Syzygy

I have been thinking about family a lot lately--about what makes a family, what is family suppose to be and support. I myself don't have a large family.I have my wife, my mom and dad, a dear couple of aunts, but we are not that sprawling sort of family that gets together a lot, or keeps track of each other well. When we have Thanksgiving, we have both sides of the family together, and we have seven people present. I know that seems strange, and maybe even sad to some people, but we are a good group. We are jovial and warm.

I grew up always wanting a brother or a sister. I would daydream about having an older sister and a younger brother. They were always a combination of the best parts of my friends brothers and sisters. I would want to go to a friend's house and hang out with them mainly because I wanted to know what their family is like. I liked seeing how they interacted with their brothers and sisters; I wanted to see what it was like to have that support network, that bond of sharing memories and experiences.

I am an only child. Sometimes I worry that I won't remember things from my growing up, and that I won't ever get those memories back, because I don't have anyone who shared them with me. Who will help me remember my mother riding my dad's motorcycle into the fence, or going to cut down a Christmas tree across the street with my dad? I find myself sitting sometimes and just remembering things that happened so they stay fresh in my mind, since I have no one really to share them with.

My parents and I sort of lived detached from the area we lived. My wife has friends she has had her entire life. When I married, not one person from my high school or growing up was there--hardly any were invited. I prayed for a life where I would be connected to the community, my coworkers, and the syzygy of the place I lived. And here in the last year I realized that prayer had been answered. It was as if my small, self contained life had bloomed like some kaleidoscope image. His hand having slowing turned the cylinder until something complicated and wonderful had been formed.

I am blessed in that I love the people I work with. I have friends of many different levels who have become my support group, my family as such. I have memories now that I can share with others--can recall and laugh about with my favorite people. I laugh heartily everyday with people who make my life so much richer and more intertwined than I could have thought. Although it was always what I wanted, and even what I prayed for, I never could have connected the dots and foreseen how mingled and warm my life would be, and I am so thankful that it is.

I know this would seem weird to most people, to be so excited about something simple as friendship and family, but to me, it was always what I wanted. I coveted a big family growing up, and it feels as if I have that now. Knowing that, helps my worry ease, my breathing more meaningful, my coping and living so much easier.

Protean Heart

We have been reading the book The Secret of Lying in my reading class for the past few weeks. In the book, a character talks about how she misses writing letters, and she mulls over how people used words like "protean" in the hey day of letter writing. Protean is an interesting word. It means to be "versatile" or "malleable", "changeable in shape or form."

I like that word. I like the meaning behind it. I like the idea of being "changeable in shape or form." I think a lot about how I act and how I am perceived. (Unfortunately, after the fact most of the time.) I think about whether the things that are important to me, are perceived as what is important to me by others, or if the "me" that I project onto the screen of my life is something different and dingy.

I have a trouble coming to a conclusion about that. I am sure it changes day to day. I would like to think that I am becoming a better version of myself everyday; that as I walk through my marriage, my job, my decreasing days, that my eyes become more reflective of my heavenly father's. But, I also know that I have a desperate and needy heart. It has been tamed, corralled as such, and I certainly don't let it lead me into as many poor relationships and poor decisions as I did while doing the growing up. However, there are still shadows of that heart, in my attempts to be funny, my exaggerations, my complainings and annoyances directed towards the people I care most about. I deny myself a thousand crazy thoughts and actions every day. I just wish I didn't have to deny myself those things in the first place. I wish my "protean heart" had been formed into something that was not so prone to wander, prone to reform back into what it was.

So, I like the idea of a "protean heart". Not in the romance novel sort of way, but in the way of my loving father's spirit wrapping itself around it, and changing it into the best version possible--a version that's need TO love and TO reach out, is more dominant that its need to BE loved and its need to have people reaching in to my life. Because those are two very different motivations.

