The "B" Word

“O Lord, how many and varied are Your works! In wisdom have You made them all;” -Ps. 104:24

There were any number of forbidden words in our household when our children were growing up. Most of them, of course, were of the four letter variety. But one word was five letters long and was known as “the B word.” It is one which we can print here and one which some of you might not even find that objectionable. Quite simply, it was any usage of the word, bored. It just seemed to us to be a crime against humanity for any of our children to proclaim themselves bored in a home located in the heart of the United States of America where toys, puzzles, pens, pencils, and paints abound; to say nothing of books by the boxfuls. If that would not suit their fancy, there was always the resident cat and dog accompanied by periodic episodes of hamsters, rabbits, and chickens. Plus, if push came to shove, there were two other siblings present at all times to either join with in cooperative fun or to torment in some fashion or another. In good weather, there was a full acre of grounds to roam, trees to climb, flush with abundant material for fashioning forts, kitchens, or club houses. To claim boredom was to bring the wrath of Khan down upon their heads.

I must confess to having experienced brief times of boredom. Usually it was at the hands of some speaker droning on and on about a topic of no import (“The History of Hats in Medieval Italy”) in a manner that resembled someone reciting all 415 colors in a paint catalog. Yes, the state of boredom is not just an affliction confined to the young. Adults find themselves sometimes trapped in boring jobs, coming home to boring marriages, and even attending boring churches. How much of this is a prison built of drab, colorless walls wherein they are truly trapped, and how much of it is self-inflicted blindness due to their own inability to see the fascinating that lurks within the mundane? That is a complex question with serious spiritual dimensions.

I suspect that the answer lies more with what is going on within us than with what is going on around us. We have been placed in an incredibly fascinating world. Life abounds around us in astonishing variety, both great and small, and in full living color. This is no black and white world (which, in retrospect, would have worked just fine, I suspect). I am continually amazed how life pervades every conceivable corner of our world in the most hostile of environments. I have seen spiders crawling out of holes in snowfields. Miraculously, some forms of algae and bacteria flourish in the Dead Sea. Even in the deepest depths of the ocean, life has been discovered.

The Psalmist exclaims, “O Lord, how many and varied are Your works! …the earth is full of Your riches and Your creatures.” These are the words of someone who has come face to face with the wonder of wonders, an infinite God who sets the universe as His table and yet numbers the hairs on our head and calls us by name. Made in His image, we were meant to live in full appreciation of the vast panoply of wonders imbedded in creation. He calls to us through it, and we are audience to the beauty and complexity of it all. The work of the Holy Spirit surely amplifies God’s voice to us in creation and stirs in us the ability to praise Him “…majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders” (Ex. 15:12). To be obsessed with ourselves is the fountainhead of boredom. To look heavenward is to discover not only who we are but the magnificent stage we stand upon. In the midst of our mindless hours, the key to victory over boredom is to break free of our self pity and look out upon the miraculous that surrounds our every step.

Children, go out and play! Look under rocks, scan the skies, smell the leaves, observe the ants, dig in the earth, unlock the secrets of a seed, and marvel! And in becoming as little children ourselves, we, too, can enter the kingdom where we discover God’s most remarkable world and raise our voice in praise.

Mercy and Truth, Mr. Moe

conflicts and fears

“…Conflicts without, fears within.” -2 Cor. 7:5 NASV

How do you know if you are alive? Besides the obvious, Paul gives a succinct and honest clue as he opened his heart wide to the Corinthians in a very transparent moment. He summed up his present existence with four words, “Conflicts without, fears within.” That little phrase captures so much of human reality. Sounds like life to me. Hopefully your conflicts don’t assume the proportions that Paul experienced as he was chased around the Mediterranean by stone throwing mobs and other unhappy customers. Yet, who among us does not feel the daily tension of conflicting priorities, the demands of our many jobs, and the feedback of differing opinions? And fears? My anxiety closet is never empty. There lurks a thousand assorted beasts of every sort that love to go bump in the night and rattle their chains to let me know they are still there.

If there is some bliss in early childhood, it is the minimal presence of either of these two commodities to any intense degree. There are many childhood tears, but they fade fast and memories heal with amazing speed. Yet, all so soon, children, too, will feel the pinch of daily tensions as they begin to experience life that doesn’t always agree with their preconceptions and self-centered wishes. And fears start to grow like June weeds in the fertile plots of young imaginations.

School presents a liberal dose of both conflicts and fears. Students are roused from their summer doldrums and challenged to do battle with multiplication and algebraic functions, gerunds and participial phrases, Napoleon and the dissolution of European kingdoms, phylums and taxonomic ranks, and all that good stuff. Some take the conflict in stride. Others get snowed under. For all of them, it is work, nevertheless. And then there is that class/peer thing. Others are watching, listening, and always eager to pounce on any excuse for a good laugh. Laughter is so delicious, so wonderful, except when it comes at our expense. Life would be so much simpler if it were not for those “others” who include or exclude, applaud or jeer, appreciate or diminish, love or ignore. Adding to any child’s list of fears are those overheard conversations that echo up hallways in the most sacrosanct refuge for a child, the home. Children can sense when adults are worried, have their moods, or are wrapped up in fears of their own which spill out at times like a glass of overturned milk.

I guess what I am trying to say is that kids are human, too, experiencing conflicts and fears in full measure. Paul rejoices that God comforted him by the coming of Titus who was himself encouraged by the Corinthians. We, as parents, are Titus to our children bringing good news with a personal touch that gladdens the heart. If the Apostle Paul needed a piece of good news and a friendly face in order to bear his trials, how much more our children need this as well. And as the Corinthians encouraged Titus, so we grandparents need to encourage our grown children laboring through the child rearing years. Letters are great and Paul used them to maximum advantage, but the personal presence of Titus did something for Paul that nothing else could match.

