Mountain Mama

Which is a lyric that has never made sense to me, but I'm not from West Virginia. 

Over the past few years DOB has been working out how to do some off-roading in the Olympics. It started as just a diversion en route to the annual beach pilgrimage, involving a lot of dead ends and occasionally bees. Over the years he has acquired more off-roading capable vehicles and figured out where to print off maps of the logging roads. 

This year we spent Memorial Day chasing down roads along with a few other people. He wanted to do that again on the 5th, but it didn't work out for anyone else, so just Dash and I went along. I suggested a relatively tame loop, but Dash and DOB wanted something more interesting. We went as far as the trailhead for Mount Ellinor, which my father used to climb regularly in his youth and which I ascended with him when I was about 10. My only memory of this trip is clinging to the summit in terror. Still, it was cool to be up there and Dash and I are discussing doing a summit. It's a challenging trail but there were plenty of people coming down with grade school children in tow, so it can't be that difficult, right?  On the other hand, while I walk a good deal on relatively level ground I was getting winded just descending a bit from the parking lot, so I probably should try some lesser elevation hikes first. 

After that we tried various roads. The first one had apparently been wiped out by a landslide several years back (judging from the scrubby trees growing out of it). Fortunately the wipe out was clearly visible from where it turned off the main(ish) road and there was a parking lot, so DOB stayed there while Dash and I hiked a short way down and discovered it would indeed have had incredible views if it had been traversible. But that one would have been a dead end at best anyway, so we were not too disappointed.  

The next one we had passed on the way up and the maps indicated would lead us on a large and windy loop that would eventually get us back to Highway 101. However, as should be indicated by my statement above, the maps are not in any way updated to show that roads have become impassable or closed. It is entirely a use at your own risk system, and often we would see roads clearly marked on the map of which there was no sign that a road had ever existed. 

The entrance to this one was rocky and narrow but clear, so we headed out and DOB was rather disappointed when the rocks dissipated to gravel and a clear but narrow road lined heavily by trees that looked more like an overgrown driveway than a mountain adventure. We continued for quite awhile with nothing more terrifying that a good bit of paint damage when the road began to be more along the edge and we came across a rockslide where a boulder blocked half the road and there was no shoulder on the other side. Dash got out and determined it was *just* wide enough for the truck and he spotted DOB through it while I tried valiantly but not always successfully not to scream. 

There were a few other narrow spots between fallen trees and boulders, and one with loose scree high on one side and a narrow edge on the other. There were also some lovely views and absolutely no other vehicles on the road, which was both a relief and a concern. 

I decided after the first time, that it would be for the good of all if I got out and walked around the next bend and examined the very lovely wildflowers while these locations were being traversed. So we continued on for a couple of hours (at about 5 mph) thinking that at least we would not need to past *those* obstacles again when we came to a place where the road was entirely covered a couple feet thick in loose scree that tapered off into more landslide on the other side. There were tire tracks on it, and the road did continue on the other side, but DOB concluded that it was beyond even his considerable skill except in a Jeep with a winch. (I did not previously realize that having equipment to tie your car to a tree and drag it over such obstacles was even a thing.)

Well. That meant all those obstacles we were relieved to get past were still waiting behind us, and that only after DOB backed the truck the quarter mile back to the closest turnout. I did even more walking ahead on the way back, along with some fervent prayers and, at that hour, some bug slapping. However, we did eventually make it all out alive. (DOB swore that death was not really a potential outcome, although getting the truck stuck in a stand of trees was one, in which case I felt like I would still be in a much better position to render aid if I waited down the road.) We got back to the main forest road and took the more mundane loop back to the highway, although we did pass where the road would, theoretically, have come out. 

Anyway, having discovered that while I do still have some fear of edges, edges with my feet on solid ground are much less scary than edges in the passenger seat of a 3-ton truck with an inch clearance for its tires, so I am looking forward to tackling Mt. Ellinor again. 

Quite a Lot of Books

 It's been a while since I did a book post, but then I was reading some rather long books and then they kept interacting with each other in my head and I wanted to get them to settle down a bit before I reviewed them. 

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: This was in my childhood re-read slot. People do ask about its suitability for children a lot. Well, there's obviously murders but things are pretty tamely described for nowadays. Yes, Holmes does do cocaine occasionally between cases to keep his brain busy and Watson lectures him about it. It's an interesting glimpse into a pre-prohibition world and I don't know of any cases of children becoming drug users because of the example of Sherlock Holmes. 

I've also seen charges of racism, which I think is unfair. There are some terms that are no longer polite, but not used intentionally to be demeaning. And there are characters who express contemporary attitudes, but not once does a stereotype prove to be the solution to the problem. Indeed, that would be antithetical to the whole nature of Sherlock Holmes to accept a prejudice instead of probing to the facts. His attitude toward women is also surprisingly even-handed. He'll take facts wherever he can find them. 

In spite of all that's come down since they're still quite readable. Holmes is definitely not the detective you'd want to have over for dinner (that would be Father Brown if I'm cooking, Precious Ramotswe if she's cooking, or Lord Peter if he--or rather Bunter--is acquiring the comestibles elsewhere). But he's fun to watch. Which is probably because, despite his emphasis on logic and reason, he's not a dispassionate emotionally repressed person (even if he and Watson both believe he is). His passions are just entirely focused on problem-solving. 

Radium Girls by Kate Moore. This was our previous book club read and it was grim but fascinating. It might help to have a little more charity towards skeptics of the latest greatest new thing to recall that over the last two hundred years there have been quite a few new things that we didn't know, or didn't fully grasp, all the downsides of. Science can only tell us the answers to questions we have thought to ask; experience tells us answers to questions we don't even know about. 

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I usually do *not* like books that are currently popular, but I gave this one a try and to my surprise I loved it. It was a little fast-paced for my taste but so well done and it had one of my favorite sci-fi themes of figuring out communication and what things are essential and what things are variable for sapient life and just fun nerdy buddies. I liked it so much I talked my book club into doing it for our next selection, it was time for something lighter after Radium Girls. I also read The Martian and then DOB and I watched the movie, both were fun. 

The Resilience Myth by Soraya Chemaly and The Myth of Normal by Gabor Mate. I'm putting these together not just because of the title overlap because they have a lot of common themes and I think the same glaring blind spot. Resilience's main point that treating resilience as a sort of internal mental toughness that people need to just have all by themselves is false and often actively destructive; sometimes we need to avoid harmful situations, lots of bad things *don't* make us stronger, and all of us need the care and support of others. Normal expands on Mate's common theme of the role of trauma in addictive behavior to look at physical and mental health and all sorts of social toxicity. Resilience I felt like was much longer than it needed to be and the author got bogged down fitting everything in the world into her hypothesis which somehow exactly matched up with well-drawn political lines which rather detracted from the usefulness or uniqueness of what she had to say. Mate at least has the humility to see some of society's problems in his own mirror. 

