I'm just fed up today. Just fed up.
I know we've always been a little addicted to following people in the news. Public figures are held up to a higher standard, especially when luck and talent have landed them somewhere with a lot of visibility and fabulous salaries. We kind of wish we were the ones with all the luck, and think they ought to be darned grateful for their good fortune, and they should be a role model of humility and hard work for the kids.
Especially athletes, I suppose, although the *rule* is the same for artists and performers, and even those accidentally swept up in the public eye for things like winning the lottery or getting some big inheritance from a chance meeting with someone rich.
But more and more the sad fact is the media plays it both ways, and it doesn't matter which is going on - the upswing or the pathetic caving in from too much PublicLife.
It is not entertainment, the rags to riches to rags story. And then there's the double whammy of letting it play out on the social media sites where they are publicly ridiculed and the basis of fights.
These kind of journalists are a new breed, although they've probably been skulking around in the background when I was young. Turning away in disgust at dog fighting rings and human trafficking, and then living off the misery of others - what would you call it?
Back in THE DAY, when reporters had honor and integrity, yellow journalism meant a journalist or paper that presented little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead used eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers. Oh but look for the symptoms while reading your online daily news or watching your main station broadcaster. They're there: the exaggeration of minor news, scandal-mongering, wide eye sensationalism, scare and misleading headlines, lavish use of pictures, false info from so-called experts, and even siding with the 'underdog' against the system.
500 year flood in Colorado!
Time To Build That Ark!
No, it's a 1,000 Year Flood!
No, no, a Flood of Biblical Proportions!
Journalists that treat news in an unprofessional or unethical fashion aren't in the rags at the check out stands anymore, like they were when we were kids. I remember laughing like crazy over the big headlines ~
Two Headed Woman Marrying Twin Men!
Proof At Last of Martian Invasion!
Reverse Stripe Zebra Found in Africa!
Houdini's Love Child Found in Chains!
It was silly and fun. Everyone understood what it was.
But not now. Now it's in reputable national papers who put the junk food right alongside a legitimate story by a reputed journalist. Not on the funnies page, or in the entertainment section. Don't worry about being right as long as you're first.
It's such an important thing, what we are fed as a diet of news. It creates a foundation for national ethics. I really question how self-reliant, intelligent, thoughtful and informed citizenry can possibly be critical thinkers on a diet of pizza and beer. And our examples in the news of drug addicted, wife beaters and cheaters who make 10 million a year, and entertain us with sexually explicit performances on national tv during an awards show aired in prime time.
Miley Cyrus On Verge of Mental Collapse!
Who gives a shit.
Sep 19, 2013
Sep 10, 2013
The Shiny Penny Syndrome
This is how it went when my kids were small.
I'd get to working in one room, spot a little project like organizing pictures, pull all of that out,
and realize I needed tape,
So I'd head into the office to get that - and notice it needed dusting, and would dust and vacuum and pull stuff away from the walls to clean along the baseboards,
and right about then need to go to the bathroom.
The bathroom would need a little straightening and I would start reorganizing the shelves,
and then see it's time to pick up the kids ... dash off to get them ...
and come back into a house that looked like we'd been robbed.
The rest of the afternoon involved retracing my steps and cleaning up the disaster.
Sep 7, 2013
Why You Never Stop Being Needed
Sometimes the most beautiful things cross your path on Facebook. This is one of them. Thank you, Ann, for sharing your family and the moment of transition we all face as parents. -Nanci
***
***
The plan was supposed to be that we would take him west.
That he’d turn 18 and go west.
That we’d pack up his room, his dog-earred G.A. Henty books, that thinning and scratchy red wool blanket of my grandmother that’s laid at the foot of his bed, the oiled painting that he was given from those mothers up in the mountains of Haiti, and his fading jeans and plaid shirt.
And his dad and I would drive him 4,000 arrow-straight miles west to the ocean and drop him off at a university none of us had ever laid eyes on in our life.
He’d be our first arrow shot. My heart would be pierced.
He made his down payment.