In looking back, I ask myself now, “Did I hug my kids enough, or extend a gentle touch (that powerful but under-rated human connection that says so much yet is totally wordless)? Did I pull apart from my own worries and preoccupations enough and invite myself into the quiet rooms of their inner worlds; and once there, offer a listening ear interspersed with words of truth and encouragement?” Paul did not shrink from using emotive words like “beloved” in addressing the Corinthians. Did I tell my kids that they were my beloved and precious ones? Paul corrected his children but then rejoiced when they corrected their course. “Great is my boasting on your behalf” and words to that effect. Did I boast enough of their good choices and let them know it? I wish I could remember more clearly doing so. May you remember unmistakably and have no doubts or regrets.

my space

I am well known to my family and friends as someone who is both glad and despondent over the new media that invests our lives at every point. The invention of word processing was truly an incredible blessing especially for all of us who remember manual typewriters, carbon copies, and white out. E-mail has also been a development that has revolutionized cross country and international communications. I still have a box of daily letters my wife and I exchanged while I was stationed in Korea. A phone call home at that time would have cost a day’s wages. Ham radio operators were the only practical means of communicating with missionaries abroad. For just these two developments alone, I count myself fortunate to have lived to see them. They rank right up there with the telephone, the airplane, and velcro. Yet, the dark side of the new media is with us as well, and we have yet to learn how to cope with it all. We cope, yes, in that life goes on. The struggle comes in determining just how much of our lives we will invest in it and in discovering to what extent it is affecting us for good or ill. These things are not readily apparent and take time to analyze.

I tremble, tip toeing where angels fear to tread, in challenging some conventional thinking regarding the social websites and the place they have come to occupy especially in the lives of our children. I have caught a glimpse or two into the world of adolescent ‘face-booking’ and have not been comforted. I had a hard time discerning the difference between it and the silly notes we used to pass in class in elementary school except that these are high tech in full color with photos. So, is that so bad? I had to think on that one. Obviously, the potential for cyber-bullying is incredible for ruining a reputation with a photo, rumor, or a total lie. None of us, I would hope, would allow our children to participate in this whole social networking thing unmonitored nor permit them to participate in cyber-assassination in any shape or form. This is not where my struggle is.

I am concerned about good kids just being their silly selves and having access to such a powerful interactive tool. Why? I am worried on two counts. First of all, both myspace and facebook require that all participants be 13 years of age or older. I suspect that I would be a rich man if I had a dollar for every less-than-thirteen year old with a myspace account. We need to re-examine our commitments to honesty and forthrightness if we are aiding and abetting access to these social network sites by our children. If these sites were as free of peril that some Christians might imagine, we should ask ourselves why it is that a purely secular company has put such age restrictions in place. It is a direct contradiction of our River’s Edge priorities to enable or allow our underage students to practice deception of this kind.

Secondly, I fear the propensity of on-line socializing to widen the chasm that separates teens from adult society. We know that given enough time and opportunity, teens will create their own sub-culture apart from the real world. What we now talk of as the “teen culture” is a relatively new phenomena that came about in the 1950s as a result of greater leisure time, increased prosperity, and the growing media. The markets picked up on the disposable income in the pockets of teenagers, and they became a target focusing on their interests and fads.

I would ask myself as a parent if I want to facilitate this social isolation which only seems to serve up in spades the most banal of adolescent dialogue. Scripture says that foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. I am still discovering pockets of it tucked away in the nooks and crannies of my life. Anytime we allow children to pull apart and set up their own community unmolested by adult values, we should not expect much. At worst, we can look to “The Lord of the Flies” to see what can happen. And marvel not at the abilities of teens to speak in code, a new language safe from adult interception. Do you really know what your kids are saying?

Dignity II

“Whosoever shall receive one of such little children in my name, receiveth me” -ASV Mark 9:37

I love the song, “Plant a Radish,” from the 1960 Schmidt and Jones musical, “The Fantastics.” It is the plaintive cry of a gardening father who has great luck with vegetables but not so much with children.

Plant a radish.
Get a radish.
Never any doubt.
That's why I love vegetables;
You know what you're about!

They're dependable!
They're befriendable!
They're the best pal a parent's ever known!
While with children,
It's bewilderin'.
You don't know until the seed is nearly grown
Just what you've sown.

So plant a carrot,
Get a carrot,
Not a Brussels sprout.
That's why I love vegetables.
You know what you're about!

Life is merry,
If it's very
Vegetarian!
A man who plants a garden
Is a very happy man!

Plant a beanstalk.
Get a beanstalk.
Just the same as Jack.
Then if you don't like it,
You can always take it back!

But if your issue
Doesn't kiss you,
Then I wish you luck.
For once you've planted children,
You're absolutely stuck!

While the spirit of this song is very light hearted and centers on the whimsical years of adolescence, the actual reality of this truth can stretch one to the limits of despair. I have a nephew-in-law in prison for manslaughter right now. He has broken his mother’s Christian heart innumerable times and one has to ponder the why of it even though there were some obvious cross currents in his life involving a broken home and an alcoholic father. But even the finest of families produce the most curious anomalies that perplex us all. One child is the model of responsibility while the next is totally forgetful and oblivious to all that is around him. One has all the gifts of an academic scholar and the other is intrigued only by machines and grease. One will cherish all the home making arts while another has no love whatsoever for anything domestic.

We are content for the most part with this reproductive lottery when it comes to the skills, interests, and abilities of our children. It is quite another thing, however, when we all of a sudden realize that our child is severely limited in intelligence, personality, or by a physical abnormality. Life all of a sudden can turn into a grinding test of faith and love when we realize that one of our children is not the child we had in mind.

Not long ago, I recall talking in the same week with two sets of parents sharing a similar though divergent problem. One set of parents had discovered that they had a very gifted child on their hands, a child that read at a level far beyond his years and who was totally bored with the school work his peers found challenging. Yet, he was emotionally right on grade level in terms of personal maturity. The other parents had discovered that their child was not just developmentally delayed but actually tested out at a very low I.Q level. Both children, as a result, would present constant and on-going challenges to their parents. Neither family asked for or necessarily would have even chosen either of these characteristics if they had had a choice. But God clothes both in equal dignity that recognizes no difference. In fact, it is the weak among us who define our humanity best and contribute greatly in that regard. Jesus chose to associate with low life, children, and even lunatics demonstrating how God uses the simple things to confound the wise. Our challenge is to see each of our children as equally valued in the sight of God regardless of ability, stature, or charm. Our children need to see that in each other.

