Hoge Poge and My Brother’s Birthday

I promise you I have been off any pain meds except Tylenol for over two weeks. Pain medicine makes my coffee taste terrible for a couple of months after I quit taking it and I am definitely addicted to my coffee.  But, as usual for someone who loves thinking about theories or possibilities instead of paying attention to the actual world around her, peculiarities still happen. I got to a doctors appointment recently and as they were taking my blood pressure, I realized I had my blouse on inside out. Of course, me being me, I didn’t keep quiet and just take the first chance alone to right it. The two nurses swore they hadn’t noticed. Which worried me a bit, because I like my medical people to stay aware of the real world in front of them, particularly when I am it.

Then a few nights ago when I was still wearing my back brace at night, I awoke to make one of my usual trips to check out the plumbing, but couldn’t get up because I was unable to move my arms. Luckily before I panicked, my attempts to free my arms made that noise peculiar to Velcro being tugged loose. It happens that the two wrist braces I wear at night for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome have Velcro similar to that on the back brace. Somehow, I had Velcroed my arms to my body. I woke my husband up with my laughter, but managed to get loose without help.

Strange things also come to memory when I have way too much time on my hands while recuperating from back surgery.
Today is my brother’s birthday. He’s my only sibling and ten years younger than I am. I was trying to remember anything about the day he was born, but couldn’t. I don’t know if I just wasn’t sufficiently impressed with that event or perhaps I was significantly depressed and blotted it out. Because I do remember riding the train with my very pregnant mom back to St. Louis when my Dad got a job there after being in the army. She was very uncomfortable in the old Pullman berth and needed my pillow. I think that was my first clue that this wasn’t going to be like getting a kitten.
I remember living on the seventh floor without air conditioning and only having screens on the windows. And when my brother was about eighteen months old I found him sitting on the window sill in the bedroom with his face pressed against the flimsy screen. I didn’t scream or grab for him, but I did get mom.  Then we had to live with those child gates on all the windows. Kind of like a kiddie prison decor.

He had natural talent in art and music, but as the “late” child never got lessons. Where as, my nun piano teacher after three or four years suggested they try me on the drum instead. Life is not fair, is it? But when he was twelve and I had married and moved to Tennessee, I sent money for him to go to the Fine Arts Museum for Art Lessons. Unfortunately, I think my mother quit driving him to them, when she found out they were doing life painting of nudes. Oh, well, at least I tried.

I have wonderful memories of the many years he came to visit us in our hundred acre, Winnie the Pooh wood.  We two city kids, that had lived seven floors up, thought we’d died and gone to heaven. He enjoyed the country even more than I did, being willing one summer to haul water in buckets up to our garden during a drought. I would have just waved good bye to those tomatoes from the house.  I fell in  love with all the weeds and rocks and spent years making crafts with them. And he would bring an empty suitcase to take back full of rocks and fossils from our creek.  He taught a class in geology in Houston which only had sand and shells.

He and I would talk until sun-up about everything from politics and religion to physics and geology. He had so much passion about everything, I loved every moment. When he was teaching in a huge high school in a very impoverished neighborhood, he was constantly at war with the administration, who seemed only interested in their own survival, not the kids welfare. I know he was a good teacher, because when he retired, the adversarial principal told him grudgingly that no matter what they asked his students, (one of whom had held a knife to my brother’s throat once), they would never “rat” him out!

So, happy birthday to my “BRO” who all my friends think is much funnier than I am. He needs to be the writer in the family, but since retirement, he has opted to fight nature and turn a flood plain into a botanical garden.  Not too different from teaching .

Giving the Devil His Due: Senator Alexander’s Response to My Letter on Same Sex Marriage

A Mother’s Plea to Not Reinforce Prejudice and Precipitate Violence

My Letter to our National and State Congressmen and to the Editor of the Tennessean and our Senator Lamar Alexander’s letter in response.

1. Freedom for and from religion are the same thing. We need to protect that freedom.

2. Homosexuality is not a choice. My great-great aunt became a pediatrician and established a clinic for the poor in the early 1900’s. She lived with the same woman all her life. My brother has been in a twenty-five year monogamous relationship with another man. My son and his partner of seventeen years teach children born HIV positive in South East Asia. Legal recognition of same gender commitment relationships is crucial on many levels, from health insurance to the same degree of acceptance and safety from persecution that heterosexuals have. A return to legal reinforcement of prejudice could very well precipitate violence.
3. I want all people to experience the unconditional love of God expressed in Jesus, so He can become their Lord. History shows that making people pretend Christians by law, violence, judgment, or discrimination does not accomplish that. If we could make and enforce secular laws against making pleasure a God, many heterosexual people would be in legal trouble. The purpose of marriage is a committed relationship, not just pleasure. Let’s support that.
4. Married to the same man for fifty-eight years, I have come to believe marriage is designed not to just populate the world, but to challenge and enable us to really know and love another imperfect (not abusive) person. Let’s not limit anyone by law to deceit in order to experience that.