And I laid down my quaking heart and this ridiculous hope that he’d stay close. The kid was crazy pumped. Yeah, so my mama-heart was drained. You still gotta smile brave.
Nobody knows it but – Parents wear Purple Hearts: the brave who are wounded and die a bit more everyday – and only get braver.
But then it was his younger brother who went east.
Right to the opposite side of the country, right out to the other coast. He goes with my brother, drives through Quebec through the night, past the farms lined up along the St. Lawrence River, following the aging river where Cartier and Champlain sailed, follow it right out to the ageless ocean and it’s endless lapping waves. They serve for a week at a Bible camp for native kids.
Joshua mops floors and gets dishpan hands and does kitchen duty and crawls into his bunk after midnight. My brother emails me in the middle of the night to tell me how happy he is to be there with our boy. At the end of the week, we pack up the sagging van with the 7 of us and head east to go bring him home.
Our only road trip ever.
And the last road trip before the first boy leaves.
Apparently —
Our youngest boy breathes too breathy and close for our daughter’s liking when packed like sardines into one van heading east.
This may or may not have led to blood curdling screaming fits replete with tears and blankets thrown over heads.
There were flat out World Wars over euchre, pillows and, seriously — the last of the grapes. I may or may not have threatened missile strikes and food sanctions and late night diplomatic negotiations for global peace – or at least van peace.
The Farmer smiles thinly and just kept his eyes on the road and us heading east.
Somewhere in the woods of New Brunswick, when they all blessedly fall asleep but the last stubborn kid, she calls out to her Dad: “You just keep driving and I’ll read to you, ‘kay?”
He wearily nods, leans forward over the wheel, battling sleep-deprivation and father-with-little-peace-deprivation.
And there in her small voice it comes — Psalm 102. She’s reading the Bible to him.
Apparently, right in our messes are where the miracles happen.
“A Prayer for the Afflicted….” She begins slow.
The Farmer grins: “Appropriate.”
“The Lord looked down from his sanctuary on high, from heaven he viewed the earth…“
And we’re all a bit crazy and we’re all a bit afflicted and we have a God who sees every bit of it and takes all of us. We have a God who sees hearts like we see faces, a God who hears ache like we hear voices, and we have a God who touches wounds like we touch skin.
God sees it all — and He will see to all of it. No one’s crazy can change God’s crazy love.
And after we get Josh, and there’s a tight 8 of us shoehorned into the van, we drive by this mountain stretched up like this sheer dare over the ocean and we make a U-turn and because we have these unrelenting boys who are determined to climb –and one girl who needs to use every single roadside washroom facility spotted– and really, you can make a u-turn anywhere.
The girls go looking for the vented outhouse.
I sit in the grass and watch the two oldest boys begin their ascent. The Farmer distracts the two youngest boys from their own climbs with one fierce and sweaty game of tag.
I keep watch at the base — as if that’s really going to help if something goes wrong. Stones roll. There’s hardly a breeze.
The boys keep hauling higher.
“Hey Josh?” Caleb calls over his shoulder. “What’s that rattling sound?”
Both boys stop, cling to some stone.
“Crickets? I don’t know — Tree frogs?”
“You sure?”
“Sure, I’m sure: crickets or tree frogs or something else.” Joshua shakes something out of his shoe. “Definitely not a rattler. Come on already, Cale…” Joshua’s already pulling higher.
I’m listening to the rattle in the sun. Cale’s back to reaching and stretching and climbing. How many times have I mistaken more than a few metaphorical crickets in my life for bona fide rattlers?
How many times did I think these boys would stay little and close and safe?
How many times have I thought safe mattered when Jesus died to save us not to make us safe. No one ever got saved unless someone else was unsafe.
“You going higher?” Josh is calling to Caleb and their mother’s watching from the bottom – Purple Heart, Parents live purple-hearted.
“Yeah — higher!” Cale’s man voice echoes down the mountain.
“Hey, Josh?” One brother’s calling over to the other.
“Can Mom see us doing this?”
