Trumped UP America Should Appeal to Our History of Immigration Instead of Fear

Tuesday’s Oval Office immigration speech: “This is a humanitarian crisis, a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul.” Abso-total-lutely! Exactly what we’ve been saying all along. We agree with what the president said. For America, the immigration nation, to be building walls to keep those legitimately seeking refugee status from having the chance to make their case is unconscionable. It is inhuman. It is Soulless. It is against everything that actually makes America great. All our ancestors came to America from somewhere else, most of them pretty recently. Those of us whose ancestors came freely owe a continuing debt to those who repaid their own debt by allowing our families the chance for a new home and for new opportunities. With no way to repay this debt to the past, we are obliged to repay to the future. This is the American way. Immigration is how we grew to be a leader among nations. Continued immigration is the only hope we have to persist in our leadership. And it’s also brought us the tasty food that gives this country Soul. What the 'typical' American "hyphen" (think, "Irish-American, Polish-American, Italian-American, German-American, Scandinavian-American) may not realize is that more immigrants have entered this country since the 1960s than the entire 130-year experience of Open Doors Immigration envisioned by us in our mind's eye. The Face of Immigration has changed once again. And, so, too must we. But, our expectations, rights and responsibilities must change beyond these privileges that we 'believe -- we honestly believe we deserve.' We don't. Just like Our Creator tells us intrinsically, it is a constant debt that we must pay forward. And, Donald J. Trump, who had the extreme priviledge and great fortune to mary and immigrant and get citizenship for his now-wife, Melania and her parents should know better. Okay. So, now he knows. And, so, too, do we. Do Better. Starting today. And, stop holding the rest of the American people--citizens and taxpayers hostage as pawns in an immigration game gone all wrong.  Have distant immigrants--thinking they are fully incorporated into the American Democratic Fabric-- felt or thought in the past that they have paid these debts already with their hard work? If so, those of us who know better, or have shifted our mindset thinking in recent days,  need to continue to be the role models and the examples of hard work. Labour. There is Dignity in work. Working together engages us and allows us to stay connected to the Human Experience. We must have lost sight of this. Working in kindness and support is healthy and wellness for those of us priviledged enough to know that we will never pay this debt of American citizenship forward. We must labour on this daily. And, extending the hand of kindness first, friendship second and inclusiveness third is just the start of a lifelong legacy in the American Experienc. This is just another example of how to Love Thy Neighbour and Love Thy Neighbour Well. The safe return and enthusiast, cohesive love, kindness and outpouring of assistance for Jayme Closs in Wisconsin is just another miracle of human beings coming together to hold together a strong foundation for humanity. This weekend's Miracle in Barron County, Wisconsin, serves to Teach & Instruct all of us well--to do better as a Nation of Immigrants who love and support each other through small, consistent Acts of Kindness, Grace & Mercy.  What are you doing today to advance both the thoughts and the actions towards a More Perfect Union? Let me know.

Are We A Democracy

 In Name Only?

Some People Hate Homer 

Tomorrow's economy will be volatile and dependent on

flexible workers with a high level of intellectual skills. Thus,

 the best vocational education will be. . . in the use of one's mind.

--Theodore R. Sizer, Horace's Compromise

Classical education's fine for the college-bound. Homer and Plato might be fun for intellectuals. But what about the student who isn't interested in college? What about the student who doesn't really care about scholarship? What about the student who wants to finish high school, get out and work?

A classical education is valuable even for people who hate Homer. [And, here's why: 21St Century Divided States of America, Brexit, European Union Nations, Israel and Palestine, China, Russia, and the Arab World--even the rest of us...newly discovered seven planets I'm talking to you, too!]

The classical education is designed to teach the student how to learn....the student who knows how to learn--and has had practice in independent learning--can successfully do any job.

Gene Edward Veith points out that the Greeks would have viewed with suspicion education that trains the student for a highly specific job. Such training creates "a slave mentality, making the learner an obedient worker utterly dependent upon his masters."2 [Technology--perhaps even Silicon Valley--Wall Street, and certainly the Halls of Power inWashington, D.C., I am speaking directly to you]

A classical education is useful.