Drama, Mumford and Sons, and Love

I teach high school. We know this. So, to say that I an not use to a certain level of teenage drama and angst would be a false statement. Most days, I can laugh off the created, theatrical nature of drama as funny, typical teen behavior. I mean there is the Jersey Shore Effect, and every school now has their little over-baked, toasted versions of Snookie roaming the hallways. It is funny to laugh at the absurdity of the boys and girls who get into these sorts of things. I laugh at the fingers being waved, the heads being bobbed, the "thckkkk" sound being made with the teeth, as they tell their stories of insult to one another. It makes stories for me to tell my wife and friends and proves that my job is anything but boring.

But, like everything, I start wondering about the nature of what is really going on? Complications and drama in teen life have been around for a long time. I joked when I called it The Laguna Beach Effect, then The Hills Effect, then Lindsey Syndrome, and now the Snookie Effect, but it just goes to show, that we really can't blame it on these shows or people. I can blame the too tight torn t-shirts on Snookie, and I can blame the skirts that are too short for fatty thighs roaming our hallways on her, but the drama creation I can't. Shows like Jersey Shore don't create a wave of kids wanting to have drama in their life. It simply is a mirror held up to our society, showing the ravaging disease of desperation as people ceaselessly have a need to create drama in their lives. There is a need within our society to make your problems seem bigger, more important. We make words harsher in the stories we tell our friends. We fidget with dialogue to goad people into arguments. Every day I witness numerous kids explaining how they have been wronged as if they were the first child to ever have a friend talk about them. I watch them hurt their boyfriends by dumping them simply because they wanted to have a story to tell.

Why????

To me it seems that kids who do this sort of thing (and adults) have a need to feel important, to feel as if their life matters. And to get the satisfaction of feeling this, they create scenarios which seem emotionally shocking and draining to help make their life seem bigger, their problems overwhelming...to give them a means by which to show out and seem tough, strong. Their insecurity cannot be controlled, and it escapes them in choreographed waltzes of lies and harsh words.

That I find sad. It makes me wonder why their parents haven't made them feel as if they matter? Has no one told them even that God loves them and notices them without the theatrics and the Snookie tan? We could shrug it off and say it doesn't matter, that it is typical teen behavior, but unfortunately it effects their future behavior. They don't learn how to care for one another properly, or that love is an action most days, not a feeling.

My mouse wheel of a mind has had the song "Sigh No More" by Mumford and Sons on continual loop for the past two days. It talks about a "love that will not betray, dismay or enslave you," seemingly echoing the "love chapter" of Corinthians that talks about the selfless, humble nature of love. Love in this sense being a gift given through treatment, not a gift to be taken by force. I don't think these kids, these people, who fill the void by creating problems in their life, by being needy for emotional provocation, get this definition or context of love. That bothers me. It worries me that some people will not feel the peace of knowing that they matter--knowing they matter to a friend, to a spouse, to a parent, to a god--never having that burden, need lifted from their chest and allowed to simple relax, and take in the cleansing breath of satisfaction.

Maybe a satisfied Snookie on tv would help? I don't know. I know that I only can show the love that has been given to me from a loving God the best I can, and hope that even when I fail miserably at that, somehow the watered down, broken bits of that love will break into their lives.

Snow Days

We have had 8 or 9 snow days so far this school year. Most of my teacher friends are nervous, lamenting that we will be in school all summer, making the kids restless and hard to manage. They are right; it will suck to be in school in June. But I can't lie. I love snow days. I don't care about the disruptions to my schedule, the longer, hotter school year. I still get terribly excited to think about not going to school. I can be exhausted and still want to stay up late, because I know we won't be having school the next day. I get up in the middle of the night to check closings. I look out front windows to see if the road is covered. Snow at night makes for peaceful sleeping. It blankets my normally ricochet thinking patterns.

The snow today was the prettiest of the year. The flakes were huge, silver dollar sized sails floating to the ground. They came slowly, gently, frosted feathers floating. Everyone watched it snow today at our school. It was a galvanizing event, and although it was somewhat annoying for the kids to be continually asking if we were leaving early, it was also nice to have something we were all interested in. The kids marveled at the snow today. They walked through it. They laughed about it. They went to the restroom just to stand by the doors and watch it. Which is something I myself did today too. For a few hours we all shared in the same occasion and rooted for the same team.

