April 28, 2008
Probably the toughest thing about being a parent is constantly wondering if you’re doing the right thing. Certainly I can’t be the only mom who has ever wondered if my kids are learning the life skills they’ll need to succeed in life.
Like commitment. Dedication. Dependability.
Nathan’s already wanting to quit guitar – after a mere 3 lessons! And for so long he bugged me about wanting to learn guitar! He just doesn’t like working for something, he wants it to just happen and be easy. Then when I picked him up at his Granny’s house after school, he had the nerve to tell me he wanted contact lenses.
The poor kid inherited my eyesight. All my brothers and sisters, my mom, and nearly everyone on her side of the family, is nearsighted. Nathan’s Dad has never had glasses or corrective lenses of any kind. Of all the better qualities he could have inherited from me, he got my eyesight! He got his first pair of glasses in kindergarten and will be wearing “coke-bottle” glasses by middle school. He would, that is, if technology had not yet invented thin lenses for very nearsighted vision.
I promptly told him that contact lenses require a lot of responsibility and dedication, and I’ve never seen him committed or dedicated to anything. Case in point, the guitar. Too, he wanted to learn karate last year, then got tired of it after 6 months. And he’s in danger of failing his reading class because he can’t commit himself to reading a library book.
So, what is he going to do, after taking care of contact lenses for a week, say he’s tired of it and wants to go back to glasses? Nope, not gonna happen.
The other day he said everyone in his class has a cell phone except him, and today it was everybody’s got a Wii except him. Well, to that I say, too bad; be grateful for what you do have. Nathan doesn’t even keep his homework done most of the time, then lies about it. Since he was a toddler I’ve tried to teach him, if you don’t show responsibility then I can’t give you any privileges.
I’m frustrated that I can’t spend enough time to Nathan and pay attention to his schooling and stuff, like I ought to and like I WANT to. I guess I'm a victim of my generation! Why is it that as parents of our generation, we constantly feel guilty that we can't do everything perfectly?
I shouldn't feel guilty; I have to work. I’m a single parent, so that part of my life is non-negotiable. When he was younger we would create eggshell mosaics or make homemade silly putty. We used to go to parks, museums, concerts and plays (family-friendly, of course). We would play board games like Mancala or Chess or Monopoly.
Suddenly everything changed and it was no longer “cool” to hang out with Mom. When he was 8 I’d give him his bath and read to him afterward! When he was 9 he took a shower BY HIMSELF and I was not allowed in the bathroom with him. I knew that one day he’d start pushing me away.
I feel so distanced from him now.
Anyway, I've been thinking a lot how that life is going by just too fast. Nathan will be finishing up 5th grade next month and will be a big middle-schooler next year. He’ll only be there 3 years before he enters high school. Three years is nothing. I barely remember 2nd grade in Mrs. Laramie’s room. Third, fourth, and fifth grades have flown by. Life is a jumble of the 5-day a week work routine, looking forward to resting each weekend, paying bills and looking forward to the next payday.
Life needs to slow down. I’m missing too much.
Monday, October 5, 2009
I Talked to Tim Today
April 23, 2008Mom called a few weeks ago with the most unbelievable news: she got a phone call from Tim!
He called our parents from the Emergency Housing Group in Middletown, NY. I looked it up on the web, and it’s like a homeless shelter, but also like a rehab center. I hate to think of my brother as “homeless,” but I’m just so glad he’s OK and he’s alive and well and taken care of. We got an address, a phone number, even the name of his counselor. So we know it’s for real and not just some ruse.
I’m just speechless – and in tears. Wow wow wow. I last saw my bro 7 years ago; he was living in Florida in a small town called De Leon Springs, north of Orlando and west of Daytona. He was a hired-hand at a stable for standardbred horses at Spring Garden Ranch.
