Author: Michele Minehart (Page 268 of 311)

i suppose i can blame the books i’ve been reading. i’ve been doing a lot of reading, even more so than usual it seems – i’ll get a couple of books in between book club monthly reads. i’ve done several with story lines surrounding not just nazi germany but post WWs. i highly recommend The Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein, which probably laid the foundation for the thoughts that emerged tonight as i continued with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

the invisible wall as a love story between a christian boy and a jewish girl that was quite forbidden. quite literally, one side of the street was jewish and the other side christian. throughout the entire book you see the seperation the groups maintained and the many mechanisms they employeed to keep it that way.

a tree grows in brooklyn is a story of a young family growing up in poverty in (you guessed it) brooklyn. tonight there was a story of the 7-year-old girl going to the doctor, sans mother because she was working a janitor job, and the distaste of a doctor and nurse talking of her dirtiness and disgust while not understanding that she could hear them. in the dialogue of medical personnel, over and over it was “they” or “them”. “can’t they at least wash?” he says.

wow, 3 paragraphs, and i’m not even close to getting to the point. but at least you got 2 free book summaries and recommendations.

how many people, or even groups of people, have been hurt by the words they, them or their? and what makes them they? why aren’t they we? the 2 sides of the street shared a street. how was it not “our street”? the nurse grew up in the same neighborhood as the dirty girl. how was that not “our children”?

it seems these words antagonize differences. go to any sporting event involving kids or teenagers and you hear how the other team, they [started practices before it was allowed] [use kids of illegal age] [brought the referees on their bus]. we’re brutal in the way we yell and discuss the actions of one of the players, yet somewhere on the other bleachers sits his mother. to her, he’s not “they”. he’s “we”.

for a while at work i noticed a lot of “they” language being used. they, the decision makers, don’t care. they, the ones doing a different type of work than me, got better hours. i can attest that life at work wasn’t as good. but once we start thinking in terms of we, things get a little better. we are hoping things turn around. we are looking for ways to make it better.

i was watching oprah one day when she was interviewing women around the world, and because it was a hot topic then, oprah asked a quesiton about universal health care to each woman in each area (all of the countries had universal health care). one woman was a doctor and made an interesting statement, no matter of your politic – she said, “it’s not an industry to us to take care of our sick.” the industry part is another post. but “our sick”? when’s the last time that our country acknowledged those who were ill or needed medical attention as our own and not as a they, those with health problems, those that need to find ways to get care they need?

there are lots of theys in my life, i’m sure. i remember, when i served as a youth director, it was quite clear. i’ve never had a natural gravitation toward teenagers. i wasn’t one of those youth directors who just had a great teenager-connection device. i’d go to cluster with other youth directors and hear stories and generally be annoyed with kids. but my kids? no way. sure they did things at time that would keep me up at night, but because they were “mine” there was a little more grace to be given, a little more effort to be made to make things better. somehow, when at cluster events, i felt like mine were different, they were better.

i just wonder, what it would be like if i found ways to make all my they’s into we’s? (and how exactly does one use proper puctuation to pluralize plural pronouns?! without apostrophes, it’s “wes”.) i wonder how i might treat people differently if they were (see! there i go!) part of my we. i mean, we all have a common we. we’re just people, trying to make it. we all want the best of things and are doing what we know as best to try to make that happen. we were all made in the image of a God who loves us all. God loves that they just as much as he loves this we. so maybe we should too.

i promise, last day of husband bragging for at least a week. but it’s a great story, way beyond the fact that i’m married to a pretty nifty guy.

several weeks ago, while the gals got together for cookie exchange, jj was in charge of picking up the wings from bw’s for guys + babies night. as he was leaving, he noticed a car going a bit too fast, and then it slammed into a parked SUV. the car took off as if nothing happened. so jj started following him, flashing his lights and honking his horn. the hit-and-runner went faster.

