The Ever-Tilting Planet

Anger is an interesting thing. We instantly want someone or something to blame when the volcano inside us erupts. Most of us have grown up hearing all the various words and expressions people use when upset. For my older brother, Todd, this wasn't the case. Being born deaf, he had to rely on lipreading for learning the cruder expressions in the English language.

Todd, however, is not just deaf; he has a myriad of issues that have made him the one-of-a-kind person he is. Over the years he has developed his own thought process on whom or what to blame when angry. Just as we have many different sayings, so does he. He has created his own brand of cursing.

Sloppy carpentry work is one thing that makes Todd riled up. His autistic leanings and perfectionism make him intolerant to construction that isn't perfect. In these instances, he raises his voice, uses animated hand gestures and begins to shout that the carpenters were "Three Stooges." To him, this is a clear way of describing something as shoddy, stupid, or to say, "What were ya thinkin?" We in the family understand this comparison. It's his anger towards winter that we find a bit funnier.

Todd despises winter for one reason: snow and ice make it difficult to get to work. Consequently, he now curses these elements. Part of this is autism at play. To Todd, life, happiness, and fulfillment equals work. To not work is misery. The rest of us in the family enjoy our non-work days; we relish our holidays, social gatherings and vacations. Todd, however, rolls his eyes and yells when he has to attend a family member's wedding, or celebrate Christmas, because this means he will not be working. This explains why inclement weather makes him holler a blue streak. In the heated moment however, Todd does not resort to the sharp, four-letter word list, but instead, he loudly mutters about things that are a jumbled combination of his religious upbringing with a touch of science thrown in.

One snowy day, Todd was in the driveway upset at having to clear off the piled-up snow on his car. He got angrier when he realized he would have to shovel the entire driveway in order to back out. All this work was a mere time-sucking project keeping him from his obsession to work. Soon he was fuming and yelling at our "ever-tilting planet", as he put it. Todd, unable to hear his own rantings, filled the air with his frustrations, as he shouted continuously about our stupid, tilting planet, which produces seasons, one containing snow and ice.

In another snow storm, Todd cursed the devil. For several minutes he stood yelling at Satan, as if he was the one who sent this white fluffy stuff. Todd linked the devil to cold freezing weather, while the rest of us associate him with oppressive heat.

Todd lives in Maine, which makes the opportunity to rant and rave about weather last a significant part of the year. One year, a particularly bad ice storm left Todd beside himself. Instead of blaming the devil this time, he decided to blame Adam, the guy in Genesis. He knew that Adam was the one who got the sin ball rolling, so naturally, he should be blamed for anything that goes wrong. Todd stood and blasted him for several minutes.

Now his curse list has included the Three Stooges, the Devil, Adam, and the ever-tilting planet, so it shouldn't be surprising that the next one to make the list would be God. But this time it is not to blame God, but rather to petition Him. He wants God to make the snowfall stop, warm up the temperatures, melt the ice and enable vehicles to operate easily. For this he summons Dad. Dad is a pastor, therefore his connection to God must be the most direct, like a telephone connection without the static. Todd yells at Dad to start talking to God to get him to straighten this weather out, to cross winter off His list of seasons, and warm things back up to respectable temperatures; to tell God to think green, not white.

In the end, I've looked at Todd's list of those deserving blame and I think I've made some sense of it, found a way to make it cohesive. It goes something like this. A long time ago the devil rebelled against God. Later he tempted Adam's wife to join him in his rebellion. It worked, and as a result Adam flunked the most important test in human history, leaving us with original sin and Satan as our lousy pack leader. Our only hope lies in petitioning God to return and set it all aright, once and for all. Till then, we will most likely continue to play the blame game, acting like the Three Stooges, as we live on this ever-tilting planet that we call home.

The Uprising

It strikes at night
when one least expects
When all in the house
are asleep in their beds

Blankets in tidy formations
covering their occupants
Pillows plumped beneath
sleepy heads

Then it comes
the uprising of the
unwanted guest

It gurgles and moves
gathering its forces
gaining momentum
Then...

momentarily it halts
to see about some acid
That's been lingering about
looking for some action

Together they make a potion
like a wanted cocktail
before continuing on
its upward march

At last it hits the sweet spot
where momentum and
force combine for
volcanic effect

which takes this vile bile cocktail
from its host, to the world
that exists just outside
the mouth.

Just Give Me the Cake

My girls were delighted to hear that Uncle Matt was getting married. They were even more ecstatic when asked to be in the wedding party. They had great fun trying on fancy dresses and being a part of all the preparations for the upcoming big event.

Months later, the day of the wedding finally came. You could feel the anticipation in the air, but for my daughter Colleen, the youngest member of the wedding party, her excitement held a solitary focus: cake. "We're gonna have cake today!" she told us first thing that morning. It was the anticipated high point of her day.

Later that morning, Colleen was downstairs getting ready for the wedding. Her shimmery dress was slipped down over up-stretched arms. As her head popped through the neck opening, it revealed two eyes aglow as she once again brought up the cake. "Is it time for cake yet?" she asked.
"Not yet, sweetie," I told her. "First we have the wedding, then we have the cake."
It soon became apparent that the pretty new dress, sparkly shoes, and the chance to throw petals held far less enchantment then her anticipation of eating wedding cake.