Completely Loved

“Henceforth I call you not servants; … but I have called you friends;” -John 15:15

A visit to Mrs. Miller’s 4^th gr. class was on my agenda the other week, and so I went to just observe and be as unobtrusive as possible. Before I could enter the room, however, a display of student work on the door arrested my attention and held me riveted by what I began to read. It was just one of those simple fill-in-the-blank exercises that elementary teachers use to get to know their students and elicit some creative expression. Under a photo of themselves, students filled in the blanks with statements about themselves that ranged from the humorous to the profound. A girl wrote: The important thing about me is that I love God. I love my family and my friends. I love my enemies but not working outside on a very hot day. Oh, that all of us found loving our enemies preferable over working outside on a very hot day. Wow! Another wrote: I like ice cream and vegetables but not mold! The most important think about me is I love Jesus, the Christ. Without a doubt, this most important thing is the most important thing. May we do as well to remember.

While these stabbed me to the heart (all the while standing there with a door half opened), one response brought tears to my soul that came close to seeping out the eyes. A girl wrote: The important thing about me is just being me! I like school so much! I like school because my teacher is fun, and my classmates are all great! I also like all the subjects – they are very fun but not English as much. I also like doing cartwheels (a lot) and playing with my sister! I think we play well together. But the most important thing about me is that I am completely loved, completely accepted, and completely significant!!!

I stood there stunned that any 4^th grader would be able to say that they were completely loved, completely accepted, and completely significant at that tender age. I wanted to file a letter of complaint against my upbringing and bring suit against all involved because I was never able to say any such thing let alone be able to even spell those words. How many of us could simply sit in wonder at how we might have matured, how different things might have been, and what results might have followed had we been able to say in 4^th grade, I am completely loved, completely accepted, and completely significant.

My first suspicion upon further reflection was that the parents had coached their daughter on what to say. And so I interviewed them over the phone trying to ascertain the source of these words that had so gripped my imagination. No, there was no dictation involved. The student had freely transcribed these stirring sentiments on her own. But there had been a conscious and deliberate pouring into this young heart a series of devotions taken from God’s word that underlined these very things. Though I am sure that these parents had invested much of their time in giving their children a sense of their own love and acceptance, in the end it is the Scriptures that brings the deepest and most satisfying answer to the child’s heart. For every child instinctively knows that there are secrets and closets within each of us that are known only to God. Parental love is important, but God’s love is even more important because he knows us, oh, so intimately. Once God’s love is grasped and accepted, we are free to love one another as witnessed by the positive words of affirmation towards all of life throughout this young girl’s responses.

It is my prayer that all our students may come to the full knowledge of our standing with God, the creator of heaven and earth, who stoops and deigns to call us, “friend.” Nothing shows the need more than a recent survey of Knox Co. middle school students which revealed that 17% of them had considered killing themselves, 12% had made a plan, and 7% had made an attempt. How desperate the need.

Thus is the man blessed who fears the LORD. Your sons will be like olive shoots around your table. NIV Psalms 128:3-4

The kindergarten teachers along with Krista Allison put together a royal kindergarten graduation ceremony on Monday evening. Running a little late from the events of the day, I arrived to discover the auditorium filled with parents, siblings, and proud grandparents. It was hard to sneak in unobtrusively especially when you are taking part in the program.

The students did what they did best, looking “cuter than a puppy under a little red wagon on Sunday,” as Tennessee Ernie Ford used to say. As each student had their moment in the spotlight, I could hear the murmured sighs of joy coming from one family and then the next. The slide show was melting hearts right and left as images of innocence paraded by. Any number of tissues were consumed during the evening as all bore witness to a year of spectacular growth and change in these young children. If nothing else, the evening highlighted what a treasure each little life represented and how it was such an honor and privilege to have shared in one year’s life of a child. And to see your children awake from your dreams is a feeling only a parent knows. The cameras were rolling and a ton of digital images were preserving the moment.

Of course, these were the very same children that barely a few months ago had so provoked their parents that they were tempted to pinch their little heads off. Moms and dads were squaring off and telling each other to do something about THEIR offspring, blaming each others genes for any and all behavioral problems.

Now that is family life for you: proud as punch one day and ready to rip an arm off to beat someone over the head with it the next. But time has a way of smoothing out the bumps, and when we stand back and get a glimpse of the big picture, we are amazed at what God had done and is doing through it all. We are participating in the very act of creation, growth, life, and blessing. For every one inconvenience, late night sickness, broken lamp, or scene of public embarrassment our children bring, we stand amazed at the grace that takes us through it all. Growing up is not a neat and clean affair. But it is powerful as we see it bring into being a story all its own, one that has never been told before since the beginning of time. And we were there.

So it is looking back on this year as an administrator. Life in the CFC family was not always neat nor clean and sometimes even downright messy and painful. Yet there was life, pulsing, moving, growing, learning, and always riddled with some laughter along the way. As I reflect, I, too, will grasp and hold the beauty of it all as we participated in the mystery of one year in the life of a child, times 150. Yes, there were tears, scuffed knees, failed tests, notes home, and even a conference or two. But stepping back to sense the big picture, I celebrate on this day a year of school busting out with life and the promise of more growth to come. My cameras are rolling. I am murmuring pride at all that these students are becoming. And, yes, I am proud to know that I and all those who labor alongside of me had just a little something to do with it all. I will keep my tissues hidden, but you will see them if you look closely. Thanks for letting us participate in the lives of your children. What a privilege.

Young Love

“A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” Proverbs 17:17 KJV

Valentine’s Day is upon us men once again. I took some boys aside the other day and tried to warn them about this nefarious minefield that is a hazard to all men, both young and old, single or married. Valentine’s Day is officially banned and illegal in some or most Muslim countries, a fact that affords in my more cynical moments my first twinge of empathy with Islamic culture. It seems they cannot abide any demonstration of romantic interest and or even the public intermingling of the sexes. Muslim men are thereby released by rule of law from all the inherent dangers of not bringing home the right combination of flowers, cards, and candy to their wives or girlfriends (or both). Hmmm!