The starting point for both of them seems to be an assumption that modern society is unusually bad/stressful/toxic in various ways. And I always wonder about that. Not that we don't have plenty of problems. But are they genuinely *worse* than other humans have dealt with through time? Do we really suffer more than others in the past? That seems hard to swallow with almost any reading of history. Or perhaps we are not suffering more, but dealing with it worse--in which case we should probably be looking not just to the things that have always been there (war, poverty, prejudice, violence), but to things that have actually changed, including the changes that we like. Or again perhaps we're not suffering more *or* dealing with it worse we are just more often surviving things that would have killed past humans and needing coping skills to deal with the fallout.

And one thing I think they both brush on but don't genuinely appreciate is that the things they want to see more of are inherently in conflict. Mate expounds on this the most; he talks about the deep human needs for attachment and authenticity. He almost brushes against the potential tension between these two values but then scurries away from it and spends his entire final section devoted to advising people on how to deepen authenticity in their life without really delving in to how much in conflict this value is with the level of human support and connection that would be needed to provide people the support he advocates for in the beginning of the book. Whenever I hear someone declaiming on their journey to authenticity and self-care I always listen to the undertones because you can almost always detect quite a lot of people who were cut off or abandoned along the way. And then what became of *those* people's journey to authenticity? The same, probably, and the end result is a lot of very authentic but very lonely people. 

If there's one thing modern (American, at least, but from what I can tell it's pretty far spread by now) humans, of every political persuasion, are in agreement on it is that they should be absolutely free from constraint and judgment in their personal lifestyle choices. (Indeed, if authenticity is really what we're missing how is it the past seventy years of devotion to authenticity have not improved matters?) We don't have a lot of first-hand accounts from hunter-gatherers but we have quite a lot of information from small closely-knit agricultural communities and they are unanimous that the kind of village that provides comfort and support through the ups and downs of life is also insular, judgmental, intrusive, rife with gossip, and harsh on nonconformists. There have also been quite a few attempts to live a simpler, communal life closer to nature since the Industrial Revolution and the ones that didn't turn into sex or death cults mostly seem to have just fizzled out as staying alive is hard on those terms and the comforts of industrialization, even for the poor, are quite alluring.

Humans are social creatures, but like most social creatures, a lot of that socialization is squabbling. We can't be close without stepping on each other's toes. One person's allergy is another person's emotional support animal. To have the benefits of a group, we all have to give up some perfectly valid and good parts of ourselves, like trees in a forest losing their lower branches. To take an example Mate trips all over without noticing, he speaks vigorously of the need for greater support for parents and young children so that children can have the emotional and physical safety they need to thrive. Well and good. But he never openly acknowledges that to do that we would have to, as a society, assert that parenthood was a lifestyle choice that is deserving of an extra degree of social support--thus implying that it is in some ways *better* than not being a parent. Sure, that'll go over well.

Both authors spend plenty of time critiquing the downsides of capitalism, everyone's favorite whipping boy, without really proposing a viable alternative. The world not being made up of pure distillation of 19th-century economic theories, the reality is that we don't have competing systems in the modern world. Every major modernized country has a capitalized private sector that is then taxed and regulated to various degrees to support various kinds of public programs. Differences are in the details but the common unquestioned basis is money, which allows us to get the benefit of the labor of other people (which we could not survive without) without needing any kind of personal relationship with them. It is a system designed for individual authenticity--and solitude. And that is probably why neither author can point to a place where more generous social programs than the US are making that much of a dent in the essential modern problems. The impersonal transactions of modern life (mediated by the government or not) cannot provide a community. As someone who works around the edges of public systems, both getting people in, keeping people on, and kicking people out, I can attest that the world of public benefits is still a terribly lonely one. 

Anyway, while I think Mate is right in bringing light to the role trauma plays in both physical health and addictive behaviors, he does tend to overstate his case. If you define trauma so broadly that everyone has it, and addiction so broadly that everyone suffers from it, then you're definitely going to land at 100% correlation but still not have shown causation. We could certainly do with looking at more than the merely physical and finding connection and support for the struggling instead of relying on, "Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled." But looking solely inward doesn't seem quite the right direction.

I thought this article had some interesting counterpoints to the assertions in both these books. I have done plenty of therapy and found it helpful but it is at best a tool, not a goal. And tools can be easily misused, as I was reminded of meeting with a young man who was facing a much-deserved protective order from his ex-girlfriend. As I was advising him of what he could tell the court to hopefully get an order that would minimize its impact on his future career, I suggested he could promise to go to therapy. "Oh I've been in therapy for years," he proudly asserted, "I've got a great therapist." In many ways therapy is a commercialized lopsided substitute for genuine human connection. We are about equal parts matter and story. Sometimes therapy can help us tell ourselves better stories. But we still have to choose which stories we allow to shape us. 

Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen by Garth Nix. This was a fun re-read. I got these books for Dame for Christmas because I know she will love them when she actually reads them but being 16 she is always in doubt about anything I recommend. But she has been gone since New Years' (Bookworm has taken over her schooling and with our house being currently in turmoil while we put on an addition for Bookworm and Rocketboy to move in, it just made more sense for her to stay with them until we are all ready for the move), I decided *I* might as well re-read them. They're one of the few depictions of necromancy that I find intriguing (bells--so lovely and mysterious) with intriguing characters and worldbuilding. (Like the series below, they're not actually a trilogy as such--they're a stand-alone followed by a duology.) 

The Curse of Chalion, Paladin of Souls, and The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold. I did a search and it appears I've never really reviewed these on here which is wild because they are undoubtedly at the top of my list of books I've found as an adult. They are fantasy, but the only real fantasy element is the quintarian religious system which manages to be both natural and transcendent, organized and organic. The main characters are mostly failures, usually middle aged, traumatized and cursed. And therefore in a position to be used by the gods. They certainly have much that is grim but they are also profoundly hopeful and real.

What a Day Looks Like Now

 Every once in a while I succumb to the nostalgia of old blog posts. (Sometimes I was quite brilliant in the past! Other times, not so much). Anyway, it was pretty fun to remember a pretty normal day twelve years ago and no doubt in another twelve years I will look back on today's equally chaotic but very different experience with similar nostalgia. 

4:30 a.m.: I wake up wracked with doubt about some eviction notices a client sent me for review yesterday. I *must* remember to check them again when I get into the office. I lie awake a long time.

7:00 a.m. DOB's alarm starts going off. I must have drifted off at some point because I did not hear Dash (15) get up and get breakfast and let his friend in. That or he has acquired ninja-level quietness skills, which is probably also the case being the only willing early riser among us. 

