somewhere.

Oh, the memories.

I miss the little girly days. I mean, I miss my daughters being little girls, but it's more than that. I miss when I was able to get lost in their world for a moment and life was all tea parties and horse rides and ball gowns and hairdos.

Cheesy as they are, I kind of miss the old kiddie shows when the good guys were all beautiful and nice and got good things in the end and the bad guys were all ugly and obvious and got their come-uppance . . . or saw the light and switched sides.

Bad guys are not always ugly and obvious. Good guys do not always win, at least in this life.

Our world is so broken. Humanity is so broken.

It makes me tired.

I might have, at one time, said that it makes me depressed. But I have learned over years of dealing with my own particular brand of neurosis that many of my emotional problems are a result of mislabeling. I have physiological feelings in my body that mimic what we feel when we're sad, and if I label them as "sadness", then I start to think about things to be sad about and get genuinely sad.

I am sad about the state of humanity, but that's not what I feel at the moment. I feel tired. I know the end of the story for our world, and there is hope for the good guys, so my sadness is tempered. But I also know there's a long, difficult road still ahead before we get there, so my tiredness is magnified.

I'm tired of fighting ignorance. I'm tired of fighting selfishness. I'm tired of fighting self-righteousness. I'm tired of fighting inaccurate depictions from others of what the stinking fight is even about.

My sleep deprivation is also a cause of the fatigue, but it only exacerbates my soul fatigue. I'm ready for rest . . . even eternal rest.

I know there are some who find it morbid and disturbing to wish for heaven and the end of the world. But when you have confidence in the justice and grace of the One who holds the end in His hands, it starts to sound very inviting. I want the brokenness healed, and I know there's only one way this will happen.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus. I'm ready for a tea party with You . . . in a beautiful ball gown . . . as Your Beloved.

Story and Being Human: Imago Dei

In a quiet moment last night with my hubby and youngest, I sat looking at our bookshelves upstairs. We have bookshelves in many places in our house, but these particular shelves have my daughters' old books. Some that they read on their own after they became independent readers, but many that hubby and I read to them at bedtime over many, many years of their childhood.

Oh, the books. Oh, the memories!

Narnia and the Pevensies. Laura and Mary in their Little Houses with Ma and Pa. All the American Girls. Junie B. Jones (the B. stands for Beatrice, but she just likes B and that's all). Anne of Green Gables, the whole series. The Magic Tree House. The Babysitter's Club. All sorts of Dear America history books. Charlotte's Web. Stuart Little. The Mandie series they got from their older cousin.

Oh, I wanted to go back. For a moment, I wanted to be sitting on a bed with one of their heads lying on my chest reading about Aslan singing the world of Narnia into being. I'll be sharing that book with my 6th graders this fall, but no -- it's not the same standing at the front of a classroom as it is snuggling at the head of a bed.

One of the greatest blessings of homeschooling was all the reading I got to do with my daughters. They did read on their own, but I also read literature aloud to them, stuff that was a step above their independent reading level to move them forward. I remember reading Julius Caesar with my eldest when she studied the Roman Empire in fifth grade or so, skipping a few unimportant scenes, stopping to explain stuff as we went, but reveling in the language and reciting my favorite speech of Antony's with mucho gusto. To this day, she claims that Shakespeare is one of her favorite writers.

An article I just read yesterday reiterated what I have heard and known for many years: one of the best things we can do to help our children write better is spend years reading high quality literature aloud to them. Let them hear the rhythm of mature language so they can replicate it naturally.

But reading high quality literature to them is also one of the best things we can do just to help them live better -- to help them become truly Human. The root of the word "educate" means "to draw out." We often think of schooling as a matter of pouring information into someone's head, but no -- it's a matter of drawing out of them what is there so that they can use it well. Which means something has to be in there to be drawn out.

Now, I believe there is a core of "knowing" that God has already instilled in us. It's a part of our being made in God's image. What is lacking is a "language" to couch our knowing in. Does that make sense? There are a lot of things I know, in a sense, but until I draw it out, until I can explain it in words, it is of no use to me. Most of those are spiritual things; thus, they are the most critical things to be educated in.

And this is where stories come in. Stories are a vehicle of knowing. Ideas and concepts can be communicated through story sometimes far more effectively than through exposition. Those inner things we know from God but cannot yet use can become accessible to us through narrative.

When I read about Laura's relationship with her Pa, it rings true in my soul, because somewhere in my soul, I already know about the security of a father's love, whether I have a father or not.

When I read about Anne breaking her slate over Gilbert's head, it rings true in my soul, because somewhere in my soul, I already know the extent of humanity's foolish pride, whether I'm conscious of my own or not.

When I read of Aslan's death on the Stone Table, it rings true in my soul, because somewhere in my soul, I already know the nobility of and need for sacrifice, whether I recognize my personal need for it or not.

Man has always told stories -- around the campfire, in books, on screens, on stages, in poetry, in song, always and everywhere. Jesus himself told stories to communicate the truths he has to tell us. When I teach my students about the story elements and the plot chart and such, I emphasize to them that this isn't stuff that people made up. We write stories that way because that's how God created story to be. That's how He made our story run. When we tell a good story well, we're imitating God. Imago dei.

Read to your kids people. Read to yourselves now. Read. Read. Read.

Visiting the Family Farm

I spent my Memorial Day weekend at the Family Farm. (And on the LO-O-ONG drive to and from the Family Farm.) My dad's family had a reunion this weekend. So did my husband's mom's family, but just he and the girls made it to that one -- I stayed at the Family Farm for a memorial service for my aunt who died suddenly Friday morning. (This required some complicated arrangements for me over the weekend, but that's another story.)

Anyway . . . the Family Farm. In Gem, Kansas, just outside of Colby. Western Kansas. Farm country. My sisters, being older than I, spent a lot more time at the Family Farm with Grandpa (who died when I was a baby), Grandma, aunts, uncles and cousins. I went to a couple reunions there when I was young and occasionally visited the aunt and uncle who moved in when the grandparents moved out.

But I'm a city girl through and through. The Family Farm was kind of an abstraction to me. A nice place to visit, but I didn't necessarily feel a personal connection to it, as much as I appreciated the idea of it.

At this visit, however, I was an adult . . . and the weekend was all about remembering my aunt and dad and grandma and hearing others remember other family members who have left us that I never knew . . . and it was much more meaningful for me than past visits.

