Could I Be A Different Me? (Part II)

When I first posted this question I wasn't thinking, as Judi surmised, about whether I could transform my life -- although that's also been at the top of the list.  The question was motivated by a debate I found myself embroiled in on a conservative message board I frequent.  One might actually say I started the debate, although I didn't see it that way.  Someone else had posted in dismay about the upcoming vote in Canada about gay marriage.  I paused, rather considerably, before saying anything, because the tone of the board had been lighthearted and happy -- but then I concluded that it wasn't a statement about which I could, in good conscience, remain silent. 

The ensuing debate got me thinking about what it would be like to be a completely different person.  I guess I've mistitled these entries -- I wasn't so much wondering whether I could be a different person that I might be hoping to become as I was wondering what it would be like to be one that I have no desire to be.  I think that it's always good to try to imagine the viewpoint of another and to try to see where she is coming from -- that old "walk around in her shoes for awhile" precept.  Like most people, I'm not so good at it. 

So I was trying to imagine:  What would it be like to wake up in the morning full of the certitude that there is one God, a God with specific and clear plans and commands, a God who would be sure to condemn certain people to eternal damnation because of choices they had made in opposition to those specific and clear commands -- not to believe in that God, or to follow their hearts and love whom they were led to love, or to have an abortion? Would I feel comfortable and secure?  Would I feel enveloped by trust in and love of that God?  Would I feel scared and persecuted whenever I encountered someone on a message board or saw someone on the news who urged that our freedoms are best preserved by keeping prayer out of the classroom and prosyletizing out of the workplace?  Would I find schools for my children where my religious beliefs would be modeled exclusively and all day and they would be protected from the influences of those who see things differently?

I'm not asking these questions sarcastically.  Not in the least.  The prayer book I often use begins this morning as follows:

"You show me the path of life, O God.  In your presence there is fullness of joy."  (Psalm 16:11).

If I woke up thinking about how devastated I, a straight and long-married mother of young adult children, was by the possibility that gay people could marry in my country, and wondering what I could do to stop that from happening, would I feel the fullness of joy? 

Maybe I would.  Maybe I would be so sure I understood God that I would feel compelled to take whatever action I could to try to prevent my felllow citizens from traveling a sure path to hell.  Maybe I would be troubled day and night by the knowledge that I was surrounded by those who do not understand God's ways and purposes in this world, and I would seek the company and comfort of others like me, others who do understand.  Maybe I would isolate myself and my children from and shun those who see things differently.  Maybe, no matter how disgusted and dismayed I felt by the world, I would be full of joy because I knew THE TRUTH.

It really is extremely difficult to try to get into another's head. 

Missin' Those Little Kids

I can't get hold of the one studying architecture a couple of hours away, so I have to be content with looking at his photos, like this one he took last month of a buffalo in Yellowstone.

I talked to the one in Barcelona this afternoon; he's finding it a tough city to which to acclimate himself. 

The other one is in the living room watching a movie with. . . a date.

How did all this happen?

Could I Be A Different Me? (Part I)

First, a clarification about that last entry, which I thought was so courageously hopeful and elegantly presented (and which apparently almost no one read):  it had nothing whatever to do with me or with anyone I know.  A couple of people have contacted me on the basis of the misunderstanding that it was mine, or my daughter's.  It was this year's graduation speech by a senior at my alma mater, where I know no one in the senior class, or any other class, for that matter.  I posted it because I was so proud that my school has continued to produce young people with such generous spirits, so willing to greet the world and extend themselves to discover and participate in it. 

I know that, while the international aura of the school is unusual in this country, the spirit it creates is not.  My children are graduates of three different high schools (including that one) and the result has been much the same.  I suppose I was struck by the young lady's approach and experiences in large part because the school in which I teach is so very different.  A religious school in which all the students and all but about six of the faculty are of the same religion and culture, it seeks to provide the students with a thorough grounding in the beliefs, texts, and lifestyle of their community of origin.  The school does an impressive job of producing articulate young people passionately committed to the tenets, vision, and politics of their faith -- but it's an approach completely distinct from the one in which my own high school is engaged.

Both methods have their plusses and minuses, of course.  But the combination of reading that speech, reading some entries from The Blue Voice, and finding myself involved in a debate on a messgae board yesterday, all got me wondering:  Could I be a different me than I am?  Would it be possible for me to be someone else, to believe differently, to hope for different things than I do?

Too much for one entry, so. . .  more later.

Old Fogie Bursting with Pride

Senior Graduation Oration Speech 2005

(from my high school's website)

Robin Barron, class of 2005

Buenos días, clase de dos mil cinco. Soy Robin Barron, y he sido una estudiante por cuatro años en NMH. Soy de Halifax, Vermont, un pueblito al noroeste de aqui. Me siento honrada de hablar ante ustedes en ésta, vuestra última reunión en NMH.

