Oooh... shiny!!

       I recently went back to work (after a two-year hiatus due to StupidCancer and StupidCancer complications) and took on a squirrelly class of two-year-olds that'd had previously had little or no discipline. I came home exhausted for the few two weeks. This is why we have kids when we are YOUNG. HA!
       Part of the previous problem lay in the fact that they had been given worksheets to color and alphabet letters to trace -- and no other opportunities to be creative. Yep. In a two-year-old classroom.
     On one of the first days holding the reins I discovered a pack of glitter glue bottles in a jumbled-up cupboard in the classroom, and let my little ones decorate tiny tambourines I'd made with them.
One generally does not use glitter with two year-olds, but in the form of Elmer's glue it becomes fairly innocuous and quite captivating. One little sprite spent 40 minutes carefully squeezing out teensy-tiny squiggles of shiny strands, and the rest followed suit. To be honest, I snagged that box of glitter glue out of the cupboard two more times when plans had to be abandoned, before I'd developed a stronger schedule and curriculum.

Last Friday, I made sense out of the Big Supply Closet, finding yet more glitter glue and glitter and sparkly colorful beads and sequins and crayons and paints and other required elements of early childhood education Art Experiences. Color, sparkle, glittering...for some of us, it's the modern-day equivalent of finding buried treasure. Ooooh, shiny!!

Ooooh shiny! I laughed to myself in the supply closet. ( I could hear Jonathan teasing me with that phrase, when I abruptly change subjects in a nanosecond, distracted by something I want to share with him in the moment. LOL )

Pretty, ooh-shiny glitter-glue provided a back-up for me these past few weeks, when I needed to get those wee ones settled down and focused and teach about taking turns.

Seems like modern-day humans tend to sometimes use God as a glitter-glue entity. We know where to find Him, we know He'll come through in a tight spot, and He makes everything beautiful and sparkly. All of that true...to a point.

I stood with twenty other sojourners yesterday during Mass, listening to the litany as we were presented to the congregation and the priests. I stood silently, after giving my commitment to further my journey, with my fellow travelers, as my sponsor made the sign of the cross on my head, to help me think on God, my eyes to see God, my ears to hear God -- and so on with heart, hands and feet.
We returned to our pews and to the kneeling benches to pray. It's been a lifelong journey for me to find a house of worship where I didn't have, or need, connections to fit in, and my prayers on the kneeling bench oozed out in tears of humble gratitude.

Last night, a visiting priest 'happened' to touch upon on the disappointing election, and asked this of us -- if we trust in God, not just believe in His love and power, why can't we trust that God is up to something good in all the chaos? "Isn't He always?"

As I listened, knowing he had a good hold on the truth, I thought about half of the population of the U.S.,  who'd waited for God to flood the streets with 'glitter-glue' during the recent election, saving us from what we perceive as a truly tight spot. (I, for one, will have a hard time finding a full-time job with benefits, since the new 'HealthCare' Plan won't get repealed. I'm not alone -- and the millions of us who categorically reject the Plan have reason to worry.) We had our hopes dashed as we prayed for our nation to be restored under different leadership.

Somehow, God had not heard the prayers of over 100,000,000 people. How could that be?

'Glitter-glue' got flung. Sometimes still in the bottle, sometimes splashed angrily on blogs and e-mails and Facebook, and sometimes it just pooled out of abandoned containers and dribbled down the drain with our hopes.  Anger always covers fear...always. Adding to the passion, it's hard not to feel as though we need to constantly fight evil. It's the American way! " Bomb the enemy! Save democracy!" "Hi-ho Silver! Away!" " Use that slingshot! We are in the army of God!"

God, the ultimate Commander-in-Chief,  isn't a God of glitter-glue. We can't just apply Him to situations on demand.

Nor is He only a back-up plan, nor just for special occasions, nor to be used as a pretty Scripture-projectile missiles to prove our points. Even if there's a battle to be fought.

He is the Creator of the trees with which to make paper, and of the minds who create upon the blank pages. He's the Light that makes color appear...so since we're made in God's image, no wonder we love glitter! It catches the light and makes the world sparkle. Ooh shiny! isn't necessarily a bad habit...as long as we remember the source and purpose of the light.