Things That Stood Out to Me This Weekend About the Family Farm:

- My grandparents apparently first acquired this property and started living there in 1921, two years before my dad was born. I'm not sure why that fact was so remarkable to me, but wow. A lot of history there.

- There's a gas pump by their driveway. I never noticed this. Apparently, that was a "duh" thing for everyone else there. Of course they have their own gas pump. Gotta fill up the tractors and so forth. Geez, so much I don't know about farm life.

- My aunt had a big shadow box on the wall (see the picture to the right) with things that, out of the corner of my eye, looked like dried flowers or weeds. Nope. Turns out, those were crocheted items made from . . . the hair of my deceased female relatives. No lie. It seems this was a common thing back then. Women would save the hair from their hairbrushes and use them like thread to crochet decorative items, like these little flowers and such. Several had labels attached with the name of the woman whose hair was used for that item, but all but one label were faded now. Kind of cool and kind of creepy at the same time.

But it reminded me of how differently the Greatest Generation lived. My parents lived through the Depression. They used everything until it completely wore out. I remember my mother rinsing out plastic bags and hanging them out to dry so she could use them over and over again. That was a bit extreme, but the wastefulness of my generation is extreme, too.

- As I said, I never knew my Grandpa. I only know him from pictures. But in most of the pictures I've seen of him, the bottom half of his face is very, very tan -- so brown that he almost looks like the old comics who did blackface. His forehead, on the other hand, was white. A farmer's tan, from wearing hats out in the fields all day. That's the image of my Grandpa in my mind.

And I was struck this weekend, while looking at old pictures of my dad and his siblings when they were young, how often the boys had the same white foreheads. Early twentieth century farm families . . . the boys worked on the farm all day, too. We have lazy, privileged kids these days. I'M a lazy, privileged kid.

- The farmhouse seemed so small. I realize that this was because for most of my visits there, I was so small. But I couldn't quite imagine how a family of nine had lived here. (And in fact, my mother told me that when she met my dad's family, the farmhouse wasn't even built yet. They were all living in the basement.)

- The farmhouse seemed so sweet. I don't think I thought much of it when I was young, other than it seemed old and it had features I was completely unfamiliar with, like the big heating vent on the floor you had to be sure not to step on with bare feet in the winter. But this weekend, it felt cozy and homey and sweet. I kept thinking, I could live here. And I know I've never thought that before.

- The air is so fresh and clean. We had perfectly gorgeous weather for the reunion, and the windows in the house were open so a breeze could blow through every room. Lovely. Refreshing. I want to live like that.

- The world is so huge. The sky is enormous! Until you've stood on a dusty road in western Kansas and scanned the horizon in every direction, you simply can't conceive of how big our world is. I remember traveling with my dad in forested and mountainous areas and hearing him complain that you couldn't see anything because all the trees were in the way. I always thought that was the most bizarre statement; I get it now.

One of these days, my aunt and uncle are not going to be able to live on the Family Farm any longer. I kept hearing this weekend that one of their sons would be moving in then. I'm glad. All of a sudden, it is very important to me that the Family Farm stay in the family.

Why I'm Angry

A young man in our lives just moved himself to Texas. He has little or no family support; he's here on his own, trying to get a new start on life.

He drove here in a car he spent a long time earning the money for and fixing up. And within a couple weeks of his arrival, a hit-and-run driver ran a red light and totaled that car. Because he could only afford liability insurance, our young friend just completely lost that car he worked so hard for.

So, he worked more to earn the money for another car, which he bought from a local guy in his home. He later realized that the title of the car only has the man's signature -- his wife was co-owner and needed to sign the title, too. But the man now insists that our friend never paid him; he won't let his wife sign the title until he gets paid for the car again.

Soon the car's registration will run out, and he can't get it legally registered without the title signed. Our friend's only recourse, it seems, is taking the man to small claims court -- which, of course, costs money he doesn't have.

But the immediate issue is getting the car back into his possession. While parked overnight in his apartment complex -- with his parking decal sticker in the window -- the car was towed by the towing company (Bexar Towing, for you locals) that the apartment complex hires to monitor its lots.

After a bunch of rigmarole to get them to give him access to the car (because his proof of ownership was in the car), he showed the towing company employee the parking decal in the window as they walked to the vehicle. Hmm, the guy said. Well, let me talk to my manager and get back to you.

And the next day, they produced a photo from the man who towed the car -- a photo that shows our friend's car with no parking decal. How did this happen, our friend asked, when you yourself saw the decal in the window when you finally gave me access to the car?

Oh, I didn't see a decal, the man says. You must have put that there after I let you in.

(Again, Bexar Towing Company, people. They have an F with the Better Business Bureau . . . many complaints for similar issues . . . they have more complaints than any towing company in the county . . . they were fined $19,000 by the state a couple years ago. In other words, we believe our friend.)

Again, the only apparent recourse is taking them to court. (Unless he wants to pay the $200 plus $20 per day for every day the car has sat in their lot while they gave him the run-around.) And again, going to court costs money the boy doesn't have.

Two observations here. First, this is why so many young men from troubled backgrounds become thugs. They are targeted, taken advantage of, and have no resources to protect themselves or fight back. They quickly learn that to survive, they have to get the "bad guys" (whoever they might be out there) before the bad guys get them.

And secondly, this is why the church needs to be the church. The Biblical admonition is to help widows and orphans, but the principle there is to stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves. Bear each other's burdens. This is a burden our friend can't bear, and luckily a lawyer at our new church home has offered to help him out. (We don't yet know the extent of that help or the cost, but it's a start.)

I'll add a third observation: I'm angry. So angry. Our young friend is trying to be responsible, trying to get his life together, trying to do everything right . . . and he keeps getting screwed over. I can't stand it anymore.

Group Markers

My pre-teen years were pretty icky. I felt ugly and awkward, and my school experiences confirmed that: I was a social outcast. I took to faking stomachaches so I could go home when it got to be more than I wanted to deal with.

(This was my first real acting experience. I instinctually knew that to pull that off, I had to be totally committed to the role -- facial expression, physical stance, weak voice . . . I had to be willing to turn down good food offered me, because sick people don't feel like eating . . . I had to be willing to miss activities I wanted to go to, because sick people don't feel like having fun . . . and I played my role well. Apparently, my parents were worried enough about all my stomachaches to take me to the doctor, concerned that I might be under too much pressure or something. Kinda feel bad about that now.)

