For-Real Parent-Teacher Conference Guidelines

It is Parent-Teacher conference season, that time of year that professional educators and the parents of their students come together to celebrate accomplishments, identify goals and articulate plans.  There is so much positive spin on the intent of these sit-downs that it could have its own press cycle.

Naturally, we all hope for the best during these meetings.   Parents go in with their edited questions neatly written on legal pads, or filed on desk tops.  The teachers enter with their grade books, course hand-outs and classroom calendars.  No one’s looking for a fight, but due diligence has been done, and done well, by all stake holders.  Game on, baby…

The scope and sequence of conferences change as a student progresses deeper into his/her academic career.   Naturally, the tone and content of a meeting about a kindergartener is different from that of a seventh grade, super hormonal, adolescent.  In the former, happy tears are often shed among the educational team.  In the later, however, wails of lament, shame and/or accusation often divide the stakeholders.

As such,  and until Valium is in the public water supply, the following guidelines might help educational teams as they prepare for this season’s round of Parent-Teacher conferences:

Before the conference:

• Schedule conferences so that another adult can attend with you.  A spouse, best friend, mentor or grandparent will hear and remember different pieces of information than you might not register.  Additionally, having a witness to confront or restrain you often assures you will not do or say anything too painfully stupid, embarrassing, or intense.

• Pack a sense of humor.  You’ll need one.

• Before meeting with the teacher, please review with the person who will attend the meeting with you all the times your child has been grounded, lost technology privileges or sentenced to family-community-service since the last marking period.  Remember that what happened in your home may well be different than what your child asserts at school.  It’s not paranoid if someone has really told his/her teachers you’re clinically bi-polar.

• Assess what you think your child’s grade should be at the time of the conference based on papers and assignments that you’ve actually seen.  Understand this may well be off the mark.  Expect omissions, backpack consumption, lost articles, and forgotten items.

• Consider the questions you will ask during the conference prior to going to the meeting.  Connect with your child to determine if there are any confessions s/he wishes to make before the meeting.  Offer a two-for-one deal on all infractions done by your child at the school s/he has not yet vetted with you in hopes you won’t enter the meeting totally clueless.

• Be ready to probe how the teacher’s classroom makes space for your child to demonstrate his strengths.  Assess if there are vending machines, video games and cell phone chargers easily assessable to his/her workspace.

• Investigate if your child has difficulty in certain subjects, for example, selective listening, hygiene, workspace organization, mood swings and communication with adults.

• Distinguish between the conference and the confessional.  Offer no life stories, personal narratives, nostalgic memoirs, tearful pleas, or begging for mercy.

• Be certain to ask about the thing your kid cares about most.  How are his/her friendships going?  Is he getting along with teachers?  How are his relationships?

On conference day

• Show up on time.

• Shut up and listen.  You talk enough at home.

• No crying.

• Ask teacher what s/he wants you to do differently at home.

• Shut up and listen.  You talk enough at home.

• Work cooperatively to put a plan in place if one is required.

• Shut up and listen.  You talk enough at home.

• Schedule follow-up conference if necessary.

• No crying.

• Leave on time.

After the conference

• Celebrate positive comments and insights from teacher with your child.

• If you made a plan with the teacher, introduce it positively to your kid and implement it right away.

• Let your kid know that you wish to work with him/her and his/her school so that s/he can do his best work.

• Update teacher on progress you see at home.

• Write a note or email of thanks to the teacher for his/her time.

It is painfully difficult for parents not to take their children personally.  This makes Parent-Teacher conferences rife with possibilities for conflict.  However, if you live with an adolescent, you really must safeguard your conflict energy for use at home.  All kidding aside, the conference might be the place you are reaffirmed in the conviction that you are not crazy, and your kid is actually, pimples and hormones aside, a really great, growing, thriving, individuating individual.

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

Kindergarten Genisis

I was grateful to hear a message about beginning well from Genisis.  The celebrant gave an example from his family, his son went to Kindergarten and won the Student of the Week Award.  This pastor said there is something inherent in us that celebrates beginnings, and beginning well.

As such, I have thought much about Genesis this week, and beginning well.

Naturally, I was delighted  to receive the following email from my kindergartner’s teacher:  “Thought you’d enjoy knowing that Ms. Head of School read [The Baby’s] poem/scarecrow project today over the intercom during morning time.  It was adorable and [The Baby] just beamed with pride!!  She brings me such JOY!!!”

