As those of you who read this blog regularly know, I homeschool the LightChildren.  Well, a more appropriate description is … they engage in home learning and I throw books at their heads.  No.  That’s not right either.  But something happens around here and occasionally something like an education seems to sprout.

Well, we fell behind in history.  This is sorta bad since I’m just a hair shy of being a certified social studies teacher.  Three hairs shy of having a masters in secondary education with a focus in … history and social studies.  So you’d think that we’d just fly right through history.  Well, yes.  And, um, no … not so much.  You see, I have all these hang ups and pre-conceived ideas about how history has to be.  So we fell behind.  We’re scooting through the modern period this summer and starting over again with the ancients this fall.  It will be fun because now I’m finally teaching a teenager and all.

In very exciting news, LightGirl has decided that she’s going to work on her own theory of everything.  The books are spread out all over the sofa.  First, though, she needs to get over Lyme Disease.  It all began yesterday when she and LightBoy watched a documentary on the History Channel on the island of Atlantis.  They came up from the playroom and recounted the whole thing to me.  Silly mom … I thought they’d been watching cartoons and was plotting revenge.  In any case, as she watched the documentary, LightGirl began to notice that many of the stories from Atlantis bore a striking resemblance to all the myth stories she read when we studied the ancients several years ago.  Later in the day, she asked to go to the library so she can get some books on myths and Atlantis.  She is quite determined to find this “missing link” as it were.  She didn’t even realize that we’re getting ready to tackle the ancients again this year in history.  It was a pleasant surprise.  Her eyes were sparkling.  She’s busy plotting the next book she wants to write.

In the meantime, we’re just flying through modern history, giving it a lick and a promise.  The girl who lives in my heart and studied international relations twenty-five years ago is weeping with shame at the utter horror of raising children with so little knowledge of modern history and its importance to where we are now.  (Okay, weeping may be overstating it just a little … but … you get the picture.)  So, here’s the thing.  We have a family movie night tradition.  We love to watch movies together.  LightHusband makes delicious popcorn, we have a light dinner before hand, turn down the lights and snuggle in together.  It can be any night … but we watch the movie together and then talk about it for some time afterwards.  So I thought it would be a good idea to get some movies with historical content to watch for modern history.  But I’m running out of ideas.  I’m going to post my list below.  Please add yours in the comments.  I’m looking for any reasonable movies about history anywhere in the world from 1875 to the present.  Please remember the ages of my children are 11 and 14.  They’re used to some violence (we’ve watched BraveHeart together without the final death scene, and LightBoy has watched Saving Private Ryan) as long as it has purpose and context.  We try to stay away from sexual content … but well the Viv@ Vi@gra ads and KY ads on television these days leave little the imagination, so really … who cares.

Here are the movies I found:

Gandhi
Reds
Grapes of Wrath
We Were Soldiers
To Kill A Mockingbird
Judgment At Nuremberg

Thanks to all for your kind words and encouragement for our quilt yesterday.  BlazingEwe and I are very happy with that achievement, but we have plans to make another just for us using color in another more dramatic fashion.  We play with color in the way that some people play with marbles.  And it gives us great pleasure indeed.

So she and I and another friend are starting a quilting company.  Yes, I’m saying that in my outloud voice and with great trepidation.  We actually have a customer and are working on our first consignment quilt.  It’s due on or before October 31, the recipient’s twenty-first birthday.  His mother has asked us to recover and reconstruct a quilt he recieved when he was a baby.  He still sleeps with this quilt.  Wrapped around his head.  He seems like an otherwise average well-adjusted twenty year old … who gets attached.  Sweet.  In any case, when we have our website up (soon), I will post it here and you can see what I do some of the other parts of my day.

I won’t be around much this weekend, it’s the annual fam damily get-together at the lake.  My brothers arrive today.  My parents arrive tomorrow.  We (of course) have been here for two weeks.  Well, LightUncle2 arrived last night with my oldest niece; his wife and youngest daughter stayed back home for a variety of reasons.  LightUncle1 arrives today with his wife and two children.  We’re all going to watch LightGirl scrimmage at her hockey camp this afternoon.  Tomorrow – blueberry picking in preparation for the annual pancake cookoff on Sunday morning.  The nieces and nephews have such high standards you see.

And, just in case you were wondering at the paucity of Olympic pondering here.  There’s no television set in the cottage at the lake, so I have not watched any Olympic coverage.  I’ve read about three articles.  But otherwise, I am an Olympic-free zone in my mind.  It’s sort of nice.

Have a great weekend and I’ll “see” you on the flip side (as they say).