7:40ish a.m. I actually get out of bed and start fixing breakfasts. This is eggs and thawed frozen blueberries for DOB (he finds blueberries are the optimum size and shape for making sure all his massive pill regime has gone down); eggs, salad mix (I will do anything for arugula, even get out of bed) and a Granny smith apple with peanut butter for me; and I make tea for myself and Dame (15 but definitely NOT an early riser) and microwave some turkey bacon for her as she is allergic to eggs. She has been working very hard over the past six months on keeping a regular schedule and eating at reasonable intervals without oversight, things which can be quite difficult when you are dealing with ADHD and chronic pain and fatigue all rolled in together. But with the progress she is made I think she is ready to tackle 10th grade at public school this fall, even with the ungodly hours they subject high schoolers to. Deux (17) is on day two of his weekly migraine, so I make his breakfast (two burritos and a banana). While taking it up I have the bright idea of helpfully carrying up the laundry he didn't get finished before the migraine struck, only I try to do it one-handed with the hamper handle and the handle breaks and it spills spectacularly down the stairs. BUT breakfast doesn't fall and it furnishes some early-morning entertainment for everyone. Dash and friend laugh at the spectacle before they depart, I believe with my niece who is taking them to teach a 5-day club in the mornings this week. DOB heads to court. I sit down and finish my breakfast and drink my tea while I read the morning prayers and then (guilty pleasure) watch compilation videos of internet stories of people's terrible behaviors towards their friends and family. You would think I got enough of that at work. 

8:30ish I arrive at the office and check the eviction notices. Wonder of wonders, they *were* the right ones and all is well. My work morning also includes:
* A telephonic hearing on a topic of which I know nearly nothing, covering for our third partner. I disconnect us just as the case is called. We get through it anyway.
* A fun advisory meeting with a probate/business client with whom I have concocted a scheme that is at once perfectly above board, ethical, and legally appropriate and at the same time should allow some unpleasant natural consequences to fall on some people who are treating her rather badly. I hope it works out well. 
* Intermittent work on a fairly large project that needs to go out no later than tomorrow that I am still training a young staff person on because my main paralegal has been in the hospital for two months. Also this area of law just changed and I am still figuring out. I realize I used the wrong form in a different but similar case that is on for tomorrow and fix it while I am at it. I have some moments of panic when I think I have misplaced important documents for the third time with this client, but then locate them all.
*DOB returning from court and then heading off to apparently get a buyer for one of our cars (DOB has finally found the people he needs to fulfill his dream of being a car-flipper and so we no longer have a front yard), and he needs my power of attorney so I don't have to meet him but apparently we never scanned in our *own* estate planning documents like we do everyone else's so I have to execute a new one and email it to him.
* Quite a lot of phone calls as we just discovered missing paralegal was the only person who had checked most of our phone messages and so none of them had been reviewed in two months. 

Somewhere around noonish I notice that food should occur. If there aren't leftovers (as is often the case these days) I usually rely on my freezer stash of sausage patties and frozen vegetables, with almond crackers. I return phone calls and forget this three times while it is heating up. 

The afternoon continues with:
* A zoom meeting with a creditor on an estate (I have no idea why this was zoom and not a phone call, but since my camera was out it came out the same anyway). 
* Some tense and at times insulting negotiations with the public tenant defense on a case I haven't filed yet. I am annoyed with myself for not being as professional as I would like to believe I am. I am annoyed with opposing counsel for trying to guilt-trip me over taking a vacation when there are homeless people in the world, or at least for trying to using existential guilt as a negotiation tactic. We still come to resolution and I provide another staff person who is learning *that* area with direction to finish those pleadings.
* A meeting with some cranky clients that has to be delayed for 20 minutes because every meeting space we have is filled with people meeting. They are calmer after we meet and I send a months-overdue demand letter out afterwards. 
* Tackling a messy probate that I am hoping to keep my client out of too much trouble on even though I secretly suspect he deserves it. 
* Not quite finishing that one big project which really, really must go out tomorrow.
*  Making sure I have my files for tomorrow since I am still training staff on how to do this and this is where I really, really miss my paralegal with 30 years' experience who just handed me a stack without me having to think about it. However, everyone has been trying really hard with a great attitude and we are all learning more all the time. (And sometimes, I fear, forgetting other things like how to check the voicemails.)

DOB arrives back very late in the afternoon after a very frustrating court episode that is going to leave a vulnerable adult exposed to more exploitation. He'll probably figure out another tactic tomorrow. I consider drafting one last deed but I am cranky, tense and headachy and I have a potentially lively argument tomorrow morning, so I decide to call it a night. DOB still has a meeting and some other loose ends. 

5:30ish: I arrive home. I see from the signs about me that Dame remembered to eat lunch *and* unload the dishwasher. She is not here, though, which presumably is the fruition of plans she had to attend a youth support group of some sort at some church with some friends, which Duchess (19) was going to drop them off at. I therefore conclude that Duchess is also doing well, though I have not seen her as is the usual state of affairs. She is not working this summer but just got back from a two-week road trip with her friends from high school, all planned and paid for herself, and is looking forward to doing more assistant teaching at the private elementary school in the fall, and also teaching ASL at the private high school (where Dash will attend). I decide to make deconstructed egg roll (with no eggs) and the leftover rice from when Deux fixed dinner on Tuesday. I put meat in to thaw in the microwave. At this point in the day I generally resort to something with chocolate to fortify my resolve to get through the evening, because what I want to do is go straight to bed. I order groceries while the meat is thawing. Then I load the dishwasher with yesterday's dishes while everything cooks. Dash does not have an evening club today as he did earlier in the week, and he wanders through once or twice. I take Deux his supper. Dash and I eat in the living room while playing games on our phone and laptop respectively. (Dash's laptop died tragically last month.) DOB shows up about halfway through, on the early side for him, and takes dinner in our room. At this point in the day we have all had about enough on the human interaction front, except possibly Dash. 

7:30: I take the dogs for a walk. As the days get shorter I have to adjust my dog-walking time earlier and earlier and soon I will have to do it before fixing supper, which is challenging. We go around the block (a term I use loosely, three of the roads are private and two-thirds of them unpaved.) This counts as both aerobic AND resistance exercise because we never did get them leash trained and now they are middle-aged and set in their ways though no less lacking in energy and desire to chase every tiny thing they encounter. We make it two-thirds of the way around and then they spot a cat. I do not want to sit down in the gravel road, the only way I can get enough traction to stop them, so they escape. Thankfully they give up quickly and before they get entangled, so I don't need to spend an extra ten minutes climbing through brambles and untangling them.  We finish the walk. I sit on the couch and start writing this (usually I would be playing a video game). 

9:00 I start reminding DOB that he needs to start his evening stretching routine. Dame arrives home by some means and discusses plans for tomorrow and general angst. Duchess comes home and feeds the dogs. Duchess and Dame confer on ride plans for tomorrow. I put away what food remains and set things up for DOB's evening vitamin routine. Alas, Deux is still not up to help either with setup for that or so we can rewatch Babylon 5 with him, so we will just watch Prison Break by ourselves. And then I will take a shower and read a bit while DOB winds down by looking at ads for more used cars  . . . 