Valentine’s Day just seems to get us men in trouble no matter what we do. If we spend too little, we are cheapskates. If we spend too much, we are profligate. If we ignore it altogether, we are toast. But for our young and single colleagues, the stakes are even higher. There is this insufferable madness that comes over young males at this time of year that says if we will just make our secret love known, it will be requited. Somehow all those heart shaped candies and little red bears, bouquets of roses and unabashed balloons, all speak to us in a moment of weakness and say, “I dare you to send me to your covert crush.” And we, like sheep to the slaughter, line up at drugstores and mega-marts to purchase these far from manly items and send them off with Marine like bravery seen only in times of war when soldiers storm ashore in reckless abandon for life or limb. The end result is a mixed bag of success and disaster with crushed and bleeding egos strewn about as hearts and affections are as often rebuffed as not.

The fever strikes at an early age. Cupids arrow starts its work for sure by 5th grade as some of our boys all of a sudden wake up to the fact that not all girls have cooties. And we just happen to have a fine collection of young ladies at hand to stand for that. So what advice do you give to your young man who finds himself smitten for the first time? First of all, I will if at all possible congratulate him for his good taste. It is never too early to affirm the Godly values you wish to see in a future mate. Secondly, my advice to our young men was that the worst thing in the world for you to do would be to tell this certain young lady that you were in love with them or single them out for an ostentatious show of valentine foo-fraw. I got a few ‘amens’ on this and could see that some had been primed already. I assured the boys that young ladies who receive such misguided attention will usually run in the opposite direction. Those whose heads are easily turned by such a display will usually end up getting a talk from mom.

At this young age, it is enough of a challenge to be able to talk with the opposite sex in a way that is non-threatening. Having friends that are girls is an art for any boy (and vice versa) and one that requires all the years of middle school and high school to perfect. For Eros to truly bloom, the other person must feel comfortable and safe in the presence of any admirer. And the safest place to learn this skill is in a group situation. Pairing off at an early age is like a two person ocean crossing: fraught with all sorts of danger. My advice for boys on Valentine’s Day is to make all the young ladies in their class feel special. They will end up looking like heroes.

My most serious word to young romantics is that they will very likely retain and treasure the same-sex friendships they make through the grammar school years, but only in the most rare cases will they marry a childhood sweetheart. It seems logical then as to where to put one’s most serious efforts.

Childhood Revived

It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter. Proverbs 25:2 KJV

I promised last week that I would review a book that I awarded my “Stocking Stuffer of the Year Award” as my pick for “best gift of Christmas, 2008.” It is The Daring Book for Girls by Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz.* It is an all encompassing book of everything you ever wanted to know about as a pre-teen girl but didn’t know how to ask. In one volume, your young ladies can find out about pressing flowers, how to whistle with two fingers, double Dutch jump rope (complete with rhymes), how to negotiate a salary, bird watching, how to make a stink bomb, reading tide charts, snowballs, and Abigail Adams’ letters to John Adams. I was fascinated with the wealth of eye-opening information it contained about both the off-beat and the profound.

It took me back to my childhood when, as a boy of 8 & 9, my family lived in one of those old two-story, four bedroom homes that, to my delight, had a full basement and a full standup, walk-in attic. It was the basement and attic that drew me like a magnet on Saturdays and summer days as I indulged a strong sense of curiosity. The basement contained my brother’s hamster cages and my dad’s workshop where I made my first woodworking project, a small boat modeled after the large iron ore cruisers on the Great Lakes. I still have it.

The attic was where I discovered a fully illustrated, hard-bound edition of Gulliver’s Travels, a ready adventure for any slow afternoon. There was also a box of old National Geographics that took me around the world. But ever fascinating was the old, stand-up radio that stood facing the top of the stairs. It had a large, green eye at the top of the circular dial which lit up whenever the set was turned on. There, at the turn of a knob, were various wavelengths that advertised such exotic locations as Moscow, London, and Tokyo. I would spend hours scanning the airwaves and reading into even the most obscure static evidence of life on other continents. Those were magical days spent in stuffy attics or cruising the neighborhood on a beat up wagon, conquering the kingdoms of vacant lots, building clubhouses, or taking off on 2-3 mile walks downtown with my buddies to cruise the pet shop, model store, and ride the elevator at the five & dime.

I identify completely with the following introduction to the Daring book:

We were girls in the days before the Web, cell phones, or even voicemail. Telephones had cords and were dialed by, well, actually dialing. We listened to
records and cassette tapes—we were practically grown-ups before CDs came to pass—and more often than not, we did daring things like walk to school by ourselves. Ride our banana-seat bikes to the local store. Babysit when we were still young enough to be babysat ourselves. Spent hours on our own, playing hopscotch or tetherball, building a fort in our rooms, or turning our suburban neighborhood into the perfect setting for covert ops, impromptu ball games, and imaginary medieval kingdoms.

Girls today are girls of the twenty-first century, with email accounts, digital cable, iPods, and complex video games. Their childhood is in many ways much cooler than ours—what we would have given for a remote control, a rock-climbing wall, or video chatting! In other ways, though, girlhood today has become high-pressured and competitive, and girls are inducted into grownup-hood sooner, becoming tweens and teens and adult women before their time.

In the face of all this pressure, we present stories and projects galore, drawn from the vastness of history, the wealth of girl knowledge, the breadth of sport, and the great outdoors. Consider the Daring Book for Girls a book of possibilities and ideas for filling a day with adventure, imagination—and fun. The world is bigger than you can imagine, and its yours for the exploring—if you dare. Bon voyage.

Yes, thankfully, there is The Dangerous Book for Boys which is the male equivalent. I have not seen it, but the introduction promises much the same from authors Conn and Hal Iggulden:

Boyhood is all about curiosity, and men and boys can enjoy stories of Scott of the Antarctic and Joe Simpson in “Touching the Void” as much as they can raid a shed for the bits to make an electromagnet, or grow a crystal, build a go-cart, and learn how to find north in the dark. You'll find famous battles in these pages, insects and dinosaurs—as well as essential Shakespeare quotes, how to cut flint heads for a bow and arrow, and instructions on making the best paper airplane in the world. How do latitude and longitude work? How do you make secret ink, or send the cipher that Julius Caesar used with his generals?