Alexander’s Response possibly indicates he may have actually read my letter.

Dear Eileen,
Thank you for getting in touch with me and letting me know what’s on your mind regarding the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage.

I believe that the states, not the courts, should be responsible for deciding how to define marriage. However, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruing is now the law of the land. Congress will have to carefully consider the effect of this ruling on religious liberty and religious institutions.

I’m grateful you took the time to let me know what is on your mind regarding same-sex marriage and I’ll be sure to keep your comments in mind as this issue is discussed and debated in Washington and in Tennessee.,

Sincerely,

Lamar Alexander

Maybe he read my letter and this response is his and not an aide’s. It’s the only response I’ve gotten from Senators or Representatives at state or federal level that even slightly sounded like someone actually was responding to what I said. It encourages me to continue writing on other issues also.

I have been calling, emailing, and writing letters and post cards. The responses to my emails didn’t make sense. The calls were answered
by interns politely and were hopefully at least counted. Letters get slower responses because of security checks, but they may be what actually gets read. I plan on keeping on doing all of the above.

New, Short, Self-Explanatory Version of the Traditional Ten

Since our society seems to have rejected rules of behavior, I’d like to pass on some guidelines:
1. If you don’t want the one or ones you love doing it, DON”T DO IT!                                               2. If you don’t want your grandparents knowing about it, DON’T DO IT!                                       3. If you don’t want your present or future children knowing about it, DON’T DO IT!               4. If you don’t want it on the front page of the local paper, DON”T DO IT!
5. If everyone doing this will make the world a worse place for your children and grandchildren, DON’T DO IT!
6. If you don’t want to spend your nights in old age overwhelmed with regret about it,        DON’T DO IT!
7. If you don’t want others doing it to you or those you love, DON’T DO IT!

Let me put this another way:

A. What so ever you do now, will come back to bite you on your ass!                                               B. What may be great fun after drinking four beers or smoking pot will make you feel like the fool you were – sooner than you think.                                                                                             C. The world has become very very tiny.  What so ever you do in secret will eventually become public knowledge.                                                                                                                             D. Even senility will not protect you from the embarrassment and regret of flash backs in old age.                                                                                                                                                                 E. God forgives us, but he doesn’t take away all the natural consequences of bad choices.     F. The people who love you may want to forgive and forget, but may not succeed in time for it to matter.

I am almost eighty.  While these things may not be self-evident, I KNOW them to be true.

 

Senator Lamar Alexander Considers Job Training for the Handicapped as Entitlement

My letter to Senator Alexander and his reply. What do you hear?

Dear Senator Alexander,

Tennessee’s exemplary Medicaid-funded Employment and Community First Choices program is enabling high school graduates with autism to work, pay taxes and contribute to the economy. Because Tennessee cared about individuals with disabilities, many are now living productive and active lives in our communities.

But, per capita caps, block grant funding, and Medicaid cuts, will seriously curtail this model program aimed at helping people help themselves instead of just being in custodial care.
Please find a way to keep helping the least of our citizens fulfill their potential and lead productive lives.

Eileen Norman (Grandmother of a 19 year old graduate with autism.)

Dear Eileen,

Thanks very much for getting in touch with me and letting me know what’s on your mind regarding President Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2018.

Fiscal responsibility is about setting priorities and keeping spending in check while supporting and maintaining our country’s economic competitiveness and national security.

The president has suggested a budget, but, under the Constitution, Congress passes appropriations bills. As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee my priorities are national defense, national laboratories, the National Institutes of Health and national parks.

We will not balance the budget by cutting discretionary spending, which is only 31 percent of spending and is already under control because of earlier budget acts. Runaway entitlement spending – more than 60 percent of spending – is the real cause of the $20 trillion federal debt. With Medicaid reforms in the health care bill, Congress is taking an important step in addressing entitlement spending. If we don’t make tough decisions now, we’ll have let America slip from the hands of the ‘greatest generation’ to the ‘debt-paying generation’ with nothing to show for it but the bill.

I’m glad you took the time to let me know where you stand. I’ll be sure to keep your comments in mind as budget and spending proposals are debated in Washington and in Tennessee.

Sincerely,
Lamar

Medicaid entitlement of the handicapped?   Entitled handicapped?   A new concept for me!