I know you must read it now, so here is her song:

I could while away the homework,
Conferring with my mamma,
Consulting with [Ms Teacher].
And my head I’d be scratchin’
While my thoughts were busy hatchin’
If I only had [School Name] brain.

I’d unravel every riddle
For any boy or girl
In trouble or in pain
With the thoughts I’d be thinkin’
I could be anothet [Head Master’s Last Name]
If I only had a [School Name] brain.

Oh I could tell you why
The Big Room’s lots of fun,
I could think of things I’d never thunk before
And then I’d sit, and read some more.

I would not be just a nothin’
My head all full of stuffin’
My heart all full of pain
I would love and be Christian
Life would be my living mission
If I only had a [School Name] brain.

The Baby

Fractured from, “If I Only had a Brain,” The Wizard of Oz, Harold Arlen, E.Y. Harburg

We love to begin well!  The Baby did…

And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

Someone Has Confused His Rage for This Woman’s Only Life

Gender Characteristics Which Distinguish Women:

• lunar cycle
• estrogen influence:  puberty, sex drive, child birth, menopause
• physiology:  breasts, hips, vagina, hair
• socialized to privilege appearance
• socialized to “be taken care of” by a male figure:  father/husband/boss
• prone to specific diseases:  eating disorders, Lupus, gynecological disorders, breast cancer

Common Lables Used to Describe Women

62 words compose this incomplete list.  What commonalties do you observe?

How many words of similar connotation can you catalogue to describe men?

What sense do you make of your results?

Gender Questions for Women:

• How does being a woman affect identity?
• How does being a woman affect social status?
• How does being a woman affect employment?
• How does being a woman affect proximity to/in violence?
• How does being a woman affect political power/affiliation?
• How does being a woman affect empowerment?
• How does being a woman affect higher education status?
• How does gender affect voice?
• How does gender affect credibility?
• How does gender affect sexual identity/role?
• How does the mass media portray women?
• How does literature represent women?
• Do women share a common culture?  If so what are its characteristics?

Another Woman

Today another woman died
and not on a foreign field
and not with a rifle strapped to her back,
and not with a large defense of tanks
rumbling and rolling behind her.

She died without CNN covering her war.
She died without talk of intelligent bombs
and strategic targets.
The target was simply her face, her back
her pregnant belly.

The target was her precious flesh
that was once composed like music
in her mother’s body and sung
in the anthem of birth.

The target was this life
that had lived its own dear wildness,
had been loved and not loved,
had danced and not danced.

A life like yours or mine
that had stumbled up
from a beginning
and had learned to walk
and had learned to read
and had learned to sing.

Another woman died today.
not far from where you live;
Just there, next door where the tall light
falls across the pavement.

Just there, a few steps away
where you’ve often heard shouting,
Another woman died today.
She was the same girl
her mother used to kiss;
the same child you dreamed
beside in school.

The same baby her parents
walked in the night with
and listened and listened and listened
For her cries even while they slept.
And someone has confused his rage
with this woman’s only life.

-Carol Geneya Kaplan

I am another woman, though I did not die that day…

I am a lunar creature; I quicken life within me…

I am a woman…

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

Grammy Perume

Smell.

Usually, the word connotes a visceral charge.

Many words do.

Makes me wonder.

There’s emotion connected to smells that occupy my thoughts today.

Made me remember what home smells like.

Home smells like welcome.

Baked apples and cinnamon.

From-the-garden, Vegetable soup simmered beneath a blanket of fresh, baked bread.

Coffee permeated the air like bacon.  Its bitter smelled sweet, and the cream was real, thick, cold and ready to pour from a brown, pitcher crock.  Only real sugar on the table in a chipped china bowl.  Not a rainbow colored packet anywhere.  Always time to linger over the mismatched cups.

The table was white and gray Formica.  The chairs around it didn’t match and had cracked seats.  Unless Grandpa was in the first seat on the right by the door, no one sat in his chair.

An apple cookie jar sat at the end next to the wall and neighbored the ever present bottle of Hot Pete sauce.  Always full, it hid the treasure of at least three kinds of cookies for little hands to grab.

40 Hour week.  The fruits of their labor is worth more than their time.

_Alabama, baby_

The one who worked behind this scene was a farmer’s wife.  Every inch a quiet, country town, church-going matron, there was simply nothing my grammy couldn’t do with a bundt cake pan and a rosary.  That smell was magical, and always different.  Butter from her barn, sweet, sweet, sweet.  Prayer-fingered beads blessed us one by one.