I visited Tim for a few days one January after a work-related training conference in Orlando. The weather in central Florida was sunny and mild, around 75°, and the skies were blue. Live oaks reached for the sky like skyscrapers, and the breezes rustled gently through their leaves. The small town of De Leon Springs, and neighboring DeLand, were quiet and peaceful. I felt I could leave Oklahoma and move there without a second thought. Anyway, that was the last time I saw my brother.
Tim is 7 years older than me, so I didn’t really know him that well while we were growing up. He was nearly in high school by the time I started first grade. Mostly I just remember that he played trumpet in the school band, and that he liked to hunt and fish. Our dad would take the boys fishing and hunting, and Tim became an avid fan of both sports. I remember my first – and probably my last – fishing trip, when I was about 8 years old, at Mill Creek not far from our house. I had trouble reeling my fish in so Tim would help me out.
Tim was sneaky and constantly getting into trouble. I remember one day in 3rd grade, I was riding the bus with my neighborhood friend Becky. Becky sat near the window and I near the aisle. She saw Tim outside walking, and waved. He would have been 15, in 10th grade. Well, apparently he didn’t see me sitting next to her, because he waved back – with a cigarette in his hand. Being the “good girl” that I was – not to mention the snitchy kid sister -- I promptly went home and told our mom! The minute he walked in the door she smelled his hands for smoke and announced that she knew he’d been smoking. He didn’t know how she knew. “Do you have eyes in the back of your head?” he asked her.
Tim was smart, but lazy. No, not really lazy. He was a free spirit. He lived by his own rules. If he didn’t feel like going to school, he wouldn’t. He spent 3 years in 12th grade but still didn’t graduate. Finally he took the GED, and got his diploma.
He lived in Pennsylvania with our grandparents for a while after high school. Grandma sent him back home after just a few months, saying they couldn’t support him anymore. “He drinks Mountain Dew like it’s going out of style,” I heard her say. That, and he was growing marijuana in his bedroom. He told Grandpa it was Japanese tomatoes.
So Tim came home and moved back into his downstairs bedroom. It was thereafter that we became buds. I was a young lady by then, 14 or 15, starting to like boys, think about my future, and take life a little more seriously than before.
I think that every girl needs a father to love her and hug her and pay attention to her and listen to her as she talks out the trials and tribulations of being a teenager. Our father was emotionally absent, and though we didn't realize it at the time, Tim became a "surrogate father" to my sisters and myself after he moved back home. He would let us watch him get gussied up on Friday and Saturday nights before he went partying. Sometimes he’d bring his friends home. We were always buddies with Tim’s friends. In retrospect, that’s a little weird, but we just needed attention, that’s all. They were like big brothers to us. And Tim hugged us, talked to us, let us in his room – he paid attention to us.
Tim was a character. Sometime in his 20’s he was caught driving on a revoked license and was legally forbidden to drive for 5 years. So I drove him around in my little Ford Escort. I’d take him to run his errands (go to the bank, pick up groceries, or whatever) and he’d buy us dinner then fill up my gas tank. Then, I’d drop him off at one of his pool halls: The Office. The 8-Ball. The Sportsman.
Sure, he was a drinker, just like our dad. He drank, smoked, hung out at clubs or smoky pool halls, and who knows what else. I remember him coming home from clubbing weekends, late into the next morning, drunk as a skunk. He was a wild one. But he was my bro.
Tim worked as a machinist at Latex Equipment for several years. He always came home smelling of smoke and metal shavings. To this day I still associate those smells with him. When I was in college he quit work at Latex Equipment – or was he fired for truancy? I don't remember.
He got a job with Patterson Stables on the north side of town. That was his first foray into the horse-racing business. He lived in a trailer with another hired hand we called “Smokey.” Tim would leave town from April to November to race in Louisville, Lexington, the Poconos, New Jersey. But during the winter months I’d visit him and Smokey there at the farm at least once a week.