Groundhog Month

Every February 2, somebody posts something about how little a groundhog could possibly know about the coming of spring.

This year the groundhog fought back. February 2 was bright and clear, a rare occurrence around here.

That night, it snowed.

That was a brief snow. The next weekend, it really snowed. Six inches of wet, sticky, heavy snow that took down whole stands of trees and knocked us out of power for three days. And unlike our usual heavy snows that turn quickly to rain, it stayed snowy for most of the week.

Then we got the stomach flu. Fortunately, I suppose, not until the power was back on. (Being on a well, we have no water when we have no power.) Still, it was a pretty ghastly bug and left us with one or more not-quite-well-enough-for-school child for the next week.

On one particularly memorable day, Dot informed me first thing in the morning that she needed to stay home. Since it was DOB's day to sleep in, I said this wouldn't be a problem and took the other three kids to school and headed to the office. An hour later, I got a call from the school that Deux was no longer in school-compatible health. I drove to the school and while I was there, walked into Dash's classroom, looked him in the eye, and asked him if he was sure he felt well enough for school. He was fine. I took Deux home and returned to the office. Two hours later, I got a call from the school that Dash was down for the count, too.

It's been trying to snow again this weekend, but so far it's mostly stuck to the cold, driving rain at 36 degrees that is even more miserable than snow.

Usually by this point in the year we are hearing a noisy nightly chorus of frogs. I heard a few feeble peeps on Tuesday but I think they gave up.

I think the groundhog has proved his point.

The Presence of Children

There were a few posts that were arousing lively discussion on Facebook feeds this week. I'm not going to bother to look up links, because if you were lucky and missed them, you have undoubtedly seen their like. One was a columnist whining about how his extremely expensive dinner was interrupted because some fellow diners had the gall to bring their 8 month old along, and the baby cried. Another was some random blogger ranting about how she despised people who had children because that was, like, so lame. (OK, I confess, I didn't even bother to read that one.)

That doesn't really concern me. There are always going to be some cranks in the world who cannot stand being made aware that other people are doing their part to perpetuate the species. What bothers me is the number of conscientious parents who respond with statements that amount to, "I would never inflict my children on other people."

Not just explaining that they taught their children to behave in public . . . no, acting as if they must apologize for their children's mere presence, and keep them out of the way of other people and never, ever expect other people to suffer even a moment's awareness of their children's existence, in any setting not specially designated as being for children. Asserting that they understood that just staying home and away from various settings was the price they paid for indulging in having children in the first place. Claiming that it would be "selfish" to expect other people to deal with the presence of their children.

This is itself a symptom that many good and dedicated parents have internalized the message that children are a private hobby of the parents, for which they alone are responsible, and with which they alone must concern themselves. But children are not puppies nor appendages of their parents. They're people in their own right. If they are in a public setting, whether onlookers think it was wise to bring a child to that place or not, it is only asking simple human courtesy to expect them to be treated with decency and respect, instead of resentful glares.

I don't take my children to fancy restaurants or symphony concerts because fancy restaurants and symphony concerts aren't my thing . . . but if they were, I certainly would. How do we expect to perpetuate our culture if we exclude the next generation from participation? You only learn culture by participating in it; if you wait until people are cultured enough to participate, it will already be too late as they will have been getting used to something else in the meantime.

People may rightly complain about the bad behavior of some children; honestly I see more parents feeling a need to crack down on their children than I see children running wild, but I'm sure there are some hooligans. But in a way, this private hobby approach to child-rearing only makes the problem worse. Modern parenting is a lonely job. Facing skeptics at every turn only makes it worse. It's hard to stage a production when everyone's a critic instead of a support cast.


What I don't understand is why there should ever be this hostility. I certainly don't look down on people who don't have children--my children's lives and my own are richer for knowing other adults whose lives are not consumed with child-rearing. My children are better behaved for being reminded of proper behavior from other adults--when their right to exist and be present is not questioned. And the people I know in real life without children, unlike the internet cranks, seem to appreciate the fact that other people are making sure they don't have to grow old on an empty planet.

And here's something I will bother to link to: G. K. Chesterton (who, by the way, never had children) on Baby Worship.

Run for your life

Why yes, I am going to bother to deconstruct a harmless Facebook meme, why did you ask?

This cropped up in my news feed a couple of times last week, posted by some very well-meaning and nice people:

Now, what's wrong with this? Rather a nice idea. Keep God first, and all that.

Well, for starters, it suggests that marriage (and relationships leading thereto) are for spiritual overachievers. First get your spiritual life in order, then find someone. (Without actually looking for anyone, because that would be unspiritual. It has to look like an accident.)

It's the churchy parallel to the theme in our culture: get your financial life in order, your career started, your nice house bought, then get married. Marriage becomes the crowning achievement of personal and spiritual life.

Except for the most part it works better the other way: Marriage helps people behave in responsible ways, leading them to greater financial stability and spiritual involvement. (Indeed, does the Bible ever suggest spiritual maturity is an essential prerequisite for getting married? Kind of the opposite--it suggests that having trouble keeping your pants zipped is the primary reason for getting married.) Raise the bar for marriage too high and you prevent the very goal you're trying to achieve.

Now, it is helpful to date and marry someone with some basic shared values. That's just common sense. If you want to raise orphans in Africa dating someone who yearns after the corporate high life is not going to work out well. But spirituality is not a competitive sport.

And that's the deeper problem--the idea that we can somehow chart our own or someone else's spiritual growth and measure how close we are getting to God. That our spirituality is measured by the intensity of our efforts. That we should reject as inferior anyone who can't keep up with us. When in fact the intensity of our efforts may be leading us farther from resting in God. And the more spiritual we think we are, the more in danger we are.

Paul spoke of running the race, but he never suggested that the race was a contest to get closer to God--Jesus ran it too, and he already *was* God. The race is just the journey of life, and God is already with us on that one.

Just as a practical measure, it's not that great of advice for young people. If you've been on the planet long enough you've known people--probably lots of people--who were all set to be spiritual superstars in the early years, but who burned out, washed up, or just walked away. (And on the other hand people who came to spiritual devotion late but strong.) The intensity of a person's visible fervor at 21 is not a strong indicator of what kind of partner they'll be in twenty years. Really, none of us know this for ourselves, either.

I wish I could come up with some sort of pithy counterstatement, but I'm no good at dating advice. Although "It is better to marry than to burn" could possibly serve as a Facebook meme. With the right picture.

