So, here's my favorite poem. It's by Robert Frost
The Silken Tent
She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when a sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To everything on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.
I love this poem because I feel my own internal life is a balance between staying where I need to be, where I love to be... and wanting to run away, to escape. And this poem paints this special kind of bondage--the mom/wife/daughter/woman bondage--in such a beautiful way.
I must be a coward at some essential level of my soul because my first impulse in the face of any kind of stress or trouble is "RUN AWAY"! But when I most want to run away I look at what I would be running away from: everything that I love and all that brings me joy. And I know I couldn't be happier living any other life. This poem covers it all and I see myself: the silken tent with the heavenward sure core, standing free until the wind blows and then the guy ropes pull and I feel it. And sometimes it feels really windy and I feel all tied down. But like the poem says, my life is summertime and the tent is beautiful, and the central pole is solid and sure, and pointed towards Heaven.
Anyway, I love this poem. And there must be thousands, millions of women like me who wish to run away sometimes, but stay in their lives where there is beauty as well as there are burdens.
Carmen is sicker. She's grown a new tumor and this one has spread all down her spine. They go to the doctor tomorrow to discuss options. Carmen is in good spirits, her mom says. I am afraid to lose her.
And I do have my versions of running away. When I'm most worried I read almost non-stop. I can read 5 (or sometimes more) books in a day when I'm "running away". And I play the piano, especially when I am angry or frustrated. It's like, having the playing to concentrate on takes just enough brain power to slow everything in my head and heart down so I can cool down and consider things.
Life is good. I feel my ties tonight but I am happy to be "strictly held by none," but "loosely bound by countless silken ties of love and thought". I embrace the ties tonight and... I'm gonna read myself to sleep and read some more tomorrow. :)
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Gimme gimme gimme
So, my life has been um.... challenging... lately in several categories. And I have for many many months now been praying for several specific outcomes. And, contrary to my expectations, my requests have not been granted by God.
When I first began my desperate prayerful requests I asked for immediate assistance. I had deadlines in my mind: if You, God, do not send this by this date, then life as I know it will end. Those sorts of things. And God missed every deadline. I thought my life could not continue in the comfortable fashion I have become addicted to without those requirements met....and they were not met.
[The aside here is how my life is still just as comfortable and happy and how my shoulders have broadened to carry my burdens, how my mind has expanded to imagine solutions that seemed impossible, how events align so that the eventualities I fear, the disasters that I imagine could send me over the edge--these never happen and life goes on in safe and comforting patterns. And how what I was sure could not be endured actually CAN be endured and even learned from. But this is an aside--too important not to mention, but not directly pertinent to what I'm talking about here]
So when first my requests were unfulfilled I observed my behavior: I was angry at God. I didn't want to talk to Him any more. I pouted. My observing self noticed that I was indulging in the same behavior that my own children exhibit when their wishes are denied. No matter if the refusing parent has a logical and sound reason for those denials, the childish reaction is the same: petulant, sulking, resentful. I saw these feelings and behaviors in myself. Like God was my sugar daddy who had unexpectedly denied my latest whim. Like He exists to give me what I ask for. As if He were falling down on the job.
However, childish reactions aside, not receiving Divine assistance in the ways that I requested really bothered me. My desires were righteous. They were unselfish. And they feel quite desperate. I feel that I deserve to get what I'm so fervently asking for. So I began to wonder: what is prayer for?
When you take away getting what you ask for, then what's left? When people bear testimony of prayer, inevitably it's because they got what they asked for. I can't even count the number of times I've heard something that began like this: "I'd like to bear my testimony of prayer because God answered my prayer for....."
There are little shadows of other sides to prayer. There are stories in the scriptures of prayers for relief being answered with strength to continue suffering. We've all heard stories of prayers not being answered for years. One lady I admired greatly said that God has 3 basic answers to prayer: "yes", "no" and "not right now". And of course there has been lots said about building a relationship with God through prayer. I am not forgetting these things about prayer.
But somehow the biggest impression I have had in my mind is that when you have a need, a righteous desire, pray to God and He will give it to you. There are actually scriptures that say this kind of thing quite explicitly. But I have experienced more than once having a need that was desperate, a need that I took to God, a need that He chose not to fulfill. And I have realized that I have an incomplete understanding of what prayer is. Somehow I have imagined it as being mainly a tool to get what I want. And not getting what I want has brought me smack into my shallow perceptions. Can I really be this superficial in my approach to God? So I've been working to expand my understanding.
And I don't know that I understand any better, but my heart has changed its feelings about prayer. It started when I was talking to my brother Reed about this (I asked how he bears having his prayers for Carmen's healing not answered in the way that he wishes) and one of the things he said was something he'd read in the Bible dictionary: that prayer was work. I don't know why this rang bells in my mind, but it started me off on a whole new track of thought about prayer. The first and most obvious thought I had was that I had overlooked the idea that prayer is my duty as well as my privilege. That it is a commandment for me to be on my knees at least twice a day and to pray in my heart many many more times. Just those thoughts were enough to soften my heart and change my feelings about prayer.
So currently I have no hard definition of what prayer is about. I know for certain that it's not a means to an end. It's not what I do to get what I need or want (although prayer does serve this end sometimes). But it's far more than that and I'm finding out what it really is for me. I am starting with the idea that I will work to be on my knees as often as I can with no expectations of reward from God. I will pray with no agenda. I will continue to make my requests, of course, and continue to hope for fulfillment of all of them, but somehow it seems so obvious to me that it is His will that will be served and not mine and that is so obviously correct and safe that I cannot be dissatisfied.
Well, that's where I am for now on this. I've obviously got a lot more to figure out. Just like all of my thoughts and impressions--there are no permanent conclusions. Every new experience (mine and those of others) lead to a reevaluation of my previous ideas. It's all a journey and I am one of those who just has to talk it all out all along the way. You know.