You'll find the answers inside. It was written by two men who would have given away the cat to get this book when they were young. It wasn't a particularly nice cat. Why did we write it now? Because these things are important still and we wished we knew them better. There are few things as satisfying as tying a decent bowline knot when someone needs a loop, or simply knowing what happened at Gettysburg and the Aamo. The tales must be told and retold, or the memories slowly die.

There are a couple of pages you will probably wish to excise with a razor blade before giving them into the hands of your children. Palm reading and Yoga are not something we wish to perpetuate, but the overwhelming majority is wholesome and exciting. You will need to read through yourself to check for content, but that will not be a hard job as you will find it telling all the stuff you wish you had known in 3rd grade. You can learn more about these books at http://www.daringbookforgirls.com/ and http://www.dangerousbookforboys.com/. The Walters family already has both books and Vashti adds:

"The Daring Book will make you long for rainy days! It was a birthday gift to our third grade daughter, Amelia, last year, and it instantly became a treasured resource. Together we've learned how to make the 'Coolest Paper Airplane Ever,' tried one of 'Three Silly Pranks,' and are longing to soon put the chapter on 'Snowballs' to good use! When asked what her favorite part of the book was, Amelia told me about a 'very pretty poem' and showed me the page. I read with new eyes, 'A Bird Came Down the Walk' by Emily Dickinson. It is such an unusual wealth of information all in one very nice hard-bound book. We gave our son the companion book for boys this Christmas and although we have not finished reading the entire book, it promises to be just as wholesome and enjoyable."

*Harper Collins, 2007, sell for @ $18.00 each on Amazon.com

young stories

Barbara Walters has a new book out entitled, Audition; a story of her life. In it she makes one statement about her famous interviews over the years that reveal one of her strategies. She always makes it a point to inquire about the subject’s childhood for she feels that much of our life is shaped by our young and growing up years. For herself, she tells how she was raised in a somewhat dysfunctional home where her parents’ marriage was weak and, at one point, extremely tenuous. Her father was seldom home due to a successful career managing nightclubs that sometimes brought her into contact with the rich and famous. She had a special-needs older sister for whom she felt a keen responsibility. She developed some negotiating skills just holding this family together. It was not an easy life as one might suspect.

I’ve been reading a book, Makers of the Modern World, by Louis Untermeyer, which fills in some short periods of solitude with quick reads regarding the various movers and shakers of our modern age from Herman Melville to Karl Marx to Mary Baker Eddy. I find that it is richly informing the way I view these famous personages.

Melville suffered a traumatic change of familial circumstances around age 11 when his father’s business failed. Never recovering from this reverse, the father became physically and mentally ill eventually dying of a stroke while in his forties. Herman struggled to finish school, tried his hand at teaching, and finally signed up as a cabin boy at age 20 on a ship headed for Liverpool. It was here that he became enthralled and repelled by a life at sea. Another trip in 1841 took him on board a whaling ship which he later declared to be his Yale College and his Harvard. Jumping ship at a tropical waypoint, he lived among cannibals for a while until escaping to another whaling ship, suffered through a full mutiny, and ended up joining the U.S. Navy. At age 25, he finally headed home to live with his mother and began to write. At age 31, he began his masterpiece, Moby Dick, and went on to live a life of relative obscurity, financial hardship, and general unhappiness.

Walt Whitman was the 2nd of nine children born to a country carpenter and illiterate mother, a family distinguished only in fruitlessness. His schooling was over at age 11 and at age 12, he was a printer’s apprentice and soon migrated into newspaper work. His early writing was described as “turgid” and “lurid” and his poetry even worse. He turned out hackwork and bounced around from job to job. Finally, at age 35, his experimentations with free verse took root, and he came out with his first version of “Leaves of Grass.” He cultivated a new image of the common man and battled poor reviews with his own self-promotion. Critics called his poetry a “mass of bombast, egotism, vulgarity, and nonsense.” They equated him with “some escaped lunatic raving in pitiable delirium.” Whitman redeemed his image through service as a nurse during the civil war, but soon fell into old age riddled by poverty and illness; living out his last days in a dingy room next to a railway crossing, kept alive by the charity of others.

These stories make me want to go back and pick up their writings and read them through entirely new lenses. Everyone has a story, and it has in large part shaped the person they have become. I rejoice at the happy childhoods I see around me everyday for these will be the solid ones when others are losing their way. Take time to share your story with them so that they, too, will see you as more than just “mom” and just “dad.” It will bond them closer to you and help them understand much for knowing your journey.

Manchester

“When I was my father’s son,…he also taught me, and said to me…” –Pro. 4:3-4

One of my 25 cent books from the Friends of the Library sale grabbed my attention and imagination last week and ended up to be an engrossing read. Goodbye, Darkness is a memoir of the Pacific campaign during WWII by William Manchester, an author I had grown to admire for his biography of Douglas MacArthur. In the 1970’s, Manchester revisited the places he had gone ashore in battle against the Japanese as a young Marine. It was on Tarawa, known to many as “Terrible Tarawa,” that he pondered as to where the courage, dedication, and steely discipline came from as he recounted how wave after wave of U.S.Marines suffered terrible casualties in taking that small but well fortified island. His conclusions staggered me especially as they came from a man who was not naturally inclined to patriotic flag waving or righteous grandstanding.

He had to admit that the America of WWII was different from that of today, and there was no way of understanding the way its sons threw down their lives so willingly and almost carelessly without understanding the culture of that time. He describes the United States of pre-WWII as a tightly disciplined society with rigid standards and where “counterculture” did not exist as either a word or a concept. And here is the lengthy quote which came so unexpectedly:

“The bastion of social stability was the family. Children were guided, not by radar beams picking up trends and directions from other children, but by gyroscopes built into their superegos at home. Parents had a tremendous influence on them. If adolescents wanted to read pulp magazines, or smoke, or listen to Ben Bernie or the Lucky Strike Hit Parade on the radio, they needed parental permission; if they wanted to see ‘The Philadelphia Story,’ their fathers decided whether or not it would be bad for their morals; if they made money shoveling snow or cutting lawns, their fathers, again, told them whether they should save it for college, or, if it was to be spent, what they could buy. There was no teenage ethos; indeed ‘teenage’ meant ‘brushwood used for fences and hedges.’ Young people were called ‘youngsters,’ and since the brooding omnipotence of the peer group had not yet arrived, children rarely felt any conflict between their friends and their families. No youngster would dream of discussing familial conflicts with other youngsters. An insult to either parent had to be avenged. …Fathers had always ruled like sultans, but the Depression had increased all family activities over which patresfamilias reigned; a study of over a hundred families in Pittsburgh discovered that a majority had increased family recreation – Ping Pong, jigsaw puzzles, checkers, bridge, and parlor games, notably Monopoly. There was also plenty of time for the householders, the doughboys of 1918, to explain to their sons the indissoluble relationship between virility and valor.” (p. 247, copyright 1979; Little, Brown & Co.)

