No Animals Were Harmed in Filming ...

Often in the credits of a movie or TV show we've most likely all seen the statement that no animals were harmed in filming, and for that I am very grateful, especially after watching a black and white classic movie a few years back (no, can't remember the name, but I'll give that some thought) when the actress kept picking up a cute little lap dog type, smacking him/her on the rump and shouting no-no ... made me really sad for the dog, because back in the day I don't think there were any computer graphics or photoshops to imply a smack on the rump. The sweet and vulnerable dog really got several smacks on the rump.

And, I just watched a movie (I'll use that term loosely here) in which I was VERY grateful to be assured no animals were harmed, because even the fake visuals of what was being done to animals disturbed me. Partly because even if no one has ever done what was implied, somebody probably will now because it's a novel and grotesque way to entertain oneself at the expense of the vulnerable.

After days of mulling over what I had seen and heard in that movie - three days of trying to escape the violence against those who are created in the very image of God, and violence against God's creatures great and small, the profane language, the undignified human behavior with one's own body excrement, the gratuitous female nudity during a "serious" conversation of import to the plot (after which conversation most viewers turned to each other to get clear just exactly what had been revealed other than the woman's breasts), and more gunshots and beatings than I can count - I realize another disclaimer at the end of movies and TV shows would please me: no humans were harmed in filming. No human minds were wrongly influenced. No human spirits were dampened. No human aspirations were misguided. No human dignity was lost. No human value was lessened. No human relationships were damaged.

It took me three days after seeing the movie to return to a place of center, and that came during a morning of spiritual reflection and planning of a Bible discussion. Thirty minutes or so of concentration on preparing an hour's worth of scripture - for discussion that edifies and lifts us to look upward toward that which is admirable, that which is worthy, that which is lovely - put me back in the place I want to be.

We must be careful in what we choose to see, what we choose to hear, what we choose to say, what we choose to do, and where we choose to go. Because it all influences us. It all affects us. May we all choose wisely.

According to me ...

1. I now feel awake and ready to do what I've already done today.
2. If I look trim and slim in a mirror, it's the mirror's fault; if I look pudgy and overweight in a mirror, it's the mirror's fault. I never see me in the mirror.
3. Good intentions get a bad rap.
4. Are the pros outweighing the cons? Settle it and live it.
5. I get up before my brain.
6. There are so many chips on my shoulder it's a wonder I can rise up out of the bed in the mornings.
7. It's the gift horse looking us in the mouth.
8. We need to focus on the rest of the stupid.
9. People watch stupid stuff all the time, and we're smarter than stupid.
10. I'm thinking. I have to think before I can talk. Some people think and talk at the same time.
11. Breeding fear is a tool used by the mean-spirited and selfish to accomplish an agenda.
12. Life is not a presentation.
13. The church is an unnatural setting - so is pre-school and middle school and high school - so is a grass lawn.
14. For life to be a vineyard, experience and make choices that benefit the vineyard, not cause its neglect.
15. I would love to loose the bounds of money.
16. Things are not supposed to work in any particular way. They're supposed to work the way they work.
17. There is a new standard that is even higher.
18. Something of almost all of it is in almost all of us.
19. There's not much of nothing anywhere in Istanbul.
20. Our culture is set up for a lot of unnecessary strain.
21. If you were responsible to set up a new world order, where would you start?
22. You said, therefore I thought.
23. Life should be bigger than that!
24. Forget immortality. Let's talk about the budget.
25. There are parts of me (all of us, actually) that it is not right to give indiscriminately to others. 
26. Be yourself. But find yourself first.
27. The concept of "assumption" ought not exist.
28. I'm a funny one.
29. Often we've gotta let go of one thing before we can grab hold of another.
30. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
31. I'm tired of going to where it's not what I came here for.
32. Last is actually first when you turn around.
33. The fact that she is deaf settles his mumbling problem.
34. How many pounds am I away from great?
35. You've got 6 inches of empty "hiney" back there.
36. I believe we have now moved beyond my area of care.
37. When you just get up and go you can be in a different place.
38. Peanuts in a can of peanuts are much more desirable and tasty than the peanuts that are left in the bottom of the can of mixed nuts.
39. That's confidence. Or stupidity.
40. Cheers to hard times! Really.
41. There are a lot of things I know, that I'm glad I know, that I wouldn't know if I hadn't traveled.