When I first began my desperate prayerful requests I asked for immediate assistance. I had deadlines in my mind: if You, God, do not send this by this date, then life as I know it will end. Those sorts of things. And God missed every deadline. I thought my life could not continue in the comfortable fashion I have become addicted to without those requirements met....and they were not met.
[The aside here is how my life is still just as comfortable and happy and how my shoulders have broadened to carry my burdens, how my mind has expanded to imagine solutions that seemed impossible, how events align so that the eventualities I fear, the disasters that I imagine could send me over the edge--these never happen and life goes on in safe and comforting patterns. And how what I was sure could not be endured actually CAN be endured and even learned from. But this is an aside--too important not to mention, but not directly pertinent to what I'm talking about here]
So when first my requests were unfulfilled I observed my behavior: I was angry at God. I didn't want to talk to Him any more. I pouted. My observing self noticed that I was indulging in the same behavior that my own children exhibit when their wishes are denied. No matter if the refusing parent has a logical and sound reason for those denials, the childish reaction is the same: petulant, sulking, resentful. I saw these feelings and behaviors in myself. Like God was my sugar daddy who had unexpectedly denied my latest whim. Like He exists to give me what I ask for. As if He were falling down on the job.
However, childish reactions aside, not receiving Divine assistance in the ways that I requested really bothered me. My desires were righteous. They were unselfish. And they feel quite desperate. I feel that I deserve to get what I'm so fervently asking for. So I began to wonder: what is prayer for?
When you take away getting what you ask for, then what's left? When people bear testimony of prayer, inevitably it's because they got what they asked for. I can't even count the number of times I've heard something that began like this: "I'd like to bear my testimony of prayer because God answered my prayer for....."
There are little shadows of other sides to prayer. There are stories in the scriptures of prayers for relief being answered with strength to continue suffering. We've all heard stories of prayers not being answered for years. One lady I admired greatly said that God has 3 basic answers to prayer: "yes", "no" and "not right now". And of course there has been lots said about building a relationship with God through prayer. I am not forgetting these things about prayer.
But somehow the biggest impression I have had in my mind is that when you have a need, a righteous desire, pray to God and He will give it to you. There are actually scriptures that say this kind of thing quite explicitly. But I have experienced more than once having a need that was desperate, a need that I took to God, a need that He chose not to fulfill. And I have realized that I have an incomplete understanding of what prayer is. Somehow I have imagined it as being mainly a tool to get what I want. And not getting what I want has brought me smack into my shallow perceptions. Can I really be this superficial in my approach to God? So I've been working to expand my understanding.
And I don't know that I understand any better, but my heart has changed its feelings about prayer. It started when I was talking to my brother Reed about this (I asked how he bears having his prayers for Carmen's healing not answered in the way that he wishes) and one of the things he said was something he'd read in the Bible dictionary: that prayer was work. I don't know why this rang bells in my mind, but it started me off on a whole new track of thought about prayer. The first and most obvious thought I had was that I had overlooked the idea that prayer is my duty as well as my privilege. That it is a commandment for me to be on my knees at least twice a day and to pray in my heart many many more times. Just those thoughts were enough to soften my heart and change my feelings about prayer.
So currently I have no hard definition of what prayer is about. I know for certain that it's not a means to an end. It's not what I do to get what I need or want (although prayer does serve this end sometimes). But it's far more than that and I'm finding out what it really is for me. I am starting with the idea that I will work to be on my knees as often as I can with no expectations of reward from God. I will pray with no agenda. I will continue to make my requests, of course, and continue to hope for fulfillment of all of them, but somehow it seems so obvious to me that it is His will that will be served and not mine and that is so obviously correct and safe that I cannot be dissatisfied.
Well, that's where I am for now on this. I've obviously got a lot more to figure out. Just like all of my thoughts and impressions--there are no permanent conclusions. Every new experience (mine and those of others) lead to a reevaluation of my previous ideas. It's all a journey and I am one of those who just has to talk it all out all along the way. You know.
Friday, October 3, 2008
My niece Carmen
My dear friends,
I usually attempt to make this blog an expression of my thoughts rather than a vehicle for personal news or too-personal feelings. This morning I make a brief exception.
A year ago September, as all of you know, my 7-year-old niece Carmen was discovered to have had a large brain tumor. It was removed and found to have been a rare and aggressive type of brain cancer. Carmen spent the months from September to June going through radiation and chemotherapy. She lost her hair, she stopped eating, she stopped talking, she stopped walking, she nearly stopped living. It was heartbreaking for all of us and most painfully heartbreaking for her parents.
Happily, in June the treatment was over. Over the last few months, Carmen has been coming alive again. She is eating on her own. She is walking and running. She is talking and talking. She is back in school. She is a happy, active girl who turned 8 years old in August and was baptized at the beginning of September.
Her monthly MRIs have shown no return of the cancer. Until the one on Monday.
We have now been informed that another tumor is growing in her brain. In the next few weeks they will kill it with something referred to as a radiation knife. This, they say, is a treatment with mild effects on the patient. Dorothy said that the doctor said Carmen could get the treatment in the morning and be home and back at school in the afternoon! Wow! Then, if she will tolerate it, she will do some rounds of oral chemotherapy at home. But that is a decision to be finalized later since her parents do not want her to suffer as she did during the previous very aggressive treatment. They want to maintain her quality of life for as long as possible.
There is very little data on this type of cancer recurring. People with this kind of cancer just mostly die. The doctors say she will most likely die. The few statistics that are available indicate that her chances of 3 year survival are 20% at best. So they begin the cancer balancing act: treat as effectively as possible while still maintaining quality of life. Hoping to kill the cancer permanently without killing the person. Because apparently the fact that this tumor has begun growing so quickly after her months of intensive treatment means that the cancer will keep on coming back. They can kill it with quick and mild things like the radiation knife, but it will keep on coming back and hurting Carmen until finally they can't kill it again without killing her.