Eventually he quit coming back into town during the winter, and that's when we lost track of him. I was in my mid-twenties. He wouldn’t call or even drop a postcard in the mail to let us know where he was. Somehow my mom was able to – as moms have a way of doing – keep a vague track of where he was and when. And somehow we knew that he was living in De Leon Springs, FL, 7 years ago.
We didn’t have a clue what had happened to him since then, until my parents got his phone call a few weeks ago from the shelter. His days of irresponsibility and making less-than-ideal choices must have finally led him to rock-bottom.
I called him, there at the shelter. He sounds different. It was good to hear him and just to know that he's OK. I'm glad to know he’s making changes in his life. He said when he went to the hospital in January, he was just 130 lbs. Tim is 6’3”! He must have been skin and bone! He’s up to 167 now, which is much better, although he did say it was what he weighed when he was 18 (he’s nearly 50 now).
I think I’ll write him a letter, and get him up to date and what’s been going on in my life since that visit to De Leon Springs. I’ll send him some pictures of his grown-up kid sister, and his 12-year old nephew whom he has never seen. After so many years of not knowing whether he is dead or alive, we finally know he is alive and well. In his own way, my wayward brother has come back to us.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Why I've Never Been on an Easter Egg Hunt
April 10, 2008
I’ve never been on an Easter-egg hunt.
The Bradford pears are blooming their white linen, the redbuds are dotted with their purple-pink, and the earth is sprouting daffodil-yellow. It must be Spring! I love this time of year, when the earth thaws out and begins to show its colors again.
But I don’t associate the season with Easter or sunrise services or memories of easter-egg hunts, as most Christian-oriented people do. I grew up in a church which, instead, observed the Old-Testament rituals of unleavened bread. We were non-denominational – not Jewish, not Seventh-Day Adventist, not Jehovah’s Witness. But still we spurned the Easter celebration as having pagan origins.
We celebrated the Passover, a commemoration of the ancient time described in Exodus 12, when God struck all the firstborn in Egypt, save for those Israelite homes who had the blood of the lamb on their doorposts. Of course the blood of the lamb was a precursor to Christ’s blood, which would one day be shed to save God’s modern-day people from eternal death.
Let me pause here to add, this is not meant to be a particularly religious or “preachy” piece. I’m certainly not out to convert anyone, or accuse anyone. This is simply a progression of thoughts as I, as an adult, reason, think through, and question a teaching of my childhood.
Because verse 14 of Exodus 12 tells the Israelites to keep this feast “throughout your generations,” “as an everlasting ordinance,” our church followed the instructions in Exodus 12 (and reiterated in chapter 13) to remove leaven from our homes and to eat unleavened bread for seven days. As churchmembers we would do a mad-spring cleaning to “put leaven out of our lives.” Leaven – which is generally found in breads, cakes, piecrusts, cookies, hamburger buns, pizza crusts, crackers, and numerous other common foods – symbolized “sin” at this time of year for us.
When the Israelites fled Egypt (verses 31-40 of Exodus 12), “Egypt” pictured sin, and of course the Israelites were God’s chosen people, so just as the Israelites fled Egypt, we as modern day Christians are to flee sin. And as churchmembers we were to put leaven (“sin”) out of our lives for seven days.
And not just by throwing out all breads, crackers, and cookies from our homes! We went so far as to clean our toasters, because crumbs of leaven lurked in there, too, just as sin can lurk in places in ourselves that we don’t think to look. We were not to eat of anything leavened, at home or anyplace, neither were we to have any leavened products in our house.
This was to occur for seven consecutive days, and generally fell around the time of Easter. I’ll mention here that the Bible makes no mention of easter eggs or bunnies or anything of the sort. Because my church strove to live by God’s Word in every way possible, we did not condone such things and thus, I never hunted easter eggs as a child.
Recently I got this set of oh-so-funny Easter cartoons from my sister-in-law. I forwarded them to many of my friends, including one of our girls who observes the Jewish faith. I asked if the Jewish celebrated Easter -- which I knew they didn't, but sometimes mainstream holidays seep their way into non-mainstream churches.