Good morning, class of 2005! I am Robin Barron, and I am a four year senior here at Northfield Mount Hermon. I come from Halifax, Vermont, a tiny town just northwest of here. This is your last “required meeting,” and I am honored to be one of your last guest speakers.

When I arrived for my freshman year, I traveled only 45 minutes to get to NMH. As a day student, I went back home every night. That year, I was amazed to hear how long people had traveled to get here. 24 hours? On a plane? I didn’t know that it took that long to fly to any place! I had no idea that during four years here I would meet someone from Uzbekistan, learn to speak Spanish, and be inspired by activist Kimmie Weeks’ story of working for the rights and welfare of the world’s children.

It didn’t take me long to find out that being at NMH was completely different from being at home. NMH was not just a New England Prep school. It was a miniature world, with students from multiple religions, languages, and cultures.

When did I figure this out? Certainly not at that infamous five-hour diversity meeting our freshman year. I started to notice it when I awoke from my little white Vermont world and began to feel connected to the outside world through my new international friends. It was triggered by the smell of foreign foods that filled the lounge after study hall. It caught my ear in the lilting accent of a newfound Ukrainian friend. It captured my attention in an explanation of how to use chopsticks at the Chinese banquet. Bit by bit, I started to realize that, at NMH, I could expand my horizons without ever leaving campus.

Eventually, though, I wanted to get out. I questioned the authenticity of this “diversity.” Were these cross-cultural experiences I was having here real, or were they forced by circumstance? Then, in my junior year, I got the opportunity to go on a term abroad and live with a family in the Dominican Republic for two months.

There’s something about being completely immersed in another culture that brings out a stronger side of you. Maybe you feel freer, or maybe you feel as if you need to be louder and firmer to be understood by all the locals. Whatever the case, being the only white person in a large city changes your perspective. It is especially eye-opening for a middle-class white American to suddenly be in the minority. It is important to feel that, and to realize that you can’t be the same person or do the same things that you do at home. You have to change. You have to adapt. You have to be confused.

I went to the Dominican Republic knowing a fair amount of Spanish, but the first few weeks there were difficult. At NMH, I could talk on and on in my Spanish 2 class about my family tree, my favorite subject in school, or my best friend, just as I had learned from my textbook. But when it came to following the rapid and slang-filled conversations of Dominican teenagers, I was lost. I had so much to learn.

Soon, I became almost fluent in Spanish. In the Dominican Republic, unrestrained by the pressures of our society that I often feel here, I adapted to their culture and found my place within its confines. There I was, a glowing white Vermont farm girl, living in the city of San Cristóbal. So many things were new and different for me—and that’s what was so exciting about it all.

When I returned to NMH, I realized that I could be that same outgoing person in our NMH culture too. I came back from the Dominican Republic filled with a renewed sense of purpose and energy. I had felt so alive every day in the Caribbean sunshine, and I never wanted to let that fade, especially when the New England weather was cold and gray and miserable. Living, speaking, and even dreaming in a foreign language for two months had truly brought me to understand it. Suddenly, fill-in-the-blank Spanish grammar exercises were much easier, and reading the poetry of Gabriel Garcia Marquez was much more enjoyable.

However, as you all know, you don’t have to go to another country to be immersed. I went to SoulFest last year and felt like the only white girl there. I sometimes realize on the bus that I’m surrounded by a group of Chinese students and that I have no idea what they’re saying. And this is ok. Because out in the world you don’t always understand what’s going on around you. You’re not always in the majority. You’re not always comfortable. And that’s ok.

There are so many ways, big and small, noticed and unnoticed, in which having international and diverse groups of students here affects the way we all learn. You can understand why birth control is no simple issue in Afghanistan when a classmate who has lived there explains to you the importance of large families in Afghan culture. It’s fun to learn German songs in concert choir and be laughed at by the native Germans for your awful pronunciation. You understand so much more about Buddhism when there are actually Buddhist students in the class who can talk about how they practice Buddhism and what the Eight-fold path means for them.

Feeling this around me, every day, I am reminded that there is life outside of NMH, but that all those lives—all those experiences, cultures, religions, languages—all come together here. This is not to say that we all acknowledge, appreciate, or dwell on the diversity we have. However, no one can deny that here, in our beautiful but isolated New England prep school, we have a kind of cultural immersion.

Maybe NMH is your first time living away from home, your first time living in America and speaking English, or the first time you heard Thai being spoken. Maybe NMH was the first place you met someone from another country. Or maybe you tried tostones at the Latin American table at the International Carnival and can’t wait to eat more.