I am heartbroken at the thought of Carmen's further suffering, or worse, at the thought of losing her. And at the thoughts of what my brother and sister-in-law have already made it though and will go through now and in the near future. But, as my mom says, Carmen is herself. She is a fighter, a strong little girl. A miracle could happen! But the Lord, also, may decide to take her. We don't know. So I guess we'll do our best with what we have.
Anyway, as many of you often ask about Carmen, I thought I'd post it here. Everyone is always so kind and caring. One of the beautiful things about this type of thing is that it really throws into relief the essential goodness and kindness of people. I am amazed at how generous and kind people are. Strangers and friends work so hard for money, for support, for all kinds of help. It truly is amazing and wonderful.
I usually attempt to make this blog an expression of my thoughts rather than a vehicle for personal news or too-personal feelings. This morning I make a brief exception.
A year ago September, as all of you know, my 7-year-old niece Carmen was discovered to have had a large brain tumor. It was removed and found to have been a rare and aggressive type of brain cancer. Carmen spent the months from September to June going through radiation and chemotherapy. She lost her hair, she stopped eating, she stopped talking, she stopped walking, she nearly stopped living. It was heartbreaking for all of us and most painfully heartbreaking for her parents.
Happily, in June the treatment was over. Over the last few months, Carmen has been coming alive again. She is eating on her own. She is walking and running. She is talking and talking. She is back in school. She is a happy, active girl who turned 8 years old in August and was baptized at the beginning of September.
Her monthly MRIs have shown no return of the cancer. Until the one on Monday.
We have now been informed that another tumor is growing in her brain. In the next few weeks they will kill it with something referred to as a radiation knife. This, they say, is a treatment with mild effects on the patient. Dorothy said that the doctor said Carmen could get the treatment in the morning and be home and back at school in the afternoon! Wow! Then, if she will tolerate it, she will do some rounds of oral chemotherapy at home. But that is a decision to be finalized later since her parents do not want her to suffer as she did during the previous very aggressive treatment. They want to maintain her quality of life for as long as possible.
There is very little data on this type of cancer recurring. People with this kind of cancer just mostly die. The doctors say she will most likely die. The few statistics that are available indicate that her chances of 3 year survival are 20% at best. So they begin the cancer balancing act: treat as effectively as possible while still maintaining quality of life. Hoping to kill the cancer permanently without killing the person. Because apparently the fact that this tumor has begun growing so quickly after her months of intensive treatment means that the cancer will keep on coming back. They can kill it with quick and mild things like the radiation knife, but it will keep on coming back and hurting Carmen until finally they can't kill it again without killing her.
I am heartbroken at the thought of Carmen's further suffering, or worse, at the thought of losing her. And at the thoughts of what my brother and sister-in-law have already made it though and will go through now and in the near future. But, as my mom says, Carmen is herself. She is a fighter, a strong little girl. A miracle could happen! But the Lord, also, may decide to take her. We don't know. So I guess we'll do our best with what we have.
Anyway, as many of you often ask about Carmen, I thought I'd post it here. Everyone is always so kind and caring. One of the beautiful things about this type of thing is that it really throws into relief the essential goodness and kindness of people. I am amazed at how generous and kind people are. Strangers and friends work so hard for money, for support, for all kinds of help. It truly is amazing and wonderful.
Unselfish Conversation
For a long time I have made a mental effort to not get so caught up in my feelings about homeschooling that I become rabidly anti-public school and therefore unpalatable in conversation to my friends who are parents of public-schooled children. I, myself, had all good experiences in public school and I have never had a desire to hate the system.
For me, homeschooling has always been about the lifestyle rather than the education. Therefore my opinions and emotions have been concentrated the quality of our lives as homeschoolers, rather than the quality of our education. (Someday I want to talk about that here, too, cuz it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately).
September marked the beginning of year number 12 of homeschooling for us, though, and I am getting more and more interested in educating myself about the state of education. I have been reading books about it. I have been talking to others. I have become involved in the government of my own "alternative education" charter school. I am taking tentative steps on the road to "passionately anti-public school".
It is my experience that people with a passion often like to share their passionate ideas with others. This sharing comes in a multitude of forms. Those who have eating passions will exhibit alternative eating behaviors--I had one girlfriend who, when her son came to spend a few days with us, sent him with all his own food, made in her kitchen and packed to travel (he came to us from another state). Those who have reading passions will share info about their latest book (this is a passion that is currently in vogue, so reading conversations are widely accepted and shared). Those who have passions for fitness will look fantastic (lucky passion!) and will talk about their fitness activities--races they have participated in, courses they have golfed, equipment they have purchased, etc.
Often, a passionate person will attempt to convert his/her friends. They love it, they love you, therefore they want you to love it! Then you can all enjoy it together! Some missionaries are more pushy than others. Some use guilt--you really should be more active, you really should read more, you really should eat more healthily.
Sometimes this attempt to convert is offensive. Have you ever felt defensive when someone was trying to convert you to their way of life? I have. And I know I have felt the defensiveness of others at times when I talk about homeschooling. I like to please people, so in response to the occasional defensiveness I have perceived when talking about homeschool, and in response to the feelings of defensiveness in myself that I feel when others try to push their passions onto me, I have long made the effort not to volunteer my feelings about education unless I am actually asked to express my opinion. Or unless I am among fellow homeschoolers who I know won't be offended--unless, in fact, I am pretty sure that they will agree.
But, as I said at the beginning, I have been taking little baby steps on the road to more voluntary sharing. I tend anyway to be generally agressive in stating my opinions during any discussion, unless I am afraid of hurting someone or offending someone (I do that enough by accident anyway, so at least I DO make efforts not to do it on purpose!). So it's not too much of a stretch to begin volunteering my opinions about public school. But. A big BUT. Anti-public school sentiment is almost guaranteed to be offensive to most of anyone I may be conversing with.