The Poor Are Not Voiceless, just Prefered Unheard

by CRAIG GREENFIELD

Being a “voice for the voiceless” is one of those things that we’ve solidly embraced as Christians. But the phrase no longer sits so well with me.

Sometimes, being a “voice for the voiceless” is another excuse to place ourselves at the centre of the story. It can become a subtle way of being a white savior, pushing ourselves to the forefront and taking the place of honour (Lk 14:8).

And when we do that, we marginalize poor people all over again. By attempting to be their voice, when they already have a voice.

When we speak for people who may prefer to speak for themselves, we reinforce their “voicelessness”.

We confuse not being heard, with having nothing to say.

Did you ever notice how often Jesus encouraged someone to use their voice? He asked beggars and lepers what they wanted him to do, when it must have seemed obvious that the guy was covered in sores or blind and needed healing.

So, I’d like to suggest 3 alternatives that may be more appropriate than being a “voice for the voiceless”:

1. Listen and learn first

Sometimes, I’m so pissed off by a situation of injustice that I’ve just read about on the Book of Face, that I’m tempted to leap to being a “voice for the voiceless” before I’ve even listened properly to those who are being oppressed. With social media, this temptation is racheted right up.

The trick isn’t to NEVER speak or post, but to remember the significance of listening properly to the stories of others first so that you can deepen your understanding of the issue. As Sarah Bessey says, “The problem isn’t their “voicelessness,” it is that we are not listening.”

Jesus himself, who knew everything, asked people questions and listened carefully to the answers, instead of lecturing the poor or talking about them ignorantly. He spent 30 years living among the people, before he ever opened his mouth publically.

2. Amplify their voice

After listening to people in unjust situations, what if instead of speaking for them, we looked for ways to amplify THEIR voices?

One of the practices I personally have tried to use, is bringing a”co-speaker” with me, usually a young Cambodian, when I am invited as a keynote speaker at events and conferences. I usually find, they will be the star of the show and their testimony is deeply impactful.

What if we used our influence to help lift up others and spread the stories of those who are oppressed or overlooked, allowing them to take centre stage, while we serve and encourage?

3. Speak of both the tragedy and the resilience

The way we “speak up and defend the rights of the needy” (Prov 31:9) says a lot about our understanding of justice and transformation.

When we speak only of the tragedy, and nothing of the resilience of the people involved, we paint them as helpless victims. Calling them voiceless when they are not voiceless reinforces the narrative that they are pathetic and can do nothing.

On the flipside, when we speak only of their resilience and nothing of the tragedy, we ignore the reality of their suffering.

We need to learn to do both – speak of the tragedy AND the resilience – as in this post. Arundhati Roy reminds us to “never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple.”

Christian Paradoxes

For all of you who aren’t sure, it is possible to be gay and Christian. It’s also possible to believe in God and science. It is possible to be pro-choice and anti-abortion.
It is equally possible to be a feminist and love and respect men. It’s possible to have privilege and be discriminated against, to be poor and have a rich life, to not have a job and still have money.
It is possible to believe in sensible gun control legislation and still believe in one’s right to defend one’s self, family, and property, it’s possible to be anti-war and pro-military.
It is possible to love thy neighbor and despise his actions. It is possible to advocate Black Lives Matter and still be pro police. It is possible to not have an education and be brilliant. It is possible to be Muslim and also suffer at the hands of terrorists. It is possible to be a non-American fighting for the American dream.
It is possible to be different and the same.
We are all walking contradictions of what “normal” looks like.
Let humanity and love win.

This is a quote for which I am trying to find the original author. Will post their name when I find it.

A Gift

Ahh…..for a moment I delighted with you…..and I don’t even like Scotch. Such is the power of language. How then, can we capture and pass on the beauty some of us glimpse only in that ephemeral place of possibility so that those unsighted can taste and see that universal goodness in which we were created to live and breathe and have our being?

Dark Matter

Sitting with
a gift-glass of excellent
Scotch, a Glenmorangie
Nectar D’Or aged in 
Sauternes casks…yes,
an indulgence, yes, expensive
and rare; that’s the point of it,
it was a sacrifice, 
it was given in love
and I drink it with love on
my mind. Lemony
start, honey on the tongue
with dark burn, a finish 
built on notes of
regret at its ending and 
joy that it was here and I 
had this chance to taste it:
I’m not going to be ashamed
at this, you see, not while 
so much wrong needs righting,
not while there’s so much need
to assuage pain and trouble;
for a few minutes
I’m going into this glass
to understand it as a golden
taste of an expression of love,
a trace of what a pure future
might be once we get past
this dim moment.

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