A Different Thought on Giving

Money conversations are always awkward ones, and religious money conversations are doubly so. Even people who would never dream of supporting a prosperity gospel at other times seem unable to avoid it when they start talking about giving, and phrases like, "You can never out-give God" pop up. (Actually, you can. We've done it.) Those of us whose experience with money has not reinforced these cheery phrases tend to just clam up or walk out. So dialogue doesn't happen.

Sometimes people try to broaden it by talking about giving of "time, talents or treasures," but besides being obnoxiously alliterative, there are times in life when one not only doesn't have cold hard cash, one doesn't have time, either, and one's talents have shriveled up from sheer exhaustion. Discussions about giving can just be another paper-cuts-and-lemon-juice reminder of how little you have to give and therefore how unspiritual and disobedient you will have to continue to be (and, perhaps, how badly you must have sinned to be in that position, whether you can figure out an offense or not).

First of all, the emphasis on the New Testament is on giving out of abundance, which I submit right off the top should mean that no one should feel that they ought to be giving if they genuinely don't think they can afford it. People are supposed to give as God has prospered them (I Cor. 16:2), not 'till it hurts.

But I think we may be missing an even more critical point about giving, which is "Why?" God doesn't need our money. He's got the cattle on a thousand hills and the whole world in his hands and all that. Nope. Not for God.

Some people talk about it being for us, so we can remember that everything belongs to God, and that may be part of it. Some people think it's so that God can give us more stuff, and they're just wrong.

But in the New Testament, when it talks about giving, it talks about a different reason: for unity and fairness within the body:

For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness. 2 Cor. 8:13-14.

If giving is really about sharing within the body, then something is true--where there is a giver, there must also be a receiver. Which means that people who don't have time, talents, or treasures to give, still have something to give--their need. Sometimes, that is the hardest thing to give.

And yet, sometimes that is what God has blessed us with--a need, a gap, a hole, that others can have the opportunity to fill, so that there can be unity, so that the whole body can grow up together into Christ. If everyone had surplus and no one had a lack, then there would be nothing to draw us together as a body. It is the flow of things within the body that binds it together.

Of course, there are other needs besides pecuniary ones and other gifts to give, some that don't make it onto anyone's asset lists at all and yet are the stuff life is made out of: friendship, example, comfort, a smile. Maybe stewardship as part of the body requires looking at both parts: Where do you have an abundance that you can share? Where do you have a lack that others can supply? Because I'm willing to bet we all have something in both columns.

A Late Summer Ramble

Last year I was adamant about clinging to the last remains of summer. This year I feel eager to bid it goodbye.

Many homeschoolers are advocates of year-round schooling. There are many reasons why I do not personally wish to do it, but one of them is that I have no heat tolerance. If the temperature is above 76 I am cranky and do not wish to speak to, hear from, and especially not touch other people. This is not good for education. So, it's a great time of year for the kids to be doing that valuable unstructured playing outside and anything else that involves them not talking to me.

However, eventually, this adds up to too much crazy and it feels like time to have a plan again. So I wrote one out. Duchess is thrilled. She loves plans. Deux is horrified. There are never enough hours in the day for all the things he wants to do, and therefore any time planned for school is time when he cannot be playing Legos/reading Encyclopedia Brown/digging giant holes in the front yard. DOB pointed out that children in regular school spend six hours a day at it, but by that time Deux had lost interest in the conversation and was back playing Legos/reading Encyclopedia Brown/digging giant holes in the front yard.

I have not read nearly as many books aloud as I meant to over the summer. Actually, we haven't finished the first one. This is because I hate it. I am not sure what to do about this. They like it. It's highly recommended by our curriculum, which I normally agree with. It is not a bad book--the chapters are just too long for me to enjoy reading out loud and I am finding it a bit too verbose for the subject matter. Right now I'm going to let it slide and read Brer Rabbit to them instead. Probably it is not worth persevering to the end if it means I never read another book aloud to them because I am dreading this one so much.

In preparation for the first day of school, and the doubling of our school size, I dug out the camera and the cord and put fresh batteries in it and downloaded the pictures and realized that the last time I had used it was May. Of 2012. I should probably do better about this. If it weren't for Her Majesty, we'd have no record of our past year of existence at all.

DOB did get up to the specialist at the University, and he ran some tests and ordered more and said it probably won't kill or permanently incapacitate him, so try not to worry too much and I'll see you in October once the test results come back. It wasn't very helpful, but I guess it's better than something that *would* kill him.

I was reading a discussion on the idea that the executive functions of the brain don't finish maturing until 25 and older people considering whether this meant young people should delay various decisions or responsibilities. I have a couple of random thoughts on this subject, completely unhampered by any actual research. One is that perhaps late maturing of the brain is more created by our culture than inherent--to a considerable extent brain functions are shaped by brain use, and so perhaps if you don't get to make grownup decisions, you don't learn how to make them. A second is that perhaps it's a good thing--growing up involves taking on a lot of really terrifyingly risky things all at once for the very first time, and it's better that it be done by people who haven't quite learned to think through all the potential consequences of their actions, because if they did, the human race would come to a dead stop right there.

The Highest Calling

It's Memorial Day, but I never got around to finishing writing the things I wanted to write about Mother's Day. If I were a cool blogger I would have announced a series and published them on a schedule and invited other people to weigh in, but I am not a cool blogger.

One of those floating phrases that tends to draw fire when it passes is that motherhood is "the highest calling of a Christian woman" or something like that. And then comes the shots--What about those who can't have children? What about those whose children have (it happens) grown up? Why isn't fatherhood so important?

Those are all good questions, but they don't get down to the heart of the matter, which the "highest calling" people have expressed so poorly as to obscure it entirely. The highest calling of anyone, of everyone, is to love God and love people. Mostly to love God BY loving people.

So if you have small children depending on you, then yes, your highest calling is to love and care for them (ahead of others simply because of their dependence). But even if you don't, or never will, somewhere, somehow in your life there are people to show God's love.

Motherhood may be challenging, but caring for the sick and dying is just as challenging, and devoid of cute photo-ops. In many ways it is more profoundly human and divine than raising children. Even animals care for their young, but only humans honor the past.

But whether it's caretaking or missions or generous donations or just working a job that other people need and being nice to the janitor, all of us have the same calling and the same opportunity and the same commandment: Love one another.

Rethinking Mother's Day

I am painfully conscious of the awkwardness of me writing this post, but, alas, that will not stop me.

It's about Mother's Day.

I have seen churches where it is a kind of competition, with the mothers standing up and prizes handed out to those with the most or the oldest or the youngest. This, understandably, has been criticized as cruel to the bereaved or barren.

Our current church, trying to be more mindful of the variety of human experience, recognizes *all* the women at once. I understand the sentiment, but I don't really see the point. Why call it Mother's Day, then? It's like having all citizens be recognized on Veteran's Day.

But I think both approaches misunderstand the holiday. (For one thing, why is this part of church? Isn't church supposed to be about, well, God? But that's another post.)