SO, (now we come to my point--finally!) I was walking with one of my new friends the other day and we were talking about people. I was telling her about a little get-together I had had at my house with several other homeschooling moms and their kids. I told her how I missed that type of group in my new ward. I mentioned how my new girlfriends here talk a lot about their kids' school stuff: classes, teachers, teams, teams, teams, etc. And how I can't really join in those conversations, except as listener. [Of course, what I didn't mention is how I have been beginning to allow myself to feel those new little seedlings of dissatisfaction, how I am perhaps even beginning to feel a bit patronizing towards these interests which I have chosen not to take...]. And I observed that my girlfriend doesn't really talk about her kids in that way.
And that's when she said something that turned on a warning light in my head. She said that she purposely avoids those types of talking points when she is with others because she feels that it is a form of selfishness in conversation. We went on to talk a bit about that, but meanwhile, echoes of that idea rang through my head and I have been thinking about that ever since.
This idea, that I find most attractive, is that of an unselfish conversation. And I think I'd like to be the kind of person whose conversation is designed to make others feel listened to, to make them feel that I am interested in them and their life. What is conversation anyway, I am wondering? It's at least two people talking about something that is mutually interesting, right? If the topic is only interesting to one of those people, is it still conversation or has it become a lecture?
I'm not really sure. But I am very interested in the idea of being an unselfish conversationalist. If I were to attempt this, I imagine that this means that I would ask more questions, I would listen more carefully, I would focus my thoughts on who I'm talking to rather than what I want to say...in other words, I would really locate myself in that conversation. I imagine that this could be very satisfying to my partners in conversation. I think it would be a way to show respect and love to my friends and family.
I need to think more about this. But in any case, I feel that her words were a timely little warning to me. Yes, I am very interested in learning more about education. I will continue to do that. But I re-establish my opinion that my passions are best kept to myself, or even better: kept in the arena where they can do the most good for others--in my homeschooling circle, in my service to the charter school, etc. I think this is a form of governing passions. I do not deny that I am passionately interested in education. But I will retrace my footsteps along that road to "passionately anti-public school", I think. I do not want to alienate my feelings from the feelings of so many others about whom I care. I would rather be seen as a resource for those who have questions rather than a crusader, wishing to convert or demolish. And my passion for this particular subject need not define me, nor take the lion's share of conversation or thought. I think that would be allowing myself to become unbalanced. And it certainly would not improve my relationships with others.
And I have thought for a long time that relationships with others--family, friends, God--are pretty much what it's all about.
Meanwhile, life goes on outside my own head. I am sitting in my bed as I write this and outside my window, down towards the garden, I can see the compost pile. And currently on the compost pile, sampling its delights, are 2 deer and 8 or 10 wild turkeys. Breakfast for the wildlife. Yum. Cool. Dang. Those turkeys are aggressive. They're chasing off the deer. Piggies. If I caught a wild turkey...and put him on my Thanksgiving table...and ate him....I'd have personally recycled my own compost! A nice thought to begin the morning with. :)
For me, homeschooling has always been about the lifestyle rather than the education. Therefore my opinions and emotions have been concentrated the quality of our lives as homeschoolers, rather than the quality of our education. (Someday I want to talk about that here, too, cuz it's something I've been thinking about a lot lately).
September marked the beginning of year number 12 of homeschooling for us, though, and I am getting more and more interested in educating myself about the state of education. I have been reading books about it. I have been talking to others. I have become involved in the government of my own "alternative education" charter school. I am taking tentative steps on the road to "passionately anti-public school".
It is my experience that people with a passion often like to share their passionate ideas with others. This sharing comes in a multitude of forms. Those who have eating passions will exhibit alternative eating behaviors--I had one girlfriend who, when her son came to spend a few days with us, sent him with all his own food, made in her kitchen and packed to travel (he came to us from another state). Those who have reading passions will share info about their latest book (this is a passion that is currently in vogue, so reading conversations are widely accepted and shared). Those who have passions for fitness will look fantastic (lucky passion!) and will talk about their fitness activities--races they have participated in, courses they have golfed, equipment they have purchased, etc.
Often, a passionate person will attempt to convert his/her friends. They love it, they love you, therefore they want you to love it! Then you can all enjoy it together! Some missionaries are more pushy than others. Some use guilt--you really should be more active, you really should read more, you really should eat more healthily.
Sometimes this attempt to convert is offensive. Have you ever felt defensive when someone was trying to convert you to their way of life? I have. And I know I have felt the defensiveness of others at times when I talk about homeschooling. I like to please people, so in response to the occasional defensiveness I have perceived when talking about homeschool, and in response to the feelings of defensiveness in myself that I feel when others try to push their passions onto me, I have long made the effort not to volunteer my feelings about education unless I am actually asked to express my opinion. Or unless I am among fellow homeschoolers who I know won't be offended--unless, in fact, I am pretty sure that they will agree.
But, as I said at the beginning, I have been taking little baby steps on the road to more voluntary sharing. I tend anyway to be generally agressive in stating my opinions during any discussion, unless I am afraid of hurting someone or offending someone (I do that enough by accident anyway, so at least I DO make efforts not to do it on purpose!). So it's not too much of a stretch to begin volunteering my opinions about public school. But. A big BUT. Anti-public school sentiment is almost guaranteed to be offensive to most of anyone I may be conversing with.
SO, (now we come to my point--finally!) I was walking with one of my new friends the other day and we were talking about people. I was telling her about a little get-together I had had at my house with several other homeschooling moms and their kids. I told her how I missed that type of group in my new ward. I mentioned how my new girlfriends here talk a lot about their kids' school stuff: classes, teachers, teams, teams, teams, etc. And how I can't really join in those conversations, except as listener. [Of course, what I didn't mention is how I have been beginning to allow myself to feel those new little seedlings of dissatisfaction, how I am perhaps even beginning to feel a bit patronizing towards these interests which I have chosen not to take...]. And I observed that my girlfriend doesn't really talk about her kids in that way.