It’s the latest fashion craze …

With the price of gas, now it’s financially wise …

And after years of eschewing the environment Christians are now flocking to the so-called green movement in droves.

Can I say this in my outloud voice?  I’m just a little bit cynical.

No, make that a lot cynical.  Cynical to the point of illness.  You see, I’ve been an environmentalist literally all my life.  I could just say, “I grew up in Vermont,” and most of you would understand.  But it was more than that.  I grew up understanding the devastating effects of pollution.  I’ve been cutting the plastic rings that encircle beer/soda cans since they came out … to protect water birds.  I cleaned road sides as a child and now as an adult I look at the trash on our roads and remember the animals who live in what has become a toilet.

We are a wasteful society and trash culture.  When we look at ourselves in the mirror, our culture of efficiency and productivity on one side of the coin, has created waste, trash and selfishness on the other side.  We cannot have low prices without using people and resources in ways that are abusive in the end.

We have had the technology for smarter cars and using less gas for thirty years.  Yet for the last ten years we have driven larger, and larger cars.  Look in any church parking lot, what do you see?  SUVs and minivans … an armada of them.

Look inside any church, what do you see?  An ocean of cheap plastic clothing.  Polyester, nylon … both derivatives of petroleum.  Made cheaply and at the expense of someone’s life in another country.   But here in the US?  We have been “good stewards” of our individual budgets.  Each family member has far too many clothes bought cheaply at the local deep-discount store.

I read on the wall of a Mennonite grocery store, “The cost of something is that amount of life which must be exchanged for it.”

Too often we have looked at our individual budgets, incomes and outgos and thought we were being “good stewards” of our money.  But have we been good stewards of our lives and of the lives of others?  Have we measured the cost of things in terms of the life that has been expended on it?  We look at cost in terms of dollars.  What if we began looking in terms of life exchanged?

What is that call on our lives?  Then perhaps, Christians truly would be little green men.

****************************************************************************

There is small handful of us posting a SynchroBlog on Green Spirituality. The posts may not be up and running until Thursday afternoon:

Is it All About the Green? by Phil Wyman
Rediscovering Humanity’s Primal Commission by Adam Gonnerman
Turn or Burn? A New Liberal Hell? by Cobus van Wyngaard
Little Green Men by Sonja Andrews
Bashing SUV’s for Jesus by David Fisher
Saints and Animals by Steve Hayes
When Christians Weasel Out of Their Environmental Responsibilities by K.W. Leslie
Green Christian Manifesto by Matt Stone
God So Loved, by Sally Coleman

Happy Father’s Day.

It’s one that will surely survive in our collective memory as a family.

It began early; as in 5:30 a.m. One last early rink time for the season. We all went. LightBoy’s game was on one sheet at 7:20; LightGirl’s on the other at 7:30. I ran through the golden arches for a delicious, nutritious breakfast. Yum. LightBoy lost. LightGirl tied. But none of that is memorable.

LightGirl has had a crush on a teammate for a while now. About a week ago she got some intel which suggested that he was more LightBoy’s age. This was completely embarassing. Humiliating. Horrifying. In her words, she felt like a pedophile. Ewweth. This morning before the game I discovered she had bad intel. Her crush was her age. I passed this information along after the game.

So what do you think she did? Well, what would you do? Given that you definitely wouldn’t be seeing the guy again til September and maybe not very much even then.

Has she ever been on a date? No.

Has she ever had a boyfriend? No.

Has she ever been in any kind of relationship of any sort other than friends with a boy? No.

Has she ever spoken more than say fifteen words in a row to this kid? Uhhh … no.

So, of course, it goes without saying … ask him out. Ask him, where? Just … you know … out. On a date. Sometimes the mom is stoo-pid.

It’s helpful too, to have a friend by your side who will act as your voice when you and the guy stand there staring at each other. So, her friend did the actual, you know, asking. She said, “So … LightGirl wants to know if you’d go to the movies or something?” He said, “Sure.” and they both stood there and looked at each other … stunned. So GirlFriend spoke up again and said, “Now it would be good if you exchanged phone numbers.” So they did that too.

Then she came flying around the corner to tell me all about it. Grinning from ear to ear.

She spent the next half an hour texting him. Now she is firmly, giddily ensconced on the phone and computer with her peeps giggling and reliving the event. Imagining what will come next. And ad finitum. It is quintessential adolescence.

And just like that LightHusband and I have crossed a rubicon. It came upon us and we were across it before we even realized that it was there. I never even heard the echo of my feet on wood as the footsteps bounced back from water.

