Scratching That Itch

 

In dry, cold weather my skin begins to itch. I slather on lotion, essentially taking a bath in it, and in a few hours it begins to itch again. But this is true for all things in this world. Solutions are always temporary and problems are seasonal. And I am a fixer. I become unhappy with this or that and I search for the YouTube video that will help me solve my problem. Occasionally I find a solution. But usually the solution is far too costly or it doesn’t come close to fixing the issue. If, by chance, the issue is fixed, I am quickly onto solving the next problematic matter. There is no end to this cycle! And there is always another itch to fix.

We all seem to be searching for a way to solve the issues of our world because we are unhappy with the way things are going. If only this decision would be made or if only this circumstance would change this would be a better place to live. If I were in power, I would… 

But I’m not in power. And if I was, my solution would not be good for everyone. It would only be good for me and that would be temporary. It would be much like those who win the lottery then quickly blow through that money and end up bankrupt. Or like those who are billionaires yet they are always looking for a way to make more money. There is never enough. They can never permanently scratch that itch and be satisfied. It becomes obvious that we live in a broken world. Will it ever be made right? 

The answer is an emphatic YES! For those of us who love God, we will see it all made right. That is God’s promise to us. Jesus is preparing a place for us where everything will be right. No more YouTube videos to fix stuff, unless you enjoy that sort of thing. No more politics. No more snarky memes. No more wars fighting over who is in power. No more cancer or death. It is God who is in power and we will all agree that his decisions are perfect. He is good, loving, kind, brilliant and all powerful. He is what we all long for. 

But the answer is also “not today”. So should we quit trying to scratch the itch? What do we do while we wait? How should we live? I believe that a concise answer that fits us all is given in Micah 6:8. Here it is as written in The Message translation:

But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love, And don’t take yourself too seriously—take God seriously.

You will probably recognize it better in the NIV translation. 

Micah 6:8
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

There is No Such Thing as a Bully

“Here comes Lizzy”! And we would all scatter. Lizzy was a teenage girl in our church who was clingy and a little different. We were not tolerant or loving toward her. We avoided her and did nothing kind to her. We didn’t include her in our plans if we could avoid it comfortably. When someone was convicted to be kind and stepped out, they were isolated with Lizzy. Looking back, I am ashamed of my choice to follow the crowd. And the crowd was comprised of really nice people when you talked to them individually. Each has grown up to be a good kind person. The crowd mindset was the bully. The individuals were not.

I believe a bully is a group because they act together or with the approval of the accepted members. They only appear to act as an individual but they act only for the approval of the group. Each individual is a coward. Sometimes there is a leader of sorts. That is usually a charismatic extrovert who is a spokesman. But fellow introverts, we don’t get off that easy. Without all of the introverted backers this person would not be in charge. The bully is a crowd. Not limited to a crowd of neighborhood kids, it can be a crowd of adults sitting behind their phone posting memes and laughing.

If you think bullying is limited to kids you would be mistaken. As we all know, some of the worst cases of bullying happen between adults at work. However, we label adult office bullying as ‘toxic work environment’. It usually happens when leadership is unfair, ineffective or oblivious that a new leader of sorts steps up and takes over. The bully is made up of a mixture of insecure individuals who find security in fitting in. It is comprised of those who know they are wrong and don’t have the courage to rock the boat, and those who choose not to think but enjoy the thrill of belonging the majority.

What about Hitler? Wasn’t he an example of an individual bully? Well yes, but he would have just been a crazy individual who lived and died alone without followers. His group was the bully. It took thousands of unthinking cowards to commit all the atrocities credited to Hitler alone.

It is not wrong to belong. Humans are by nature pack animals. We belong to families, friend groups, churches, neighborhoods, political parties, and work cohorts. We love waving the flag of countries, states, churches, teams and politicians. We wear the T-shirt. We post memes reflecting the beliefs of our groups. We put bumper stickers on our vehicles. This only becomes wrong when we follow, wave or post without thinking or questioning actions and words of the group. When we wear the t-shirt, we are giving our stamp of approval to the ideology of the group. If we quit analyzing this, we start bullying. We must be thinkers.

What groups do I currently belong to? It is these groups that can be cowards who go with the flow no matter what is said or done. It seems to be rare to find a group of inclusive people who are like-minded but maintain the courage to speak up or step out of the group if they get off track. I must be careful when a group I belong to acts or speaks in ways that are not what Jesus taught. If I keep my mouth shut and continue to belong, I am the bully. If I continue to wave the flag of the group I am the bully. If I don’t think about words iterated by the group, I am the bully.

Lord, forgive me for the times I have belonged without thinking. Help me always question the beliefs of any group I belong to. Give me the courage to step away when it is out of your will.

Learning from History

 In history, when have waves of people invaded the land and changed the ways of the people that were there? Give up? Recently I read a novel that was written from the point of view of the Native Americans when waves of emigrants were traveling west through their land. While reading it, I had an ah-ha moment. I saw a parallel to our present day issues.

In the novel there were two points of view represented. One was the chief who fought with all his might to keep the emigrants out or deter their progress through violence, mistrust and anger. He villainized them to his people and they responded with violence. The other point of view was a chief who saw the big picture. He saw that if one emigrant was killed, ten more would come and take their place. So his choice was to work with the emigrants and get the best deal to preserve his people and their way of life. Consequently, his tribe still has valuable land rights and his ancestors live on while the former tribe was exterminated.