And that's when she said something that turned on a warning light in my head. She said that she purposely avoids those types of talking points when she is with others because she feels that it is a form of selfishness in conversation. We went on to talk a bit about that, but meanwhile, echoes of that idea rang through my head and I have been thinking about that ever since.
This idea, that I find most attractive, is that of an unselfish conversation. And I think I'd like to be the kind of person whose conversation is designed to make others feel listened to, to make them feel that I am interested in them and their life. What is conversation anyway, I am wondering? It's at least two people talking about something that is mutually interesting, right? If the topic is only interesting to one of those people, is it still conversation or has it become a lecture?
I'm not really sure. But I am very interested in the idea of being an unselfish conversationalist. If I were to attempt this, I imagine that this means that I would ask more questions, I would listen more carefully, I would focus my thoughts on who I'm talking to rather than what I want to say...in other words, I would really locate myself in that conversation. I imagine that this could be very satisfying to my partners in conversation. I think it would be a way to show respect and love to my friends and family.
I need to think more about this. But in any case, I feel that her words were a timely little warning to me. Yes, I am very interested in learning more about education. I will continue to do that. But I re-establish my opinion that my passions are best kept to myself, or even better: kept in the arena where they can do the most good for others--in my homeschooling circle, in my service to the charter school, etc. I think this is a form of governing passions. I do not deny that I am passionately interested in education. But I will retrace my footsteps along that road to "passionately anti-public school", I think. I do not want to alienate my feelings from the feelings of so many others about whom I care. I would rather be seen as a resource for those who have questions rather than a crusader, wishing to convert or demolish. And my passion for this particular subject need not define me, nor take the lion's share of conversation or thought. I think that would be allowing myself to become unbalanced. And it certainly would not improve my relationships with others.
And I have thought for a long time that relationships with others--family, friends, God--are pretty much what it's all about.
Meanwhile, life goes on outside my own head. I am sitting in my bed as I write this and outside my window, down towards the garden, I can see the compost pile. And currently on the compost pile, sampling its delights, are 2 deer and 8 or 10 wild turkeys. Breakfast for the wildlife. Yum. Cool. Dang. Those turkeys are aggressive. They're chasing off the deer. Piggies. If I caught a wild turkey...and put him on my Thanksgiving table...and ate him....I'd have personally recycled my own compost! A nice thought to begin the morning with. :)
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
The Power of Youth
So, here's a quick thought for you, culled from an unremembered website (I can remember what it said, but not where it was!) and an Agatha Christie political suspense novel.
I get a lot of email from conservative interest political groups. One of them contained a link to an article that they had posted on their website. This article was written by a homosexual activist. This writer claimed that the homosexual movement had converted the majority of youth between the ages of 18-24 and therefore the war was won. They were now concerned with the little skirmishes that would take place as the views of the youth grew to take place over the more conservative views of their elders. Ultimately the youth would be adults and their views would define the political and social climate. The war--won in one generation.
I didn't find this difficult to believe at all. Talk to any bishop of any California LDS single adult ward and he will tell you that his ward members are struggling with the idea of taking a firm stand against homosexual marriage. And these are our kids! It is a walk in the park to convert to homosexual rights any non-religious kid. After all, who would teach him/her any reason to object?
This shouldn't shock us. For many years our kids' most go-to sources for information: school and the media, have been preaching the doctrine of sexual tolerance. No, more than tolerance--they teach the full acceptance of the current "in vogue" sexual deviances i.e. homosexuality, transsexuality, and the like.
Anyway, that little article has been swimming around in the back of my brain and then I read this by Agatha Christie:
"They--whoever they are--work through youth. Youth in every country. Youth urged on. Youth chanting slogans--slogans that sound exciting, though they don't always know what they mean. So easy to start a revolution. That's natural to youth. All youth has always rebelled. You rebel, you pull down, you want the world to be different from what it is. But you're blind, too. There are bandages over the eyes of youth. They can't see where things are taking them. What's going to come next? What's in front of them? And who it is behind them, urging them on? That's what's frightening about it. You know, someone holding out the carrot to get the donkey to come along and at the same time there is someone behind the donkey urging it on with a stick."
She goes on to remind her readers of Hitler's Youth and how they were used so effectively in WWII.
She adds, "What is being promoted, you must understand, is the growing organization of youth everywhere against their mode of government; against their parental customs, against very often the religions in which they have been brought up. There is the insidious cult of permissiveness, there is the increasing cult of violence. Violence not as a means of gaining money, but violence for the love of violence."
Christie's book was a political thriller (and a rather boring one at that) written in 1970. But what it said about youth really struck me. I felt a strong sense of their power and their vulnerability. Am I giving less credit to their individual strength of mind and their openness to the Spirit of God? Probably so. Every generation of youth is bombarded with the most liberal of social ideals and some choose to adopt them and some choose to stand fast with higher morals. Hm. I'll be thinking more about this. What do you think?
I get a lot of email from conservative interest political groups. One of them contained a link to an article that they had posted on their website. This article was written by a homosexual activist. This writer claimed that the homosexual movement had converted the majority of youth between the ages of 18-24 and therefore the war was won. They were now concerned with the little skirmishes that would take place as the views of the youth grew to take place over the more conservative views of their elders. Ultimately the youth would be adults and their views would define the political and social climate. The war--won in one generation.
I didn't find this difficult to believe at all. Talk to any bishop of any California LDS single adult ward and he will tell you that his ward members are struggling with the idea of taking a firm stand against homosexual marriage. And these are our kids! It is a walk in the park to convert to homosexual rights any non-religious kid. After all, who would teach him/her any reason to object?
This shouldn't shock us. For many years our kids' most go-to sources for information: school and the media, have been preaching the doctrine of sexual tolerance. No, more than tolerance--they teach the full acceptance of the current "in vogue" sexual deviances i.e. homosexuality, transsexuality, and the like.