Soon we were being assembled in a line outside the sanctuary door as we waited for the processional to begin. Not surprisingly, Colleen turned to ask if she would get cake once she was done throwing petals. "Not yet honey," I told her. "We have to wait for the reception. That's when we'll have cake."

Colleen proudly fulfilled her flower-girl duties and then struggled through the remaining ceremony, unable to savor the moment. Frankly, she just didn't care about the pontifications on love, beautiful music, or Grandpa's words of blessing. To her, the whole ceremony was simply an object that stood in the way of her getting a piece of cake.

After the ceremony, the wedding party posed for photos. My gown being sporadically tugged on as she asked, "Is it time yet, time for the cake?"
"Soon," I assured her, "very soon."

Finally, things wrapped up and we piled into the van as we headed for the reception. When we pulled in the parking lot, I glanced back at Colleen who was conked out in the back seat, her floral headpiece off-center like a cock-eyed halo. "Hey girl," I said. "Wake up, it's time for cake. It's the moment you've been waiting for." Her eyes didn't open. We carried her in and once again tried to revive her with the promise of cake. No avail, she was down for the count.

Inside, we pulled two chairs together into a make-shift bed and I covered her with my shawl as she continued to lay there motionless. She slept...slept through the dinner, slept through the introduction of the wedding party, slept through the dancing and slept through the cutting of the cake.

Colleen was too young to understand the whole significance of the wedding day. To her it was a day of getting cake. I, on the other hand, understood that what she was really getting was far better. She was gaining family. She was getting a new aunt and would eventually gain cousins. Family was the true gift of the day.

However, I don't think that one has to be a three year old with rosy cheeks and twinkly eyes to miss this point. I think there are many people in the church today that are going through life motivated by the hope of heavenly rewards in the same way Colleen was passionate about the cake. Many Christians have turned rewards into the focus that drives them, clamoring on about them as if they were an ultimate end, the high point of eternal life. I question this motivation. Are we to go through life with our hearts set purely on accruing rewards? Are we missing the wedding while dreaming of the cake?

Maybe, we'll find ourselves like naive three year olds on that great day, when we understand rewards in light of what we've truly gained: family, the ultimate family. We will fully understand that God has given us, the church, as a bride to His beloved son. Maybe in this face to face communion with God we will realize we had been passionate for the lesser things. We had it all backwards. We had missed the significance of this unique wedding.

At the end of the reception a waiter approached me about my sleeping daughter's untouched meal. "Would you like us to wrap this for you to take home?" he asked.
"No thanks," I said. "We'll skip it, but if...ah..we could take a piece of wedding cake that would be great...just great.

Little Bo Peep: Scripted Out Femininity

I was sure it was Little Bo Peep I was looking at in the catalog, but then I realized it was a forty-something mother in a puffy white dress with her hair all up in a bow. she was posed very demurely. By her side were little girls who were also in dresses, looking as if they were ready to appear in an episode of Little House on the Prairie. The girls were sweetly gathered around their mother while working on embroidery or playing with their dolls.

The scene was as saccharine as the message it put forth, that this is what good Christian mothers and daughters should look like. The material by this group had a narrowly defined interpretation of femininity and masculinity. Their catalog was clearly divided into male and female sections. Things like code-breakers, bows and arrows, and Indian caps are for boys to play with. Girls had their choice of embroidery, cooking aids, or dolls. Their message was loud and clear: Home-economics for the girls, adventure for the boys.

Lately, I've been bombarded with this type of thinking, particularly from within the religious homeschool community. I think this is an ever present danger in the religious world; to script-out specifically an everyone-should-do-it-this-way method on the non-essentials of the faith. Just for the heck of it, I decided to see just how I would measure up on this group's particular checklist.

First thing I determined was that I don't dress like Little Bo Peep. In fact, the only thing she and I have in common is lost sheep. Occasionally, my sheep escape and wander off. But when they do I seek after them in my barn clothes, mud boots, and a ball cap. Who wants to wash a white frilly dress caked in mud anyways? I then determined that my girls didn't fit their scripted-out image either. They are complex, complicated creatures who refuse to have their girlhood turned into a list of girl-only and boy-only activities. While they do own some pretty dresses and enjoy the so-called feminine activities, they have also been known to be fierce orc fighters. They have read books ranging from Jane Austin's Emma to Tolkien's Ring Trilogy. In the end, it was the girls who fought orcs that most captured their imaginations.


The awe-inspiring scene in Lord of the Rings in which Eowyn fights the Lord of the Nazgul has left an indelible impression on my youngsters. Christmas 2009 demonstrated this beautifully. My girls asked for weaponry. They wanted swords and shields, bows and arrows. Old boxes in the basement soon became Helms Deep, and fabric scraps were made into capes. Then, out from the cardboard windows, they appeared ready to fight, armed to the hilt. Scenes like these that make me question narrowly defined interpretations of femininity.

I quickly decided to stop comparing myself to their checklist. Aside from the Bo Peep clothing, I already knew that my interests, activities and reading material wouldn't make the cut. We will keep the catalog though, as we sometimes purchase weapons and such from the boys section; but as for their script, they can keep it and Bo Peep can keep her dress, as well. No one in my house will be needing it.