And I hear that. The old mother at the bottom of the mountain, she hears her boys men hollering that and I nod and smile slow.
Yes, boys – right to my end, I will be your witness.
God as my witness, I will be your witness, and you can climb and you can take risks and you can go east and you can go west and distance never stopped love from being a witness.
Go ahead, sign me up to witness the launchings and the beginnings, witness the dares you take, the challenges you rise to, the heartbreak you don’t want anyone else to see and the crazy you wish you could hide. The Lord looked down, from heaven He viewed the earth in all it’s crazy and God sees it all – and He sees to it all – and He doesn’t turn away. God is your witness: You are seen and known.
Who will be God’s witness? So He is seen and known?
Be brave. In all your crazy, be brave, boys. And I’ll be there, in heart or in body, to witness the first dates and the failed dreams and it’s okay to cry, boys, your tears are safe with me.
Because the truth is: Life’s a trial and everyone needs a witness — someone on your front row, someone on your sidelines, someone to clap you across the finish line when everyone else has gone home.
Everyone needs a witness – someone to testify you were really here and you really tried, someone to witness your wounds and believe in your worth, someone to say even your crazy can’t stop you from being crazy loved. Everyone needs a witness who will stand and not hold you back because if we all only lived safe, no one would ever get saved.
Everyone needs a witness — and I’ll be yours.
You don’t become a parent by bearing a child. You become a parent by bearing witness to his life.
The boys wave.
And I swallow hard and memorize them.
And I wave back —the witness willing to always bear the weight of all their glory.
That he’d turn 18 and go west.
That we’d pack up his room, his dog-earred G.A. Henty books, that thinning and scratchy red wool blanket of my grandmother that’s laid at the foot of his bed, the oiled painting that he was given from those mothers up in the mountains of Haiti, and his fading jeans and plaid shirt.
And his dad and I would drive him 4,000 arrow-straight miles west to the ocean and drop him off at a university none of us had ever laid eyes on in our life.
He’d be our first arrow shot. My heart would be pierced.
He made his down payment.
And I laid down my quaking heart and this ridiculous hope that he’d stay close. The kid was crazy pumped. Yeah, so my mama-heart was drained. You still gotta smile brave.
Nobody knows it but – Parents wear Purple Hearts: the brave who are wounded and die a bit more everyday – and only get braver.
But then it was his younger brother who went east.
Right to the opposite side of the country, right out to the other coast. He goes with my brother, drives through Quebec through the night, past the farms lined up along the St. Lawrence River, following the aging river where Cartier and Champlain sailed, follow it right out to the ageless ocean and it’s endless lapping waves. They serve for a week at a Bible camp for native kids.
Joshua mops floors and gets dishpan hands and does kitchen duty and crawls into his bunk after midnight. My brother emails me in the middle of the night to tell me how happy he is to be there with our boy. At the end of the week, we pack up the sagging van with the 7 of us and head east to go bring him home.
Our only road trip ever.
And the last road trip before the first boy leaves.
Apparently —
Our youngest boy breathes too breathy and close for our daughter’s liking when packed like sardines into one van heading east.
This may or may not have led to blood curdling screaming fits replete with tears and blankets thrown over heads.
There were flat out World Wars over euchre, pillows and, seriously — the last of the grapes. I may or may not have threatened missile strikes and food sanctions and late night diplomatic negotiations for global peace – or at least van peace.
The Farmer smiles thinly and just kept his eyes on the road and us heading east.
Somewhere in the woods of New Brunswick, when they all blessedly fall asleep but the last stubborn kid, she calls out to her Dad: “You just keep driving and I’ll read to you, ‘kay?”
He wearily nods, leans forward over the wheel, battling sleep-deprivation and father-with-little-peace-deprivation.
And there in her small voice it comes — Psalm 102. She’s reading the Bible to him.
Apparently, right in our messes are where the miracles happen.
“A Prayer for the Afflicted….” She begins slow.
The Farmer grins: “Appropriate.”