So the parallel is to the pending changes that I see in the US today. We can choose to villainize the immigrants on our Southern border, use our tax dollars to put up razor wire, build walls and inspire further hostility or we can think outside of the box. We can try to understand their needs and push to create an expedited protocol for them to assimilate and help us with our needs. We can remember that we are a nation of immigrants who came here for the freedom of worshipping God. We can remember that we are all foreigners in this land. We can take a path of love and its inspiration of creative problem solving or we can villainize and turn to hate and exclusion.

I realize that this is an oversimplification of all the issues. I realize that the obstacles are complex, numerous and scary. However, I believe that if our over-arching attitude will change to offense rather than defense, we can use our American ingenuity to create innovative solutions. Innovation doesn’t happen in an atmosphere of fear, hatred and resistance.

We, as Americans, have a choice to act on the love of Christ, think of ways to make this inevitable future work for our children and grand children or go the path of hatred and resistance and its destruction. We need to get off of that bandwagon of fear and support those who propose changes for the better. We are better than this.

Weird Family Members and World Peace

 The media has given us an alternative name for the upcoming holiday by inventing “Friendsgiving”. More and more you see people forgoing family time to have their own private holiday excursions. Holidays have become uncomfortable because we are forced to hang out and have conversations with folks from differing opinions. I believe this is a symptom of becoming a selfish society. We want our favorite food and our favorite opinions blaring from our favorite source of news. It is all about what we want. We have our rabbit hole and we don’t want to go into someone else’s. So we have become escape artists for family get-togethers.

Spending time with family members that we don’t enjoy doesn’t sound like an appealing way to spend precious vacation time. But if we don’t start building bridges now, our children will suffer the consequences. We must put aside our entitlement, learn to love the unloveable and show our children how this is done by example.

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“But Uncle Fred is an intolerable bigot,” you say? Maybe we need to take the first step with Uncle Fred by letting him rant without our input. Maybe we shouldn’t try to fix Uncle Fred’s opinions and give him time to speak his mind in a safe environment. Oh, and did I mention that we need to look Uncle Fred in the eye and not stare at our phone or the TV? We need to engage with him. We need to pull some stories from his life and maybe we will discover a gold mine under his bravado. Or maybe we won’t.

Maybe we will only find our own personal gold mine of kindness. Maybe it is time to man-up and calmly sit and listen in a non-judgmental way to those with opposing values. Maybe this is where unity begins. If families can’t even sit down to a meal together in peace, how can we expect world leaders to fix this mess?

The Chemistry Teacher Next Door

 Life is so unpredictable. In a time when I lost what I thought was the love of my life, I found so many friends and they pointed me to my true love.

It was my first teaching gig. I was hired by a small school district in a town 30 minutes drive from mine. I was married, had a kindergarten daughter and was pregnant. The guy who hired me didn’t notice the baby bump. I quickly found that I loved my students and teaching. But not only that, I found a friend next door to my biology classroom. Deryl was a quiet, kind, non-judgmental soul. He introduced me to his wife, Linda who was not so quiet but every bit as kind, and they took me under their wing after my daughter was born and my husband left me. I particularly remember two of their acts of kindness.

When my six year old daughter was sick and I had run out of sick days to stay home with her, Deryl offered to let her stay on the couch in his office connected to our classrooms. He was so thoughtful and would stick his head in and check on her periodically during the day. About a year later, he and Linda invited me to dinner as they so often did but this time they had someone for me to meet. He is now the love of my life and we have been married for 37 years.

Through the grapevine I heard that Deryl had pancreatic cancer and passed last Saturday. I lost track of Deryl and Linda except through that grapevine but I will always remember how their kindness changed my life.

Educators: The Eyes of Little Texans are Upon You

 

National Holocaust Museum

While going through the museum, questions kept creeping into my brain. What led someone to think this genocide was ok or that it didn’t happen? So many drank the Hitler Kool-aid and they were who kept him in a power position. Why didn’t they realize that their unquestioning devotion was what placed him in that position? What were the precursors to this genocide? What led those who stood up against this carnage to do what they did? What, pray tell, made folks do nothing? And where would I have fallen in this scenario? I’ll let you research for yourself the answer to these questions. My questions were answered and it was eye opening.

What I want to share with you is that those who took a stand against this genocide were labeled “up-standers”. So I noted what the careers of the up-standers were and I was pleasantly surprised that the majority of the female up-standers were educators. But to keep a level-headed perspective on the situation also I note this quote from my favorite educational psychologist, Israeli, Haim Ginott.

I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no person should witness: gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot by high school and college graduates. So, I am suspicious of education. My request is this: Help your children become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths or educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.

So according to Haim Ginott, an education does not immunize you against becoming an agent of hate. However, educating children on ethics and making children more human is critical.

Clearly, this puts educators in a pivotal position. Maybe the most important thing teachers teach each day is empathy, understanding, patience and kindness. Teach what you were hired to teach, but remember what is truly crucial is how you teach. It is how you handle yourself and others that speaks louder than any words that are preached from an old-school Baptist pulpit. Remember, as an educator, you are in a powerful position of influence.

As a young public school teacher who felt that teaching God’s love was so much more important than teaching science, I came to the following conclusion after a great deal of soul searching. There is no call to cease teaching reading, writing, science, history, athletics, ag, music and math to begin preaching because actions speak so loudly to students. A Christian education is taught when I do my job to the best of my ability, with integrity, showing children love and kindness regardless of whether I teach in a public or private Christian school. Children watch how their teachers interact and this is where ethics are taught. This is not taught from a textbook. Those eyes are on you, educators.