Anyway, that little article has been swimming around in the back of my brain and then I read this by Agatha Christie:
"They--whoever they are--work through youth. Youth in every country. Youth urged on. Youth chanting slogans--slogans that sound exciting, though they don't always know what they mean. So easy to start a revolution. That's natural to youth. All youth has always rebelled. You rebel, you pull down, you want the world to be different from what it is. But you're blind, too. There are bandages over the eyes of youth. They can't see where things are taking them. What's going to come next? What's in front of them? And who it is behind them, urging them on? That's what's frightening about it. You know, someone holding out the carrot to get the donkey to come along and at the same time there is someone behind the donkey urging it on with a stick."
She goes on to remind her readers of Hitler's Youth and how they were used so effectively in WWII.
She adds, "What is being promoted, you must understand, is the growing organization of youth everywhere against their mode of government; against their parental customs, against very often the religions in which they have been brought up. There is the insidious cult of permissiveness, there is the increasing cult of violence. Violence not as a means of gaining money, but violence for the love of violence."
Christie's book was a political thriller (and a rather boring one at that) written in 1970. But what it said about youth really struck me. I felt a strong sense of their power and their vulnerability. Am I giving less credit to their individual strength of mind and their openness to the Spirit of God? Probably so. Every generation of youth is bombarded with the most liberal of social ideals and some choose to adopt them and some choose to stand fast with higher morals. Hm. I'll be thinking more about this. What do you think?
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Can a parent be a friend?
Okay.... I had this vision of parenthood the other day when I was thinking so much about family as the best friends.
I've heard often from parenting "experts" that a parent should not be a friend--he/she must parent. And I've always felt vaguely guilty about that because I WANT to be friends with my children. Now that I've been thinking about it all, I've come up with an idea that supports my desires (those are the best kind of ideas. In fact, pretty much all my ideas support what I already think. Why else would I claim them as mine?) :) So, you can see what you think.
I think that there are 2 main phases of parenting, one phase much longer than the other.
The first phase is the real PARENTING part. This is when your kids are young and you must instruct, guide, reprove, protect, set boundaries (and defend them), etc. This is what we do from almost the beginning of parenthood.
The second phase is the FRIEND part. This is when your kids have grown out of the lectures, the rules, the punishments. They no longer want/need the protection and they have already set their own boundaries (which will inevitably vary from some degree from those which were set by their parents). IF a parent attempts to parent during this second phase, they will push their children away. Adult children do not want lectures from their parents. If a parent persists with lectures, boundaries, rules, etc, a child will avoid encounters with parents. These are the situations so often parodied in our sitcoms. The kids belittle the parents behind their backs (sometimes in front of them). The parents look ridiculous because they are providing parenting rather than friendship.
Once you've identified this situation and the cause behind it (i.e. the parent fails to move from parenting into friendship), it seems obvious, right? When does your mom bug you? When she's giving you advice you didn't ask for. It seems like she's not allowing you to be the adult, that she's pushing you back into childhood, maybe? She's not being a random pain, though, she's just being the parent--the same parent that you really needed when you were little. The same parent that you practically worshiped then. She's doing what she's always done only now it doesn't work the same way it did and she wishes she knew what she was doing wrong. And you, the poor child, are so busy pushing her away and defending your own adulthood, that maybe you don't realize what is going on. Plus, as a child, it's easy to stay in childhood roles too and it's hard to make the effort to actually contribute in friendly way to your relationship with your mom. It's just habit to make her to all the work in the relationship and something you may not think about changing. One way or another, the transition to friendship is never made and the relationship can never reach its true potential.
The parent can actually be the best friend: the SUPERFRIEND. A loving parent-child relationship has already all the right ingredients for a great friendship: true caring, unconditional love, shared history, common interests (to name a few). And, this phase is the LONGEST phase of parenting. The rule-setting phase only lasts for a few years, but the friendship phase lasts for the rest of life and on into forever. Therefore, making this phase work is essential to eternal family relationships.
The tricky part is where the two phases collide. When does the first end and the second take over? This is where the mess-ups happen. I'm thinking this transition would be smoother if the parent has been a friend all along. You can add friend characteristics to parent characteristics as you go along from the very beginning, can't you? While still being a parent? I'm thinking YES. But I'm still pretty foggy about details. I have some more thinking to do about this. What do you think?
I've heard often from parenting "experts" that a parent should not be a friend--he/she must parent. And I've always felt vaguely guilty about that because I WANT to be friends with my children. Now that I've been thinking about it all, I've come up with an idea that supports my desires (those are the best kind of ideas. In fact, pretty much all my ideas support what I already think. Why else would I claim them as mine?) :) So, you can see what you think.
I think that there are 2 main phases of parenting, one phase much longer than the other.
The first phase is the real PARENTING part. This is when your kids are young and you must instruct, guide, reprove, protect, set boundaries (and defend them), etc. This is what we do from almost the beginning of parenthood.
The second phase is the FRIEND part. This is when your kids have grown out of the lectures, the rules, the punishments. They no longer want/need the protection and they have already set their own boundaries (which will inevitably vary from some degree from those which were set by their parents). IF a parent attempts to parent during this second phase, they will push their children away. Adult children do not want lectures from their parents. If a parent persists with lectures, boundaries, rules, etc, a child will avoid encounters with parents. These are the situations so often parodied in our sitcoms. The kids belittle the parents behind their backs (sometimes in front of them). The parents look ridiculous because they are providing parenting rather than friendship.