“The Lord looked down from his sanctuary on high, from heaven he viewed the earth…“
And we’re all a bit crazy and we’re all a bit afflicted and we have a God who sees every bit of it and takes all of us. We have a God who sees hearts like we see faces, a God who hears ache like we hear voices, and we have a God who touches wounds like we touch skin.
God sees it all — and He will see to all of it. No one’s crazy can change God’s crazy love.
And after we get Josh, and there’s a tight 8 of us shoehorned into the van, we drive by this mountain stretched up like this sheer dare over the ocean and we make a U-turn and because we have these unrelenting boys who are determined to climb –and one girl who needs to use every single roadside washroom facility spotted– and really, you can make a u-turn anywhere.
The girls go looking for the vented outhouse.
I sit in the grass and watch the two oldest boys begin their ascent. The Farmer distracts the two youngest boys from their own climbs with one fierce and sweaty game of tag.
I keep watch at the base — as if that’s really going to help if something goes wrong. Stones roll. There’s hardly a breeze.
The boys keep hauling higher.
“Hey Josh?” Caleb calls over his shoulder. “What’s that rattling sound?”
Both boys stop, cling to some stone.
“Crickets? I don’t know — Tree frogs?”
“You sure?”
“Sure, I’m sure: crickets or tree frogs or something else.” Joshua shakes something out of his shoe. “Definitely not a rattler. Come on already, Cale…” Joshua’s already pulling higher.
I’m listening to the rattle in the sun. Cale’s back to reaching and stretching and climbing. How many times have I mistaken more than a few metaphorical crickets in my life for bona fide rattlers?
How many times did I think these boys would stay little and close and safe?
How many times have I thought safe mattered when Jesus died to save us not to make us safe. No one ever got saved unless someone else was unsafe.
“You going higher?” Josh is calling to Caleb and their mother’s watching from the bottom – Purple Heart, Parents live purple-hearted.
“Yeah — higher!” Cale’s man voice echoes down the mountain.
“Hey, Josh?” One brother’s calling over to the other.
“Can Mom see us doing this?”
And I hear that. The old mother at the bottom of the mountain, she hears her boys men hollering that and I nod and smile slow.
Yes, boys – right to my end, I will be your witness.
God as my witness, I will be your witness, and you can climb and you can take risks and you can go east and you can go west and distance never stopped love from being a witness.
Go ahead, sign me up to witness the launchings and the beginnings, witness the dares you take, the challenges you rise to, the heartbreak you don’t want anyone else to see and the crazy you wish you could hide. The Lord looked down, from heaven He viewed the earth in all it’s crazy and God sees it all – and He sees to it all – and He doesn’t turn away. God is your witness: You are seen and known.
Who will be God’s witness? So He is seen and known?
Be brave. In all your crazy, be brave, boys. And I’ll be there, in heart or in body, to witness the first dates and the failed dreams and it’s okay to cry, boys, your tears are safe with me.
Because the truth is: Life’s a trial and everyone needs a witness — someone on your front row, someone on your sidelines, someone to clap you across the finish line when everyone else has gone home.
Everyone needs a witness – someone to testify you were really here and you really tried, someone to witness your wounds and believe in your worth, someone to say even your crazy can’t stop you from being crazy loved. Everyone needs a witness who will stand and not hold you back because if we all only lived safe, no one would ever get saved.
Everyone needs a witness — and I’ll be yours.
You don’t become a parent by bearing a child. You become a parent by bearing witness to his life.
The boys wave.
And I swallow hard and memorize them.
And I wave back —the witness willing to always bear the weight of all their glory.
Sep 3, 2013
Red Sky in Morning
The sun is low and red on the horizon this morning as September rolls into view. The last holiday weekend of the summer marks a shift, and we now are looking to the promise of Fall. I noticed a couple of leaves fluttering down to the drive yesterday. We are surrounded by large, stately deciduous trees and remembered our maiden voyage into fall. Oh, but the leaves!
We witnessed a PowWow on Sunday with the bunnies and ground squirrels: a bunny had the floor and the ground squirrels were intently listening. They're probably discussing the best way to divvy up the land for residential use. The last flare-shaped poison that was dropped in the holes was found days later rolled back out and waiting for the trash. I can't help but admire their fortitude but we are still seeking a compromise.