But to a certain extent, to ask "What's the use?" is itself antithetical to the goals of the classical education. "The practical life," writes David Hicks, in a paraphrase of Plato, "falls short of completeness. The wealth one acquires in business is a useful thing, but as such, it exists for the sake of something else."3 The classically educated student aims for more than a life of comfort; she aims for a "life that knows and reveres, speculates and acts upon the Good, that loves and re-produces the Beautiful, and that pursues excellence and moderation in all things."3

The classical education, with its emphasis on the life of the mind, on reading and writing about ideas, is aimed at producing a student who pursues excellence and moderation in all things. This is Plato's "virtuous man" (who, parenthetically, is generally highly employable--a side effect).

There's yet another reason for classical education, which has to do with the nature of a democracy. From ancient times through recent centuries, only a small, elite segment of the population received the kind of education we've outlined in these chapters [The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home, by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise]. Because only a fraction of society is equipped to think through ideas and their consequences, only that fraction was qualified to govern--an act that demands that the governing members of society look past the immediate, the popular, and the simplistic in order to evaluate long-range consequences and complex cause and effect.

But, in a democracy, all citizens have a part in government. They should be able to look past immediate gratification, rhetorical flourishes, and simplistic solutions in order to understand which course of action is the right one to take. In a healthy democracy, the casting of a vote is the act of a well-trained mind.

Every citizen in a democracy takes on the responsibilities that were once reserved for the well-educated aristocratic segment of society. And so every citizen, college-bound or not, should receive the type of education that will develop the life of the mind.

What happens if this is neglected?

"The average citizen," David Hicks writes, "will begin to doubt the soundness of his own judgments. He will surrender his fundamental democratic right to ideas and to decision making to a few experts....[He will] grow lazy in his demand for a high quality of public thought and information. He will doubt his ability to decide the issues shaping his life, and he will take another step beyond representative government in relinquishing the privilege of self-government by putting himself at the mercy of a few experts. At last, abandoning his Western classical heritage, he will resign himself and his children to . . . a democracy in name only.[emphasis mine]"4

It's a chilling scenario, but already these tendencies are visible in America in the beginning of the twenty-first century. The classical education--for all students, not just for some college-bound "elite"--is the best preventive.

And yet you don't have to wait for your local school to come to this conclusion. You can train your child's mine yourself. [And, you should; any other thought, may be construed as Indoctrination]

* * * * * * *

Folks the proof is in the pudding. We aren't listening. Hearing. Or acting. 

Albert Einstein said, If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

We're there. But, who's reading to our children, let alone, classically educating them? The hand that rocks the cradle truly rules the world. 

Artists, Intellectuals, Inventors & Innovators drive both economic and social change. Where have all the humans gone? History repeats, rinse, repeat. When we know better, we should do better. Are we awake yet? Or at least alert? Technology is not the only thing that is changing our world. Refugees and immigrants are not the only circumstances, situations and issues that are in flux. We are experiencing a New World Order. Change. But, His Holiness, Francis I, along with many others warned us, looking back prophesized with almost precise acccuracy5 and yet we still do not act on the serious habits of a classically, good mind. What will it take for our modern communities, societies and cultures to do the Right, Just Thing? Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young song, "Teach Your Children Well". Classically Train Every Child. That's should be our response to our historical mistake of No Child Left Behind. And, every parent left in the dust to the Race to the Top....left with only common core, nationally-normed tests, and purported standards bereft of any love of learning, or the lifelong pursuit of happiness let alone the everyday enchantment of contentment. Mr. Jefferson where art thou now?

Author's Blogpost Note: A 1985 graduate of Mr. Jefferson's academical village, I first read this work in 1999 (first edition) as my partner and I anticipated parenting during the aftermath of the Columbine Massacre on Tuesday, April 20, 1999. I have reread parts of this definitive, groundbreaking work, and the 'bible of every home educator, parent and student," every week since that day, sometimes daily, even hourly. 

In other words, I have spent many an hour in discontent. But, not a day goes by since November 20, 2016, after our election cycle, that I have not sat in solitude pondering my reality and that of my legacy through our children and yours, contemplating my next action and the consequences of those threads of action. Just like our pontiff, His Holiness, Pope Francis I, and Peter & Paul and all the Saints befoe him, I am a bridge builder, seeking to break apart walls, breakdown barriers. tear into borders of discontent and injustice. 