In any case, this morning for some reason, I was remembering the jeans that suddenly became popular in my late elementary years. They had colorful embroidered designs on the back pockets -- hearts, rainbows, stars, that kind of thing (these were girls' jeans, obviously). The popular girls all had these jeans, and I so wanted them. My mom eventually made a deal with me where she would pay what a regular pair of jeans would cost and I had to make up the difference for these fancy jeans, which I did. Unfortunately, the fancy jeans didn't get me out of the outcast corner.

Those symbolic jeans are interesting to me now. The uniform of the in crowd. Like the colors that gang members flash. Like the jerseys a basketball team wears. We put things on our outsides to identify us with a group. And we all want to be identified with a group.

Now some of these groups are logical. It makes perfectly good sense why, say, all the mothers of young children in a congregation would group up. Or all the recent immigrants from Korea in a certain town. Or all the people interested in knitting or running marathons.

Popular groups at school seem to be a different phenomenon. Sometimes wealth brings them together, or athletic ability, but not always. It's always a mystery to me how the popular kids gets "popular", especially when many of them are not very nice or very well-liked by the rest of the school community. And even more a mystery why everyone else accedes this status to them. I'm sure there are psychological studies about this stuff; I'd love to read them.

I wondered this morning, as I remembered the rainbow-embroidered jeans, whether this cliquish behavior is part of our image-of-God DNA (God is a three-person entity, after all, always existing in community), or if it is a mark of our sinfulness. I suspect it is both, a sinful warping of how God made us. When you look at scripture, God is quite intentional about giving His people instructions for setting themselves apart from the rest of the world, through ritual, behavior, and appearances.

However, they are not to physically isolate themselves from the world. Even the ancient Israelites were to welcome the gentile stranger hospitably and offer them a clear path to join their ranks once they taste and see that the Lord is good. New Testament Christians are instructed to be salt and light to their communities, to be in the world but not of the world.

So, God made us to group up, to identify with a certain people, but not necessarily for protection or for comfort or for our own selfish purposes. We are, first and foremost, made to identify with Him -- and those who identify with Him will necessarily identify with each other (like the spokes on a wheel that are all lined up evenly once they are in right relationship to the center) -- and His people will then minister to the world and draw more folks into a relationship with Him.

It's a good system, when we don't muck it up with frivolous markers like expensive Sunday suits, tattoos (or a lack of), and rainbow-pocketed jeans.

IMHO: The Biggest Fix for Education

My eldest just told me that on one of her college-associated tests (ACT? CLEP? She couldn’t remember which), she had to write on this question: should high school be extended to five years instead of four? Well, that led to a lively discussion on our part.

She could see pros and cons. On the one hand, some students need more time to learn what they need to learn in high school and to mature enough to be ready for what follows. On the other hand, she wasn’t confident that they would simply be allowed more time; she suspected the powers-that-be would just add more to the load of what they were expected to learn.

Here is the root of the problem with our society’s system of schooling, in my humble opinion: it is bound by time restraints. It is no secret to anyone – teachers, administrators, parents, students, psychologists, educational researchers and experts – that students learn at different rates. One student learns at a different rate than another student. A student learns one subject at a different rate than he learns a second subject. And a student may learn at one rate at one time of life or stage of development and at a very different rate at another time of life or stage of development.

The time involved to learn is a constantly changing variable. But our system of schooling does not allow for such a variable.

In order for a teacher to teach something to a group of students, all of the students have to be at about the same place academically, ready to absorb this particular new skill or information. If that teacher is going to teach that same group of students over a stretch of time, then over that stretch of time, the whole group of students needs to remain in about the same place academically.

So for one teacher to teach a class of twenty second graders seven hours a day for nine months, that means that all twenty of those students have to be at about the same place academically – in every subject – and progress at about the same pace – in every subject – for nine months.

What a ridiculous expectation! No wonder so many students struggle . . . and so many others are bored. And so many teachers burn out.

In a recent discussion about a math class at our school, I made the suggestion that the teacher could slow down the pace, since all the students are struggling at the moment. “But then they would be behind,” was the response I got.

Behind what, exactly? Behind the arbitrary point in the typical math curriculum that every student in the country of this age group is expected to be at by the middle of April? Should that really be our goal?

Maybe it's the homeschooler in me, but I so want to free all of our students from those time restraints. I want to tell them, "The goal is to learn Algebra -- the full content of it, and to learn it well. It isn't important how you learn it. It isn't important when you learn it. If you could do nothing but Algebra in an online course for six weeks and get it down pat, great. If you stretch it out over two years, sitting with a private tutor twice a week but get it down, awesome. The goal is mastery of the material, however and whenever that happens for you."

But people are so afraid of their kids being "behind" the rest of the kids their age. What if -- gasp! -- they don't finish high school in four years? Well, what if they don't? What if they are a year older and more mature when they start college? What if they actually have the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in college when they start rather than having to fake and float and eventually fail when you're paying thousands of dollars for the education? What if they come out of high school knowing that they know something and not just that they worked a system to get a signed document that everyone seems to think means something (but they know it doesn't)? 

What's wrong with taking more time in high school? 

Frankly, if we would have this mindset in the earlier years, it might prevent a lot of kids in high school from having to worry about "graduating late." I have all sorts of thoughts for how elementary school could be done differently. Not being an elementary teacher, I hesitate to promote my ideas much, but I still have them.

Can we just stop with the race to adulthood and give our kids some time? I'm sure they'd thank us for it, and I think we'd all enjoy life so much more.

My Mom's Review of "A Chorus Line"

I saw something on Facebook about April 16^th being the 40^th anniversary of the first performance of A Chorus Line. Ah. A Chorus Line. There’s a musical.

The national tour of A Chorus Line came to Wichita sometime when I was 11 or 12. I know because I was still taking ballet, and everyone at the studio was positively raving about this show, which I’d never heard of. The dancing! Oh, the dancing! It was fantastic! You HAVE to see this show!

So, I talked my mother into taking me to see the show. To this day, I’m a little ashamed that I put her through that. Of course, never having heard anything about the show (other than, “The dancing! The dancing!”), I’m not completely to blame. I had no idea the storylines and subject matter and suggestive language we would be subjected to. I remember being afraid to look at my mother until it was all over. The whole time, I was waiting for her to decide this had finally crossed a line and remove me from the premises.