NMH is a little slice of the world, and your time here has started you on your way toward getting the whole pie. Don’t let your exploration, your adventuring, or your learning stop here. It’s time to venture outside the wonderfully protective walls of NMH. It’s time to go and be the only white in a country of black people, the only Muslim in a country of Christians, the only liberal in a conference of conservatives. Put yourself in that new place to explore, to learn, and to experience. Put yourself in that place to enjoy and to live.

Traveling to new places is about finding yourself surrounded by the unexpected, and about letting that unexpectedness take you along for the ride. You probably assumed that I would begin my speech in English, but I didn’t. I thought that everyone would understand me when I arrived in the Dominican Republic, but they didn’t. I thought that my four years here at NMH would be just a more demanding high-school education—but it wasn’t. Ha sido mucho mas que eso. It has been so much more than that.

Hospitality and Its Reward

So. . . I got to preach the sermon this morning.  If you want to see it, head on over to my other journal.  And  forgive me for adding the other material from the beginning but, now that it's over, I can say that not only was it a great privilege; it was great fun!  It's a lot different on the other side of the altar, where you have to pay attention to the order of the service and to standing and sitting at the right times - not to mention the part where you have to make an attempt to say something of significance.

YIKES!

I now need to go directly to the pool, do not pass go, do not collect $200, and stare at vacant air for awhile.

There's a Reason for This

There's a new game going around Journal Land.  I first picked it up from Cynthia here, I think, but I've seen it around elsewhere since.  And Cynthia stole it from someone else anyway.   Now Judith has added a new twist here.

At first I wasn't going to ask, but now I find that I'm rummaging around in my mind in order to write something about myself and where I am right now or, perhaps more accurately, where I'm not, so I really would love a response to the question as first posed.  I guess I'm going to follow Judi's twist in reverse, but I'm having trouble getting started and I think it would help to have  few words to bounce off.  So if you wouldn't mind:

Please leave a one word comment that you think best describes me.

It can only be one word.  No more.

Then copy and paste this into your journal so that I may leave a word about you...

 

 

Labels

So my daughter, who is 17, graduated from high school, gainfully employed, and en route to college, says at dinner tonight,

"Growing up in this family, and in this community, I only realized very recently that the label "conservative" is not necessarily pejorative, and that there are people who voluntarily identify THEMSELVES as conservative and see that as a GOOD thing!"

"Sweetie," I said, "those people think 'liberal' is a derogatory term."

"Well, I understand that NOW," she said, in a slightly huffy tone of voice.  "But how would anyone growing up in this house know that?"

 

We Seem To Be Gettin' Up There

As of yesterday, my husband and I have been married for 31 years.  I'm not sure  that I would have taken much note of that fact as a marker of the passage of time, except for two unrelated events that took place in the preceeding 24 hours.

The night before, a friend of my daughter's was married in a lovely outdoor Summer Solstice celebration.  (It got started a bit late thanks to a disapearing microphone and the pastor's fear that she wouldn't be heard without it; as things turned out, we could hear the pastor just fine but could barely see the bride and groom in the dark, and I kept expecting Puck to leap out of the suburban shrubbery to create additional chaos.) This was the first of my daughter's friends to marry and, I would imagine, the last for quite some time.  The bride is the only member of their just graduated class to forego an immediate transition to a four-year college; she and her new husband (now that's a hard word to write in the context of my daughter's generation!), both probably genius-level kids, are wriggling out of the academic world that has probably seemed more confining than liberating to them, at least for the time being.  She's always been the unconventional one, which made her very traditional wedding all the more poignant.  She seemed completely and supremely happy at the reception, so we are all hoping that her determination to detour from the path laid out for her since birth will lead her to nothing but happiness.  But it is most definitely hard for me to comprehend that a little girl who used to arrive here for regular overnights is now a young woman in possession of a husband and and a china pattern.

And in the next astonishing life-event, yesterday morning another friend's daughter and her partner became the parents of a brand new baby boy.  I don't know the new parents, but the new grandmother -- Grandmother??? Oh, MY -- and I are good friends.  Yet another unconventional situation in which the older generation silently fears the long term potential for sorrow -- in this case due to the idiotic stance of our state law, which apparently prohibits lesbian mothers from adopting the biological children of their partners, thereby precluding them from the legal  protections afforded heterosexual parents.  For the moment, though, we can only rejoice in the arrival of a new little person and hope that the good will of his parents and extended families will be sufficient to see him through whatever the laws of the state seek to confuse.

I'm not sure how this all happened.  How did we reach the point where our generation is parenting brides and new mothers?