I can still taste my childhood when I smell cake bake today, though I can no longer eat it.  Nothing compares.

Fresh eggs straight from the coup smell moist and almost woody.  Their nearly orange yolks painted sunshine in the fry pan.

Grammy’s cheek smelled like morning rain, and like baptism washed us clean.

The cradle of her arms was home.

She was perfume.

And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

Be The Change

Our church family participated in a Be The Church program this Sunday.  Very:

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world,”
—  Mahatma Gandhi

our church family was called to go out and serve.

And it was good.

A less often Mahatma Gandhi quote opines:  “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

There is much I will mine from our experience together today.

I confess that I am overwhelmed.

Steeled by Fruit and sheer work ethic alone, inside, we rooted through roaches, mold and human excrement, while outside we primed and painted.   As we did so, able-bodied, adult, children of the couple we served were either dormant within, or absent from the home.

I need to think about and write more about this day, for now, however, I trust that under the litmus of both his oft and lesser quoted charges, Gandhi would have endorsed our work today.

I want to be the change Gandhi challenged, and live my life as a Christian he would consider a good branch of His vine…

It is well, it is well, with my soul.

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

Quiet Rage, part iii

The iconic Hallelujah breaker of violence against women is considered in another woman

I thought I was done with Michelle for now.

However, I can’t stop thinking about her Hallelujah vacuum that risks entropy.

Thus, a third window into Michelle’s life. 

( For the first pieces of the story, see:   Quiet Rage, part i and Quiet Rage, part ii)

And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

_quiet rage, part iii_

Her parents had left pissed.

Nothing new there.

Michelle had become so intimate with their disappointment that they were almost lovers.  She couldn’t remember a time that the way she responded didn’t frustrate them.  In an odd way that she knew was on some level was sick, their impatience with her felt safe and familiar.

She recalled the way her father had ended the abortive interview with that Polish cop who had just gotten a perm.  Michelle herself hated perms.  They smelled worse than sour kraut, like a helmet of funky cabbage.   She hated that cop too.  She’d always hated women who acted like dicks.  This one manned herself up behind a badge and had tried to eat her heart.

But oh, God, oh!  How Michelle loved poetry.  It kept her sane.  Pretty pissed herself, she had not expected to wake up to this old shit.  She had not expected to wake up again ever.  Even now though, inside a vise of almost claustrophobic, physical pain, she recalled a Sylvia Plath poem:

Lady Lazarus

As if a director of a play, her father had cast himself in the role of her hero.  Her knight in shining armor.  Like he could rescue her now.   And she, only 18, didn’t care how many lives she may have been granted, she knew only that no one could rescue her now.

A fatigue deeper than pain had invaded when that bitch had said, “It’s only just begun.  She is going to have to face it.”

Michelle had no appetite left.

She was unleavened bread.

Quiet Rage, part ii

The too common Hallelujah breaker of violence against women is considered in another woman

Here is the second part of another window into Michelle’s life. 

( For the first piece of the story, see:   Quiet Rage, part i .)

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

_quiet rage, part ii_

“Just let me know where it hurts,” Dr.  Williams instructed.

She neither stirred nor opened her eyes.  She felt him draw back the starched, white sheet.  Cold air assaulted her mid section as he pulled up her gown.  He pressed her stomach in several places.  She groaned when he touched her for the fourth time.

“I know you’re sore, Hon.  You’ve got two cracked ribs and a nasty cut down here.  I want to make sure there’s no signs of internal bleeding or infection.”

She gritted her teeth again in an attempt to swallow her sobs.  Tears escaped from her tightly squeezed eyelids.

“I’ll get you something for the pain now,” Dr.  Williams said as he pulled her gown back down and replaced the sheet.  “I’ll send your parents back in too.”

She felt another gentle squeeze on her good hand and heard his steps move away.  She listened as the door swished open and creaked shut slowly, it sounded like the door of a school bus.  She heard the door open again.  She waited for the footsteps to approach her bedside.

“We’re back, Kitten,” Daddy’s voice said.  “Dr.  Williams said you could talk to our friend here while he got you some pain medicine.”

She opened her hazel eyes to see another stranger’s face next to Daddy’s and Mom’s familiar ones.  A pair of huge, brown, doe eyes met her curious gaze.