She never did. She didn’t say a whole lot about it, actually. I worked up the guts in the car on the way home to ask her what she thought about the show. “Well,” she hesitated, “I like that it showed a lot of different kind of people living a lot of different kinds of lives.

“And that’s what I didn’t like about it, too.”

My mother. The queen of sweetness and diplomacy.

Now that I’m mature and all, I’d love to ask her more. For one thing, I wonder what she told my dad about the show when we got home. I can’t imagine that she owned up to the real content matter that she had subjected me to, because I’m pretty sure he would have taken me home at intermission and would have thought she should have, too.

I also kind of wonder if she could have articulated even more what she meant by the review she gave me. If she could explain what she liked about the variety of lifestyles shown. Why is that a good thing? It’s not because she enjoyed hearing about all those lifestyles – that, I’m confident, is what she didn’t like about it. But could she articulate what was good about hearing all that?

I’m not sure she could, but I think instinctively she knew that there is benefit to being aware of not just the sin in the world, but of the situations that lead to sin, of the grief and brokenness that comes out of sin. I think there was something in her that understood the dangers of a Christian cocooning and accusing rather than listening and loving.

So much you miss when you lose your mom at 31.

The Obligatory Fast Food Gig

My eldest has been looking for a job. Kind of. She's had her eye out for places that seemed to be hiring and put her application in at a couple, to no avail. So a couple Sundays ago, when we were picking up a gift card at Freddy's, she saw the "Help Wanted" sign and filled out an application. Two days later, she started training.

And life suddenly changed very quickly.

Here's what I don't get about this job: she never knows exactly when she's going to work. She's given a start time -- like, 11am. But she doesn't know when she gets off. She just gets off when they tell her she can go. That meant that last Saturday, when she started at 11am, they didn't tell her she could go until 8pm.

A nine-hour work day -- that's a long day, to begin with. But more than that, how is she supposed to plan her life around this? How can she make any commitments for activities in the evenings if she has no idea when she gets off work? That particular evening, she had agreed to babysit for a neighbor (agreed to it before she even got the Freddy's job), so she had to get her sister to cover for her until she could get there -- and then she was babysitting for three hours AFTER her nine hours doing fast food.

Is this legit? Do all fast food places run this way? I understand that they have to deal with unreliable workers who will choose to show up or not show up as their mood strikes, but still.

And there's more. The weekly work schedule begins on Thursdays. As of today (Wednesday), she doesn't know when she is scheduled to work beyond just today. We're hoping she finds out the upcoming week's schedule when she goes in at lunch. But again, how is she supposed to plan her life when she doesn't know more than a couple days ahead when she's working? How can she ever agree to babysit for anyone again if she doesn't know if she'll get off work in time? This is Easter weekend -- her boyfriend is flying down for a visit -- and she has NO IDEA when she's free for anything. We may not be able to do any Easter activities together as a family. He may spend all that money to come see her and hardly ever get to see her (a good possibility since she's at the bottom of the totem pole there and most likely to be scheduled on a holiday weekend, I would assume).

I remember a woman on my drama team in Sioux City had the same problem with her job at Chik-Fil-A. We couldn't schedule rehearsals with her more than a week ahead because she didn't know her work schedule. (But at least she knew what time she was getting off!)

This is aggravating. I don't like that kind of unpredictability.

Her first week of training was hard. It's her first "real" job. She was nervous. Her trainer was apparently not a great trainer (even the other workers told her that). And that nine-hour day while she still felt so uncertain about what she was doing really did her in. She came home from babysitting in tears about what a failure she was at this job.

We tried to reassure her -- you're still learning. Think of all the friends you know who have half a brain in their head and still work successfully in fast food. You will get the hang of this. But I felt her pain. I wrote a while back about my unsuccessful two weeks at TCBY when I was her age. It's a terrible feeling when you are given expectations and not given the means to meet those expectations.

But two days ago, somebody from corporate (in Wichita! my hometown!) was in our Freddy's here to observe. And apparently, this man told the manager, "We need more people like this girl here" -- indicating my daughter.

Boo yah! Told you, hon.

Life as an Extended Metaphor

During the children's sermon yesterday, we were asked to examine our hands and pray for God to bless the work they do. So I did. And when you think about it, your hands do an amazing heck of a lot of important things.

Examining my hands closely also reminded me of something I've noticed many times over the last few years: they look like my mother's hands. The backs of them anyway. The same veins sticking out in the same manner. Wrinkles in the same spots. My thumbs curve just like hers did when I stretch my fingers. Yep, I have my mama's hands.

At least in appearance. Not in practice. In a poetry writing class I had to take in college (ugh -- I'm not a poet and don't I know it), I experimented with a piece that was an extended metaphor comparing my mother to a pair of hands. My professor (who was patient and gracious with my efforts) commented that this was kind of a bizarre image, and I suppose it was. But the truth is, my mother is probably best symbolized by her hands.

Hands that cooked meals for her family and for many others.

Hands that sewed clothes and household furnishings and anything else that could be created on a sewing machine.

Hands that crafted macrame plant hangers, quilted casserole carriers, felt Christmas tree ornaments, and pinecone wreaths for our door . . . among countless other items.

Hands that faithfully and consistently kept our small house clean and tidy. (After her death, my sisters and I remarked how we never actually saw her clean the bathrooms, and yet the bathrooms were never dirty . . .)

Hands that pulled weeds in the garden and hung laundry on the line outside.

Hands that smoothed my hair into a bun for ballet class. (Eight years of ballet and I never learned how to do my own hair.)

My mother had a warm smile and a sweet voice. But it is her hands that represent her best.

But as I said, I don't think I inherited those hands. I mean, I don't think my kids will look back on me after I die and remember things I did with my hands. I kinda wish that wasn't the case, because part of me wants so much to be like my amazing mother. But God just didn't make me that way.

I don't know what extended metaphor my children would make of me, but it would be pretty interesting to know. I think they are still too young to answer that question -- as thoughtful and creative as they are, I think you need more life experience and perspective to come up with something like that.

My words, maybe? I have many words. I deal a lot in words. That would definitely put me in contrast with my mother. Yeesh . . . if I am going to be remembered for my words, I may need to close my mouth more often . . .