Harkness Education

Like most of us, my early educational years were marked by a teacher-centered form of schooling.  The teacher stood in the front of the room and presented; the rest of us sat in rows and absorbed.  It wasn't until I reached high school that I experienced anything different, and then it occurred so seamlessly that I didn't even realize that I was the beneficiary of a revolutionary approach to education. 

I spent my high school years at the Northfield School, a  New England boarding school for girls (today it's the co-ed Northfield Mount Hermon School).  My father, a graduate of the Phillips Exeter Academy, another New England boarding school (and also co-ed now, although not in his, or my, day), had scoured the countryside in search of a girls' equivalent to Exeter and had been told repeatedly, "Northfield is the place."  I selected Northfield for other reasons entirely, not having any idea why he was so satisfied with the choice.  And it wasn't until a few years ago, when I read about a Harkness seminar that one of my daughter's teachers had attended, that I realized why.

The education offered by Exeter takes place largely around oval tables, the originals the gifts of one Edward Harkness.  Students spend their classes seated around those tables, largely in student-led discussions,  guided by the occasional teacher prompt or suggestion.  That was high school as I knew it -- although we didn't have the elegant Harkness tables, we did follow the model of the seating arrangement and discussion, at least in the humanities.  (I understand that math and science classes have moved increasingly closer to the Harkness method over the decades.)  In the article that I read, the author noted that the teacher began class by walking into the room, tossing his copy of a Shakespeare play onto the table, and asking, "Okay, what did you guys think?"  The students took it from there.

When it came time for our own children to go to school, my husband and I chose a Montessori education for them that lasted from preschool through 8th grade.  Still knowing nothing about the Harkness method in any official or articulated way, I naturally gravitated toward a school in which the children were responsible for their own learning, in which the adults create the climate and space and then get out of the way.  My daughter and I were discussing this topic last night, and I said something about my surprise when her high school had turned out to be deeply traditional in its approach to education, with much lecturing and teacher-directed learning going on. I reminded her about having read that her freshman English teacher had gone to a Harkness seminar, which her school had seen as something of a novel approach.  She acknowledged that she had been surprised, too, by how much more responsibility she and her peers had had for their own learning when they were in middle school than they later had in high school.

The topic came up last night because I had spent the day at a teacher workshop on the topic of better incorporating writing into our social studies classes.  The school in which I work provides some immensely creative teaching, and the workshop was both inspiring and of practical value.  But I was bothered by the emphasis on a  "hook" -- the idea that we should open each class with something designed to grab the attention of our students and focus the lesson for them.  Pursuant to that approach, each class is designed to become a mini-masterpiece of a drama created by the teacher, rather than an exploration initiated and pursued on the basis of student curiosity.  The idea of tossing a book on a table and asking the students, "So, what did you think?" is viewed as carelessness rather than as the fostering of student discipline and rigor.

It can be fun to create those "hooks."  I was working on lessons about the Scientific Revolution in Europe yesterday, and I got a kick out of looking for Ptolemaic and heliocentric maps of the universe, and finding a little cartoon depicting Galileo's run-in with the church.  But in the Harkness-Northfield-Montessori line of schooling that forms the basis for my own educational philosophy, the students should have the pleasure of making those discoveries on their own.

Yes, it takes longer.  Sometimes much, much longer.  It's certainly easier and speedier for a teacher to present a lecture on the concepts of metaphor and simile than it is for her to ask casually, "So, 'All the world's a stage' -- what does that mean?"  and leave it to the students to derive an understanding of the both the passage and the literary device.  But at the end of the day, who grasps better what a metaphor is -- the student who memorized a definition and example, or the student who figured it out for herself and went on to search delightedly for more of them?

 

Slowin' Down

I hardly feel like myself.  The school year is just about over --I have graded 50 projects and 20 final essay exams, recorded grades and written comments for 70 students, counted and stored books, rescued my new $1000 worth of maps that the custodial staff didn't see them in quite the same light that I do, moved boxes and boxes from my work space to my car to my basement, had a couple of meetings to try to incorporate some new assignments into my life, and worked on the placement of 8th graders into honors classes (or not) for next year.  I have one more set of meetings tomorrow, as we work to clarify the writing expectations for our social studies students, and then I am officially FINISHED with the school year.

Of course, unofficially I'm finished with nothing.  I have two students who have taken Incompletes, so there will be some make-up communications over the summer.  I have piles of books and reams of paper to organize.  I have my own children to keep track of (even though they are all, as they have informed me repeatedly, Responsible and Consenting Adults).  I have a sermon to finish preparing for next Sunday.  I have to help get our church's Adult Education program into place for next fall.  I have a week-long graduate course in July.  I have my own reading and photography lists.  With any luck, The Great Driveway Project will at least be underway by the time school starts up again.  And I've aleady begun preparing next year's classes -- I'm printing a 15-page day-by-day calendar for one of next year's classes as I write.