Set points are powerful forces. They are the suction cups of life, taking hold and not letting go without the greatest of steady and deliberate attention on our part.

No matter how much weight I gain or lose, I end up back at my set point ... that comfortable place of neither under or too much over, but still too much. Leaving the house in the morning for church, set point of 9:28 when it ought to be 9:15. Money in the bank? Where does it go and why does it return to and hold at that same disturbingly dangerously low balance? The catch all table or counter or dresser top or floor board can be aggressively made orderly ... only to return to a familiar and chaotic set point.

We work diligently on breaking old habits and developing new ones and suddenly and unexpectedly find our return to a habitual way of doing things we thought we'd left behind, just like a messy closet.

Set points in nature are good things - the rise of the sun every morning, the seasons coming and going just so. So why are human set points usually not reflective of our best? Why is it that when left at rest our set points turn flat? Or fat? Or messy? Or irritating?

Why don't undisciplined human set points result in something awesome. Or do they? When there is so much change and chaos in the world, how is it that these set points which we'd like to see change or throw to the wind hold on steady and firm for most of our days?

I Ain't Got the Patience No More

I ain't got the patience no more.

It has been said of me, many times, that I have the proverbial patience of Job. So, what happened that morning, in the car, on the way home from a prayer breakfast, when I said to my husband, "I ain't got the patience no more."

It means I still have the patience of Job with life circumstances that come my way over which I have no control, literal acts of God as one might say, and with others who are experiencing such and striving to make their way through. But, I ain't got the patience no more for attention paid to behaviors, initiatives, conversations and so on and so on and so on and so on that do not move this world and its people to a better place.

I ain't got the patience no more for petty put downs, gossip, disgruntledness, insignificant aggravations, philandering. I ain't got the patience no more with joking that jabs and cuts. I ain't got the patience no more over bitter words from scowly mouths in perfectly created and healthy bodies ... what a waste. I almost ain't even got the patience no more for hopelessness ... though I'll respect it while a person sorts out a loss, or a new direction. But I ain't got the patience no more with whole and resourced lives sitting pitifully desiring ... something, anything they don't have, or trying to kick another person down in order to rise above, or determining that a child with less ought to just have to stay put.

That said, if I am not careful, I am going to end up in a place where I ain't got the patience no more with myself. Gotta always strive to claim all good things observed and invisible, and stay with what matters and makes a difference. Seek joy. Stay encouraged. Convey care. Wear love.

Sheriff Rhonda's Dealin'

Sheriff Rhonda just got called down by the law. It's about time, I guess. Never even had any kind of ticket in my 55 years. But today all that nearly changed ... it didn't fully change because I was let go with a warning in a kind of anticlimactic way after the blue lights and singular siren burp.

If anyone is on the side of the law, I am. Grew up respecting my police officer father more than I can tell you, and learned from that a trust that most law enforcement has the best of intentions under the literal worst of circumstances. I want to do good and what's right. I have no need to buck the rules.

So today's scrutiny came as quite a surprise as I was taking my friend home after an afternoon together. She happens to be a 10 year old African American girl who lives in public housing. We had just spent the past hour together, as we do every Thursday afternoon after school, at a community center where I give her a piano lesson. She's just mastered the left hand of the last piece in Teaching Little Fingers to play. She was humming it on our way to her home.

Upon entering the development where she lives, I turned on my left turn signal - ever always careful to use them properly you see - and started to begin thinking about making the turn when my friend shouted out the window "Momma! There's my momma!" Momma is in a park to my right - my friend shouts to me "Turn right! Turn right!" I follow suit easily, it's a residential section, not much traffic, slow speed, and make the right turn quickly but only after confirming it was not hazardous in any way ... but my left turn signal is still "a-blinking." I am aware of my mistake, but see no harm in it until ...