This particular excerpt is from Part III. The Rhetoric Stage: Ninth Grade through Twelfth Grade, 34. Some People Hate Homer, pp. 608 - 611. It was a harbinger for me with Columbine, in 1999 (first edition); a cautionary tale, on September 11, 2001--emotionally numb, but joyfully experiencing our second  pregnancy, (second edition); frosty, on June 15, 2011 and the summer of 2011, when we made the decision and pulled our children out of institutional school to home education (third edition); and now, in the words of Susan Wise Bauer, ....[beyond] chilling after our election 2016 cycle and less than One Hundred Days in 2017 into our new administration under Trump's Make America Great Again. Are we all, like me, in our own Season of Winter? Like the Snow Queen or The White Witch in C.S. Lewis' Narnia? Indeed, Einstein knew, what I know. We are there. Well, and truly there. Now what? Teach Your Children Well. Serious Habits of The Mind.

_____________________

2Gene Edward Weith, "Renaissance, Not Reform," an essay posted at the Philanthropy, Culture, and Society website, August 1996; www.capitalresearch.org. See also Gene Edward Veith, Jr., and Andrew Kern, Classical Education: Towards the Revival of American Schooling (Washington, D.C., Capitol Research Center, 1997), p.78.

3David Hicks, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education (New York: Praeger, 1981), p.20.

4 Hicks, p.83.

excerpt with permission Bauer, Susan Wise and Jessie Wise. The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009.

On Pointe!

The Commodity and Currency of the Gift of Time and Memory are the Precious Inheritance that endows even our future legacies .It ebbs and flows and stood still only for a moment, that's why it's called currency--like cash and resources, time and memory is a fluid, living thing. 

Look how we spent our time this afternoon on Wednesday, 5 October 2016...I always knew October was a PINK Ribbon Month. Now, through our youngest daughter, Luci, "Light" I've discovered its new meaning!

See for yourself! The price tag is still showing. But, to me...priceless!

It's  37 years this month that I first stepped into my own toe shoes. The feeling apparently never really goes away. I just saw it captured once again in an eleven year old's heart and soul. And, the joy that surrounded her first moment was blindingly On Pointe with her radiance. 

Thank you for the privilege of allowing me to share our Private Dancer. It's with tremendous and profound gratitude that her sisters, Emma-Marie & Sophie Celine were also able to share Lucia Isabelle's precious, cherished moment.

Mommy, Blessed Saint Mummy, I think we three just got our perfect birthday present this year. All tied up with an Enormous, elaborate, pink ribbon bow. Happy Birthday! One of life's most precious moments. I am so grateful to be alive and catch but a glimpse of pure heaven on earth!

But, it's not really about me. What to do when it's not about you...enjoy! Relish with gusto! Embrace love! And, the miracle of life. One little girl is walking on air, childhood is still calling in our household. If just for a few more magical moments of fairy glitter & dust.

An Early Birthday Gift For Mother Teresa, The Smile of Calcutta! September 4, 2016

Annual Back-to-School Message from The Catalyst Pioneer:

.: Mother Teresa: The Smile of Calcutta :.

As the rest of North America gets ready for school ('cause everyone else in the world is getting ready for either their Autumn, Spring or Summer Break!), I thought I would send my Annual BTS Message to Mothers, Fathers, Grandparents, Children and  Lead Parents out a little earlier than normal to all of us Catholics. because of the upcoming

  First Saint Day of Blessed Mother Teresa

This way, every family can discover, foster and nurture learning and a better understanding of this Great Lady's Life (and also understand, she, like us, washuman folks...but also, increasingly a rarity--she was also humane.) and celebrate for and with their own Domestic Churches.

I also recommend watching, The Letters starring Juillet Lewis and it's FREE at the moment on Roku's Netflix's or Netflix's Account. You may remember that Marco & I first saw it on a Date Night last November at The Bowtie Theatre here in Richmond City. It's another simple way to celebrate her life and legacy!

Encourage your own children, grandchildren, youth groups, religious ed groups or CCD or Children's Liturgy of the Word to find out why Mother Teresa is called "The Smile of Calcutta" by other cultures and societies from the United States? Do you know? 

• Encourage a Mother Teresa Challenge as your birthday gift this year to Mother Teresa and a gift in honour of her First Saint Day:

Each Lenten Season Marco & I challenge our children to give away at least ten beautiful smiles the Second Week of Lent and then to whisper a little prayer to Jesus for the people they have smiled at. They can keep track of the smiles by drawing a smiley face on a piece of construction paper for each time they have sincerely smiled at someone. For the younger ones, you can draw the faces and they can color them in once they have passed on their sweet smiles. Were you and yours a special recipient of one of those smiles? Certain you were! Can you just imagine how very different how world would be if every person smiled and prayed for just ten more people? Imagine. Imagine. There is genius in every child and an artist of creation and creative talent within all of us. Mother Teresa saw that in each one of us and still does! For her, she saw Christ in Every Person? To every Leper she ministered she literally saw the Face of Christ. Do you? I know my own personal path to this was probably just as difficult as Mother Teresa's. It was not easy for her. And, that today, encourages me, and in the words of the New England poet, Robert Frost, "...made all the difference."