My Future With Dementia

Yesterday, a friend posted on FB a link to a news story about Alzheimer’s disease (which you can see here). The reporter experienced a simulation created to give you an idea of how life is for victims. It was fascinating to watch.

My father died in 2001 after a 21-year battle with Alzheimer’s. His three sisters have all been diagnosed now as well. (His three brothers haven’t shown any symptoms that I’m aware of.) Since there is a genetic component to this, I've known for quite a while that there’s a chance that I may be afflicted one of these days.

I think that should disturb me more than it does. Maybe if I watch more videos like this one, it will. And maybe as I get older (Dad was diagnosed in his mid-50s), it will. But right now, I surprisingly seem to take this in stride.

I've made it clear to my family that I want them to have no hesitations over putting me in a nursing home when it is time. Please do the work to be sure it’s a good nursing home (I may even do some care-shopping myself while I’m capable). And please keep an eye on me and visit me frequently. But don’t think you’re being heroic or loving by keeping me in your house when I reach the point of being dangerously debilitated. Put me where I’m safe and you’re safe, too.

I've also made it clear that I want them to appreciate the humor in the situation whenever they can. Seriously. I remember once visiting my dad in the common room of his care center when a fellow patient wandered into the room. She looked around curiously, and then announced loudly to everyone present, “I gotta pee!” And she dropped her sweatpants and undergarments to her ankles. The four care workers in the room came diving from their various corners, calling in unison, “Noooooo!!!!”

I tried SO hard to stifle my laughter. It was hilarious. Please don’t judge me – if that had been my dad, I would have laughed, too. It was funny, people! If I get to where I’m doing crazy stuff like that, I want my family to feel free to find some enjoyment in it. Life will be hard enough at that point; you gotta see the humor where you can.

The editor of World magazine once wrote about his mother's Alzheimer's experience. She had apparently had a miserable, difficult life and was generally a very unpleasant, miserable person to be around for most of it. Until she got dementia. Then she forgot all the old resentments and hurts -- every day was new and bright. He said her last three years of life were probably her happiest. Sometimes there is a blessing in forgetting.

I don't expect that to be me -- I don't think I have horrible resentments that will bring bliss when they are forgotten. But I have been making a point of trying to change my general mental state. What I have noticed about people as they age (including my parents) is that they don't really change in personality; they just lose their ability (or desire sometimes) to put on the mask that they are expected to wear in polite society. They say what they really think. They act how they really feel. They stop playing the "nice" game, and usually not by choice. 

This being the case, I want to be sure that I'm genuinely nice, that my thoughts and feelings are full of grace and love, so when my filter is gone, I'm not spouting venom to the world that serves to isolate me from the world. My best preparation for old age, I think, is submitting myself wholeheartedly to God changing me from the inside out, so I'm as much like Him as possible. 

Which, really, should be my goal in life anyway, right?

Things That Happen When You Get Old

(Not that 46 is old yet; "old" becomes a more and more relative term the older you get. But when I was 21, I thought 46 was pretty old, and to my teenage daughters, I'm sure 46 is getting up there. And Lord knows, I'm not getting younger. So, to get back to the topic at hand . . . )

THINGS THAT HAPPEN WHEN YOU GET OLD

- Bedtime comes a lot sooner -- and by your own choice.

- The extra weight you gain over the holidays is a lot harder to lose.

- Routine is more appreciated.

- Crowd noise is more annoying.

- Annoyance is harder to hide.

- Technology gets more ridiculously complicated.

- Your deceased parents appear much wiser than they did when you had them around to talk to.

- Cold weather is much less fun.

- Big city drivers get more stupid.

- Hymns grow more beautiful.

- Mornings are significantly stiffer in the joints.

- Sunshine is so much more glorious.

- Years pass more quickly.

- Faults, fears, and failures are harder to hide.

- I become more honest with myself.

- God becomes more obvious to me.

What's In a Name? RESPECT

During a pleasant conversation over frozen yogurt yesterday with another newbie teacher at my school, I remarked casually how much I enjoy hearing "Yes, ma'am" from my students -- because I hear it a lot and it's new to me.

She smiled and said, "Oh, I expect that. It's a Texas thing." She has a student who just moved here from the north, and she has to keep reminding herself that the poor thing is not necessarily being rude when he answers her with a "Yeah" instead of a "Yes, ma'am."

"Ma'am" and "Sir" are the expected ways to address your elders in these parts, my friend tells me. Now I'm wondering if Texans find my daughters rude. (Although I doubt it.)

This discussion stirred up memories of similar conversations with friends in New Jersey about how our children were to address us, their friends' mothers. The standard among most of my friends was "Miss _____". As in, "Miss Sue" . . . "Miss Judy" . . . "Miss Marilyn." I had taught my daughters to call their friends' mothers "Mrs. So-and-So" right off the bat, because this is what I was used to. Some friends accepted that and got used to it. Others told my daughters to call them Miss Such-and-Such . . . which my girls rarely got the hang of.

"I figure, my kids hear me calling adults by their first names," my friends told me, "It'll just confuse them if they have to call them by a different name." Confuse them? Uh -- no. I grew up with this system in place and never got confused. The woman I called Mrs. Garnett my mother called Leona. Simple as that. In fact, it was very helpful; I learned people's full names.

But I willingly accepted whichever name these kids gave me, as long as they were spoken with respect. I never got offended at being called Miss Gwen. However, I did get offended when the "Miss" was left off.

There was one little girl living near us whom we had over for a couple playdates. When I first met that child on my front porch and she enthusiastically greeted me by my first name, I wondered what I was going to do with that. Since her mother didn't correct her, I decided to let it alone.

But as the playdate went on, I realized that this girl did not see me as an authority figure in her life; she saw me as her peer. When I told her to do something, she took that merely as a suggestion. She even asked me personal questions that I thought were ENTIRELY out of line for a six-year-old to be asking of an adult. (And this seemed to be typical of the other schoolmates my daughter had who called me by my first name.)

(On a side note: It wasn't surprising when her mother came to pick her up and had to say, "We need to go" twenty-three times before her daughter gave an inkling of response. Twenty-three times. Yes, I counted.)

By about the third playdate, my inward fuming got the best of me. I finally -- politely -- told the young lady that I preferred that she call me "Mrs". She looked at me as if to say, ohhhh, you're one of THOSE people . . . Whatever, kid.