So of course she replied that they don't; they celebrate the Passover which pictures the Exodus from Egypt. Well, I knew all about that, but it got me to thinking about the Council of Nicaea, which was the big council that decided on which days to celebrate. I needed to understand as an ADULT, and not just a child following my mom’s religion, the truth behind the history of Passover vs. Easter.
I found a section at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea, which describes the transition from the Hebrew Passover to the Christian Easter in a way that I hadn’t thought of before. When I read it, my first thoughts were, they're openly ADMITTING that they changed the day of celebration of the resurrection. Then I realized that they changed the day of the CHRISTIAN holiday -- and the Jews weren't Christians. Our church kept the JEWISH holydays, all the while passing off the “christian" traditions of Easter as "pagan."
This passage helped me realize why there was such disagreement between the days in the first place. The Christians were setting themselves apart from the Jews: ‘The council assumed the task of regulating these differences, in part because some dioceses were determined not to have Christian Passover correspond with the Jewish calendar. "The feast of the resurrection was thenceforth required to be celebrated everywhere on a Sunday, and never on the day of the Jewish passover, but always after the fourteenth of Nisan, on the Sunday after the first vernal full moon. The leading motive for this regulation was opposition to Judaism, which had dishonored the passover by the crucifixion of the Lord." Constantine wrote that: "… it appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast we should follow the practice of the Jews, who have impiously defiled their hands with enormous sin, and are, therefore, deservedly afflicted with blindness of soul. … Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Saviour a different way." Theodoret recorded the Emperor as saying: "It was, in the first place, declared improper to follow the custom of the Jews in the celebration of this holy festival, because, their hands having been stained with crime, the minds of these wretched men are necessarily blinded. … Let us, then, have nothing in common with the Jews, who are our adversaries. … avoiding all contact with that evil way. … who, after having compassed the death of the Lord, being out of their minds, are guided not by sound reason, but by an unrestrained passion, wherever their innate madness carries them. … a people so utterly depraved. … Therefore, this irregularity must be corrected, in order that we may no more have any thing in common with those parricides and the murderers of our Lord. … no single point in common with the perjury of the Jews."’
This made so much sense to me. My church had never explained in quite this way, and it left me undecided. And where did easter eggs and bunnies come from in the first place? I’d been taught relentlessly as a child, that Easter originated from worship of the fertility goddess Ishtar, and that rabbits and eggs were pagan symbols of new life. But could this be documented?
I googled “easter” in search of its origins. A Catholic site, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05224d.htm, mentions this: “ The English term, according to the Ven. Bede relates to Estre, a Teutonic goddess of the rising light of day and spring…” The site, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Bunny, states, “The rabbit as an Easter symbol seems to have its origins in Germany, where it was first mentioned in German writings in the 1500s,” and, “Eggs, like rabbits and hares, are fertility symbols of extreme antiquity.” The goddess Eostre is cited, and following that link, I read that the Benedictine monk Bede associated Eostre and Eostur-monath with the month of April; according to Bede, Eostre’s festival was celebrated in the spring.
Another site documenting the origins of Easter (specifically the Christian Easter vs. the Jewish Passover), echoes this, and goes on to say, “…scholars actually believe that the festival has its roots in a number of pre-Christian faiths, including Pagan and Jewish. For example, historians believe that the word Easter is derived from the Saxon name of the Pagan goddess of spring and fertility, Eastre. The lunar calendar month of April was dedicated to a celebration of Eastre, featuring rituals to mark the vernal equinox and welcome the fertility associated with springtime. Many of these Pagan traditions have been incorporated into Christianity's celebration of Easter today. The Easter bunny and Easter eggs, for instance, are both Pagan symbols of fertility.” (http://www.holidays.net/easter/story.htm)
(By the way, I googled Ishtar, and she seems to be a completely different goddess than the one for whom Easter is named).