So, perhaps, we will challenge our children, now adolescents on the precipice of young adults now to give away another ten beautiful, dazzling, heavenly, Saintly Smiles in honour of the Sainthood of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the day before her birthday. Be on the lookout for a Mother Teresa smile from this family all weekend long. Maybe we have our own secret "IceBucket Challenge" going around here! Stay tuned. But, here's just one of many reasons why The Smile of Calcutta got to me (Marco & I were 'official marriage mentors; now, we are just 'unofficial at the moment, and we feel we get a lot more accomplished with couples and families with our new status at the moment. So, here's one genesis of The Smile: 

One Time while attending a meeting, Mother Teresa was asked to give a little inspirational message. She stood up and looked out at the group and simply said 

"Husbands should smile at their wives and wives should smile at their husbands and children. "

Someone (misunderstanding, misinformed, not fully formed in their thought process, mindful or genuine ignorance asking to be informed in a loving way) wondered how she could give this advice and asked her,

 "Are you Married?"

She replied that she certainly was married (I'm almost certain this inquiry must have been from a non-Catholic)  ......

married to Jesus...

and sometimes she found it difficult to smile at Jesus because he could be so demanding! (haven't we all felt at some point that our spouses and progeny are a bit too much to deal with. So, too, did Mother Teresa! Rest Assured! We are never alone in our sacrifices & suffering, no matter how trivial or great!)

.: Mother Teresa: The Smile of Calcutta :.

"Love Begins at home, love lives in homes and that is why there is so much suffering and so much unhappiness in the world today, because there is so little love in the homes and in family life...If we are to bring that love again, we have to begin at home. We must make our homes centers of compassion and forgive endlessly."

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta

For those of us in our Domestic Churches, and I include each and every one of you in the above-referenced quote, we know quite well what it meant to us to grow up in  a loving home or not. For some it was perhaps the lack of that love, that forged future, deep meaning for you in crafty your domestic church of today and tomorrow; for others, it was huge respect and responsibility andweight, heft, if you will, that you give the above quote honor in your home as a perhaps, unspoken, mission statement in your dc.

We know the meaning of what it means to serve. As Catholic Christians we should have been taught that; for some, sadly they never got the instruction, for others it went over their heads, and we should have corrected that. For others it is not yet their intention. 

But, if we, if you and I, friend and neighbor, are indeed to bring LOVE back to our world, whatever world that means for you and yours, we must, we simply must make our homes centers of compassion and forgiveness and grace and mercy. We simply must. No matter where we work or where we play or where we educate or where we worship or where we vote, we simply must. Our Father Calls Us to Do So. And Saint Teresa will call us all to smile while doing even the most simple, of simple, ordinary things. It is our Duty. It is our difference, perhaps even as Catholic Christians. In the words sung by that of a returned Catholic, my personal friend and Sophie Dulog's, too, Sarah McLachlin, "It's an Ordinary Miracle. Everyday." Written by someone else; sung with simple eloquence by her.

For those of you who know me well, you may recall my first family and I have a special, unique relationship to Blessed Mother Teresa: she attended the Loreto Sisters Convent, the same institution that my maternal mother attended in Dublin, Ireland until the late 1950s. While my mother was young (born in 1936 and moved with her family briefly to Woodstock, Canada & PEI just before and during the outbreak of WWII because of employment opportunities for her architect father, my grandfather) she returned to Dublin for her schooling and even when she left out of Loreto Convent the footsteps and the footprints of the little girl from Skopje (modern day Macedonia) were all over the place even then. My mother passed decades before Mother Teresa , but looking back, I suppose I was blessed with knowing about and of Mother Teresa decades before the rest of the world got to really know her because of my original domestic church.

My association with Mother Teresa and her Sisters of Charity, was in fact, my primary motivation to go to India, Pakistan and the Punjab (the annexed part of the Indian-Paki border) for my year abroad studies with the University of Virginia in 1982 - 1983. (Especially after I didn't get the plum assignment of going back to Paris, France! or even Germany or Russia!). What a disappointment at first. 