But my pace has been transformed, from Frantic to one of Utter Leisure.  I can't believe how much TIME I suddenly have at my disposal.  I have so many hopes for doing my own writing this summer -- and why not?  In just one afternoon I've picked up the entire first floor of the house, something I hadn't been able to get to for weeks.  I've been out to survey my garden, and I'm going off to buy some fun reading material.  I'm even going to pay some bills more or less on time.

Of course, there's no food in the house. . .  but that's what take-out is for!

Summer Breeze

I actually fell asleep and took a real nap this afternoon.  I was wiped out because the lovely new graduate went out to a drive-in with friends last night and called at 12:15 to say they wanted to see the second feature and would spend the night at the young man's house rather than drive home at 3:00 a.m.  Of course, I didn't really sleep until after I talked to her at 2:45 and they had all arrived safely. 

We had A Discussion about it when she got home today.  She is so completely at the We Are Adults and Can Make Our Own Decisions place and I so am not.  It's like having one of those little people around again, the ones who put their hands on their hips and say "You are not the boss of me!"  This is my third time through, and I am very aware of the need for them to make their own decisions this summer while there are still parents nearby to pick up the pieces if necessary.  But that doesn't do anything for my sleeping, or lack thereof.

Tonight we all went out to a ball game to celebrate my husband's birthday today and Father's Day tomorrow.  The kids had really wanted to do something special together, since it's rare for us all to be here at the same time in the summer, when all of our birthdays are.  There was a terrific fireworks display afterward, which was great since by July 4 we will be down to one child again.  In fact, tomorrow the boys and I leave to deposit one of them in the other's apartment for the summer so he can start his summer architecture classes the next day.  This is his big experiment, his attempt to see if he would like to pursue a career in architecture after college -- God forbid that his own school should offer degrees in any subject of a practical nature, such as architecture or engineering.

I'm ready for another nap.

Okay, Why Not?

1. Do you do a yearly "spring cleaning" in your home?  If so, have you done this year's version, yet?

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

2. Have you ever been blindfolded and asked to identify which of two drinks is Pepsi or Coke?  If you haven't, do you think you could tell the difference?

I think I could tell, because I really don't like Pepsi.  But I could be wrong -- my sense of taste is almost nonexistent, given that I have no sense of smell.

3. You find out that you're going to have a child:  what baby names will you choose?

Holly.  Luke. 

4. You must become one of the Brady Bunch kids for a single day:  which one would you choose to become and why?

Marcia Marcia Marcia.  Always wanted that long blonde hair.  Of course, Marcia probably turned into Bree, and that sure wasn't my destiny.

5. Where are you going for summer vacation this year?

Probably nowhere.  Maybe Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia with my daughter if we get really, really lucky.

6. What is the most religious thing you do on a day-to-day basis?

Prayer and reading.  I usually pray while I walk.  I usually read religious stuff in the morning and evening.

From Patrick, of course.

 

Christianity and Politics

As I was glancing over The New York Times this morning, I saw that the governor of Massachusetts has indicated his willingness to support legislation that would overturn the rights of gays to marry in his state.  I sighed and wondered where Mr. Danforth, Episopalian priest and former United States Senator, was.  A few months ago, he wrote a piece decrying the current right-wing Christian obsession with gay rights. He commented that in all his time in the Senate, he went to bed every night pondering the world political and economic situation, and never once went to bed thinking about homosexual marriage -- and then noted that, for many of our elected representatives, those priorities seem to have switched places.   Imagine my delight as I continued to scroll down the page and discovered the following:  

The Op-Ed Contributor (New York Times)  

By JOHN C. DANFORTH

Published: June 17, 2005

St. Louis

IT would be an oversimplification to say that America's culture wars are now between people of faith and nonbelievers. People of faith are not of one mind, whether on specific issues like stem cell research and government intervention in the case of Terri Schiavo, or the more general issue of how religion relates to politics. In recent years, conservative Christians have presented themselves as representing the one authentic Christian perspective on politics. With due respect for our conservative friends, equally devout Christians come to very different conclusions.

It is important for those of us who are sometimes called moderates to make the case that we, too, have strongly held Christian convictions, that we speak from the depths of our beliefs, and that our approach to politics is at least as faithful as that of those who are more conservative. Our difference concerns the extent to which government should, or even can, translate religious beliefs into the laws of the state.