No, we're even missing the point of having Mother's Day. Did you know the woman who brought Mother's Day about as a recognized holiday, Anna Jarvis, did not have children? Mother's Day was never about claiming honor as a mother. It was about giving honor to our mothers.

Back in the day, as my grandmother taught me, everybody got a corsage on Mother's Day. Red if your mother was alive. White if she was dead--because loss is also universal. It wasn't about a status some people had achieved and other people hadn't. It was about being grateful for the tremendous gift of existence.

Not everyone gets to be a mother, but everyone had a mother. Someone's body nourished yours before you even knew you existed. Someone risked her life to give you yours, and will always bear the marks of it. Someone (maybe someone else) put food in your mouth when you still didn't know what your hands were, taught you to use food and the toilet. Maybe they did it badly, even cruelly, yet still they gave you the moon and the stars and that is something to be thankful for.

Perhaps if our focus on Mother's Day was outward, on gratitude and not status, we could better share it without slighting anyone.

Jesus is Not the Answer

So how does the modern penchant for approaching everything as a puzzle to be solved affect religion? It's almost swallowed it up. That's what BIBLE stands for, right? "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth." How to have a better life, God's way. God's answers to man's problems.The instruction manual from the Maker.

Which is pretty sad. Think of the scintillating metaphors the Bible uses for itself . . . honey, a sword, fire, bedrock, precious jewels . . . and our favorite metaphor is the most tedious and forgettable lump of words literacy has produced?

There are so many practical examples of this that I won't even bother to list any. You've seen the books, heard the sermons, read the blog posts. Full of how to improve your marriage/financial life/parenting/relationships/happiness by doing things God's way.

Yet anyone who reads the Bible with half an eye for the actual story will find out that a lot of people followed God and had pretty terrible lives; and some other people did a whole lot of awful things and still got rewarded. If you teach the Better Life Jesus long enough and hard enough, people start to notice that life doesn't really work that way and start walking away from the whole facade.

The Bible wasn't written to be a self-help manual and if (God have mercy) that's really what you want out of life, you can get a thousand other more specific self-help manuals for much less trouble. People don't need yet another self-help manual that is a couple of thousand years out of date.

This is practical atheism. The eternal, the transcendent, the permanent--that's an afterthought. What matters is living right and getting rewarded for it right here, right now. It doesn't matter how correct your doctrinal statement is if that message is the one that gets repeated and lived.

Sometimes people don't miss the whole point; sometimes it's framed in terms of man's problem being sin and God's solution being Christ--but this, well, it's still missing the point. It makes the whole thing about us and slants it as if it were all over but the shouting.

The history of the universe, the meaning of life, is not a "problem" with a "solution." It's a story--a tale of love, betrayal, exile, restoration. It's a story we get to participate in, but it is not primarily about us. It is a true story. A real one. It is not tidy or predictable. And it is not over yet.

A Brief Diversion

>>>>>Regular Life Stuff<<<<<<<<
DOB apparently picked up the flu in addition to the sinus infection and now we all have it, except possibly Deux, who is keeping everyone else entertained with battles between plastic figures. DOB is doing slightly better; by "slightly" I mean "able to breathe occasionally." This means that we missed the big annual bar dinner, at which DOB was being recognized for his contributions to the local legal community by getting the Young Lawyers organization up and running again. We watched it on Youtube, but it wasn't the same. Today I am missing the newest neiphling's baby shower. In fact, it's probably best if we draw a veil over all the things we are or might soon be missing and rant about random things total strangers have said on the interwebs.
>>>>>End Regular Life Stuff<<<<<<<<<

So some well-known pastor I haven't heard of writes publicly in answer to a question from an inquirer as to why previously-married Christian singles shouldn't fornicate since they can't get married right away for financial reasons. The writer actually does a pretty decent response right up until he gets down to what he thinks is the heart of the matter: a lack of concern for God's kingdom. Because if they were really, really sold out and on fire for God's kingdom, they wouldn't have TIME to think about such things. "Why do you lie in bed with your lady friend when the King has called you?"

Apparently if we were all really doing all we could to bring the Good News to everyone, everywhere, we would not be so bored that we fall in to sin. As an example, he cites a story of a secular couple who were so obsessed with rescuing Jews from the Holocaust that they had no time for their own passion.

If that's the case, though, it ought to apply just as well to married people. Really, Mr. and Mrs. Christian, what are you doing "sleeping in" when you could be out working for The Kingdom? Or to a lot of other things we could be doing with our time that, last I checked, weren't actually wrong but are not grabbing people by the collar and telling them the gospel.

Now, he also says--and I agree with him here--that if we actually believed God's laws were given to us for our good we would be more willing to obey Him. But he's gotten it mixed up with the wretched urgency that turns the Christian life into an exhausting treadmill of multi-level marketing. It is not normal or healthy for human beings to spend their entire lives in all-consuming missions. It takes a terrible physical and emotional toll. You can do it for a while in response to a great crisis, but you're going to get burned out, and fast. And meanwhile somebody's got to be making food and money and babies or the world isn't going to keep on running anyway.

Moreover, it repeats the idea that if we were just totally committed to God, really serving him, we wouldn't be sinning. Really? Let's face it, a lot of the worst sins--pride, anger, selfishness--don't take any free time at all. You know that meme people like to repost about how God can use anybody; how Noah was a drunkard, and David was an adulterer, and Elijah was suicidal, etc.? Stop and think about how many of these heroes of the faith ran into their big problems AFTER their great spiritual achievements. Sometimes RIGHT after. We've got this crazy idea that God takes sinful people and turns them into something else, when the truth is God takes sinful people and uses them anyway.

It also maintains that the work of the kingdom is somehow radically different from ordinary life, which doesn't seem to be the message of the Bible at all. "Study to be quiet and to do your own business and work with your own hands." "What does the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" What the original questioner should be doing about the kingdom of God is learning to love God and his neighbor, and that might involve asking himself what it says about his professed love for his girlfriend that he is more worried about his financial status than about committing to her publicly.

Happy Birthday, Somebody

This is trying not to be a "Snarky Things" post, because I acknowledge that it is unfair to be snarky about people's carefully thought out religious convictions. And I recognize that celebrating holidays is explicitly made a matter of personal conviction. And I also acknowledge that I do not necessarily know why people believe what they do and they may perhaps have very good reasons for it.

However, I note that there are a fair number of practicing Christians who don't celebrate Christmas, sometimes because of its pagan origins, sometimes just because of its extra-Biblical origins. Because somebody made it up once upon a time. Very well. Same goes for Easter.

But then, they notice that their lives and their children's lives are lacking in celebrations. Everybody needs an excuse to throw a party, decorate, dress up, have fun. So they go out and make up a new celebration. (One family always watched The Ten Commandments on Easter. I can only guess that Easter was too pagan, but Hollywood wasn't.)