The next time she called for a playdate, I answered the phone and she said (dripping with sarcasm and attitude), "Hi, Gw- . . . I mean . . . Missuzz Ka-" . . . and I immediately knew that I could not have this child in my home today or I might slap her cheeky little cheek. Fortunately, my daughter wasn't fond of her either. That friendship faded away quickly.

So, yes, I'm enjoying the "Yes, ma'ams" in my classroom. One of the many things I'm finding they get right in Texas.

A Eulogy to Saturday Morning Cartoons

I was informed of lamentable news this weekend. ("Lament" is one of my Freshmen's vocabulary words -- glad I chose it -- it's quite useful.) Apparently this past Saturday morning was the first Saturday morning in fifty years where a network television station did not broadcast Saturday morning cartoons.

Saturday morning cartoons are dead. Let us all observe a moment of silence for the end of an era.

Watching cartoons on Saturday morning was a defining characteristic of my childhood years. Every other day of the week, my mother would have to come in and wake me up. But for some reason, on Saturday morning, my body consistently knew when it was almost 7am and woke me up of its own accord. I never overslept.

As I recall, the first show I watched at 7am was the "Laff-a-Lympics" -- a show that had all the various Hanna Barbera cartoon characters divided into three teams (the Scooby Doobies, the Yogi Yahooeys, and the Really Rottens) who competed in Olympic-style events. It was corny, and I loved it.

Another favorite was the Bugs Bunny show (sometimes the Bugs and Daffy show, sometimes the Bugs and Tweety show . . . ) with its catchy theme song: "Overture . . . cut the lights . . . ."  Scooby-Doo, of course, and its later variations with Scrappy Doo and with celebrity guest stars. I still hear the voices of the gang when they recognized this week's celebrity:  "[gasp] It's Mama Cass!" (Yes, Mama Cass was a guest star on a Scooby Doo cartoon. My introduction to the Mamas and the Papas.)

Bill Cosby did Fat Albert, which wasn't one of my favorites, but I still watched it. Another unforgettable theme song, which my husband pulls out and sings once in a while. "Na, na, na -- gonna have a good ti-i-i-ime . . . "

Super Friends, with Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin, and Aquaman at the Justice League Headquarters. Oh yeah.

Captain Caveman. Jabberjaw. Speed Buggy. Hong Kung Phooey. Grape Ape. Oh, my -- GRAPE APE, people.

There were some live action shows that I like, too. The Harlem Globetrotters show -- with funny bald guy Curly. Isis. Bigfoot and Wild Boy. Electrowoman and Dynagirl (no lie -- I'm sure if I saw the reruns I would be horrified at their awfulness, but I so loved them at the time).

And, of course, the greatest Saturday morning invention of all time: Schoolhouse Rock. Brilliance. I still can't say the Preamble to the Constitution -- I have to sing it. Somebody made Schoolhouse Rock into a stage show, and I heard that when they began, "We the People . . . ," the audience stood and sang along with patriotic tears rolling down their face. I would have done that, too.

Saturday morning was an escape. By the late elementary years, my school weeks were difficult. Successful as I was academically, I felt like a social outcast in school. I didn't feel liked, and I didn't like myself much either. I dragged myself through the week, waiting for the few hours on Saturday morning that I could lose myself in being a kid and forget the pains of growing up.

No more Saturday morning cartoons. My kids feel no loss. Yet I grieve.

So Precious

My two daughters had a babysitting job last night, but the eldest got sick so I stepped in to help. My job was to put the babies to bed.

First remark about the experience: I have never seen a baby go to bed as easily as these two did. I changed their diapers, put on their pjs, turned on the sound machine and lay them down. After I turned off the light and shut the door, they went right to sleep. Amazing. The older boy went to sleep easily, too. This mama knows how to train her children.

Second remark about the experience: babies are just precious.

Even when he spit up on me, he was precious.  Even when his brother filled his diaper with poop, he was precious. The tiny little fingers . . . the tiny little pjs . . . the tiny little diapers . . . it's been a long time since I held a tiny one and you forget just how tiny they are.

Now, I'm not kidding myself: I remember the screaming and fussing, too. I remember the times when I loved my kids but I couldn't stand another moment in the room with them that day. Parenthood is hard sometimes.

But the precious tiny little fingers!

It's October, and even though it doesn't feel anything like fall here in Texas (sigh! I miss fall . . . ), Halloween stuff is out in the stores and in a few people's lawns. I am not a fan of Halloween, in general, for many reasons. But I have found myself, in the past couple weeks, having an urge to watch an old videotape we have stored away in the fall decorations:

"Elmo Says Boo."

Yep. I am dying to watch a Sesame Street Halloween video. Something about the memory of that video makes me feel serene and peaceful and happy. When the music from that show runs through my mind, I feel preciousness surrounding me. And for a moment, I long for the preciousness.

I have friends who would tell me that this is God's way of telling me I need more children. I doubt that. I think this is God's way of preparing me to have grandbabies. Precious tiny little grandbabies. Not quite yet . . . but they'll be here before I know it.

And I'm going to sit them down beside me to watch "Elmo Says Boo."

The 7th Graders and the Impossible

My 7th graders began their year reading a short story by Richard Thurman called "The Countess and the Impossible." It's about a boy who gets snagged by the eccentric, mean old lady in his neighborhood whose property he is short-cutting through and she hires him to take care of her lawn. She says she'll pay him what he thinks he's worth -- which he thinks is fifty cents, but she pushes and demands more of him until she can justify paying him two dollars for his work. She'll pay him more in the future, she says, if the quality of his work improves, but a five-dollar job -- well, that would be impossible..

Ultimately, he becomes obsessed with doing a five-dollar job. Once he discovers the secret he needs to get him there (taking 10-minute catnaps when his strength runs out), he ends up spending an entire Thursday making her lawn and yard immaculate beyond anything he ever thought himself capable of . . . and proudly astonishes the Countess by accomplishing the five-dollar job.

This was a great story for these kids to read to begin their junior high careers. Right now, you want to do fifty-cent work. We, your teachers, know that you can actually do two-dollar work and we aren't going to accept anything less. But we also know that within you is the ability to do the impossible: you can understand algebra. You can write a well-structured five-paragraph essay. You can remember all the details about the War for Independence and pull them together into a coherent presentation. You can do this experiment and discover something about the nature of momentum and gravity. You can focus yourself on six hours worth of home study work and get it all done and organized to turn in when you need to. You can fix your attention on the instructor in class so you pick up all the information you need and not distract yourself and your classmates with mindless chatter. You can do this. It is within you to do the five-dollar job. The impossible.