“Hi, my name is Officer Linda Kozickowski,” the round face said.  “I was hoping that you could tell us what happened to you the other night.”

This time she cast her blank stare like a net toward that new, round face.  She guessed that Linda had just gotten a perm; her chocolate-brown hair was a bouquet of short, tight curls that could only come from a salon.  Her large nose was crooked, and looked as if it had once been broken.  Her lips were painted a frosty pink and gaped open slightly like a microphone head, greedy and anxious to record every grisly detail.

“Can you tell us?”  Officer Kozickowski asked.

She looked up again, this time noticing her navy uniform top  and the gold MPD patch on her right shoulder.

“I’m going to turn this tape recorder on so I can get everything at once,” Officer Kozickowski explained patiently.  “Just talk like you do every day and ignore it, okay?  I’ll start.”

“This will be a taped statement, a case of rape.  The date is August 20, 2003 at 1:40 p.m.  This is Officer Linda Kozickowski in the hospital room of the victim, and with me is Michelle, M I C H E L L E, middle initial L, as in lilac, Larson, L A R S O N.  DOB August 18, 1986, address of 824 Bayview Drive, Millpoint, MA, 01775, phone, 978-897-5531.  There is no one else in on this interview besides Michelle, her parents, and Officer Kozickowski.  Michelle, starting from when you left your place of employment two nights ago, would you tell me in your own words what happened to you.”

Michelle let out a weary, exasperated sigh, clenched her teeth, and stared at Officer Kozickowski.

“Can you tell me what he looked like, Michelle?”  Officer Kozickowski asked.

Tears polluted Michelle’s vision.  Her parents’ faces appeared hazy and blurred as if she looked at them through carnival glass.

“Did you see his face?  Did you see the knife?”  Officer Kozickowski drilled.

Michelle slammed her swollen and bruised, hazel eyes shut and clenched her good fist.

“Where did the subject first approach you?”

Michelle turned her face away from her interrogator.  Her chest started to hitch up and down like an overtaxed furnace.  She lay there keening, her eyes squeezed so tightly shut that her brow and nose appeared to almost meet.

“Michelle, we need your help so this doesn’t happen again.”  Officer Kozickowski lectured.

Like a station transformer had been hit, Michelle went dark and became still.  She laid as stiff and unyielding as a fallen oak downs power lines.  She lay there unmovable and broken.  Her swollen, bruised face was drenched in tears and mucus, causing the cut which ran from her right earlobe to the center of her right cheek to sting even more.

“Look at me, Michelle, talk to me.”

Michelle refused to move or open her hazel eyes again.  She began to grind her teeth like an earnest apple press.  The frequent sniffling of her nose provided a somber wind accompaniment to their percussion.

“It’s only just begun,” Officer Kozickowski said, “She is going to have to face it.”

“That’s enough!”  her father spat.  “Get out, get out and take your fucking tape recorder and notepad with you.”

“Shh, Baby.  It’s okay, Michelle,” Daddy said.  “She’s gone.  We’ll take care of you.”

“It’s too late for that,” Michelle whispered hoarsely.  “It’s too damned late now.”

Quiet Rage, part i

The too common Hallelujah breaker of violence against women is considered in another woman

Here is the first part of another window into Michelle’s life.

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

_quiet rage, part i_

She slowly opened her swollen, bruised eyelids.  She squinted as she struggled to keep her eyes open as her pupils adjusted to the glare of the bright light.  For several minutes she fought against her heavy, fluttering lids.  They staggered open like old theater curtains,  too worn from use to glide.   She stared up at the white ceiling, noticing the random disorder of its small raised bumps.  Her brow knitted in concentration as she steadied herself.  Drawing deep, labored breaths, she tried to determine where she was.  She attempted to turn her head to look around.  A sudden jolt of pain forced a grimace as she sharply gasped for breath.  Everything hurt.  Pain smothered her.  It was too much for her to withstand.  She surrendered, let the waves of dizziness wash over her like a tide, closed her battered eyes, and allowed the undertow to pull her away, lost in its vicious current of pain.