Reflecting back now on that decision, I often wonder, "Was it God's handprint for me to bend to his will in the natural, holy selection of my own husband and eventually my family." I doubt very seriously that this country/city lass would have ever moved to Gotham City, Sin City (New York City) on her own without her mother (My mother had died by then) or ever entertained the thought of accepting a courtship with Mr. Dulog, let alone, say, "Yes" to God's call to motherhood. And, I know that I would not have had the strength in this last decade to move through this marvelous journey of earthly life without the teachings, reflections, writing, musings, prayer life of the Blessed Mother Teresa and her Sisters. Or to rest simply at home after almost four decades of work and travel and positions of power and authority. It is still hard. To serve, simply.

What are your reflections of Mother Teresa in your own life? In your journey as a woman, as a daughter, or wife, or mother or co-worker or employee? Or, if you are a man, as those other roles. Most especially as a human being. Because the word is out that humanity is on the decrease. I'd love to hear from you. Perhaps, I've inspired you or encouraged you to dig a lot deeper into your own spiritual life and discern and discover something new for yourself. I certainly hope so. And, maybe that's personal and too close for you to share at the moment. So, someday. Maybe. Maybe this is the first time you have even been challenged or encouraged to consider another side of you. And, that, perhaps is the greatest gift of all that you can give yourself today!

Finally, I would like to share with you on a personal, spiritual level that I would never have gotten through our first year of education at home if I had not dedicated that year 2011 - 2012 to Mother Teresa's quote:

"Do Ordinary Things with extraordinary Love"

For me, she didn't need to be an earthly saint; for me, she already was a Saint. 

I know that I got through that year in the palm of another great woman just doing ordinary things with the only thing I had left to me and mine...LOVE!

I can not believe that five years have flown by and so much has happened since I first took my own personal pledge. I can clearly remember the pledge in the pew where it all happened. And, in 2011, it was only just being revealed, the writings, diaries, and thoughts of Mother Teresa's own inner dialogues and struggles, too. It is almost surreal to me now. I was loved and taken care of and nurtured not by neighbors, family and friends, but as quite often happens, in the work of God, by others. Prayers answered. I do, so love a full-circle moment. 

"Because we cannot see Christ we cannot express our love to Him, but our neighbors we can always see, and we can do to them what, if we saw him, we would like to do to Christ."

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Perhaps the operative phrase here from Mother Teresa was, "...if we saw him." Perhaps we can all celebrate anew the beginning of seeing Christ--even if for some of us--the first time, in our neighbors. Smile. Know what St. Teresa knows already: The World Changes. Because You Changed.

So you know our family and our domestic church will most positively be celebrating this week the Sainthood of Mother Teresa! It's personal. 

After writing this Post, I wish that our church, or our parish or our Diocese had made so much more out of Blessed Mother Teresa's canonization and her Celebration of her First Year of Sainthood--her First Day as a Saint. After all this, doesn't it seem such a natural, perfect, God-designed plan to have her birth, her death and her Canonization, Sainthood, perfectly timed and wrapped up in all the Back-to-School Season for America! Surely a GIFT. A GIFT! A Gift for us, like the Fruits of the Spirit and the Corporal & Spiritual Works of Mercy and the Beatitudes all in one earthly form--Mother Teresa! Something to truly celebrate as we enter our Autumn Ember Days in both the church and our culture, often a culture of malcontent and toxicity. Don't let it happen! Celebrate the Goodness of all God's Gifts!

Those of us lucky enough to have met Mother Teresa when she was living felt her energy, her passion, her devotion, her disciple, her commitment to her calling in her own earthly life. You would know what I am speaking about. I have since met many people, laypeople and clergy who have indeed, met her, and they speak of the same je n'sais quoi factor that I allude to. It is only astounding to us. It was only much later, after her death, that we read or read her original diaries for ourselves, that like us, she struggled, too. She sacrificed, too. She suffered, too. And, not always, according to her with the Grace & Mercy that others felt from her. Her own interior life in many ways, may have been very much like our own, and certainly, not perfect or even perfectly or simply balanced. It is yet again, another of our own miracles. And, I in good, Great Faith, pass it along to you and your own Domestic Church. There is absolutely no reason why you can't Celebrate this week, this weekend, and again on September 4 and 5 (Mother Teresa's Birthday!) in honour of a Life, well-lived, well-loved, and well-used with a [future] legacy of all of our peaceful, healthy, happy futures both here and in Heaven!

