Editor’s Note: I love the first 3 seasons of Arrested Development, but found the 4th unbearably discordant.
I love Better Off Ted and think it is a crime they cut it.
Which is why I am begging you to try The Neighbors airing on Friday nights on ABC.
It is an elegant, witty, kid-friendly alien sitcom and I want it to survive.
So please, try it out. George Takei would want you to. Trust me.
I never thought I would think so highly of our former presidents.
I am a cynic and not easily impressed by politicians.
But the utter lethargy evinced by our current POTUS in the case of Kenneth Bae defies the ordinary perfidy of our elected o-fficials.
He has doggedly refused to send any emissary to ask for the release of this harmless and well-intentioned American citizen.
And while I privately hold with MIB on the original antics of Dennis Rodman–even a self-respecting extraterrestrial being would have the decency to parlay his coziness with one of the worst despots in modern history to pray for the release of Kenneth Bae.
Someone must pray.
Someone must.
Ironically I first ran across this interesting “justification” of same sex parenting when I was researching the story of a young boy who was trafficked and sexually exploited by his “dads.”
I still grieve for him and the terrible tragedy of his life with them…and I ask who will pick up the pieces?
There are plenty of wretched parents of all sorts of backgrounds, and I do not–not think that homosexuality disqualifies a person from great parenting any more than I believe that heterosexuality engenders great parenting.
Let’s face it, most of us are just ok parents, and some of us are just plain lousy.
But back to the marquee statement–
Jesus had two dads…and he turned out ok.
When I read that statement my first reaction is–really?!?
And my second is–have you read the story?!!
Dying beaten and broken on a Roman cross is not ok.
It is the death of a criminal.
Jesus died with murders, thieves, terrorists.
He believed he was paying the ultimate price for a broken world.
Do you?
I have been haunted recently by this story.
Should not happen.
But here is the thing…
The neighbor should have been arrested and detained after the initial rape.
He should not have been free to try to murder a child he had already raped
Yet Robbie Middleton’s assailant was allowed to go free even after he tortured and attempted to kill Robbie.
Insufficient evidence…the police said.
I would say, try a little harder boys.
Only I understand this–the reason that Don Collins was not arrested, charged, detained, or tried for the rape and attempted murder of Robbie Middleton was because too many of us looked away.
We do not want to know these stories. We do not want to carry them with us.
When the system fails our children, we fail them too, by not demanding more.
How fast would you complain if someone cut off your wifi?
Pretty fast, I bet. I know I would. Because we paid for it.
We all pay a price for the years Robbie suffered before he succumbed to such unbearable injury.
Robbie paid in pain.
We pay with our flaccid and tarnished souls.
First of all, let me restate for the record:
I am an egregious sinner and a (to quote my adopted daughter)–“failed parent.”
So yeah. Don’t be me:)
Second, a story…
When I first became a parent it was to a 12 year old boy who had been through hell.
He flipped out fast, threw rocks at our neighbors’ cars, and his caseworker told us our only option was to call the police.
Our next two charges we kept, despite the fact that they screamed at the top of their lungs 2-3 hours a day.
We lived in a cute little neighborhood. Imagine our neighbors’ chagrin when the howling started and their tremendous relief when we finally moved.
Imagine being young, reasonably cute and surrounded by a maelstrom of LOUD everywhere you went.
I still can’t believe we did it.
But we did.
Because we believed
In Jesus
Still believe, actually.
Before I wrote this I asked my oldest biological child how how life would have been different for this child and the family if I had followed advice we have encountered over and over about hiding our adopted son’s predations.
The answer was a chilling thing–
If I had, if we had, hidden the crimes against our children and supported their predator, we would have unleashed darkness on our children.
In other words–we had to tell the truth, be the failures in the eyes of family, church, and community to succeed in the one thing that matters–showing our children they are precious.
In fact I would say this to all of them the same–you are precious.
And if you are a threat to yourselves or others I will be the first person to call the police.
Because, my dear, we all deserve the law–it’s gravity and protection.
Beneath a grim and unavoidable Cross.