I’m sure there are numerous more sites I could research. But what I’ve found is enough to believe that yes, the celebration we know today as “Easter” does indeed have non-christian origins. The controversy of Passover vs. Easter did indeed divide Christ’s early followers. But does this mean that Christians are not to celebrate easter but to keep Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread, as outlined in the Old Testament? No, I don’t believe so.
What I do believe is that there is no “one size fits all.” I believe in questioning convention and traditions. We each have to make our own decisions based on facts, and live as we are convicted to believe.
I’ve never been on an Easter-egg hunt.
The Bradford pears are blooming their white linen, the redbuds are dotted with their purple-pink, and the earth is sprouting daffodil-yellow. It must be Spring! I love this time of year, when the earth thaws out and begins to show its colors again.
But I don’t associate the season with Easter or sunrise services or memories of easter-egg hunts, as most Christian-oriented people do. I grew up in a church which, instead, observed the Old-Testament rituals of unleavened bread. We were non-denominational – not Jewish, not Seventh-Day Adventist, not Jehovah’s Witness. But still we spurned the Easter celebration as having pagan origins.
We celebrated the Passover, a commemoration of the ancient time described in Exodus 12, when God struck all the firstborn in Egypt, save for those Israelite homes who had the blood of the lamb on their doorposts. Of course the blood of the lamb was a precursor to Christ’s blood, which would one day be shed to save God’s modern-day people from eternal death.
Let me pause here to add, this is not meant to be a particularly religious or “preachy” piece. I’m certainly not out to convert anyone, or accuse anyone. This is simply a progression of thoughts as I, as an adult, reason, think through, and question a teaching of my childhood.
Because verse 14 of Exodus 12 tells the Israelites to keep this feast “throughout your generations,” “as an everlasting ordinance,” our church followed the instructions in Exodus 12 (and reiterated in chapter 13) to remove leaven from our homes and to eat unleavened bread for seven days. As churchmembers we would do a mad-spring cleaning to “put leaven out of our lives.” Leaven – which is generally found in breads, cakes, piecrusts, cookies, hamburger buns, pizza crusts, crackers, and numerous other common foods – symbolized “sin” at this time of year for us.
When the Israelites fled Egypt (verses 31-40 of Exodus 12), “Egypt” pictured sin, and of course the Israelites were God’s chosen people, so just as the Israelites fled Egypt, we as modern day Christians are to flee sin. And as churchmembers we were to put leaven (“sin”) out of our lives for seven days.
And not just by throwing out all breads, crackers, and cookies from our homes! We went so far as to clean our toasters, because crumbs of leaven lurked in there, too, just as sin can lurk in places in ourselves that we don’t think to look. We were not to eat of anything leavened, at home or anyplace, neither were we to have any leavened products in our house.
This was to occur for seven consecutive days, and generally fell around the time of Easter. I’ll mention here that the Bible makes no mention of easter eggs or bunnies or anything of the sort. Because my church strove to live by God’s Word in every way possible, we did not condone such things and thus, I never hunted easter eggs as a child.
Recently I got this set of oh-so-funny Easter cartoons from my sister-in-law. I forwarded them to many of my friends, including one of our girls who observes the Jewish faith. I asked if the Jewish celebrated Easter -- which I knew they didn't, but sometimes mainstream holidays seep their way into non-mainstream churches.
So of course she replied that they don't; they celebrate the Passover which pictures the Exodus from Egypt. Well, I knew all about that, but it got me to thinking about the Council of Nicaea, which was the big council that decided on which days to celebrate. I needed to understand as an ADULT, and not just a child following my mom’s religion, the truth behind the history of Passover vs. Easter.