And, this Rogue of the Church (Me!) perhaps challenges our church, parish, and Diocese and all our domestic churches to make this anniversary a more substantial commitment next year and in the years to come.

as always,

fondly in Our Faith,

Cheryl Ahern Dulog

Deflecting Rude Behavior 101 During "Edible Etiquette"

Yesterday, a girlfriend of mine,  mother, a feminist, a career girl turned home school mother (for a season) invited our daughters to attend what she called "An Edible Etiquette". She was the hostess for 12 young ladies ranging in age from nine years old (my youngest) to almost seventeen years old, driving, (her oldest) and every age in-between. It seemed the perfect number and guest list. Some of these girls had never met. Some were just acquaintances. In other words, these were not 'best friends' in the cultural vernacular. Nor did they truly share a common interest (sports, fashion, school, church, fine arts, family, etc.). I'm guessing the hostess carefully controlled the guest list, though. And, it worked. What a delightful afternoon. What delicious time well spent. I won't dwell on the details of the event, just to suffice it to say, it was a teachable moment and learning opportunity for all of us to share proper mealtime etiquette at a dinner party or restaurant from soup to nuts.

I felt it was especially appropriate and timely, because our girls and I have been actively talking about Downton Abbey's (Season 6) dinner table conversations, especially those comments and conversations going around the table between Lord Grantham, the village schoolteacher, Sarah Bunting, and Lord Grantham's Irish by birth, son-in-law, Tom Branson. I might add, how those conversations are affecting, Lady Grantham, her marriage, the Dowager Countess Grantham, Violet, Lady Mary, and don't get me started with the Below Staff Dramas unfolding as a result of these conversations. Dinner table conversations in the manor houses of England in the late 1920s started the conversations to class struggle, educational reforms, child labour laws, emancipation, a Woman's Right to Vote, The Land Acts, Free and Equal Pay equality, so many topics in the conventions of Post-Victorian Society. But, Primarily, we are talking about what classical education prior to 1979 (some say, even before that as early as pre-WWI) used to teach: Joining in and Participating in The Great Conversation. The Blue Print on how to do that. Our girls have been dialoguing back and forth what they think about village schoolteacher, Sarah Bunsing, pursing conversations--whilst worthy--she is going about them in all the wrong ways. And, the havoc that they wreak once baited. Specifically, when one is invited to one's house (manor or hovel), one does not attack, bully or aggressively seek out a wrong. Especially at the host's dinner table when one is 'invited' to sup or dine. Regardless of how, one is 'invited', there are rules of engagement to that dinner table. And, they are, or should be, universal. Not survival of the fittest. One reaches out in love, truth, integrity. One practices and employs one of the Ten Commandments: Love Thy Neighbour As Thyself....it is a journey worth taking and a journey, I fear, my be sadly lost. The Fine Art of Dinner Table Etiquette.

I will follow up that, prior to "Edible Etiquette" 101, our girls have grown up around our dinner table in the European or French way, where every member is respected and expected to pursue the Art of Table Manners. The older two girls regularly attend The Great Dance (a program of social dancing, etiquette and modern day social rules for young ladies and young men ages 11 - 19 alternate Fridays for three or four hours),so they are well-versed in dinner table conversations and etiquette. But, our daughters enjoyed the very real fact that other girls and adult women (who were once girls and perhaps may draw on their own adolescent experiences) may need 'toolbox skills and coping mechanisms' on how to carry on polite, respectful conversations without marginalizing or 'taking down another human being'. That was, I think, their BIG takeaway moment yesterday when the hostess interceded and talked about "Deflecting Rude Behavior" ['without honouring, condoning or supporting it, either,] without the girl allowing herself to be a doormat or becoming a shrew. That is so hard to teach, let alone model (if it's not in place: how can we model the behavior; or more, accurately, if the 'socialization' taking place does not support appropriate behaviors as the majority behavior (there's your classical Greek, Socratic thought carried through to our 21st digital technical age). My friend skillfully wove this thread through the dinner table as seamlessly as she explained the proper etiquette to butter one's bread, so-to-speak--literally--teaching that smearing community butter from any individual's knife directly to the bread and back again and again (crumbs...germs...saliva...unsanitary...disease) is a faux-pas. But, the bigger faux-pas, remains, how we treat each other. And, that was really what the dinner table etiquette was all about for these girls.