Once you've identified this situation and the cause behind it (i.e. the parent fails to move from parenting into friendship), it seems obvious, right? When does your mom bug you? When she's giving you advice you didn't ask for. It seems like she's not allowing you to be the adult, that she's pushing you back into childhood, maybe? She's not being a random pain, though, she's just being the parent--the same parent that you really needed when you were little. The same parent that you practically worshiped then. She's doing what she's always done only now it doesn't work the same way it did and she wishes she knew what she was doing wrong. And you, the poor child, are so busy pushing her away and defending your own adulthood, that maybe you don't realize what is going on. Plus, as a child, it's easy to stay in childhood roles too and it's hard to make the effort to actually contribute in friendly way to your relationship with your mom. It's just habit to make her to all the work in the relationship and something you may not think about changing. One way or another, the transition to friendship is never made and the relationship can never reach its true potential.
The parent can actually be the best friend: the SUPERFRIEND. A loving parent-child relationship has already all the right ingredients for a great friendship: true caring, unconditional love, shared history, common interests (to name a few). And, this phase is the LONGEST phase of parenting. The rule-setting phase only lasts for a few years, but the friendship phase lasts for the rest of life and on into forever. Therefore, making this phase work is essential to eternal family relationships.
The tricky part is where the two phases collide. When does the first end and the second take over? This is where the mess-ups happen. I'm thinking this transition would be smoother if the parent has been a friend all along. You can add friend characteristics to parent characteristics as you go along from the very beginning, can't you? While still being a parent? I'm thinking YES. But I'm still pretty foggy about details. I have some more thinking to do about this. What do you think?
What is friendship?
My close girlfriend is in the middle of getting a masters degree. She's reading and writing a ton, but she still manages to email me now and again. Since she's knee deep in ideas, she can't help but pass some of them along and this latest one really made me think. Here's how it started out, from her:
"I read something in the Gatto book that I have been pondering a lot, and I wonder what your thoughts are. He writes about the fact that we don't really have friendships as adults, only networks. He says we don't even know the difference between communities and networks, communities being a collection of real families who participate in life--argue and help and make things together. Networks don't require the whole person. You suppress all the parts of you but the ones that are necessary to your job (calling, board, club). He says that networks seem to address human and social needs, but they don't really encourage the friendship that we constantly seek. [He says:]
'With a network, what you get at the beginning is all you ever get. Networks don't get better or worse; their limited purpose keeps them pretty much the same all the time, as there just isn't much development possible. The pathological state which eventually develops out of these constant repetitions of thin human contact is a feeling that your "friends" and "colleagues" don't really care about you beyond what you can do for them, that they have no curiosity about the way you manage your life, no curiosity about your hopes, fears, victories, defeats. The real truth is that the "friends" falsely mourned for their indifference were never friends, just fellow networkers from whom in fairness little should be expected beyond attention to the common interest.'
So... I've been thinking a lot about this. Here are some of my thoughts. What do you think?
Firstly, I agree with the network/community idea. Our mobile society has not been kind to communities. Nor is it kind to friendships. We move a lot. It's hard to build true communities (as Gatto describes them) in this kind of atmosphere. We try, though. We all want those kinds of connections. Perhaps networks are the best substitute that we manage to generate in our efforts to build communities. Networks are a series of positions that can be filled by whomever is present, so I guess it's kind of a framework for a kind of friendship. Some enduring friendships are made from those network beginnings. Communities seem to require a pre-supposed kind of committment e.g. when generations of families lived and died in the same place together, they knew they'd always be around each other and therefore there was a committment to living among each other. We just don't ever get to that place now. What social folks do instead is join multiple networks. They have many different groups of peers. In my area it's: book clubs, bunco groups, church groups, teams, school groups, etc. Pile up a lot of limited networks and maybe the community spirit comes close to being reached?
Secondly (and this is just a vague idea): I wonder sometimes if our general inability to form and maintain intimate friendships might be designed to bring us to God, or at least to leave a craving in us for that perfect relationship that only He can offer. After all, no human can be the perfect friend. Every friend has a flaw. Even our most intimate friend (hopefully), our husband, can never offer us the perfect love that can only be offered by God. Can anyone know every part of us and love us still? Are we even capable of showing anyone every part of ourselves? I'm not sure that we are. I think that we are flawed in what we can offer as a friend just by virtue of our humanity. We are incapable of complete unconditional love because we can't do anything perfectly. But God is God and he offers that love unceasingly, if only we can find our way to it. And there's the rub, eh? Hm.
Or here's another angle that makes even more sense to me: Our unsatisfying temporary friendships with others should encourage us to seek those more permanent friendships with the people who are truly permanent in our lives--our family. As I make and lose friends over years and years, I realize more and more that the most stable, lasting relationships that I have are family relationships. These are the relationships that are divinely designed to last forever and they have the most capacity for unconditional love and acceptance. However, these are also the relationships that can become most deeply flawed and therefore most deeply painful (which things are a good indication of how powerful these relationships are). And it's not always the fault of parents who are trying their best and children who are attempting to do what's expected of them. I believe that society has poisoned our notions about what family is.
One of the falsities of this "dynamic" sociality that is sold to us by our world is that our families are the enemy and our social peers are our friends, that family is to be outgrown, while friends are kept forever. This leads us to mock and abandon the "difficult" family relationships while we seek depth in the "easy" relationships with our friends. So we can never be satisfied. We invest in shallow relationships and feel the lack of them at the same time we are critical of the relationships that could really satisfy us.
I really think, though, that this campaign to destroy the family relationships has been going on for a long time, and that family dynamics today have fallen into patterns that create these disconnects. It starts in grade school when our teacher becomes our exemplar and we begin to see the inadequacies of our parents. As we get older, we become convinced that our parents (and most other adults) cannot understand us and that our peers can best provide that understanding and counsel that our parents seem incapable of offering. No sibling can be as close to us as a friend. Parents often become merely wardens and bankers. There are families that overcome these typical patterns, of course. Thank goodness for that! I'm suggesting only that these are common patterns that we have somehow been fooled into accepting as "normal". Some strong families see beyond "normal", but many people just follow conventions and, if they're lucky, they may manage to overcome the societal norms, and parents and children can build things in common and be friends. But, as the children grow to adulthood, too often parents and children follow their parallel paths to occasional visits, vastly different interests, regular back-biting and complaining, and general dissatisfaction.