There; a long quote but one which so many of you should find encouraging. I see you doing these very things today; instilling those “gyroscopes,” attempting to shield your children from the “brooding omnipotence” of modern teen culture, instilling “absolute” notions of truth and morality, and keeping your families together at all costs. Some of you may have thought you were alone and bordering on the bizarre. Take heart. You stand in the grand tradition of those who raised what Tom Brokaw has labeled “The Greatest Generation.” I grow increasingly impressed with what those young men did who pushed back the forces of evil in WWII at such great expense. I have high hopes for our young people, as well, in standing against the Evil One who comes to kill, to steal, and to destroy. Keep up your good work.

Prosperity

"By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life.” –Pro. 22:4

Last week I left you with a question to ponder: what does the inclination of humans to forget God in the midst of prosperity have to do with families and children? One answer can be found in a book entitled, The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids (HarperCollins) written by Madeline Levine, a practicing psychologist in Northern California. Her target study group were families enjoying 6 figure incomes, but what she learned is applicable to all. She discovered that: a) 30 to 40 % of affluent teens experience significant emotional problems (3 times the national average), b) depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse and psychosomatic disorders are higher among affluent teens than among teens in any other socioeconomic group, and c) affluent kids feel less close to their parents than any other group of teens. Levine concluded that these parents are trying to fill their children with the wrong things – material goods, super achievement, worldly success, and status. At the same time, the importance of values, character, unconditional love, and a work ethic are neglected or short-changed.

Betsy Hart, who reviewed the book (News-Sent. 1-26-08), argues that “too many of our kids have been abandoned to a secular culture and have little or no transcendent spiritual values being imparted to them.”Both highlight the need for balancing the need for academic achievement with the experience of success and satisfaction that comes from being a contributing member of the family group and acquiring a strong work ethic. The inference is that instead of a steady diet of soccer, violin lessons, ballet, and little league all on top of honor-roll level homework, there should first be a substantial portion of taking out the garbage, digging flower beds, washing dogs, vacuuming under furniture, and mowing lawns. From these things, they learn the value of good deeds, the ability to cooperate and be a contributing member of a group, and the accumulation of daily living skills.

There was a day when I did not look so kindly on those ideals. My experience growing up on a farm included any number of daily chores many of which I found highly odious. But we knew that our living was directly tied to the strength of Dad’s back and Mom’s arms. To not assist them would be nothing short of criminal. And when the barn was filled with hay at the end of a summer and when the corn cribs bulged, there was a sense of pride, satisfaction, and security that touched even my often dulled, teen-aged mind. I also learned how adversity could be overcome every time the decrepit old, family hay-baler broke down in the middle of the field. Dad found a way to fix it even if it took the rest of the day and several trips to town. We learned to endure adversity when the market prices plummeted. And we learned to share the joys of fresh strawberries in season topped with mountains of whipped cream from the milk of our own cow, the same cow I herded up from the fields every day after school.

I am always thrilled when I see our CFC families working together as teams, where each child lends a hand in some capacity or another. It is a valuable part of their education. Levine backs you up on this but also stresses letting kids work through frustrations and adversity instead of us constantly solving all their problems for them. Add to this a lesson in letting them know that parents have needs, too. But above all, love the kids you have, not the ones you are trying to create. In so doing, we can avoid the traps created by excessive prosperity. No, affluent kids do not have it all. And we certainly do not need to emulate their dysfunctions. Work, teamwork, affection, life skills, adversity, and eternal values are time tested ways to remove the poison from the prosperity in which we stand knee-deep.

dogs

“Correct your son, and he will give you rest…(and) delight to your soul.” - Pro. 29:17

I had the pleasure of making two new friends this last weekend. Completely friendly and entertaining, they accompanied me on a camping trip into the heart of the Big South Fork wilderness. As I got to know them, as one naturally soon does with spending a little trail time together, I came to have a deep admiration for the boundless joy that these two showed in embracing the outdoors but also their sense of restraint for the boundaries of others. They didn’t say a lot, but they were well mannered individuals that quickly warmed up to complete strangers. Their names were a bit odd, Sidney and Indy, but they shared the cold, the stream crossings, and the hard ground with not a word of complaint. It was all great fun to them, especially when the scent of a bird crossed their path or when told to fetch a branch or a pug thrown into the woods. They were dogs, after all; Sidney the black lab and Indy, the short-haired pointer.

The two had been carefully chosen as pups by my two separate friends and each reared with careful training for a specific purpose in mind. Sidney was becoming the skilled retriever that a duck hunter depends upon. Indy was being groomed as a bird-hunting dog. Each had been the object of countless hours of careful training by their masters. I was amazed to see them come on command, heel, and lay down at just a single word. Sidney would obediently watch as her pug was thrown into the woods beyond a stream. She waited until the word was given to retrieve. Then she bounded up and brought back her “prey” until told to sit on the other side of the stream. She sat picture-perfect still with the pug in her mouth. On command, she returned the rest of the way and “held” the pug gently in her mouth until given the command to “give.” In camp, each of the dogs would lay obediently on the ground in their assigned positions if they got too carried away by frisky play. At the word “kennel,” they would go back to their respective tents and await further instructions.

I was intrigued by the devotion, obedience, and joy which these man and dog teams exhibited. Questioning revealed the training involved. The effort was considerable. I, being the grandfather, immediately challenged them to exercise similar effort and care in raising their future children. They admitted that it was great preparation. Indeed. There were things to be learned here. They had done many of the right things. Sidney’s owner told of seeking out help from someone who had knowledge and experience in training. Ahh! Lesson number one. When raising sons and daughters, it is wise to not go-it-alone but to seek out the counsel of others who can speak from wisdom and experience. Smart.