He's always up to something good. Always.

He. is. God.

As the priest said last night, "we must open the door of faith", and I shall add, to let the Light in.

Be blessed.

Shenandoah, revisited...

My sister Karen and I used to go to the PTA sponsored Summer Film Series at the Fox Theater in downtown Riverside back in the early 70's. Our mother would drop us off every Tuesday afternoon, and afterward we'd wait for her to pick us up. While protected from the hot California sun underneath the awning of Shook's Shade Shop, around the corner from the grand old theater, we'd go over the movie we'd just seen again and again, as we wondered if the roller shade in the shop window had possibly been there since the Spanish-American War. HA . Those were the days... 

One 70's summer week, we saw Jimmy Stewart, and Doug McClure, and Katharine Ross, and a (pre-Dukes of Hazzard "Uncle Jessie") Denver Pyle in the gloriously filmed and wonderfully heartfelt "Shenandoah", a Civil war-era film. This screen shot shows the featured Virginia family seated around the table. Not but a few frames later in the film a bitter argument breaks out amongst the family members. Stewart, as the patriarch, insists that none of his sons will fight in this war unless it affects the family. 

Events unfold, family members die as casualties, and in the final frames of the film, most of the chairs remain unfilled.

We girls were so sad to see that empty table. Tears welled up in our pre-teen eyes, in the dark rows of the Fox Theater, and we told our mom all about it on the way home from Shook's Shade Shop. 

A similar occurrence has developed amongst the "family of Americans" during this long and ridiculously hateful political season. The left paints the right as hysterical conspiracy theorists and the right paints the left as commie-pinkos, to coin a phrase from the past. The family divides in the film as in the actual Civil War, brother against brother, and so has our country. 

Friends ditch friends over ideological differences. And not just ditch, but stab through the heart.

Family members stop talking to each other, even on common ground, because one can't stand a certain candidate whom the other respects, and so all other conversation becomes stilted and obligatory, if any ensues.

People try and play the race card, even when people of the same race as a candidate oppose him politically. 

Religion comes into play -- " which is worse, Muslim or Mormon?" -- when neither are inherently bad to begin with. 

This family, this nation, this America is divided. I offered up a 40 Days of Prayer posting on Facebook during the last few weeks, focusing on finding truth, dignity, integrity, civility. All things which  I myself certainly need to work on, and which I see a deplorable lack of across the nation. Campaign signs are destroyed, vehicles keyed and damaged, candidates openly mocked -- DURING DEBATES. 

Perhaps this all began during the Kennedy campaign, when whispers that 'that Catholic will take over the country with the Pope' circulated viciously. 

Perhaps this all began with Nixon and his botched attempt to lie under oath. At least he had the dignity to resign and go away...

Perhaps this all began with Reagan and the Nuclear Arms Race, scaring the bejeebies out of all of us on a daily basis. 

Perhaps the deplorable lack of civility began with Clinton, whose quite admirable successes as President are forever tarnished by his degradation of the Oval Office to a publicly discussed den of sex, deceit, and lawsuits, along with the dubious and dire distinction of a trail of bodies who could have been witnesses in the lawsuits, to boot. 

Regardless of where or how it started, this election season split this country asunder, like lightning through a hundred-year-old oak that no one ever expected to fall. 

There are empty seats at the table. 

No matter who garners the votes on Tuesday, those seats will remain unfilled. Our nation is divided. 

One nation, under God, no longer indivisible, due to the current political climate. we are no longer "under God". IF we believe in Him, we tell Him how it should go, or we dismiss the thought of a God, or worse, we claim to be Christians but instead choose politics as our god, shunning family and friends who do not share our political thoughts. 

 No matter who garners the votes next Tuesday, we have become a nation at war -- the war of hostility and incivility and hatred. Over politics... we claim, but truly it's the lack of decency and morality that has led us to this place. We are at war, not only with terror, but with each other, in the pews, in the workplace, on the news, in social media. Brother against brother. 

As the Anderson family does in the above photograph, before they are forever disbanded, let us pray.