We are lucky, I suppose. She’s very confident. The young man in question is kind, upright, and a decent hockey player. We now have decisions of heavy consequence to make. Where should they go? What should they do? Now that the question has been asked and answered, will the “date” actually even take place?

On another hand, our fortunes run much deeper than that. Our definition of what is quintessentially adolescent is light and air. It involves words like, “giddy” and “peeps.” She will (Lord willin’ an’ the creek don’t rise) complete her secondary education and go on to get a college level education of some sort. There are many, many parents in the 2/3’s world who never even begin to think these words, never mind associate them with children in their family. Yet most families in our world … our 1/3 world, that is the industrialized, civilized, mechanized, and importantly educated, world do have the opportunity to associate words like, “giddy” and “adolescence” and “grin” and “date” and “secondary education” and “college education” with our daughters. Not only do we have that opportunity, we make the assumption that it is the right and natural course of things.

According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs being secure in our bodily needs allows us to become more secure with our friendships, family and relational intimacy. This in turn builds self-esteem, confidence, etc. It makes sense in a way. One cannot build relational intimacy, when one is deeply hungry for days and months on end. Or living in a place where the water is not reliable. It is simply not feasible. So most Westerner’s (we of the 1/3’s world) would tend to think of education as necessary yet expendable. After all, an education will not build security. It will not fill stomachs or healthily hydrate starving bodies. It will not keep peace among warring neighbors.

Or … will it?

What we are coming to find now is that the key to world peace might just be …

… our daughters. Our collective daughters. The brown ones, and tan ones and yellow ones and pink ones. It’s not that they need to rule the world. Far from it. They just need an education. It is having an education that gives them self-esteem and self-esteem begets relational intimacy which then allows for safety and security and then they can help their families fill their stomachs and hydrate their bodies. It seems that Maslow works for us, but it may just be upside down in other parts of the world.

Give these girls some time … time to be giddy and grow up. Time to learn. Time to be girls, then time to be women. Time to read. Time to calculate. Time to have a date or maybe two. Time to giggle. Time to achieve. Time to gain confidence in their righteous state as children of the Creator. Time to earn respect. Time to bestow respect. They need our time, so that they may have a little more time. And in so doing it is our collective daughters who may just change the world … one village at a time.

Today marked a milestone of sorts.

One day about 14 years ago I signed up to take a meal to a woman who’d just had some sort of surgery. She had two small children and her husband worked alot of hours. The family were members of our church and it was the beneficent thing to do. The children were about 4 and 1 (at the time) and LightGirl was around 6 months old. I figured I’d drop the meal off, say a few words and leave. It was around LightGirl’s naptime afterall. I think I left about 3 hours later.

The way I figure it I think we’ve spent the equivalent of a year of our lives on the phone together. Most of that laughing. I spent the wee hours of the morning with her oldest two when child number three joined them, and then child four and then finally, child number five (who is now five).

Child number 2 and number 3 are LightGirl and LightBoy’s ages … they have grown up together.

The oldest, a girl, graduated from highschool yesterday. A milestone of sorts. My first friend to have a child graduating from highschool. More than that though … I’ve known this girl virtually her whole life. I remember more about the funny things these children said when they were little, than my blood nieces and nephews. We hid out together during tornado watches and cooked chicken feet one day. We’ve watched each other’s children for overnights and for vacations.

We fell away from each other for a few years for no particular reason. We staying in sporadic contact, but falling off of a cliff in the middle of the mines of Moria made me a little difficult to reach for a while. So when we received the invitation to her graduation party, our whole family was delighted. Even better was LaughingEye’s reaction when she opened the door this afternoon. Her whole body radiated joy.

I made her an album quilt … a quilt with space for her friends and family to sign. She was thrilled. I am thrilled. And I sat, absorbed back into my friend’s family and realized that friends really are the family you choose.

I have three blood uncles.  Two on my father’s side and one on my mother’s.  That’s two brothers to my dad and one brother to my mom.  All three served in the military.  Two (my dad’s brothers) served in World War II.  Interestingly, all of my uncles (by blood or marriage) served in the military.  In my generation, I can only think of three or four cousins (out of about 30) who served.

Yesterday Uncle Ralph, the younger of my dad’s two older brothers, came to town to visit the WWII Memorial.  He came with other WWII veterans in Connecticut and Massachusetts to visit the memorial.  It’s part of a private program that is working diligently to get WWII vets to the memorial before they pass on.  As Uncle Ralph told me yesterday, there are only 10% of the veteran’s left alive today.  One of my older cousins arranged to get my uncle in the program and was his guardian for the trip.