It is always a matter of figuring out what inspires each kid to get there.

In the course of my reading this weekend, I found an old verse that has challenged me often over the years:

Matthew 5:48 -- Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect.

PERFECT. Perfect the way God is perfect. Talk about the impossible job.

Whatever it was I read this in over the weekend (and I don't want to take the time to hunt it down now) talked about the possible meanings of "perfect" in this context, how it may not be demanding such an unreachable goal as it sounds. But I see no need to water this down. Jesus was telling us to strive to be just like God -- it's that simple. And the Word tells us that He has given us His Spirit to enable us to do just that. To be like Him.

Without the Spirit, we can only go so far. With the Spirit we are fully capable of doing the five-dollar job. It's just that we settle for two or three dollars, impressed at how far we've come since we were earning quarters.

And once again, I'm inspired to aim for the impossible.

Here's My Heart

Oh, to grace, how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be.

I could force my children into moral behavior. Well, I could have to an extent, when they were younger . . . my oldest being eighteen now, everything is a little more complicated . . . but that's kind of extraneous to the point I want to make here, so we'll gloss over that for now and return to . . .

I could force my children into moral behavior. In fact, that's what parents do on some level when our children are young. Through various disciplinary techniques, we require our children to behave morally with the hopes that these behaviors, which are not natural to them, will become reinforced and habitual, and with the hopes that they will see the benefits of moral behavior and strive to continue in that vein.

Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee.

In fact, it seems like the bulk of our parenting effort when our kids are young is expended toward shaping good, responsible kids -- probably because that task requires so much effort. Our natural bent toward sin makes this training a long-term job, one that doesn't ever get completed, one that our children (we hope) eventually take up to work on in themselves.

So much energy gets spent toward the goal of making our children good that it's sometimes easy to lose sight of the fact that this isn't our primary goal in parenting. At least it shouldn't be. At least it's not mine.

It's also not my primary goal that my children be happy. Not that I don't want them to be happy, but we all know that the happiness they desire from us today is temporary and destines them for misery later. The happiness we desire for them requires gruntwork today that is no fun.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love.

If I limit myself to the temporal goals I have for my children in this life (which I will for the purposes of this metaphor), one of my primary goals is for my children to have a relationship with me. A real relationship. Genuine, authentic relationship. Relationship appropriate to who we each are to each other -- not buddies, not business associates, but a mother and child. If I raise "happy," "good" children who don't have an authentic relationship with me, I have not really succeeded in my goal as a mother.

And it strikes me lately that I need to remember this about my heavenly Father as well. It is often easy to lose sight of the fact that His ultimate goal for me while I'm on this earth is not to make me a good, moral person (although He'd like that). Neither is it to make me happy in this life (although He wants that, too). Both of those goals pale in comparison to the ultimate, crucial need to establish a genuine, authentic relationship with me -- a relationship based in the reality of who we each are: father/child, master/servant, king/subject, creator/masterpiece, bridegroom/beloved bride. Goodness and happiness will all be taken care of some day; the relationship part has to be taken care of NOW.

I'm finding that when the ways of God don't make sense to me, it's usually because I've forgotten His ultimate goal. Not my morality or my levity, but my heart.

Here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.

Embracing Your "Faults"

I am an Initiator. That's something I've learned about myself over the years.

A mentor-friend identified that in me early on: "You seem to be an Initiator -- you're good at getting things started up, like this drama ministry. I'm not an Initiator; I'm a Maintainer. I'm good at taking something someone else has started up and keeping it going long-term . . . tweaking as necessary, all that." At the time, I just chalked that up as an interesting observation about life; I wasn't sure that her description of me was accurate. Only after many years of adult life experience did I realize how right she was. I'm an Initiator. I get the ball rolling.

I'm not so good at Maintaining -- at keeping the ball rolling later. I get restless and want to move on. For years, I (and other significant people in my life) saw this as a fault. I'm such a quitter. I should be able to stick with something longer than I do. It took a long time to realize that this fault of mine was actually a flip-side of my strength . . . and that this strength is something to be valued. Not everybody can initiate things well, and it's a necessary task in the world.

This weekend was our SCA teacher's work retreat. We spent a good amount of time talking about this new high school we're starting up this fall with a Freshman class of five students. It was weird to me to hear other teachers talking about how daunting an idea it is, to start something this big from scratch. Weird because I am so darn excited about this I can hardly stand it!! This is me in my sweet spot! I love it! I have no illusions about the difficulties here; I know there will come a time (many times, probably) when things aren't going well and I am tired and aggravated and want to throw in the towel on the whole idea. But I expect I will have less of those moments than others will . . . and I expect that's one reason God placed me in this school For Such A Time As This.

It occurs to me that, of all the important and valuable things I need to teach my students in their four years of high school, this may be one of the most valuable: your biggest faults are often the flip-sides of your greatest strengths. That impulsiveness that always gets you into trouble? That's the negative side of the boldness God has planted in you, which He will use in a mighty way.

Your over-sensitivity that causes you to get your feelings hurt all the time? That's a gift God has given you to sense when others are hurting and to sympathize with them when the callous world won't.

Your bossy, demanding ways that turn people off and lose you friends? That's your leadership qualities getting out of hand.

Now, some of our faults are just sins that need to be eradicated. But more often than not, the personal qualities that cause the most problems in our lives are actually gifts that just need to be tamed and brought under control. And it's important that we recognize and value those gifts. Knowing I'm an Initiator doesn't mean I'm excused from situations that require me to maintain (I'm a wife and mother -- I have a household to maintain at all times). But it does mean that I don't feel like a failure in life when I'm struggling in that area. It also means that I can seek out positions where I am needed to do what I do well and feel good about that. God made me this way for a reason -- I have to choose to honor the way God made me rather than letting the world tell me I'm lacking somehow. And so do my students.

"Know thyself", Socrates advised us. I love these kids I'm teaching this fall. I can't wait to get to know them and help them know themselves.

The Octogenarian Newlywed

I don't know for sure how old my Uncle Jim is, but my dad (the eldest sibling) would have turned 91 yesterday, so Jim must be in his late 80s. And I just heard Uncle Jim is getting married.