People of faith have the right, and perhaps the obligation, to bring their values to bear in politics. Many conservative Christians approach politics with a certainty that they know God's truth, and that they can advance the kingdom of God through governmental action. So they have developed a political agenda that they believe advances God's kingdom, one that includes efforts to "put God back" into the public square and to pass a constitutional amendment intended to protect marriage from the perceived threat of homosexuality.

Moderate Christians are less certain about when and how our beliefs can be translated into statutory form, not because of a lack of faith in God but because of a healthy acknowledgement of the limitations of human beings. Like conservative Christians, we attend church, read the Bible and say our prayers.

But for us, the only absolute standard of behavior is the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. Repeatedly in the Gospels, we find that the Love Commandment takes precedence when it conflicts with laws. We struggle to follow that commandment as we face the realities of everyday living, and we do not agree that our responsibility to live as Christians can be codified by legislators.

When, on television, we see a person in a persistent vegetative state, one who will never recover, we believe that allowing the natural and merciful end to her ordeal is more loving than imposing government power to keep her hooked up to a feeding tube.

When we see an opportunity to save our neighbors' lives through stem cell research, we believe that it is our duty to pursue that research, and to oppose legislation that would impede us from doingso.

We think that efforts to haul references of God into the public square, into schools and courthouses, are far more apt to divide Americans than to advance faith.

Following a Lord who reached out in compassion to all human beings, we oppose amending the Constitution in a way that would humiliate homosexuals.

For us, living the Love Commandment may be at odds with efforts to encapsulate Christianity in a political agenda. We strongly support the separation of church and state, both because that principle is essential to holding together a diverse country, and because the policies of the state always fall short of the demands of faith. Aware that even our most passionate ventures into politics are efforts to carry the treasure of religion in the earthen vessel of government, we proceed in a spirit of humility lacking in our conservative colleagues.

In the decade since I left the Senate, American politics has been characterized by two phenomena: the increased activism of the Christian right, especially in the Republican Party, and the collapse of bipartisan collegiality. I do not think it is a stretch to suggest a relationship between the two. To assert that I am on God's side and you are not, that I know God's will and you do not, and that I will use the power of government to advance my understanding of God's kingdom is certain to produce hostility.

By contrast, moderate Christians see ourselves, literally, as moderators. Far from claiming to possess God's truth, we claim only to be imperfect seekers of the truth. We reject the notion that religion should present a series of wedge issues useful at election time for energizing a political base. We believe it is God's work to practice humility, to wear tolerance on our sleeves, to reach out to those with whom we disagree, and to overcome the meanness we see in today's politics.

For us, religion should be inclusive, and it should seek to bridge the differences that separate people. We do not exclude from worship those whose opinions differ from ours. Following a Lord who sat at the table with tax collectors and sinners, we welcome to the Lord's table all who would come. Following a Lord who cited love of God and love of neighbor as encompassing all the commandments, we reject a political agenda that displaces that love. Christians who hold these convictions ought to add their clear voice of moderation to the debate on religion in politics.

John C. Danforth is an Episcopal minister and former Republican senator from Missouri.

INNER TURMOIL

I received an interesting comment a few entries back, in which someone said that I usually seem unflappable.  I wonder what that means about me and the way I move about in the world.  People are always telling me things like that -- well, not my family, which knows better, but other people.

"You look so elegant, professional and calm."  Said just as I am thinking about throwing up due to anxiety over a court appearance (in my former life as a lawyer).

"You were so collected and cool." Said in the aftermath of a trip to the ER after mopping up my daughter and her blood, soaked into a playing field following her encounter with a field hockey stick that was a bit too high.

"I had no idea you were concerned about that."  Said about a zillion times just following some clenched-fist crunched-stomach crisis.

It seems that I move through life with my feelings almost completely masked.  Where did that come from?  I read during last year's presidential campaign that Howard Dean had attended a New England boarding school where the icy approach to life taught as a matter of course was "Never complain; never explain."  Ahhh, I chuckled to myself, THAT I recognized.  (In direct contrast to much of contemporary life, where the rule seems to be "Complain and explain and don't ever stop.)  Although it was a motto that I had never heard articulated in just that way, anyone who grew up under the shadow of an eastern boarding school would recognize it.  Unfair bad grade?  Suck it up.  Feelings hurt?  Not a word.  Uncomfortable about a situation, a presentation, an assignment?  Don't let on.

My family of origin reeked of the same set of values, as established primarily by my beloved grandmother, who seldom mentioned -- and NEVER complained about -- the trials of growing up with and eventually bearing full responsibility for a mother richocheting from one biploar episode to another, and almost never mentioned my own mother and brother after they died.  It wasn't just that feelings were an unacceptable topic of conversation.  It was that presenting a calm and focused appearance to the world at large was an absolute imperative.

