Doing Great.

Having buckled the girls into their high chairs, and having plopped two heaps of Annie's Mac 'n cheese on their plates, I was sitting on the kitchen stool drinking an apple juice/Bacardi rum combo and devouring the new issue of Mothering Magazine. Yes, we usually wait for Daddy, eat around the table together, pray, talk about our days, etc. but it was 6:15, Daddy was running late, the girls were stealing the neighbor's bagel at the greenbelt across the street out of hunger, and after a day like that, I wasn’t doing too great and I really needed to put them on autopilot for 20 minutes.

Now that Mothering Magazine only comes every other month, I am so needy for its natural family validation and advice that I am known to hibernate with it until I finish each issue. This one didn't disappoint. A thought-provoking article by a pacifist on why banning war play and violent games can actually backfire (it turns out that children, especially boys, use violent play to explore important developmental issues such as power, control, authority, and healing). A tear jerker from a mom who had the unknown biological sibling of her two adopted children contact them when they were all teenagers, forcing her and her husband to revisit their children’s discomfort with why their birth mom would give away yet another baby (it turns out the teens were overjoyed to meet this newfound family member and it made them feel even more wanted by their blood family, not less). Natural toy choices for the holiday season (check out this cool website for many of my favorites, especially the cooperation-minded board games for preschoolers and costumes/dramatic play items. Yes that is a hint, family members). I interspersed each article with sips of the overly sweet but somehow perfect cocktail, creating just the right buzz and allowing me to feel I had achieved "me time." (Don’t fault me for the kiddy cocktail. We are out of red wine.)

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Grace reaching for Natalie's plate and I focus to see if I need to intervene. Their laughter invades my concentration on a great letter to the editor about our bottle-feeding culture as I look up to see the girls swapping plates and cracking each other up. "Okay, Nally, you want this one?" Hysterical laughter from Natalie as Grace thrusts one plate towards her. "Or this one?" More laughter as Grace throws her head back, smiling and exclaiming to no one in particular, "She doesn't even KNOW what she wants!"

I begin to crack up and return to my magazine. This scene is repeated several times as Natalie now decides to take Grace's plate and now Grace pretends to be the baby who doesn’t know which plate is hers. Their happy interaction begins to shame me for my self-absorbed cocktail and magazine me-time. What fun parenting moment am I missing out on for the sake of some above average rum and stories about not missing out on parenting? I roll my eyes at the irony as I close the magazine and turn to involve myself in their fun when it hits me. This is their fun. I didn't orchestrate this moment. It wasn't brought to you my mom and the letter C. It grew organically despite my lack of attention, or (I began to realize) perhaps because of my lack of attention.

So, laugh on, girls. You have officially both replaced me as each other's most important companion. It seems sudden, but this has actually been in the works for a while. Both of you as babies wouldn't sleep anywhere except next to mom in the big bed, and now you lie beside each other on a mattress on the floor of the bedroom you share. You who would beg for mom to get in the tub for your nightly bath now close the sliding door to us and dump water on each other's heads and laugh.

Daddy walks in on this laughing/smashing pasta/apple juice cocktail dinner about 10 minutes later, and exclaims, "Wow. You look great. You all do." I can see on his face that he might have been expecting pandemonium and saw something different this night. "We are great," I reply. "They are great," pointing to the girls, "And I am great," I finish, turning away from them towards my magazine. And I am. Feeling great, that is.

Girls and Math article

I have a few things brewing, but just saw this and wanted to post it since it had to do with my first gender post.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/10/19/women.math.ap/index.html

Notice how the study doesn't comment on whether or not there are differences in math skills between males and females. It seeks to show that a perceived female weakness is a self-fullfilling prophesy.

Let them know we are Christians

The card was addressed "To: Our Neighbor" at my address. It was from El Toro Baptist Church, an evangelical church in my area. It was an invitation to "Judgement House," (that is their misspelling of “judgment”) and here is the text of the invite:

"Judgement House is a walk-through drama presentation that tells the story of one evening in the lives of four teenagers who through a series of events must face the consequences of their choices for eternity.

The consequences of those choices will be revealed as you tour their eternal destinations and consider yours.

October 28-31. 6:00 PM till 10:00 PM. Reserve your tour in advance. We look forward to seeing you there! There is no charge for admission. Not recommended for children under the age of 12."

The company that equips churches to present Judgement House also has its own website. At the end of the walk-through, guests are offered the opportunity to accept the free gift of salvation. The average U.S. covenant church “experienced 6 salvations per hour of presentation!”

Let’s pray for a moment before continuing. God, you are the ultimate Truth, the Source of Life, indescribable, indefinable, the One whose love knows no bounds. Please guide us to your love; show us how to bring you into our hearts, and fill us with your Peace. Amen.

Okay, I feel in a better place now. Here we go.

The people of this church are so filled with God’s love, and so eager to share His radical message of redemption and peace for mankind, and so moved by their own experiences with His divine touch, that they pow-wowed on how to reach out to the community so that they can share this love with others, and this is what they came up with? A PG-13 rated scare tactic? Has Christianity stooped so low that we need to scare our friends and neighbors into believing in Christ?

While we ponder that question for a minute, I would like to reflect on Jesus and His teachings. His own “drama activism,” if you will. The way he drew large crowds of people together only to bewilder them by defying the cultural norms of the time by touching sick people, speaking with unmarried women, allowing menstruating women to touch him, sharing food that had not been purified with people who were not meant to eat together. Let’s reflect on the way He went out of his way to include the “other.” The way he often disappointed even His own followers with his message of love. They wanted a revolutionary; what they got was revolutionary love.

This is the man I worship as my God. The more of His presence I bring into my life, the more I realize that Jesus saves, not because we one day say “Jesus is my Savior!” but because knowing Jesus means that you know the depth of God’s love for you. It means that you know the depth of God’s love for that person next to you. It means that you can be so buoyed by God’s abiding love that you don’t seek the fulfillment of your own needs, but instead seek to meet others’ needs.

Everything I have learned about God through Jesus Christ, both in scripture and in experience, points me towards wanting to drastically change my life so that I am not about me, but about Him. So that the only needs I have are to meet other’s needs. So that the line between “others” and me is blurred. So that the line between God and others and me is blurred. "On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you" (John 14:20). So that we all are empowered by the Holy Spirit to do God’s work in the world, to transform any given moment into God’s kingdom.

This is so much more radical than one day saying that Jesus is Lord. If we are counting and measuring “salvation” by how many people say that Jesus is God per hour of programming, we have missed it. Jesus did not reach out to thousands, challenge his own religion and culture, and die on the cross so that people would say He is king. He did it to show the kind of human we are supposed to be.

So I return to Judgement House. Undeniably, the people putting it on believe that if they don’t act, their neighbors’ souls will end up in eternal hell. I understand that they feel they have to do something, anything, to get people to come to Christ. I know Jesus spoke of the fire and of Judgment Day. But there are alternate ways (see also this) to interpret these quotes that are more consistent with all we know about Jesus through his other teachings and actions. Ultimately, would our God be pleased with the fearful worship of people trying to avoid their own suffering? Was Christ afraid of suffering? If we are to be Christ-like, we must not live out our faith as a fearful exercise to avoid suffering. We must live our lives awash in God’s love.

Let them know we are Christians, not by the way we frighten our neighbors into wanting to avoid pain, but by the way we are willing to endure anything or any pain to help our neighbors. Let them know we are Christians by our love. And they will come to worship what is good, what is giving, what is God. Amen.