Perhaps even more important in our little domestic churches for our tweener and teenage brains, (apologies for succumbing to materialistic, consumer and advertising labels) regardless of gender or role, is to know that it does happen. Rude behavior, does and will happen, every day at every moment. And, Rude Behavior Hurts. Marginalizes. Destroys. Breeds, Fosters...Misunderstandings. Dr. Seuss knew that. He wrote about it when he explained The Butter War in The Butter Battle Book (1984). His theme, similar to the war between Lilliput and Blefusca in my countryman's, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels which was nominally based on the correct end to crack an egg. Butter side up/Butter side down. Really! War? The song, "Butter Side Up" from "Seusical, The Musical", says it all (look it up) about our petty, human squabbles. It's hard to imagine.It's toast, folks. But, if one thinks about it with intention. It's easy to see how a war, or minor skirmish, could and often, does start at the dinner table, especially the dinner table of everyday life. One only needs to come from a family to know that. It is up to each individual to draw the boundary, boundaries, in appropriateness and even harder still, to do so in such a Universal way that is not-offensive to anyone group or individual but respects the whole-hearted human being without regard to other dynamics. And, to teach and do and continue to learn before the Line of Scrimmage is drawn. To take a seat at the table of every Great Conversation and to know before you go, what is expected of you. Not high expectations, as our culture lies to us, but appropriate, right, just, expectations. I don't think, I KNOW, that our hostess accomplished THAT "Little Way"at least for and in our household yesterday. And, it's up to me, as their mother, and my husband, as their father, to carry it out in a logical, consistent, appropriate, lasting way. Day by Day. Because the culture doesn't want whats right for our girls (as Matthew Kelly continually points out). The Culture wants to sell them, us, something. I'm a mom. I Can Do This. I Can Do The Right Thing. Today. At my own dinner table. Everyday. Every day. Every. Day. That's it. That's the secret: Nobody but a family. Nobody but a mother. And, a father, can do THAT. Everyday. Consistently consistent. Consistency. No other institution even can try. And, they secretly know this. Build Me Up Here. Support me./Support Them. 'Cause I need your help. I have little or no support system. No raft. No gondola. Throw me a line. I got Jesus. He's Got me. But, I still need a few good peeps. God's Dream Team. And, believe it or not, it's really not about building me up. It's all about Building Us Up. Together. 'Cause consumer culture wants to make sure they have multiple families to peddle their products. And, around 1979, they decided that they could 'split' a nuclear family, divide it, manipulate and feed the hurt, multiply the hurt, quantify the hurt, and build an algorithm on those wounded, bleeding needs and wants and push their products onto us in massive quantities. 

It helped to know that our girls were not alone. Those rude conversations, inquiries, comments, thoughts, snips, snide remarks are felt by a plethora of people, and NOT JUST THEM PERSONALLY. What to do when it's not about you, kinda things. As STING, Gordon Sumptner, says in one of his lyrics, "You're Never Alone". Those God moments for the atheists and agnostics around us that Sting attempts to capture and lasso  in through pop culture.   And, I have to thank that hostess-with-the-mostest because very often, mothers need other mothers, women need other women, to model that behavior to our own girls.

On Super Bowl Sunday (which we will NOT partake with 40 million people around the globe this year), I pray for the day(s) when we all reach an understanding that competition, worthy competition, has its place, but Cooperation is what builds, strengthens, maintains, and endows, a healthy, firmly planted, rooted whole-hearted human race. You and I have already started the process through our 'little ways' . So let the Dinner Table Games Begin!

United in Christ's Ways

Bridges out of Poverty

Individuals leave poverty for one of four reasons: 1) a goal or vision of something they want to be or have; 2) a situation that is so painful that anything would be better than the current situation being lived 3) someone who "sponsors" them, be it an educator, mentor or role model who they truly believe, 'believes in them', who shows them a different way or convinces them that they can live differently; 4) or a special talent or ability that provides an opportunity for them.

I believe that it is actually harder for people NOT living in poverty to grasp these concepts than those folks currently afflicted by their dire circumstances. They realize, at some point, that these are the only avenues available to them. They painfully realize through trial and error what they truly need and what they truly want. But, increasingly, these avenues are more and more shut out to them because those traditional avenues are no longer available to them in a myriad of reasons and ways in our fast moving, dehumanized, corporate, big brother is watching, technology-driven cutthroat culture.