As a pacifist by nature and by choice, I struggle with war and the need for it.  I want to negotiate with evil and find compromises.  I’m not always certain that is possible.  Even though it is my choice.  When I heard about the building of the WWII Memorial I was saddened by the glorification of war.  When I heard about busing vets in to this mecca of war for one last visit, I was cynical.  But our visit there yesterday changed much of that for me.

It was chaotic and messy and slow and hot and beautiful and gracious and happy and the smiles that wreathed those old faces were glorious.  These men (and a very occasional woman) knew how precious life is because life had been lost.  The drums of war were silent here and water in the fountains sprayed and tinkled, reminding us of life lived and worth living.  These were the faces of determination and perseverance in the face of adversity.

Adversity which was not glorified nor was it depicted as something to be put aside.  It is and was a part of life which creates character.  It was that voice that I heard when Uncle Ralph kindly refused the use of a wheelchair, “I never fell out of a 25 mile march and I’ll finish today, thank you, though.”  In his 80’s and he still has something to finish and learn.

I hope I end like that.

I’m still here. I’m still alive. I don’t know what’s been going on in my head lately, but the well seems to be dry for the time being. I do have some things percolating, but the bubbles are moving slowly and gas seems to be on low.

What little writing energy I have has been going into exchanges with old youth group kids. They’re all grown up now, but we’re re-connecting on FaceBook and having some good conversations. Some of those have gotten sorta deep and required some thinking and processing on my part … and on theirs.

I’m also trying to finish up the school year with my kids, continue on with managing the hockey team through some choppy waters and dream about new adventures in quilting with some friends. I’m still around, and things will continue to arrive here, but I won’t make any promises about reliability in the near future.

I’ve got some reviews to post in the near future and some thoughts … and some photos of recent field trips.  So stuff is on it’s way soon, I just need to realign myself with some things.  Restructure my time and go home and rethink my life.  Or something like that.  😉

Today I got a tree. A cherry tree to be exact. I believe it’s a Montmorency Cherry, but I’m not certain. LightBoy wanted to get an apple tree. But apple trees need to be pollinated in order to bear fruit. He had grand designs of taking our harvest to the farmer’s market. From our one tree.

In our back yard.

He has no shortage of self esteem.

We discovered that cherry trees do not need to be pollinated. We are lazy. So we got a cherry tree. It’s taller too. It got planted in the poop hole. Ships have a poop deck. Our back yard had a poop hole. The former owners had a special hole into which doggie waste was to be disposed of. I think they put special enzymes in there to speed decomposition. It was like a doggie septic system. We never used it. It was just tiresome hole in the back yard. So we put a cherry tree in it.

It’s taken six years. When we moved in there was one tree in the front yard and some horrid boxwood shrubbery out front. I pulled out the boxwood. I’ve been slowly replacing it with hydrangeas and other perennials. On the very shady side of the stoop, I put in a ninja bush. No … I can’t remember what it’s called, but it starts with nin … and it grows delightfully in the shade. There’s lily-of-the-valley in front of it.

We’ve got boatloads of yarrow. If you need some yarrow, I’m your woman. It’s really a weed that I paid good money for I found out later. Oy! Now two lilac bushes grace us with blooms and finally the french lilac that I thought died gave off blooms this year too. I didn’t know that french lilacs are different when I bought it. They are … there’s no scent, but the blossoms are beautiful. My peonies are enormous this year and there are about 20 buds. Who knew?

The willow that we planted out back about 4 years ago is almost big enough to climb. The butterfly bush is looming large over all; tempting butterflies near and far.  The tulips are all up and bright.

This is the lilac bush my dad gave me six years ago. It was a runner from one of his bushes in Vermont; so tiny it came in a half pint milk carton and I had to put a fence around it so that LightHusband wouldn’t mow it down. It took six years to bloom, but it was worth the wait.

Now I need to plant the new hydrangea I just bought and the two monarda that are perennials as well. I like watching my garden grow. A little here and a little there.  One tree at a time.

My in-laws visited for a few days recently. They are snowbirds. That is, they spend several winter months in Florida in their motorhome and then return to Vermont for the remainder of the year. So they were visiting on their way back north. My mother-in-law (LightMIL) recently marked her 70th birthday, so we had a celebration with her while they were here.

We did this by taking her on a lunch cruise of the Potomac River to see the cherry blossoms.