We talk about things to do in the schools to help promote school spirit and camaraderie--the answer is simple. Snow. It worked greater than any pep rally or guest speaker i have seen.

My dear precious one

My dear, precious wife left me a note on a book today beside my Mac instructing me to read a chapter from her Bible study. It was a nice chapter, written in large print, because she had checked the book out from the old people's section of the library. The chapter talked about how, although we will often have very explicit and amazing encounters with god, that we also have encounters with him every day in the rituals we keep, the acknowledgments we give him. The author pointed out, that God is a god of routine, bringing the sun up each morning, and the moon forth each night.

It is easy at 31 ( I just had to ask my wife if I was 31 or 32) to get caught up in the almost midlife crisis, that seems to pass through our demographic, like the flu through a kindergarten class. What am I doing with myself? Does what I do really matter? Is this how I thought my life would turn out? I am sure to many people, who were to view my life trough the lens of their little Viewmasters, clicking from slide to slide, that m y life would seem fairly ordinary and mundane. I get up. I teach school. I hang out with my wife. Work out, eat, sleep, go back to school, etc. However, I my life doesn't feel mundane. I don't rush into ER's and open up chests, and I don't buy expensive properties and sale them for twice their value. But I laugh everyday--numerous times. I work with my best friends, people whom I have invested in, and have invested in me. I know my students know that I care about them and what happens to them...even when I am grouchy and hateful. I have a wife who gets me and doesn't mind that I am the way I am.

So it is easy for me to see how I should honor God everyday in the "monotony" of my life, because he honors me greatly in my monotony everyday. If someone were to excavate me; if they were to dig way down deep, through all the carefully plotted shrubbery, soil, and rock, they would probably find a fairly crooked person, with a surprisingly selfish center. I do not deserve the things I have been given, but I am thankful I have been entrusted with them.

Parents?? Parents??

02/02/11
I find it intriguing how the government, media, and other prominent community leaders are always talking about making schools better, and making a child's education better. Obviously, I think every child deserves a great education, and I think every child should have access to that.

However, for the millions of dollars we spend on education, for the countless hours that schools and their curriculum are discussed by both the schools themselves as well as the people observing schools through the fish bowl, we rarely hear any worthwhile discussion from those government leaders, from those businessmen, from those television news hosts, about the family. Has the parents role in their child's education been forgotten? Ignored? Or has the responsibility simply been abandoned?

We can look at lots of data about what makes a student successful, well adjusted, motivated. That data will show lots of complicated, tangled, correlations between various factors. From my classroom perspective, it seems that most well adjusted, successful students come from a stable home environment. Not necessarily two, non divorced parents, who make lots of money, but more so an environment where the child knows they are loved, knows someone is keeping track of them, and knows that there will be discipline.

My teacher friends and I talk about the things parents tell us. We have had parents refuse to give up their dating life to be certain their daughter doesn't sneak out of the house. We have had parents come to meetings drunk or stoned. We have many parents who don't come to anything in the first place.

Trying to fix the education of our children at school only, is probably an empty gesture. It is a regifted bottle of wine taken to a party for someone you don't really care for. It is a courteous clap for the average singer. To really fix a problem, you have to trace it back to its root. You cannot trace a child past their home-life.

How do you fix a home through government money and programs? I don't know. I simply know that ONLY trying to fix education through the schools, through the curriculum, the type of instruction, the technology used is a losing battle. Three out of every fifty kids will overcome their uninterested parents and do a good job with their learning and life. Most will struggle, with both their learning, and their personal adjustment. They will not know how to concentrate on schematics. They will not know that their boyfriends shouldn't call them slut. They will not know that some good things in life take time.

Until someone with some sort of voice is willing to start sanctioning uninvolved and unengaged parents, as uninvolved and unengaged schools are sanctioned, I doubt we will see many great leaps and bounds as a whole. But we will continue to have great sound bites from frenzied groups calling for better schools. We will have the crowds supporting those givers of the soundbites, and we will still have parents who don't know where their kids are at night, whom they are with, or if they have a test in biology the next day.