She lay stiffly and still.  Her forehead creased as her nose twitched.  She was awake again.  Her eyes paced back and forth beneath her puffed lids like sentinels, as if to consider whether or not to do battle with the light again.  She turned her head to the left before she gradually opened her hazel eyes.  They teared as she blinked and waited to adjust to the invading light.  Her eyes followed the length of her arm.  She noticed the small, bloodstained Band-Aid that was pasted to the inside of her left elbow.  She looked at the network of cuts, scratches, and bruises which covered her arm like a red, laced glove.  She tried to move her fingers.  They wouldn’t bend.  It was then that she saw the white band which taped her fingers and wrist to a brace board.  She could only see the mound of white tape and part of the thin tubing of her IV.  Tears welled up in her eyes and coursed their way down into her matted, blonde hair.   The hitch and pull of her sobs tired her quickly, and like a mewling infant, she cried herself back to sleep.

She could hear someone calling her name, beckoning her out of the deep, black fog.  The intrusion of her peace as unwelcome as the pain that waited to attack her again when she woke.  It pestered like a woodpecker holes a tree, and refused to relent.  She strained to identify the familiar voice.  Her eyelids felt too heavy to pry open.

“Let me sleep,” her defeated thoughts begged.  “Please!  Don’t!   Please!  Please don’t make me!”

The voice menaced with her again and again, “Wake up, honey,” it said.  “Come on, baby, open your eyes.”

She had to fight against her own resistance to remain below, and forced herself to swim up through the darkness, exhaustion and fog back into the bright pain.  Finally, she crested the surface and forced her eyes open.  She slowly blinked away her blurring vision to make out the faces of her mom and dad.  Adrenaline smacked her bloodstream like an intravenous drug.   The taste of tin fear coated the back of her throat before it completely registered to her brain that she was very afraid again.

“If they are both here, and together,” she clicked, synapses firing in her mind like lightning bolts, “It must be really bad.”

She noticed her mother’s worried look right away; her brow was knit, her brown eyes were moist with tears and blazed with absolute fury.  A tight, strained smile painted her pale face into a grim mask of strained, maternal composure.

“Hey, Kitten,” Daddy said in his best salesman, I’ve-got-a-bargain-for-you voice.  “Rise and shine.  You can’t sleep this whole day away.”

“Honey,” Mom almost whispered.  “Are you alright? How do you feel?  Where does it hurt?”

Before she could answer, she heard a door being pushed open.  Heavy footsteps moved toward her bed.  She flinched.  Her panicked eyes strained to see who was coming.  She tried to seek solace in her parents’ faces, but they had retreated to greet the intruder.

Suddenly, a stranger’s face stabbed his stubby head over her.  She surveyed his salt and pepper hair, horn-rimmed glasses, big, ruddy cheeks and dull, green eyes suspiciously.

“And so, Ma’am,” he said smiling, “you finally decided to wake up for awhile.”

She looked up into his smiling face with a confused stare.  She noticed the stethoscope coiled around his neck, the white lab coat with a black smudge on the shoulder and the double Windsor knot of his navy necktie.

“It’s so nice to see you awake,” he said, still smiling.  “Now I can admire those beautiful, hazel eyes.  My name is Dr.  Williams.  I admitted you two nights ago when you came in.  You’re at Saint Joseph’s Hospital here in Millpoint.  I know you’re probably experiencing some discomfort.  We’ll give you something for the pain.  Along with everything else, you’ve suffered a pretty nasty concussion.  I’m going to have a look at you.”

Her split and chapped lips parted slightly as her eyes widened in fear.  She attempted to pull her shoulders back and hoist her waist up in an effort to rise,  bleated pitifully like a wounded lamb trapped under a fence, and collapsed back onto the bed.

“Now, now,” Dr.  Williams comforted.  “It’s all right.  No one will hurt you here.  Your parents will be right outside.  They can come back in as soon as we’re finished.”

“Go on, folks,” he said, directing her parents outside.  “We’ll just be a minute.”

“Hang in there, Poopsie,” Mom said, squeezing her good hand.  “We’ll just be outside for a minute.”

“Let’s get this out of the way,” Dr. Williams said.

She watched as he pulled down the silver, metal guard rails which surrounded each side of her bed like a barricade.  They looked cold.  She stared at the perspiration handprints he left on the bars as he lowered them.  The small beads of water looked like a ghost gripping the steel bars, refusing to let go.

“Okay, can you take a few deep breaths for me?”  Dr.  Williams asked.

She looked back up toward him to see he’d stuck the stethoscope in his ears, donning the instrument like a sacred, clerical robe.  His chubby cheeks appeared imprisoned by the silver tubing which joined together at his neck.

She stared at him blankly.

“Come on, Hon.” He said, pressing the head of the stethoscope to her chest.  “Just a few deep breaths.”