Or they do up birthdays fancy to take the place of Christmas. So instead of devoting weeks to the contemplation and celebration of the coming of God to the world, they make the big celebration all about . . . me. Yay, me!

And . . . this mystifies me. At least the pagans had the humility to celebrate something bigger than themselves. At least their celebrations were tied to the seasons God made. How is stuff made up today inherently superior to the celebrations that have been held by the saints through the ages?

On the one hand, I can better appreciate the Christians who decide to start celebrating Jewish holidays, because at least they are real holidays. On the other hand, I wouldn't feel too comfortable getting carried away with it because it just seems like poor etiquette--like the Sons of Italy crashing the Leif Erikson Day parade.

No, the traditional Christian holidays are not commanded by God, nor are they untainted by any outside influence. But neither is anything that is going to be made up to take their place. And I, for one, am thankful for the chance to join hands with the saints of all times and places and throw a big party because God came here.

In Which I Rant About Something That Is Probably Nothing

Deux found a very cute little graphic novel about a robot at the library today and I let him bring it home. I prelooked it (there were no actual words involved) and I doubt anything in it will damage him. But it still bugged me.

The story line is that this dog makes a robot from a kit and they are best buds and do fun things together and then the robot goes swimming and gets too rusted up to go home from the beach. After a while the dog gets a book on robot repair and tries to go back to the beach and rescue the robot, but it's closed for the season. So he goes home and tries to play with other things and finally gets a new robot kit. Meanwhile the robot daydreams of being rescued and gets scavenged for parts and finally hauled off for scraps. There his few remaining parts are found by a raccoon, who turns him back into a cool radio robot. In the final scenes, the radio robot sees his original dog friend walking by with his new robot, and he turns on the radio and plays them a tune as they pass.

Message, as far as I can tell: Relationships are fleeting. Enjoy but move on.

Maybe it's silly. I mean, nobody says a robot gets a till-death-do-us-part vow. But surely even a robot deserves a little more perseverance. Fight for your friend, little dog! Climb the fence! Borrow a boat! Don't just walk away and find someone new!

Then again, maybe it's not so silly. How can we raise children to be loyal and faithful, to be capable of permanent relationships, without holding it up to them as an ideal when they are too young to be cynical and jaded? So much of modern's children books seem to be an effort to prepare children for life by lowering their expectations; by smashing idols that have never had time to be built.

Maybe I'll just make sure he checks out Horton Hatches An Egg next week.

What are We Good For?

The Veggietales situation as well as an interesting discussion on the homeschool forum that I seldom wish to be snarky on reminds me of one of my ongoing issues as a parent: What is the point of teaching children to behave?

Yes, I have to think through things like this. I cannot do something consistently if I don't have a good reason for doing it. When the children were very small, this lead to conversations with Wondergirl like this:

Wondergirl: Are your children allowed to climb on the coffee table?
Me: I don't know, none of them have gotten up there before. Let me think about it.
Child, falling off the table: WAAAAHHH!!
Me: OK, that's a reason. I guess not.

When it comes to moral behavior, though, I think it's an especially important question. Not only is it important for me to be clear in my mind why I am requiring good behavior of them, it's important for me to communicate it clearly to them.

Most of the books about how to be a Good Christian Parent take the duty of inculcating moral behavior very, very seriously, but I'm not usually very comfortable with the idea of why. Are we hoping to make our children better Christians by teaching them to behave? Well, that's patently wrong. Anything that gives them the impression they are more acceptable in God's sight because they behave themselves is just raising a little Pharisee who won't even think they need a savior. (And, as icky as I find it to imagine saying, "You make Mommy very sad when you do that," I find it ten times ickier to say, "You make Jesus very sad when you do that," as if Jesus gets his feelings hurt and is going to sulk until we apologize nicely.)

Then there are the people who come in opposition to that to say that the point of our parenting should be to reveal to our children just how evil their little hearts are. If we come down off Mount Sinai with smashing tablets, or just preach a come-to-Jesus sermon every time they slug their little brother, we may, someday, lead them to cry 'mercy' and find Jesus. While this has some internal logic, I have yet to see it be effective in practice, leading usually to children who simply give up before they get to the grace part.

I am not the Holy Spirit. I cannot convict of sin. I cannot bring repentance. I cannot bring forgiveness. I cannot bring sanctification. I am just a fellow sinner and recipient of grace, sharing what I know.

So what's the point of teaching them to behave? It's kind of like the exchange between George Bailey and Clarence in It's a Wonderful Life:
George: You don't happen to have 8,000 bucks on you?
Clarence (chuckling): No, we don't use money in Heaven.
George: Well, it comes in real handy down here, bud!

Good behavior isn't needed for Heaven. But it comes in handy down here. It's not always the easiest or most pleasant thing to do, but overall, it was given to us for our good. And knowing about what is right helps us understand more about who God is--about the beauty and order and relationships he made us to have.

Ultimately, we learn to behave simply because it's right. You don't hit your little brother, not because of how it makes Jesus or Mommy feel, but because it's wrong to treat other people that way. Jesus can take our badness (in fact, he already has), but little brother is smooshable and needs to be treated rightly.

Anniversaries

Easter, despite being a movable holiday, has become an important anniversary for us, and one whose significance has grown over the years.

It was the day, nine years ago, that we got engaged. It was the night before Easter, three years ago, when we began a line of questioning and seeking that would take us far afield and bring us home again. It was Easter last year that we invited our children to join us as part of Christ's body.

This year on Easter, we officially joined the church we have been attending for the past year and a half. It probably looked like a pretty obvious step for many--one lady commented she had thought we had been members all along. We show up for all the services, we read and sing and teach. But for us it was a big step to join, to state that we had found a place and a people we were confident enough to commit.

Growing up in the more conservative sort of evangelicalism, I always thought the mainline churches were just "country clubs" where people didn't really believe all that any more, but just went to church out of habit. I'm sure there are many that are like that. But we've found a place where the Good News is still proclaimed faithfully, and where we can hear it and live it in a generous way that has room for struggles and differences.

One phrase that was new to me on coming into the Lutheran tradition is "remembering your baptism." The Lutheran view of baptism is that of God acting through the water, setting his seal on us. Instead of being challenged to try harder, to recommit our lives, to promise God more, we remember that God already did it all, we recognize that God has guided us this far, we look for how God is working now, we know that it's still all God.

So today I'm remembering with gratitude the way God has spoken to me, through the places I have been, through the churches I have attended, through my baptism when I was eight, through my parents' teaching, through God's people and His world and people who don't see God as I do but have yet grown my faith anyway. 'Tis grace has brought us safe thus far, and grace shall lead us home.

The Middle Ages

Much to everyone's surprise, my body has survived for nearly a third of a century on this planet (while, as far as anyone can tell, my brain continues to operate on an entirely different one).

