Rabbi

Let’s say you want to learn to swim. You would need water, a bathing suit, and a teacher. And while the bathing suit might be optional, the teacher knowing how to
1. Swim
2. Teach
Would not

The other day I heard a very smart man complaining that his students lacked motivation. I thought, that is your job, make it fun.

Yesterday I saw a man teach a kid to do something nuanced and physically challenging. He is good at what he does, both doing and teaching.

I say all this because at the heart of the Jesus question is–
Can he really do what he teaches?
Can he teach me to do it?

Most of us think the gospel is words. We are wrong. The gospel is the pop quiz, the open book test.

The real thing?
Can you rise from the dead?
Can you love like Him?

Everything he says is just the instructional course. Everything he does is life everlasting.

6 ways to help your child deal with Sandy Hook

listen.

Your child is smart and logical and already has pieces of information. Ask what he thinks and if he has questions.

be honest

Honesty demonstrates advocacy. It gives your child a strong sense of safety. If you lie or obscure the truth your child will not feel as stable. Truth telling does not have to be explicit or graphic, but it provides security.

admit when you don’t have answers

It is ok to say you dont know something. Find out if you can…

Enlist your community

Don’t be afraid to talk to a counselor, doctor, or trusted friends.

Practice safety

Give your child a chance to practice safety and self-defense. Hopefully she will never need these skills, but she will feel safer and more secure if she knows how to handle emergencies.

keep talking

Big traumas stay with us. Make time to check in on your child over days, weeks and years. This will allow him to process all the complicated emotions that travel with grief and uncertainty.

We should never make our children face the scary stuff alone.

Alone is the scariest of all

Memorial Words

The words are familiar, the voices quavering–

a table before mine enemies

Psalm 23 at the memorial for children who should have been safe at school.. What do we do with our grief? With Christmas? With all those presents for the fallen?

I have been praying for the Krims. I knew this holiday season would be terribly hard for them. Now I have this image in my mind–20 homes without their babies.

I keep thinking-they were six, they were six, they were just little.

Yes. I know some were seven. Seven years is long enough to fall in love with a bright light in the world and long enough to know that the dark has grown darker with each light extinguished.

These people will never be the same.
We should never be the same.

Yes. I know that each death hurts and the hurt is the more unrelenting because it was so cruel.

Cruel. Cruel like our enemies. Cruel like Herod ordering the murder of babies. A king who murders children?
This table set for us in the presence of…

Our enemies.
Chief among them, death itself.

We forget sometimes that the baby in the manger is the Man on the cross.

In the presence of our enemies.
He dies
To set this table where light cannot be snuffed out–
No matter what
Heaven

A History of Violence

Yesterday an entire community woke up feeling safe and went to bed knowing the truth–no one is safe.

When we examine mass killings in America the list is chilling without the quotidian descriptions of domestic murders. When I read these articles on our history of violence what struck me was how incomplete the lists were.

I found several articles but none mentioned the tragedy at the Amish schoolhouse several years ago. The story of a methodical murder of children at school? Worth remembering.

And now we have Sandy Hook. I hate these stories. Most of us do. But what I find almost as disturbing is how quickly we go back to our Christmas parties and meme gathering.

Sometimes it does seem as though we are more pro-active about spreading urban legends than the truth.

I understand our desire to play the numbers–immediately after the tragedy I heard and read several reporters say–these events are rare.

I seem to have missed the bend in history when the NRA needed more public advocacy than school children.

We have a big problem. A deadly,escalating association between power and slaughter, the desire to exact a terrible revenge on children and the need for fame?

Can it be that our culture of entertainment violence has collided with real violence and a quest for celebrity? Do any of us dare face the possibility that this is the monster we have created? Nurtured? Then allowed to roam our schools, malls, concerts and cinemas while we idly click our remotes looking for something to distract us from a gathering darkness?

Hi, I am the Narrator…

Hi, I am the narrator. Elea was annoyed with me for napping on the clock so she is giving me extra assignments. Typical.

She wants me to discuss nature versus nurture.. Claims the subject is too close to home for her. Says I am the professional and she is the amateur so, yeah, show her how it’s done…

Team Nature argues for the biological expediency of our genetic code. Nature says, basically we are all just a sequence of predetermined impulses and urges and we are what we are–Darwinian productions, all water and code.

Team Nurture says, no! Humans are more than a sum of our chemical parts. Love matters. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, all that…

Why the flippy intro?

Well, H and C have rather wantonly stirred their genetic material in the petri dish of human determinism and Elea says I have to give you–sparse and gentle readers, a crash course on the odds.

Or whatever…

The Standard Predator

He worked with children in a job that was focused on children.

He worked with child advocates or at least people who have been educated to educate children.

He hid his sexual preferences/behavior.

He has never admitted he molested children.

He is not Kevin Clash.

He is a (former) coach and trainer i know who molested at least half a dozen children in conjunction with his job/coaching.

His victims have told the truth about abuse. He still denies everything.

Sesame Street needs to face this one straight. Let’s talk about child sexual abuse (allegations) and what it does to all of us.

Now.

Message in a Bottle

Once a very wise person lost a child. Maybe children. He mourned because he loved them. so he came up with a plan. Put fire in the sky to guide them at night. Put smoke in the sky to guide them by day. Give them rules on something durable to keep them safe. Tell them from the beginning that you have a plan. Don’t worry, a plan of love.

Send messengers to remind them. Send someone like a son to find them. Document who you are and who they are. Leave a record of your love. Do everything because they are everything to you.

Understand that the story they are told about you may not be all true. Understand they may not want you in the end. Understand that no matter what no matter where no matter how, you will always love them. Because you are their dad. Because it is your nature.

Oh yeh, and write a book. Tell them in the book how much you love them. Pray they read it. Because it means everything.

If what i do ever seems a little crazy, remember that I am following that guy, that Wise Guy, so that one day I can tell my daughter face to face…

I have always loved you.

The New America

It has been over a week since the election and I continue to be shocked by the animosity in our political dialogue.

I recently read about a man who had told his four year old that people from the opposing party were brain damaged. I was not sure what shocked me more–that she was so young or that he was using brain damage as an epithet.

Other egregious examples: any racial insinuations, wrangling about birth certificates, and in general personal attacks against people who you disagree with on public issues.

Something terrible has happened to our political discourse. We treat opposing political viewpoints like mascots for football teams and then we elevate those teams to a status they have neither earned nor deserve. Then we vilify the opposing team.

This hurts us all, but no one more than our children. We justify bullying and prejudice in the name of political parties which have done nothing to earn our allegiance and we begin to view our neighbors as enemies?

Dangerous. We all need to work together–somehow.

To quote a beloved Carson McCuller’s title–the life you save may be your own.

Worried about abuse?

So you know someone who you think might be abused or in a bad situation?

If there is any serious danger call the police.

If there are warning signs sufficient to file a report with cps, file it

If you just have a bad feeling…

Be very inquisitive
Be emotionally supportive
Do research to gain more information
Provide non-material (no $) support
Food
Clothes
A good ear
Simple kindness
Any way you show an abused person they are valuable is love
And love never fails

Answers for hard questions

I force myself to ask a mixture of hard and easy answers–
Do you like scary movies?
Do you do puzzles
Mixed with
Where is your anger
He has a self-effacing way of saying he used to “act up”
This is a little like saying Mussolini used to be into public oratory
So I ask
How is your anger (anyway)?
He says his psychologist
Tells him he is letting it out
(like a Jack Russell terrier roaming the cul-de-sac?)
…When he does ordinary things

It is gone now
the subtext
I am always reading the subtext