The boat docks at a pier in southwest DC. There’s only a very tiny little bit of DC that is southwest and this pier is in it. So is Fort McNair … the location of the National War College. It takes about an hour to get there from here, no matter how you cut it. We spent a fair portion of that hour in some heavy traffic going and coming. I entertain myself by reading bumperstickers and vanity plates when I’m in traffic. Especially here in the DC area, where I’m familiar with the surroundings (i.e. there’s not much interesting to look at).

I saw the usual number of intolerant bumper stickers. Things like “You can’t be both Catholic and Pro-life.” “Put the Christ back in Christmas.” “Man’s way leads to a hopeless end! God’s way leads to an endless hope!” I reflected, as I often do when I see these bumper stickers, with no little resentment and aggravation, what do the drivers of such cars hope to gain by bearing these stickers? To me (and it is possible that I’m wrong) these stickers seem arrogant, harsh, and hubristic. I don’t mean to pick on the Catholic stance on abortion in this instance, because there are many anti-abortion stickers out there. But all of them suppose that the bearer has thought through the issue most thoroughly, and you, dear reader of the bumper, have not. If you would simply accept the veracity of the sound-bite on the bumper you will be issued into a new level of truth and righteousness.

They also make me think of the nearly constant refrain that this is a “Christian nation.” Keep “under God,” in the Pledge of Allegiance … it’s very important. We must institute or keep prayer in our public schools; letting it go has been the downfall of our whole way of life. Or has it? Are we really a Christian nation? What would that really look like? Who would decide which brand of Christianity we would follow as a so-called Christian nation?

I think about those things. Because some versions of Christianity have a lot of rules. Some have much fewer. Who would decide? Typically the many rules version of a religion is the one that takes charge in a country, when there is a country ruled by religion. There was a time (back when I was in college studying anthropology) when I could tell you the reason for this. Now, I simply understand that it happens and grieve it. I was thinking about this as well the other night as I read toward the end of A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini. (warning … spoiler alert)

A main character has killed her abusive husband. He had raped her, beaten her, withheld food and water, thrown her around like a rag doll and treated her worse than most of us treat our household pets for nearly 20 years. She killed him as he throttled her best and only friend. Killing her husband was an act in defense of another human being’s life, albeit a woman. What follows here is her sentencing by a Taliban court in Kabul:

“It does not frighten me to leave this life that my only son left five years ago, this life that insists we bear sorrow upon sorrow long after we can bear no more. No, I believe I shall gladly take my leave when the time comes.”

“What frightens me, hamshira, is the day God summons me before Him and asks, Why did you not do as I said, Mullah? Why did you not obey my laws? How shall I explain to Him, hamshira? What will be my defense for not heeding His commands? All I can do all any of us can do, in the time we are granted, is to go on abiding by the lsaws He has set for us. The clearer I see my end, hamshira, nearer I am to my day of reckoning, the more determined I grow to carry out His word. However painful it may prove.”

He shifted on his cushion and winced.

“I believe you when you say that your husband was a man of disagreeable temperament,” he resumed, fixing Mariam with his bespectacled eyes, his gaze both stern and compassionate. “But I cannot help but be disturbed by the brutality of your action, hamshira. I am troubled by what you have done; I am troubled that his little boy was crying for him upstairs when you did it.

“I am tired and dying, and I want to be merciful. I want to forgive you. But when God summons me and says, But it wasn’t for you to forgive, Mullah, what shall I say?”

His companions [2 other judges] nodded and looked at him with admiration.

“Something tells me you are not a wicked woman, hamshira. But you have done a wicked thing. And you must pay for this thing you have done. Shari’a is not vague on this matter. It says I must send you where I will soon join you myself.

“Do you understand, hamshira?”

Mariam looked down at her hands. She said she did.

I know a lot of people will read this and think things like well … that’s the Muslims … we Christians aren’t like that. We have grace, after all. Do we? How do you think this situation might have played out in a Christian court? I’m not certain it would have looked any different.

I ‘m glad we don’t live in a “Christian nation” but one that is guided by our First Amendment. A nation where Jews and Christians and Muslims and Hindus and Flying Spaghetti Monsters are all equal under the law. The idea of becoming a Christian nation frightens me, quite frankly. While I want to know that those who lead us have thought through their personal issues of faith, I also want them to be open and welcoming to members of other faiths. Thinking that one has all the answers to questions that haven’t been asked has no place in the government of an empire.

On this Easter morning I thought I’d do a visual of joy …

Giggling for no apparent reason …

Lovin’ every minute of it!

Bein’ silly … cause she can.

Scored the first goal! YAY!!!!!

I win!! We win!! YAY!!!!!!!!

Dying eggs …

Happy Easter Morning … go forth and enjoy the risen Son.