“Very good,” he said.  “Now let me help you sit up.”  Take my arm.  Let me pull you.  Don’t move around too much.”

She forced herself to relax while he pulled her into an upright position.  She fought crying out in pain by focusing on the black smudge on his shoulder which got larger and larger until her head was resting against it.

She felt the cold head of the stethoscope invade her bare back.

“How about taking a couple more of those deep breaths for me?” he said.  She buried her head further into his smudged, white-coated shoulder, and gasped to draw air.  She began to cry, soaking the fabric with tears, making it even harder to breathe.

“All right now,” Dr.  Williams comforted her as he lay her back down.  “Enough of that, you can rest now.”

Mucous streamed from her swollen nose to mix with the remnants of dried blood in her nostrils.  She licked her parched lips.  She closed her eyes.

“No sleeping yet, Dollface,” Dr. Williams said.  “Suppose you tell me what happened to you.”

She opened her eyes and stared at him, rage and pain darting from those haunted, hazel houses.  She gritted her teeth, closed her mouth like a vise, and shut her eyes again.

“Okay, we don’t have to talk now,” he said.

Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress

I mourn as I write, and share with you my grief as I reflect upon the day’s headlines.  CNN reported on two, tragically similar stories.  Anderson Cooper interviewed Asher Brown’s parents, and the CNN Wire Staff have updated the Tyler Cleminti story all day.

Words are not only too small for the enormous losses suffered by two, American families this week, they also dilute proximate cause:

Bullied by his peers and called gay for over two years, despite repeated, family interventions to the school, Asher’s choice to come out of the closet to his parents was among his last words.   Asher made this disclosure early on the same day that he entered a closet in his family home and committed suicide by firearm.  Asher was 13.

Tyler Clementi’s last worldly communication was to update his Facebook status, “jumping off gw bridge, sorry.”  Tyler’s suicide is linked to the live, clandestine webcast of a sexual encounter with another man.  Tyler was 18.

Bullying.

Cyberbullying.

Homophobia.

Bias incrimination.

Internet as a tool to hurt and destroy a life and/or reputation.

Intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Hate crimes.

Hallelujah breakers all.

The capacity of technology in our society exceeds the judgment, education, and appropriate behaviors of many users.

Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Bisexual curious youths are four times as likely to commit suicide as heterosexual youths.

We MUST be part of the solution.

Matthew 5:3-12 (King James Version)

³Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

⁴Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.

⁵Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

⁶Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.

⁷Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

⁸Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

⁹Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

¹⁰Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

¹¹Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

¹²Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you, and even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah!

Gettin’ It Right

Several significant events transpired over the past week:

1.)  I learned that my spiritual ministry is off balance as I withhold it from myself.

2.)  I realized that I must, must, must give The Boy more autonomy and take him less personally.

3.)  My Father held me on His lap.  He wore an old shirt, just like The Husband does at church, so that the mascara on his shoulder didn’t matter.

4.)  Broken Hallelujah achieved 30 days, and then, 30 posts.  (Small in the comparative litmus of the Internet, huge in terms of an investment from me to me.)

5.)  I enjoyed reunion with my Foster Daughter.  FD may be one of the most physically,  beautiful people I have ever met.  A natural strawberry blonde, and eyebrows of a magazine cover, she’s simply shiny with potential, and she belongs on the stage.  She lives in NYC now.  She’s courageous enough to risk and leverage her gifts.  She’s all done with what was done to her:  she’s rescued herself.   When I first met her, there was much triage, and my constant point of focus was… “What does she need?’  Last night, we sat across each other at The Cheesecake Factory, of all places.  The dinner was replete with wonder, and we both ate cheesecake… joint recovery miracles unto themselves.  Tummy tight with delight, I looked across the table at this now-sophisticated-young-woman, and realized how much growth and hope she’s spun into the fabric of our family life.  A sacred chord.   FD is as unexpected a gift from God as I have ever received.

6.)  I gave The Middle Girl an experience today that so reverberated with joy and friends, she may well remember it when she’s 30.

I remain uncertain of many things.  In this past month with you, however, I have confronted demons, sent my baby to kindergarten, identified lids, not run away from home, and mined gifts.

Tonight, I celebrate some things I got right.

Gettin’ it right lifts Hallelujah!

Realizing that  I get it right more often than I get it wrong isn’t vanity, it’s sanity!

Maybe I’ve been here before
I know this room, I’ve walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah!