Category: perspective (Page 7 of 10)

The circle of life

January 13, 2015 / Michele Minehart

This is normal in most homes, right? (Also, I asked my children permission to publish this.)

Sunday mornings in our house equate to an extra cup of coffee for mom, dad cooking bacon and eggs, perhaps a show for the kids while we wake up slowly. Then the shenanigans: showering all the little ones and getting ready for church. So it shouldn’t strike me as odd that they started stripping down to race around the house. (Note for future homebuyers who want/have kids: buy a house with a loop. Ours can run through the living room, office and kitchen and make a full circle. This is paramount for entertainment purposes.)

As they were enjoying some Nudie Races, I hear one of them begin to get upset that she’s not in the front. Well, my dear, I tried to explain. It’s a circle. There’s really no front or back. It depends on your attitude if you’re ahead or behind the others.

Oh, friends. What if we lived like this? What if we believed that we’re all making another loop around the sun, instead of believing we must climb to the top first? What if we realized that “ahead” or “behind” can be a tad more relative than we like to believe?

Perhaps we could just approach life like a Sunday morning, plenty of time to run around, never knowing exactly who is in front or behind. Those of us who like to take it fast can run. Those who get winded easily will walk. We wave and giggle as someone passes by and perhaps see one another as inspiration to keep moving, not someone to catch.

Creating Space

January 5, 2015 / Michele Minehart

The beginning of the year always comes chock full of wanting more of something. More weight loss. More gym time. More “living life to the fullest.” More shower heads (which, incidentally, made yesterday 400% more enjoyable. As a matter of fact, I did take two showers). Resolutions and changes exist to bring more of something desirable into our lives. I love this.

However, it has dawned on me – and perhaps many of you, I could just be late to the game here – that more is not always better. In fact, more cannot always exist. Taking stock of the American Life, I’m not sure we have room for more.

Who would’ve known I could find a picture of an apple tree by a sweet corn field? What serendipity. Photo by Matt Callow via CC.

Perhaps, instead, we need to refocus our work not on gaining more, but on creating space for the right and the good. We cannot have our current inventory and add more of something. You cannot grow an apple on top of a field of sweet corn. If you want an apple, you must make space to grow an apple tree.

In yoga, much of the work of the mat is about creating space. Once, we were in a reverse triangle my teacher said the phrase, “as we create some space in the sidebody” and I nearly fell over. Astounding! This stretch, this leaning in, opened up an area of my body so that blood and oxygen and all the necessary, life-giving elements could flow to those parts and organs and often-ignored places of my body. In ancient thought, blood was the “life source” and as a carrier of oxygen we can understand why. When I stretch and bend, I’m creating space for my body to have new life infused into it.

I got hung up on the Beatitudes this morning, those crazy sayings of Jesus about when you have all the nothings, you have everything. Grief, poverty, weakness… these seem to be game-changers in experiencing the Kingdom of God. He says that those who have lost what is dear to them or is necessary for life, has more of God.

In our loss, in our poverty, in our desire for something else, we create space for God to “move into the neighborhood.” But for God to move into the house, someone else has to move out. Even if God were to decide to build a new house at the end of the block, we lose that empty green field our children used to play in. We must decide what we want closest to us.

As we each endeavor this first full week of the new year, the re-entry into life, let us find the places and things that can move out, to create space for that which we really thirst after. If we want something new to grow in our midst, pick a patch of land and grab a plow. What was formerly there must first become barren earth if we want to plant a seed and watch it grow.

Crayons and fires

November 25, 2014 / Michele Minehart

My third-born developed a pattern: when she’s lonely, she’s destructive. The moments that we we want her to go and play like a nice little girl, she shoves herself back into our line of vision, sometimes with a crayon on our wall. She can’t contain her emotions and will react to small frustrations with bites upon her older siblings. Usually, she’s asking for something (a nap or a cuddle most often) but she uses the wrong words. The wrong means.

As a mother, especially of many, sometimes I don’t want to have to give that to her. I might prefer reprimand and get angry that she took her aggressive feelings out on other things and people. It’s inconvenient to sit and listen and hold, especially when I cannot identify with her feelings of frustration that come with broken crayons or a brother that won’t do as he’s told. These seem like pretty insignificant ordeals in my world, but to her corner of the universe, they matter. On my Good Mom Days, if they matter to her, they matter to me. That’s how things like empathy, kindness and love take root in a heart and grow us into beings that recognize the holiness in all things and people.

I chose not to learn a darn thing about Ferguson (chastise me later). I don’t know the names, the actions, the anything. I know there’s a police side and a black side and a whole lot of feelings. For a second just join me over here and set your opinion aside. I want you to hear me clearly. I’m not talking about agreeing or disagreeing with a grand jury right now. I don’t know who or what to agree or disagree with, and knowing my track record, I probably agree with everyone.

Right now there is a population of people who is so angry, they feel the need to burn things in order to get our attention. We might want to yell and discipline, but if we’re good humans, we should stop and question why riots have to happen in order to get our country to talk about race.

We have brothers and sisters in this country trying to say something. They’re telling us about a hurt, something so outside our immediate context that we have difficulty identifying with them. We want to blow it off, tell them to stop the current behavior and believe we’ve fixed a problem. Hear me: I’m not justifying behavior. I don’t like crayons on my walls nor fire in my streets. It’s not okay. But behavior modification will not fix this problem – it’s a symptom of a larger issue.

My three-year-old has taught me about human nature in her action. She has also shined a light on my propensity to gloss over her very real hurt with my reaction. Finally, in the third year of raising the third kid, when we see these behaviors I have come to ask myself, “does she need something from me that I’m not giving her?” The answer is nearly always, yes. She needs my attention. She needs me to hear. She needs me to try to imagine her world and what this is like. When I give her those basic internal needs, she exhibits the kind and loving behavior we seek from her. Her behavior has a direct correlation with her sense of security and place in our family dynamic.

What we lack in understanding, may we make up for in a willingness to listen to the real request of these behaviors.

Category: perspective (Page 7 of 10)

The circle of life

Creating Space

Crayons and fires

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