I found a section at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea, which describes the transition from the Hebrew Passover to the Christian Easter in a way that I hadn’t thought of before. When I read it, my first thoughts were, they're openly ADMITTING that they changed the day of celebration of the resurrection. Then I realized that they changed the day of the CHRISTIAN holiday -- and the Jews weren't Christians. Our church kept the JEWISH holydays, all the while passing off the “christian" traditions of Easter as "pagan."
This passage helped me realize why there was such disagreement between the days in the first place. The Christians were setting themselves apart from the Jews: ‘The council assumed the task of regulating these differences, in part because some dioceses were determined not to have Christian Passover correspond with the Jewish calendar. "The feast of the resurrection was thenceforth required to be celebrated everywhere on a Sunday, and never on the day of the Jewish passover, but always after the fourteenth of Nisan, on the Sunday after the first vernal full moon. The leading motive for this regulation was opposition to Judaism, which had dishonored the passover by the crucifixion of the Lord." Constantine wrote that: "… it appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast we should follow the practice of the Jews, who have impiously defiled their hands with enormous sin, and are, therefore, deservedly afflicted with blindness of soul. … Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Saviour a different way." Theodoret recorded the Emperor as saying: "It was, in the first place, declared improper to follow the custom of the Jews in the celebration of this holy festival, because, their hands having been stained with crime, the minds of these wretched men are necessarily blinded. … Let us, then, have nothing in common with the Jews, who are our adversaries. … avoiding all contact with that evil way. … who, after having compassed the death of the Lord, being out of their minds, are guided not by sound reason, but by an unrestrained passion, wherever their innate madness carries them. … a people so utterly depraved. … Therefore, this irregularity must be corrected, in order that we may no more have any thing in common with those parricides and the murderers of our Lord. … no single point in common with the perjury of the Jews."’
This made so much sense to me. My church had never explained in quite this way, and it left me undecided. And where did easter eggs and bunnies come from in the first place? I’d been taught relentlessly as a child, that Easter originated from worship of the fertility goddess Ishtar, and that rabbits and eggs were pagan symbols of new life. But could this be documented?
I googled “easter” in search of its origins. A Catholic site, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05224d.htm, mentions this: “ The English term, according to the Ven. Bede relates to Estre, a Teutonic goddess of the rising light of day and spring…” The site, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Bunny, states, “The rabbit as an Easter symbol seems to have its origins in Germany, where it was first mentioned in German writings in the 1500s,” and, “Eggs, like rabbits and hares, are fertility symbols of extreme antiquity.” The goddess Eostre is cited, and following that link, I read that the Benedictine monk Bede associated Eostre and Eostur-monath with the month of April; according to Bede, Eostre’s festival was celebrated in the spring.
Another site documenting the origins of Easter (specifically the Christian Easter vs. the Jewish Passover), echoes this, and goes on to say, “…scholars actually believe that the festival has its roots in a number of pre-Christian faiths, including Pagan and Jewish. For example, historians believe that the word Easter is derived from the Saxon name of the Pagan goddess of spring and fertility, Eastre. The lunar calendar month of April was dedicated to a celebration of Eastre, featuring rituals to mark the vernal equinox and welcome the fertility associated with springtime. Many of these Pagan traditions have been incorporated into Christianity's celebration of Easter today. The Easter bunny and Easter eggs, for instance, are both Pagan symbols of fertility.” (http://www.holidays.net/easter/story.htm)
(By the way, I googled Ishtar, and she seems to be a completely different goddess than the one for whom Easter is named).
I’m sure there are numerous more sites I could research. But what I’ve found is enough to believe that yes, the celebration we know today as “Easter” does indeed have non-christian origins. The controversy of Passover vs. Easter did indeed divide Christ’s early followers. But does this mean that Christians are not to celebrate easter but to keep Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread, as outlined in the Old Testament? No, I don’t believe so.
What I do believe is that there is no “one size fits all.” I believe in questioning convention and traditions. We each have to make our own decisions based on facts, and live as we are convicted to believe.
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