The Final Touch

I’m in love with my almost-7-year-old’s brain. Seri­ously. My heart just swells when I think about how intel­li­gent he is. (Please under­stand, I’m not say­ing he’s more intel­li­gent than his brother or his class­mates or any other child; it’s not even so much a mom’s bias at work here as it is amaze­ment at the won­der that is the human brain cre­ated by God.) Yes, I am in love with that mys­te­ri­ous col­lec­tion of gray mat­ter between my lit­tle guy’s ears that makes him capa­ble of doing such things as work­ing his way through a pre­cise series of steps to cre­atively and resource­fully do what he has become fix­ated on doing.

That said, he has — as you might expect of some­one his age — a ways to go in the common-sense depart­ment. In other words, his highly capa­ble brain is some­times too capa­ble for his own good… or for mine. Read the rest of this entry »

It can be hard to do some­thing pub­licly when you know not all peo­ple will agree. But I have come to such con­vic­tion about the mat­ter addressed in this procla­ma­tion that I can­not authen­ti­cally do any­thing else. I have added my name to the procla­ma­tion below (it may take a cou­ple days for those adding names to catch up with all their emails). If that causes me to lose friends or fol­low­ers or clients or poten­tial clients, so shall it be. I believe I am doing not only what Jesus “would” do but what he DOES do: includ­ing those soci­ety has too often treated as unclean. Time and time again, Jesus touched, ate with, served, and showed love for peo­ple deemed unclean by sec­u­lar and reli­gious lead­ers and oth­ers. I strive to walk in the foot­steps of Jesus — in this and in all else — so help me, God.

P.S. I’m happy to explain in pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion with any­one inter­ested how I arrived at and why I believe in this posi­tion, but I’m not inter­ested in debat­ing about the mat­ter. I agree with the Procla­ma­tion where it states that “the debate is over.” I’m weary of it.

(The for­mat­ting copied imper­fectly below from the web­page where this is posted. I’m not going to try to edit it here. I encour­age you to visit www​.Heart​land​Procla​ma​tion​.org to see the doc­u­ment as posted and to view a full list of signers.)

The Heart­land Proclamation

by the Heart­land Clergy for Inclusion

As Chris­t­ian clergy

we pro­claim the Good News con­cern­ing Les­bian, Gay, Bisex­ual and Trans­gen­der (LGBT) per­sons and pub­licly apol­o­gize where we have been silent. As dis­ci­ples of Jesus, who assures us that the truth sets us free, we rec­og­nize that the debate is over. The ver­dict is in. Homo­sex­u­al­ity is not a sick­ness, not a choice, and not a sin. We find no ratio­nal bib­li­cal or the­o­log­i­cal basis to con­demn or deny the rights of any per­son based on sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion. Silence by many has allowed polit­i­cal and reli­gious rhetoric to monop­o­lize pub­lic per­cep­tion, cre­at­ing the impres­sion that there is only one Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive on this issue. Yet we rec­og­nize and cel­e­brate that we are far from alone, as Chris­tians, in affirm­ing that LGBT per­sons are dis­tinc­tive, holy, and pre­cious gifts to all who strug­gle to become the fam­ily of God.

In repen­tance and obe­di­ence to the Holy Spirit, we stand in sol­i­dar­ity as those who are com­mit­ted to work and pray for full accep­tance and inclu­sion of LGBT per­sons in our churches and in our world. We lament that LGBT per­sons are con­demned and excluded by indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions, polit­i­cal and reli­gious, who claim to be speak­ing the truth of Chris­t­ian teach­ing. This leads directly and indi­rectly to intol­er­ance, dis­crim­i­na­tion, suf­fer­ing, and even death. The Holy Spirit com­pels us:

to affirm that the essence of Chris­t­ian life is not focused on sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion, but how one lives by grace in rela­tion­ship with God, with com­pas­sion toward humanity;

to embrace the full inclu­sion of our LGBT broth­ers and sis­ters in all areas of church life, includ­ing leadership;

to declare that the vio­lence must stop. Christ’s love moves us to work for the heal­ing of wounded souls who are vic­tims of abuse often prop­a­gated in the name of Christ;

to cel­e­brate the prophetic wit­ness of all peo­ple who have refused to let the voice of intol­er­ance and vio­lence speak for Chris­tian­ity, espe­cially LGBT per­sons, who have met hatred with love;

There­fore we call for an end to all reli­gious and civil dis­crim­i­na­tion against any per­son based on sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­tity and expres­sion. All laws must include and pro­tect the free­doms, rights, and equal legal stand­ing of all per­sons, in and out­side the church.

This is an AWESOME video! Funny and true at the same time — as is good satire.

In the words of its cre­ator: “In honor of all those Lutheran papas who made sure we got out of bed on Sun­day morn­ing, who taught us to pray, and who didn’t let our moth­ers bear the bur­den of rais­ing us in the faith all by them­selves.” Hear, hear!

Take time to watch it… and then, if it applies to you, call or email your own dad and say “thanks”!

Unfor­tu­nately, I ran across this a week and a day late, but it’s still the month of May, and this video — and the sen­ti­ments that go with it — would apply any day of the year. If it doesn’t bring you at least close to tears, you’re either not Lutheran, not a mother, not the child of a devout Lutheran/Christian mother, not mar­ried to some­one who is a Lutheran/Christian mother, or per­haps not liv­ing and breathing.

So, view it here, and let me know in a com­ment what you think. Read the rest of this entry »

On April 3, I attended the Home Con­cert (con­cert given imme­di­ately upon return from tour) of the Oak Grove Lutheran High School Con­cert Choir. One of the most mov­ing pieces they did was called “Requiem,” by a young Amer­i­can song­writer named Eliza Gilkyson. The arrange­ment was by Craig Hella John­son. It was writ­ten in response to the South­east Asia tsunami of 2004, was per­formed also in response to Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina in 2005, and in the con­cert I attended was per­formed as a trib­ute to all affected by and lost in the earth­quake and tsunami in Japan this past March.

The video here is not the choir I heard; this is the National Lutheran Choir. But the song is gor­geous no mat­ter who sings it — believe me, I’ve lis­tened to it at least four times in a row by dif­fer­ent per­form­ers this evening! Take a lis­ten:

photo © 2009 AASU Arm­strong Uni­ver­sity Archives | more info (via: Wylio)

My lit­tle guy earned him­self deten­tion today.

Yup. In kindergarten.

I’ve never had a kid get deten­tion before, but some­how I thought if it did hap­pen, it would be in, say, fourth or fifth or sixth or sev­enth grade. Or maybe eleventh… you know, for skip­ping class or something.

Nope. Kinder­garten. For punch­ing a fel­low kinder­gart­ner in the face. Read the rest of this entry »