there was apparently a bit of a chase (which was nothing less than thrilling to jj, i’m sure) and he got the license plate. the guy went into walmart’s parking lot and jj lost him (once again – walmart, the root of the perils of evil!). so jj called the sherriff to make a report, and even went the extra step to going into bw’s to tell the manager and give the license plate to the owner.

so today jj got a call from the owner of the SUV. apparently it all went to court and jj’s legwork contributed greatly to the case. the kicker is, the owner wanted to send jj a gift card to bw3s.

i’m just impressed upon impressed, by both the actions of my husband and the owner of the SUV. now, this isn’t anti-typical of jj. he’s a guy who believes in rules and fairness… he’s also the guy who will get far enough over in traffic so that when merging people can’t come flying from behind and merge at the last minute. it drives me crazy. in the past i just haven’t seen the sense in playing caped crusader with traffic rules.

but this time as jj patroled the streets, mandating fairness among all drivers, it mattered to someone. it mattered so much that it was reciprocated into bw bucks.

a friend called to announce a resolution yesterday; i said that if she was successful i’d be exceptionally jealous. she wants to pay better attention to the things that matter to people. i think it’s an admirable attempt, one that benefits personal character along with other people’s happiness. i mean, really – what strengthens a relationship better than showing that you notice – or even more so, that you care.

it could be noticing your car just got slammed into, or that you’ve lost a few pounds, but i think the small things DO matter to people, so i’d love to find ways to a) notice them and b) acknowledge them.

it reminds me of the EBB quote i have at the bottom of my email:
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes-
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from my recent read, a tree grows in brooklyn, by betty smith:
“Mother, I know there are no ghosts or fairies. I would be teaching the child foolish lies.”
Mary spoke sharply. “You do not know whether there are not ghosts on earth or angels in heaven.”
“I know there is no Santa Claus.”
“Yet you must teach the child that these things are so.”
“Why? When I, myself, do not believe?”
“Because,” explained Mary Rommely simply, “the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination. I, myself, even in this day and at my age, have great need of recalling the miraculous lives of the Saints and the great miracles that have come to pass on earth. Only by having these things in my mind can I live beyond what I have to live for.”

[you miss a bit of the depth by lacking the backdrop of story in which this lies, but it’s good nonetheless]

we had dinner tonight with 2 people who i think possess some of the most imagination i’ve encountered. i’m lucky enough to be related to them and have been known to try to steal some creativity-by-association (can you say “international copyright law”?), but tonight, especially after my bathtime reading fun, the value of imagination and creativity really lept out at me.

LBW has an amazing gift of seeing something beautiful and arranging things so that beauty is enhanced. you can see it from her dwellings… she loves beautiful things, but the way she is able to gather and display them, either in simplicity or in complex arrangments, brings the beauty into 3D. sure, that’s a nice picture. but put it with this fabric or stack it on that table and suddenly it just pops. i think that’s why i don’t own a lot of pretty things…i just don’t know how to help them live to their full, beautiful, potential. not only can she see beauty, she knows what to do with it.

BRW also has a knack of seeing something where there’s nothing, but rather than beauty it’s the $$ that motivates. however, you can’t argue that there must be an ounce of imagination and creativity (not to mention a whole lot of cahones) to make some of the crazy ideas come together in a way that works – and not just for him, but for many of the people he has surrounded himself with in ventures to try and make a buck. i admire that there are people out there with a passion for things and he takes that and says (in typical wingfield fashion) “what if we…” and “a guy could…” and then suddently some sort of hairbrained scheme is born. and works.

i love the artistic skill of KLM. i had a friend in seminary who was similarly artistic and could draw and write and produce music in a way that creates something from little. but tonight i could see the true value in an imagination that is outside of art. LBW and BRW have a creativity that does, as “mary” says above, inspires hope. and that’s what it’s about, right? not who can draw the prettiest picture, but what that pretty picture inspires us to believe, and then do. and there are so many ways to inspire hope… it just takes a little imagination to see it.