What he was told was that there were three things to remember in any training program: care, calm, and consistency. Not bad words to remember in the raising of children, I thought. Care – that tangible and unqualified expression of love and concern for the child that is clearly expressed in countless ways. Calm – that disciplined sense of self-control that communicates order, steadiness, and self-assurance. Consistency – that day after day evenness that produces reliable expectations and uniformity of results.

I also saw these animals imbued with a sense of purpose and given the skills to accomplish these ends. We can’t order up children according to a desired propensity, but we can awake in them a sense of purpose in the grand scheme of the kingdom of God, help them discover their individual giftedness, and equip them for a productive life. The result: great teamwork of parent and child where each becomes a joy to the other and a pleasure to behold. The things you learn on camping trips!

Differences

“let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” –Gal. 6:9

Part of my job that I really enjoy is getting to watch the infinite variety of children in our school. As people, we have much in common: our humanity, our homo sapien-ness, our biological make-up that makes medical books possible. But leaving that behind, we are as different as snowflakes. Even within the same family, it does not take long before parents begin questioning the origins of their offspring. “How could this child have sprung from our loins?”

I see ‘bouncy tiggers’ that were born into sedate homes. Intellectual types give birth to athletes. A musician emerges from a non-musical family. I marveled the other day at the flexibility of a youngster who could not sit in a chair without sitting on one foot or the other or both. It was as natural and compulsive as could be for this bright student while everyone else sat in comfortable conformity. To force either the one or the group at large to exchange their posture for the other would be excruciating torture.

I watched a young boy work a math sheet the other day and his rate of speed was exceedingly slow. It made an expediter like myself want to grab the pencil from him and race across the page. The teacher assured me that he was bright and fully able to handle all his math facts. But he was never one to be in a hurry. That can be so frustrating to parents who like to move quickly, racing from one job to the next.

One parent has commented repeatedly how one of their two children will quickly report any infraction of the rules he may have committed while the other one is impetuously breaking the rules and quite willing to cover it up. The one is a dedicated, task-oriented, first-born people pleaser. The other is a free spirit that soars quite often into places it should not go, fearless of the consequences.

The moral is that we cannot be held responsible for the children we bring into the world in any sense of personality, ability, temperament, or handicap. They are who they are. Some will write with perfect script from day one and others will fight legibility issues all their lives. Some will never be able to dribble a basketball and others exhibit the skill with no coaching whatsoever. The variety and genetic surprises are never-ending.

While we cannot control who they are from birth, we can shape their character. In fact, that is one thing which often characterizes a whole family. Your kids may all exhibit different giftedness, but I am always impressed by the character that children mimic in the same home. That kind of talk always makes parents nervous for they well know that their children are fully capable of embarrassing the family name at any one point in time. I have stories to tell as well as anyone. But to know your families over time, to be with your children day after day, to see them struggle and triumph in little different ways, I am pleased to say, is to see Godly homes and young lives being carefully built, line upon line, stone upon stone.

I grieve when I see beautiful and gifted children crash and burn as young adults for lack of Godly character. And I marvel at seeing children who are average in every way go on to build solid and productive lives because of the Christ-like character formed within them. The secret is not in the cards we are dealt but how we play them. Trite truth? Perhaps, but it is also a fountain of hope for all because the race is not to the swift, or the beautiful, or the rich and famous. Keep up the good work.

No Child Left Inside

“But whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented.” - Matthew 11:16-17

In speaking to the people of his day, Jesus pulled up an image well known to every adult person: that of children role-playing in the streets, acting out and mimicking adult behaviors in group situations. Way before Fischer-Price or Sony Play Stations, child’s play involved other children and the great outdoors. It was the privilege and passion of children to run the neighborhood streets, walkways, yards, driveways, bushes, and vacant lots. Who would even want them in the house?

Not yet 5 years old in 1863, Theodore Roosevelt’s family moved to the countryside for the summer where this future president discovered “the ‘enthralling pleasures’ of building wigwams in the woods, gathering hickory nuts and apples, hunting frogs, haying and harvesting, and scampering barefoot down long, leafy lanes.” “Teedie,” as he was nicknamed, soon became the leader of the children’s play and improvised countless stories. His sister, Corinne recalled tales “about jungles and bold, mighty and imaginary fights with strange beasts . . . there was always a small boy in the stories . . . who understood the language of animals and would translate their opinions to us.” At the age of nine, ‘Teedie’ began the Roosevelt Museum of Natural History out of his bedroom and back hall. The washer-woman complained, “How can I do the laundry with a snapping turtle tied to the legs of the sink?” The good-natured cook declared, “Either I leave or the woodchuck does!” referring to a carcass she was ordered to boil for 24 hours.*

All of this child’s play has become an endangered species today and verges on extinction. Central heat and air brings blessed relief from the heat but imprisons us within our houses. Scenes of neighborhood children romping through backyards and playing under trees have all but disappeared. My memories of neighbors gathering in the cool of an outdoor shade tree around the ubiquitous back-yard swing are very distant. My congressman included a concern about “indoor children” in his newsletter. Seems that the Washington Post has run a lengthy article reporting both the physical and mental problems that come when young people spend too much time staring at TV screens or playing video games. “Concerns about long-term consequences affecting emotional well-being, physical health, learning disabilities, and environmental consequences—have spawned a national movement to ‘leave no child inside.’” This has even become the subject of some Capitol Hill and state legislative hearings.

Our children’s clubhouse sits idle now, a nesting place for spiders and junk. But our kids have many fond memories of tea parties downstairs, walnut wars fought from upstairs, trips down the fire pole, and campouts in the loft. It was a kid-magnet for the neighborhood, a launching pad for friendships and adventures, and headquarters for plots and counter-plots. Of course, the near-by overgrown lot was also a real plus. It became riddled with trails and foxholes where many a battle was waged against the forces of evil. All of this was horribly unsafe, of course. Who knows what creatures inhabited the woods though I think they all evacuated quickly at the sound of children. And the Nord-mobile was a 3 wheeled rattle trap that was guaranteed to scare both parent and child as it noisily careened down hills and across yards. Improvised from the front end of a small bicycle and the cast iron wheels of an old welding cart, it makes even me wonder today if I should have been arrested for child endangerment. But oh, what fun. “No child left inside.” I am not much one for crusades, but I kind of like the sound of this one. Think about it.