How fortunate that the geological imperatives of Yellowstone are somewhat less restrained.  I can't take any credit for this one -- it's my son's, from his little four-day cross country jaunt.

Mindfulness

This could so be me.  Walking and reading at the same time.  Overly enthusiastic dog.  Psycho cat.

We had such a lovely morning.  My son and I had picked up his brother from college yesterday and driven about an hour east of Chicago to LaPorte, Indiana, where we had settled into a small resort hotel on a little lake.  This morning I took a long walk, discovering another lake and a path through the woods.  I came back to a refreashing swim in the pool just outside our door and a little bit of time to bake in the sun while the boys swam and got organized for the trip home.   

I think this summer's highlights will be made up of tiny patches of time like that.  We used to spend a week or two in St. Augustine every spring, a week or two at Chautauqua every summer, and a week or so at least once a year in a completely new place.  Four different school schedules, five different sets of jobs and activities, and increasing monetary pressures have ended that period of our lives, so we have to find our moments where we can, and not necessarily all together.   

I've been reading a lot of Buddhist stuff in the past month.  I have a real need to practice mindfulness, to be in and aware of the existing moment.  (That probably means that I should not be reading and walking at the same time.)

It's been a tough few weeks.  My children are clearly off and on their way, and no matter how intently I focused on their presence as they grew up, the fact is that they still grew up faster than speed-dial moves.  I've had a huge disappointment, with major financial repercussions, at work, adding a completely unexpected level of stress to my life.  I've had a huge compliment outside of work, in an arena that's important to me, and I'm mystified by the juxtapositon of such bad stuff in one place and such good stuff in another.   

So. . . I really needed to just enjoy the Indiana water and sun this morning.

New Life

Those who've been watching the Blackwater NWR Eagle Cam and reading the accompanying blog for the past months know that three eaglets were successfully hatched, one moved to Vermot to join an eagle re-introduction program there, and all three have now fledged.

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the marsh, the osprey parents have just produced two young.  Their story appears here; the first egg was lost but the two surviving little ones show every sign of a healthy start.

In my own nest, one son has returned from college, albeit briefly (he's off to Spain in two weeks) and he and I leave in the morning to pick up his twin brother, who will be home for less than a week before heading off to summer school.  The daughter performed her senior voice recital today -- a tiny but lovely affair for family and friends of two young ladies, graduated and ready for college. 

I am the only one left in school, with a week to go, so I guess summer is more or less officially here.

 

 

 

 

Outside Caribou Coffee

This day has been the worst one I have endured in quite awhile. 

Job issues, kid (x2) issues, money issues.

It's a good thing someone out there has a sense of humor.

PS: There is a picture at the top of this entry.  I have no idea why it keeps refusing to appear.  Guess that sort of goes along with the day.

Life. . .

. . . is just too much right now.  There isn't a single thing that's happened in the last few weeks that hasn't become complicated 100 times over.  And I, like some other people around here, am exhausted from being the only person in the family juggling all of it simultaneously in my mind.

I've been working on a links journal -- Worldwide Connections -- because my lists are out of control.  I've put it in my sidebar, but it isn't remotely close to being finished, so don't be insulted if you don't see yourself there yet.

One of the very, very cool sculptures in one of our little nearby shopping areas, this one outside an ice-cream-and-gelato place, of course:

 

A Tiny Rant

On the Let's See How Many Headaches We Can Make For Ourselves With 9/11 Precautions Page:  Today I had to take my lovely daughter for a drug test for her animal shelter job.  Yes, the place in which she volunteered for her senior project has given her a real job!  I had to TAKE her because of that one-month license suspension, which has a week to go and has been one headache for ME after another.  In order to take a drug test, you must provide a photo ID.  Since the nearby county in which she had her accident is in possession of her license, her only photo ID is her recreation center card.  We got to the drug-testing center only to learn that we were supposed to have understood the generic "photo ID" on the instructions to mean "STATE OR FEDERAL photo ID." 

So off to get a state ID card.  This involved a frantic search of the house for a certified copy of her birth certificate, an hour trip out to her school for a certified transcript, and my presence with her at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles -- two forms of ID and my presence mandated by 9/11 legislation so that she could obtain another form of ID from a state agency that already has her securely listed in its very own computer system.  Back to the drug testing place, where by then the wait was so long that I had to go home to let in the piano tuner and go back to get her.  FIVE HOURS.   That's how long this little episode took.  How fortunate that I had the day off work so that I could invest it in making sure that the world is safe from drug users with false identification.  It would be laughable if it weren't so utterly time-consuming, inconveniencing and pointless -- I bet that the security guards accused in the case of that abducted young woman in Texas had provided adequate ID and had passed drug tests.