This does not make me old yet, but not so young anymore, either. Most of the Epic Life Events are behind me and I hope to hold off on the others for quite awhile. From the tumultuous years of young adulthood, this stretch of life looks rather dull.

Hooray for dull!

Dull means less time spent trying to figure out how to survive and more time looking up that strange bird at the feeder. Less reading books about theories of feeding babies and more reading books about murder and dragons and the periodic table and the search for Troy. It means I finally have time to think again about what I really want to do when I grow up.

It's almost like being a kid again, except now I have a driver's license. I'm sure enough that I'm a grownup that I don't have to worry about acting like one. My joints don't creak yet and I don't need reading glasses.

Better enjoy it while I can.

In Which I Make Things Unnecessarily Complicated

I was reading a short while ago a discussion in which a lady was quoting priorities from some How To Manage Everything Book and stated that one's priority list should look like this:

1. God
2. Husband
3. Children
4. House
5. Self
6. Outside (work, volunteer, etc.)
(I may have those last two backwards, I'm not sure.)

I've seen a lot of priority lists run pretty much that way. It makes no sense to me. For one thing, if I were to prioritize by people like that, I'd have to put Me at the head of the list. What good am I to my husband or children (or house) if I don't have enough rest, exercise, proper food, and quiet to be a reasonably sane and functional human? None whatever. (Believe me, I have tried.)

It still sounds dreadfully heathen not to put God at the head, but let's be honest: Does God need anything from me? The Maker of the Universe, the Triune Mystery, is he sitting around lonely if I neglect him? No, spiritual activity is for my benefit, not God's. And honestly, most of what God actually asks from us has to do with loving other people, so see everything else on the list.

I can only assume that the people who write priority lists probably don't really mean it about putting yourself last, or they've never been in a position where you needed to write yourself memoranda to take your shoes off and use the bathroom personally. They probably just mean getting a pedicure or something (ewww).

Everything on the list is subject to that economic law of diminishing returns. Some things for your husband may be more important than some things for your children, but if he can't wait for help finding the remote until the baby has eaten, then he's the one with the mixed up priorities.

Furthermore, everything on the list is mixed up. Do I wash the dishes for the sake of the House, for the sake of the Children and Husband who will need another meal soon, or for the sake of Me, who will start flinging them in the backyard if they sit there any longer? And then there is urgency--my children's math lesson probably shouldn't take precedence over someone starving at the door. But then there is frequency--if that happens every day, the math is going to be sorely neglected and I should find some other way to feed the hungry.

If I really, really had to make up a priority list, it would be something more like this:

1. Make sure everyone I'm responsible for has what they need to survive.
2. Tend to everything else in rotating order, or in whatever way seems to make most sense at the moment.

If I were a nicer person, I would put something like, "nurture emotional and spiritual relationships" in the middle. But I'm not.

Real Play, Fake Play

Grownups must periodically rediscover that play is an Important Thing for children to do. This time around, it's being touted for its value in developing "executive function": the ability to plan, exercise self-control, negotiate, and persist. Which is, of course, absolutely correct. All young mammals play at exactly what they need as grown-ups. Young tigers play at pouncing on things, and young cows play at running into things. Young people play at managing small worlds of their own devising.

But the great danger is that as soon as grownups discover that something is important for children, they will ruin it by turning it into something children Have to Do. At which point, if you are under the age of 12, you instantly realize that it's not playing any more.

So I have very mixed feelings when I hear about something like these Tools of the Mind classrooms. Sure, it's better that children be given time to play than herded into one worksheet after another. But by the time you've sat down with a teacher, made an official plan for playing, then been required to stick to that plan for a designated period of time--well, that doesn't sound much like playing anymore. The children aren't the executives any more, they're only the middle managers.

And when I got to the bottom and read in the Q&A, "How much of our 7.5 hour kindergarten day should be devoted to playing?" and saw the answer, "Kindergarteners should play for at least 30 or 40 minutes a day," I gave up. Thirty or forty minutes? Out of 7.5 hours? Five year olds? Now I understand you need time for eating and resting and picking up and an ungodly lot of time for going potty, but still. Thirty or forty minutes of work on letters and numbers and the rest of the time spent playing would be a much better balance, and produce much better results both in literacy and general sanity.

Play is important for children because it's what children are wired to do. It's like real food: we can try to scientifically analyze the different parts and functions, but no one will ever come up with a pill that has the same effect on mind and body as eating a vine-ripe home-grown tomato. And we'll never come up with an activity for children that is as beneficial as real play. But it's only real play if the grownups can keep their grimy mitts off it.

The Opposite of Magic

In the church I grew up in, the pastors made a special point, it seemed like at each instance of celebrating communion or baptism, of saying, "Now, there's nothing magic about this bread (or water). This is just something we do in obedience."

Something in me always rebelled against that. If there was nothing special about it, why go through it? Why would God order meaningless actions? But, no, I didn't really believe in magic bread or water, so I let it lie.

Over the past couple of years, as we've explored sacramental churches and stepped back and then explored again, I've come to realize that a sacrament is the opposite of magic. Magic is an intangible action--a word, a gesture, a symbol--to generate a physical result. But a sacrament is a physical action to transmit a spiritual reality.

We are physical beings. And we are spiritual beings. In the sacraments, God promises to meet us on both levels. And as we began to acknowledge it as such (and recognize that God had indeed been present to us, in that way, all through the years of being told that there was nothing special but we were going to do it anyways), we've begun to see a whole lot of things differently.

We've begun to see that salvation isn't something that rests on the fervency of our own faith, or the complexity with which we can articulate doctrine. It rests simply on the work of God in Christ. It is not a deal to be signed by those who have reached the age of consent, but a meal to be shared with all who come. And looked at that way, it no longer made any sense to keep from sharing it with our children.

Which is why we celebrated this Easter by having all four of the children baptized and receive first Communion.

Do they understand it all? Neither do we. When was I "saved," after all? Was it the first time I prayed the prayer, hiding in the grass as a toddler? Was it when I was seven and wrote it out in my Bible? Was it when I was baptized at eight because my older siblings were? Was it when I was twelve and the enormity of God dying for me hit for the first time? Was it when I wrestled with and walked through doubts as a teenager and young adult?

Or was it all God the whole time? Did it matter how clearly I understood or simply whether I received? Did Jesus, who commended us over and over to the faith of a little child, really mean to tell us that their faith didn't count?

So today we recognized the gift of faith in them and permitted them to receive God's grace through baptism. The older ducklings can answer catechism questions with the best of them, and the twins know that they belong to Jesus. Will they have doubts? Surely. Will they have a crisis of faith, of wondering if it is really theirs or just something inherited? Very likely. I will probably have a few more crises of my own. But that won't change what God does, nor do I hold back from receiving His grace now because I might not take advantage of it in the future.