Yeah, my jaw dropped, too. Except that he's my Uncle Jim, and he's just kinda like that.

He's been widowed twice before, so this is his third marriage. His bride (also in her 80s) was widowed three years ago, according to a news article about her that my sister told me about. She immediately decided to go back to college, printing up business cards to hand out to the students calling herself "Granny Franny". Someone even nominated her for Homecoming Queen. Sounds like the kind of lady my Uncle Jim would marry.

Still, it's hard for me to imagine getting married at that age. I mean, what exactly does marriage offer you at that age that you can't get just by being friends? I doubt they're marrying for the bedroom privileges (although, again, this is Uncle Jim . . . I can't quite bring myself to eliminate that possibility).

Is it terrible that I found myself wondering if there are financial advantages to tying the knot at that age? (Because it doesn't seem like there would be many . . . but then Lord knows I'm no money guru . . . )

Do they want someone to help take care of them as they age? That's possible, but they're both aging, so I don't know how reliable a help they'd be to each other. Plus Uncle Jim has been pretty darn independent his whole life; it's hard to imagine him needing to be taken care of. And Granny Franny doesn't sound like a fragile, needy little thing, either.

Honestly, why shouldn't somebody in their 80s want to get married? I assume they're getting married for the reasons people should get married: they love each other, and they want to build a life together, even if it's a relatively short one at this point. They're house-hunting in Topeka (house-hunting!), and my sister said he sounded VERY happy.

God bless them! I hope I have the energy to consider starting a new life path in my late 80s. I just hope I live to my late 80s.

What Makes High School, High School?

My daughter's school is a relatively new one: they add a grade a year as the current students grow into new grades. So next year, they'll be starting a high school with my daughter and four other ninth graders. Eventually, she'll be in the school's very first graduating class. She's hoping for her name on a plaque.

As a teacher AND a parent of this inaugural Freshman class, I very much want to make this high school experience . . . well, a high school experience. Already in the two junior high years, parents and students (and staff) were noting the need for the kids to be differentiated more from the elementary school kids. They wear different uniforms; they have different teachers for different subject areas; but there is still a need for them to develop an identity as junior highers . . . and now as high schoolers.

But how exactly to accomplish this? Our first reaction is to look to our own high school years as a model. Unfortunately, a lot of things that marked high school for most of us are not feasible in such a small but growing school. (And others are not desirable.)

Like, lockers. When my eldest started high school after years of homeschooling, her first “uh-oh” moment was when she was given a locker combination and had no clue what to do with it. (That struck me as particularly funny because when she was a baby and I was first introduced to the idea of homeschooling through high school, as my brain was turning this idea over in my head, I half-consciously said out loud, “But . . . she'd never have a locker . . ." My friend guffawed at that; so did I. Even as I said it, I realized what a ridiculous objection that was.)

I don't think the church we are meeting in would appreciate our installing lockers in their halls. And we don't have enough space to physically separate the elementary and secondary kids very far (although that may change next year).

The distinctions will need to be not in the cosmetics but in the culture. Which is probably better anyway because then we have to be more intentional and thoughtful about what culture we want to create among our high schoolers.

I have ideas. So do some others. We'll need to get together this summer and brainstorm. But I'm also curious what my readers would have to say about this. What events, behaviors, routines, expectations, environments, etc. would constitute the culture of a high school? And a healthy culture, of course – we all know there is stuff that defines high school these days that we'd just as soon eradicate if we could. Our school can hopefully nip that stuff in the bud now, if we're consciously doing so.

Suggestions, friends? I'll write about this again as I get more to share.

Just What Gives You the Big Idea that You Should Be Free?

My eldest got tired of listening to talk radio yesterday and pulled out an old Adventures in Odyssey cassette to listen to. Boy, did that send me back! My little ones buckled into their car seats behind me and John Avery Whitaker's soothing voice coming through the speakers. Enjoyed those years.

The tape she picked was the story of a boy who gets bonked on the head and goes back to Revolutionary War time (I never said the stories were realistic -- just fun). He ends up in the middle of the Continental Congress session where they are debating whether or not to declare their independence from Britain. John Dickinson from Pennsylvania is arguing vehemently and eloquently against the idea. When he realizes he can't convince them, he graciously steps down from his position so they can proceed with a united front. (Wikipedia tells me he then joined the Pennsylvania militia. Fascinating man.)

Listening to the story made the girls and I wonder: how exactly did the founding fathers, the leaders
who led our country into making this radical and dangerous move, get this all-consuming passion for "freedom"? I don't think any other country in the world had "freedom" in this way. Where did they get the idea from to begin with, and what made them so convinced they had to have it that they were willing to stake their Lives, their Fortunes, and their Sacred Honor on it? People all over the world lived contented lives under governments that controlled much of their lives -- why did the Americans find this so intolerable?

How Then Shall We Live by Francis Schaeffer compared the American Revolution to the French Revolution . . . but he first compares the Reformation to the Renaissance. He sees them both as reactions to the corruption in the Roman Catholic Church. In northern Europe, people reacted by separating from the church and forming the Protestant denominations, based on believers reading the Word for themselves and being accountable to God individually. In southern Europe, people reacted by rejecting the premises of Christianity altogether and celebrating the greatness of man on his own -- the Enlightenment and so forth.

The American Revolution grew out of the Reformation tradition, Schaeffer says, and that's why it succeeded. The French Revolution grew out of Renaissance and Enlightenment thinking, and that's why it failed within a few years and Napoleon took over.

Now, this may be a bit simplistic of a view of things (and I haven't read the book in a while -- I may be simplifying it too much), but I do know that even the founding fathers argued that America needed godly principles to keep it going. "Only a virtuous people is capable of freedom," Ben Franklin said. And John Adams agreed: "Our Constitution is made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

We know that the founding fathers were influenced at least some by Enlightenment thinking, and that they were rather mixed and varied in their religious views, some more orthodox than others. But we also know that they all came out of a tradition of Protestantism, and they seemed to operate on a public level as Protestant believers even when their private views were more murky. Am I right in surmising that their passion for "freedom" came from their understanding of their relationship to God? Hmmm.

Listening to Dickinson's arguments made me think a lot of the arguments I hear liberal friends make justifying what conservatives feel is dramatic over-reach of the government. Wouldn't we all love to hear that Constitutional Convention crowd discuss, say, Obamacare? I'd buy tickets for that show.