I first heard of Jizya when I was studying history with my children. The caliphates of the near east would levy a tax on non-Muslim citizens.
It was couched as a brilliant stroke of evangelism and diplomacy–the tax encouraged conversion by presumably making space for other religions.
The present iteration of Jizya emerging from places like Egypt and Syria is brutal. Survivors report demands for cash combined with murder. Coming out of countries where we are shaping policies?
The United States is simply responsible if we push the agenda of, provide monetary support for, or look the other way when any foreign entity extorts and murders on our watch.
The Jizya stories have so far been confined to the margins of journalism about Syria and Egypt.
Ask yourself these questions–
Who are the “good guys” in these countries?
Who are we supporting?
And if you, like me, read a lot of news and still don’t see those things spelled out by our government and media…
Why?
Why don’t we know?
Don’t get me wrong…I think the dog who saved the baby is a hero. And I think it was smart and canny of the owners/parents to register the canine’s distress and believe the dog.
And yet…
My own experience as a very noisy advocate for abused and neglected children has been the opposite of the dog’s.
When I barked out my story people distanced themselves or shut down…they sometimes told me just shut up.
I am 43 and can take the discomfort. But how about all the child victims? Shouldn’t they get the same support and protection as the baby in the story.
I guess what I am saying is this–don’t mindlessly forward a story about a heroic dog if you are not willing to be a heroic person.
All it takes is a little time to growl at the bad guys, let someone know. Listen to anyone who makes a cry for help.
All our children deserve a defender like that.
And…in my experience, a person who would slap a baby is capable of hurting the dog too. We all have a right to live free from abuse.
I had a dream a few nights ago. I had no money, no means of buying things. I had been given the task of engaging my adopted daughter (who has disowned me) in a conversation.
Because it is a dream, I choose to discuss an array of roasted and cooked chicken that is behind a butcher’s counter.
I try to keep the conversation very neutral, very chicken-focused.
Because when your kid is RAD that is how you learn to roll…even in your subconscious.
I am going to start laying out my memories of life with my adopted children. Like an old woman pulling sweaters from the attic. I need to organize this thing….the life we lived together.
The first thing you should know is the last thing that happened–she cut me off because she suspected I had reported her brother….suspected him of child abuse.
Ironically, as with so many things before, she unleashed her anger on the alleged reporter instead of facing the crime.
The terrible crime.
Richard Dawkins says a lot of crazy things. My favorite was when he told Ben Stein that our world was seeded by aliens.
My least favorite is from an interview in which he says that not only were he and his fellow students systematically preyed upon by a teacher, it was “mild pedophilia” and “did no lasting harm.”
Desensitizing a grown man to the concept of child rape is harm enough. I wonder whether his fellow students would agree?
I do not know any other victims of child sexual abuse who would pass it off as harmless.
It is not harmless. It is rape.
But here is the thing–so often Dawkins is most instructive when he fails to see the obvious–what he is really saying is that the children of his generation were taught to be quiet and deal with a terrible injustice.
And for Dawkins, at least, that was not a good thing. For him to draw a distinction among various kinds of egregious injuries to children is to show a grave gap in his thinking, his logic, his philosophy, and his grasp of the law.
If he is wrong about this, what else is he missing? What else is he getting so very wrong?
I don’t mind saying it–some of my biggest heroes are the fostering and adopting parents of attachment disorder kids.
RAD is the nightmare consequence of leaving a baby without physical and emotional nurture. It is a scary mix of pathological thinking and behavior.
It deserves to be a household word, but it is not.
RAD is preventable–babies need the security of physical and emotional caregiving. They need to know that when they cry someone will respond to their needs. They need to know love.
If they do not get that love and security their brain functions and emotional wiring gets pretty messed up.
Scary messed up.
Impossibly tangled.
Recently Reuters and other news sources have focused on the rise of an informal networks developed to help adoptive parents with disrupted adoptions–many because of RAD.
I have read the installments with a grim empathy…for the parents…
As the adoptive mother of two RAD kids, I know exactly what drives well-intentioned parents to abandon fheir kids.
After reading this article I am deeply grateful we all survived.
So far…
Carrying Light 