And then, on the Why America Is Really Losing Out To The Chinese Page -- while we sat in the waiting room, we were treated to a television blaring forth The View.  A group of women, one of whom was Barbara Walters, were going on and on about Angelina or Angelique or someone and scientology or whatever.  They moved on to an interview with Connie Chung, whom I remember from her reporting days, and her husband, but as far as I could tell neither of them has accomplished anything of significance lately -- they were just there as a joint celebrity presence.   The daughter and I looked at each other after a few minutes of this mini hell-on-earth and asked, "Who on earth watches this stuff?  Does anyone actually want to watch people they don't know gossiping about other people they don't know?"  "People with absolutely no life of their own?" she suggested.

Sorry if I've offended any View watchers out there.  My friends know that I have tried Oprah three times and never made it all the way through a show.  And last week I tried to watch The Today Show to learn a bit more about Deep Throat, and found myself appalled by Katie Couric's general display of idiocy.  Perhaps I am just a tiny bit out of the mainstream.  But I am convinced that if The View is representative of American morning entertainment, we are truly doomed.  We don't have to worry in the least about drug testing for employment , because our brains have already been severely compromised by our very own media.

Tomorrow: Happy Graduation

Yet do I not repine
Knowing that Bird of mine
Though flown --
Learneth beyond the sea
Melody new for me
And will return.

~    Emily Dickinson

Spreading Their Wings

I knew I was in trouble when my then 17-year-old son called from France to say that he was faxing me a permission form to sign that would enable him to travel across the country and stay in a hostel by himself.  I pointed out that I would not think of allowing him to travel to say, Boston, and stay in a motel by himself.  "M-o-o-m," he whined, "this is FRANCE, not the United States."

Precisely.

Well, he survived it, although a year or two later I learned that he omitted a few of the more lurid details about the isolated train station in Marseilles.

Many years ago a friend and I had a long discussion about what we really wanted out of our later life.  What I wanted, I concluded (and she concurred) was to purchase three of the houses on my block and install each of my children and his or her respective spouse in one of them with, of course and most importantly, my grandchildren.  I wanted them all to come around for family dinners and movie nights, and to call me up to go out with them occasionally.

Of course, we had already blown it.  Summer camps in North Carolina.  Soccer tours and language camps and school years far, far away.  A family trip pretty much every time we scrounged up enough money to maybe think about curtains or carpeting.  Of the six children between my friend and I, their colleges represent or are about to represent four states besides our own.

I have a number of friends and acquaintances who drew a circle with a radius of a couple of hundred miles from home and told their kids, "That's it for college."  Just not my style.  And, even if it were, the aformentioned friend has commented more than once that her first child, who went to college about an hour away, was thoroughly miserable for four years.  "Distance, or lack thereof, is just not a factor," she says.  Her youngest, and only girl, is headed to the west coast this fall; mine is headed to New Orleans.

There's another really, really important reason for my foolish shove of  my chicks out of the nest.  When I was nine, and off at summer camp in the south for two months, I grossly offended another young lady in my cabin by my use of the term, "you guys."  And I couldn't help it.  "Y'all" just didn't glide off my tongue. "You guys" was my way of being friendly and open to strangers.  I can still remember that girl, a skinny little thing with a head full of curls, stalking off with the disgusted pronouncement, "I am NOT a guy."  I have never forgotten that lesson in how easy it is, despite the best of intentions, to offend utterly another human being.  A powerful insight for a nine-year-old.

Forty years later and I still don't apply it too well.  But I think it's important to know that you can live with all kinds of people, and it's equally important to know that it can be difficult to do so.

I did set out, intentionally, to offer my children the opportunity to become independent citizens of the world.  I'm only the slightest bit disapppointed that they seem to be taking me up on it.  They do these things -- like heading off 1500 miles to see the Yellowstone sunrise -- without me!

Oh, To Be 20!

Yesterday afternoon I received the following email from my son, a second-year at the University of Chicago:

<<Dear Mom,

Given your desire to know what it is I do aside from the
tedium of coursework, I have decided to write you about this
last weekend. Actually, I'm sending you a single image, from
which I imagine you can piece together much of my adventure.

For your piece of mind: I'm am currently in Chicago and have
neither missed a class nor neglected so much as one
assignment.>>

The photo he sent, clearly of Morning Glory Pool, a hot spring found along the Old Faithful Boardwalk, caused me to e-mail him back immediately, as follows:

<<You went to YELLOWSTONE?????????>>

As the evening progressed and the storyunrolled, it turned out that he and three other guys had spent the long week-end driving to TO IDAHO AND BACK.

And I thought he would be sound asleep in Chicago.  Silly mother.

En route to the Continental Divide.