It was a cooking weekend after a stressful August. The house up north is on the market, and our agent began getting calls a week or so ago responding to an ad for rent. It quickly became apparent that a hacker had taken the info off the MLS and advertised it as his own home and hoping to gather up rental deposits and run off with it. That took a lot of the week to unravel, working with the PD and Homeowner's Association, posting signs on the house and talking to the neighbors. The renters who sent in money feel entitled to occupy, and we are hearing stories of those who find a way in, believing they are entitled to be there, which causes a great big headache for the police and the property owners to get them out. Fortunately for us, the fraud was discovered when a victim did not have the code for the gated community. I'm sure there are others, and it is disappointing to know that.
The renters are settled into the house down south, and hopefully happy for many years to come. It was a chore and half getting the house ready, after a promise left unfulfilled by the exiting tenant. But all is done now, thank goodness, which is doubly why it was fun to watch August slip away.
I was praying this morning for a couple of friends handling more than their share of challenges, and thought about the sun on the lawn, and how most of my prayer is in the form of thanksgiving when life is going well. Gratitude. Appreciation for life's bounty. I shy away from praying for myself, other than a desire for a deeper well of knowledge and a largeness of heart to forgive and forget.
I have lost many things and failed miserably at others, but I have been given more courage and humanity because of it. When I am judged and ridiculed and ignored, I can look into the faces of those badly dressed and see faces whose smiles are waiting for you to acknowledge them. I can tell you the name of the badly burned homeless man at the corner of Howe and Alta Arden, and his story. I pray gratefully for peace and faith during hard, painful times, and for God's grace eventually resolve them. May it always be that way, hard and rewarding and a life full of astonishment when life resolves itself.
It is not the easy road, but it's the road that has been chosen for me. May I never forget to be grateful.
We witnessed a PowWow on Sunday with the bunnies and ground squirrels: a bunny had the floor and the ground squirrels were intently listening. They're probably discussing the best way to divvy up the land for residential use. The last flare-shaped poison that was dropped in the holes was found days later rolled back out and waiting for the trash. I can't help but admire their fortitude but we are still seeking a compromise.
It was a cooking weekend after a stressful August. The house up north is on the market, and our agent began getting calls a week or so ago responding to an ad for rent. It quickly became apparent that a hacker had taken the info off the MLS and advertised it as his own home and hoping to gather up rental deposits and run off with it. That took a lot of the week to unravel, working with the PD and Homeowner's Association, posting signs on the house and talking to the neighbors. The renters who sent in money feel entitled to occupy, and we are hearing stories of those who find a way in, believing they are entitled to be there, which causes a great big headache for the police and the property owners to get them out. Fortunately for us, the fraud was discovered when a victim did not have the code for the gated community. I'm sure there are others, and it is disappointing to know that.
The renters are settled into the house down south, and hopefully happy for many years to come. It was a chore and half getting the house ready, after a promise left unfulfilled by the exiting tenant. But all is done now, thank goodness, which is doubly why it was fun to watch August slip away.
I was praying this morning for a couple of friends handling more than their share of challenges, and thought about the sun on the lawn, and how most of my prayer is in the form of thanksgiving when life is going well. Gratitude. Appreciation for life's bounty. I shy away from praying for myself, other than a desire for a deeper well of knowledge and a largeness of heart to forgive and forget.
I have lost many things and failed miserably at others, but I have been given more courage and humanity because of it. When I am judged and ridiculed and ignored, I can look into the faces of those badly dressed and see faces whose smiles are waiting for you to acknowledge them. I can tell you the name of the badly burned homeless man at the corner of Howe and Alta Arden, and his story. I pray gratefully for peace and faith during hard, painful times, and for God's grace eventually resolve them. May it always be that way, hard and rewarding and a life full of astonishment when life resolves itself.
It is not the easy road, but it's the road that has been chosen for me. May I never forget to be grateful.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)