The officers approach my car, one on either side of me, confess that they "were not following me," point out my mistake, ask to see my license, again say they "were not following me," give me a warning this time and send me on my way.

I have felt conspicuous entering the public housing development where two of my friends live and who I pick up each week for music lessons. Children have begun gathering around my shiny red Volvo, hoping to get in on whatever it is that I am offering. I've seen neighbors watching the old white woman coming in to take the children away (I have parental consent) and I have wondered if I am suspect.

Because they "were not following me" (two officers who were white, just like me), I can't help but wonder if I have been reported, someone different who enters in and interacts with the children. I can't help but wonder if the neighborhood wonders if I am "dealin'" something.

The more I think about it, I realize I am dealin' something with the children. I am dealin' opportunity in the form of relationship and music education. I am dealin' juice boxes and apples. I go where the children are and get them and take them to a place where they get committed relationship to stick with them through school suspensions or bus suspensions, or expulsions, and to get their attention on practice and progress and hope and music for the sake of music. I love seeing them looking at nothing but the music and their fingers on the violin strings or piano keyboard. No one is threatening them. No one is judging them. They relax and focus on something worthy. And they gain from it.

I've heard it asked of gang leaders how they get such support and participation by vulnerable kids. The answer that stands out is "We're there." The gathering around my car, the desire for kids I've never even met begging to "go to violin, too" is proof that these children often go where the "get in the car" is.

I am going to keep being there. Because goodness for the sake of the children has to be there, too.

Please help me understand. I mean it. I am past my rage. Past my shock. Past my disdain. And past my personal offense. Or, at least let's say I'm past all that. For the sake of argument anyway.

But, truly, those of you who get it. Who support her. Those of you who have voted for her and would vote for her again, explain it to me. Explain to me why, when Sarah Palin speaks, the audience not only applauds but stands in ovation. WHY? I want to understand the answer. Why are people not outraged.

Because when I heard her speak just now, of it being the Christmas her husband got the gun and she got the rack I felt betrayed. I was betrayed. Every other woman who has ever lived and suffered because she did or did not have said "rack," or suffered and/or died because of the disease attacking said "rack" was also betrayed on some level. What happens when her rack is compromised? What will she have to say then? Her lack of depth of sensitivity and understanding is mind boggling.

And if I can apologize in some way for her having said it, I cannot apologize for an entire audience leaping in ovation after that comment when she then proceeds to mock the truly damaging effects of a Big Gulp. Of course, banning the Big Gulp seems over the top, but at least there is an effort to send the message that maybe we ought to think (does that happen much anymore?) before fueling our bodies with the stuff. Her message is destroy at will. We have the right to destroy at will. At least the destruction is tasty. And not so painful with a nice rack.

With her presentation a disservice has been done to women. A disservice has been done to children who look for role models. And the whole point of public service is ... well ... service. Not disservice.

So tell me why sucking on a Big Gulp with lips that have been prepped for presentation, why mocking an attempt at weaning ourselves from obesity and diabetes and sugar highs and mocking an attempt at setting a standard for health gets the standing ovation.

Tell me.

Get ready ... brace yourself ...

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I was neither ready nor braced when the search results were up ... all the above are the top five results from a bing search of the word "wife." I had intended to enter the name of a man I had just heard speak in a TED talk who referred to his wife several times, followed by the word "wife." Instead, the way whatever is written in the search window is highlighted when the window is revisited and then deleted when additional typing begins, I ended up unintentionally searching for the singular word "wife."

And, in an instant, the top five webpage results for the word "wife" were splayed across my computer screen. My repsonse? Confusion. Then shock. Then horror. Then anger. Then despair for the condition of the honor of "wife".

I remember from over 30 years ago a comment from a husband to his wife that he wanted her to be "more than a wife." I distinctly remember wondering, silently of course, what that meant. How could a wife be more than a wife unless "wife" implied something less than, something limited, something undesirable. These top websites, with the notable exception of Wikipedia, seem to speak to that syndrome.

A "wife" has been denigrated into a concept of "vulgar," which has been denigrated into a concept of desireable. Dishonor and disregard accomplished. 

Proverbs 12:4a

A good wife is the crown of her husband ...