So perhaps the loose networks that exist and that can provide foundations for deeper friendships are acceptable as long as we as a society remember to care for our family relationships. But that's the rub, isn't it? Family can be so much harder than casual friends. Have we discarded family members as our intimates in favor of our comfortable friends within our loose networks? And what does this say about our capacities for forming lasting relationships of value and depth? Are we, as individuals within a loosely knit society becoming too isolated? If so, will this isolation incubate selfishness, pride, enmity, and all those other destroying characteristics? Perhaps. Perhaps not. In any case, I'm sure thinking a lot about my friendships and family relationships and what I am (or am not) contributing to them. It's something to think about....
"I read something in the Gatto book that I have been pondering a lot, and I wonder what your thoughts are. He writes about the fact that we don't really have friendships as adults, only networks. He says we don't even know the difference between communities and networks, communities being a collection of real families who participate in life--argue and help and make things together. Networks don't require the whole person. You suppress all the parts of you but the ones that are necessary to your job (calling, board, club). He says that networks seem to address human and social needs, but they don't really encourage the friendship that we constantly seek. [He says:]
'With a network, what you get at the beginning is all you ever get. Networks don't get better or worse; their limited purpose keeps them pretty much the same all the time, as there just isn't much development possible. The pathological state which eventually develops out of these constant repetitions of thin human contact is a feeling that your "friends" and "colleagues" don't really care about you beyond what you can do for them, that they have no curiosity about the way you manage your life, no curiosity about your hopes, fears, victories, defeats. The real truth is that the "friends" falsely mourned for their indifference were never friends, just fellow networkers from whom in fairness little should be expected beyond attention to the common interest.'
So... I've been thinking a lot about this. Here are some of my thoughts. What do you think?
Firstly, I agree with the network/community idea. Our mobile society has not been kind to communities. Nor is it kind to friendships. We move a lot. It's hard to build true communities (as Gatto describes them) in this kind of atmosphere. We try, though. We all want those kinds of connections. Perhaps networks are the best substitute that we manage to generate in our efforts to build communities. Networks are a series of positions that can be filled by whomever is present, so I guess it's kind of a framework for a kind of friendship. Some enduring friendships are made from those network beginnings. Communities seem to require a pre-supposed kind of committment e.g. when generations of families lived and died in the same place together, they knew they'd always be around each other and therefore there was a committment to living among each other. We just don't ever get to that place now. What social folks do instead is join multiple networks. They have many different groups of peers. In my area it's: book clubs, bunco groups, church groups, teams, school groups, etc. Pile up a lot of limited networks and maybe the community spirit comes close to being reached?
Secondly (and this is just a vague idea): I wonder sometimes if our general inability to form and maintain intimate friendships might be designed to bring us to God, or at least to leave a craving in us for that perfect relationship that only He can offer. After all, no human can be the perfect friend. Every friend has a flaw. Even our most intimate friend (hopefully), our husband, can never offer us the perfect love that can only be offered by God. Can anyone know every part of us and love us still? Are we even capable of showing anyone every part of ourselves? I'm not sure that we are. I think that we are flawed in what we can offer as a friend just by virtue of our humanity. We are incapable of complete unconditional love because we can't do anything perfectly. But God is God and he offers that love unceasingly, if only we can find our way to it. And there's the rub, eh? Hm.
Or here's another angle that makes even more sense to me: Our unsatisfying temporary friendships with others should encourage us to seek those more permanent friendships with the people who are truly permanent in our lives--our family. As I make and lose friends over years and years, I realize more and more that the most stable, lasting relationships that I have are family relationships. These are the relationships that are divinely designed to last forever and they have the most capacity for unconditional love and acceptance. However, these are also the relationships that can become most deeply flawed and therefore most deeply painful (which things are a good indication of how powerful these relationships are). And it's not always the fault of parents who are trying their best and children who are attempting to do what's expected of them. I believe that society has poisoned our notions about what family is.
One of the falsities of this "dynamic" sociality that is sold to us by our world is that our families are the enemy and our social peers are our friends, that family is to be outgrown, while friends are kept forever. This leads us to mock and abandon the "difficult" family relationships while we seek depth in the "easy" relationships with our friends. So we can never be satisfied. We invest in shallow relationships and feel the lack of them at the same time we are critical of the relationships that could really satisfy us.
I really think, though, that this campaign to destroy the family relationships has been going on for a long time, and that family dynamics today have fallen into patterns that create these disconnects. It starts in grade school when our teacher becomes our exemplar and we begin to see the inadequacies of our parents. As we get older, we become convinced that our parents (and most other adults) cannot understand us and that our peers can best provide that understanding and counsel that our parents seem incapable of offering. No sibling can be as close to us as a friend. Parents often become merely wardens and bankers. There are families that overcome these typical patterns, of course. Thank goodness for that! I'm suggesting only that these are common patterns that we have somehow been fooled into accepting as "normal". Some strong families see beyond "normal", but many people just follow conventions and, if they're lucky, they may manage to overcome the societal norms, and parents and children can build things in common and be friends. But, as the children grow to adulthood, too often parents and children follow their parallel paths to occasional visits, vastly different interests, regular back-biting and complaining, and general dissatisfaction.
So perhaps the loose networks that exist and that can provide foundations for deeper friendships are acceptable as long as we as a society remember to care for our family relationships. But that's the rub, isn't it? Family can be so much harder than casual friends. Have we discarded family members as our intimates in favor of our comfortable friends within our loose networks? And what does this say about our capacities for forming lasting relationships of value and depth? Are we, as individuals within a loosely knit society becoming too isolated? If so, will this isolation incubate selfishness, pride, enmity, and all those other destroying characteristics? Perhaps. Perhaps not. In any case, I'm sure thinking a lot about my friendships and family relationships and what I am (or am not) contributing to them. It's something to think about....
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