Self Esteem

“For God so loved the world…” -John 3:16

There is a new public service announcement out. It features Mariska Hargitay who says “If you like you, everyone else will too.” One of my high school students went to the national motivational seminar in Knoxville last week and took home a message about not listening to anyone else’s viewpoint about ones’ self, especially if it is negative. My wife and I recently reminisced about how many of our own college days were absorbed by our own insecurities and how much more we could have accomplished if we had only felt less afraid about who we were. And how often have adult friends shared stories about how their own parents filled them with feelings of insecurity and inadequacy that still continue to plague them?

Out of this fertile ground of our insecurities and self-doubts sprung the self-esteem movement. It tried to reassure us that both you and I were okay. It spawned numerous seminars, books, and self-help classes to say nothing of the efforts at building self-esteem among our school-age population. From there, it just seemed to be a natural progression to eliminating the sources of negative self-esteem. Grades were suspect, tracking was denounced, testing was dethroned, and everyone was encouraged to think they could do anything they put into their minds to do. Never was heard a discouraging word and the skies were not cloudy all day.

Like any humanistic movement and lie, there lay a kernel of truth at the core. Yes, we are born into this world as a 7-pound bundle of fears. We bear a terrible burden that we were never intended to bear: free, moral autonomy. And because it is an impossible load to carry, we wrestle with very, real guilt along with all the cast off remnants of parental and societal failings. The insecurities we feel are quite real, and the most, deservedly so.

But there is no healing power in a blind mantra that keeps repeating, “I’m okay. I’m okay.” Those who actually come to believe that often morph into arrogant monsters that no one can live with. I find little in myself to love so how can I truly love myself? There is ultimately only one means of reconciling myself to myself, and that is to see myself as God sees me. He knows it all, the failings and the filth, and yet he places great value on me. He comes and deals with the moral guilt, buries it in the deepest sea, and adopts me as His son. I am worthy because He said so, and the price of my ransom was high.

Next to that, the love of friends and family pales by comparison in its redemptive power. But because we are God’s body in this world, we can be the instruments of communicating His grace; “God’s love with fingers and toes.” I have to have God’s love and forgiveness, but that which comes through human agency is powerfully reassuring as well. It takes the form of the good Samaritan who picks up my battered spirit and nurses it back to health, reflecting the grace of God at work in us all.

I say all this to encourage parents to love your children with all the love that God puts in you. Your arms are a welcome flesh and blood embodiment of God’s love, and I think He meant it to be that way. I knew no one in my life as a child who could extend that act of grace to me. Many of our parents never experienced it given to them. How many sons have gone off seeking the reassuring love of their mothers in the arms of strange women? How many daughters have sought the love of their fathers in the embrace of young men? Love your children. Not blindly, but purposely, redemptively, and passionately. It grounds the spirit of a child like nothing else.

Children

Why and how does God pick the children to send to us? This is all rambling speculation, of course. Who would dare think such a thing and hope to know for sure. There is my disclaimer. Now, permit this foolish mind to wander. As you very well know, children come in all sorts of sizes, shapes, and personalities. No two are alike. We place our order for the normal sort and hope for the best. But, alas, some funny things happen on the way to the forum. One of my favorite songs reflecting this truth is taken from the stage play, “The Majestics.” Two neighbors commiserate about their children and the one who loves to garden complains, “You plant peas, you get peas; you plant carrots, you get carrots, but with children, you never know what you are going to get.” True, they do end up looking like various elements of the family tree with noses and eyes, ears and toes, hair and skin that reflect everyone from dad to a maternal great grandmother. But after that, the reflection pales quickly. Engineer types end up with budding artists, farmers beget physicists, teachers give birth to future plumbers, and neat freaks awake with horror at the presence of a complete litterbug in their family nest.

There is the heart and soul of my question. Is God in charge of picking out and sending us these un-returnable gifts that we cannot possibly let go of but that turn our carefully arranged worlds upside down? Now even I know that there are some limits to be observed in picking out gifts for my unique family members at Christmas. My wife does not appreciate the mystery and magic of a power tool. Grandma has no use for a new bowling ball. Our family, like yours, has seen some strange gifts at Christmas time. I got a full-size Pizza Hut delivery sign for the top of my car once. And then there was the flying pig wind catcher for the front lawn. Gift giving is challenging, and I certainly have had my moments of madness in trying to be “appropriate” as much as anyone. I take comfort at the long lines of folks returning things after Christmas knowing that I am not the only one who sometimes gets it wrong. But God surely must know who we are and what would really make us happy. Right? How could He possibly get things so screwed up at times. Was this the child we ordered or had in mind?

I am afraid of the theology that says that it is all mere chance, potluck, a roll of the dice, that brings into our lives such momentous change. Somehow, I can’t quite go there. And yet, how do I make sense of the wondrous packages that arrive in my life that so befuddle me and bring such perplexity to my otherwise comfortable mind? Could it be, oh please, that God knows what we need as well as what would make us happy? Dare I think that He would send a child into my life that would challenge me at my weakest point? I have to admit that He seems to give mates that both attract and challenge one another. I am certainly the better for having married one so unlike myself.

And did not God send His Son into our world in both form and fashion that would shake all of our carefully crafted pre-conceptions of what God would look like in human flesh? He ignored all customary protocols of royalty. He arrived, the embarrassment of a virgin. Shepherds were His heralds and strange foreign stargazers His witnesses. He soon fled, a fugitive of destructive forces He could have crushed with a whisper. And in His life, He was rejected, a man of sorrows, homeless. There was no beauty in Him that we should desire Him. Finally, accused, betrayed, and crushed, He died condemned a criminal. And yet, He was everything we needed. Everything we were not. The best gift ever. May you cherish anew all the gifts given into your life. They are all good, you know. Even the ones you can’t figure out.