What is Natural? (A Parable)

  There once was a girl named Jane.  When she was in her early teens she would announce almost every day to everyone around her how much she delighted in being a woman and a Christian.  She sang songs about Christian femininity, and she had a green canvas knapsack with "Ovaries Are A Gift From God: Use Them Responsibly!" on it.  She campaigned ceaselessly against abortion, though she herself had never been pregnant and was not, of course, sexually active.  But she could be found many weekends, standing with a small group of middle-aged ladies in front of restaurants with signs depicting scarlet bloody abortions.  She did not think this at all strange or unnatural for a teenaged girl. It was what teenaged Christian girls should all do.  It was what Jesus would have done.

  "Remember every day to be as grateful as you should be that you were born with the ability to Bear Children for Christ, or you just might LOSE that ability!" she would tell her friends, if they played organized sports, got short haircuts, or went outside without their makeup.  She was always troubled when girls around her did not act as she felt they should.

  Every morning she got up early and had her vitamins and daily chapter of scripture from her little tan bible.  Every night she either went to an evening church activity or watched an episode of Touched By An Angel, Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman or Road to Avonlea and retired early.  Still, no teenaged boys showed any abiding interest in her or her obedience to scripture and interest in bearing Christian babies.

  As she approached twenty, she started to become increasingly restless.  "I'm a woman.  I should be pregnant" she mused.  "It's what Jesus wants. What is wrong with men?  Only interested in One Thing."  She daily sang her songs about the privilege of being born female and Christian, and wrote poems about loving to sing about Jesus, fallopian tubes and uteri, and derived some small satisfaction from them, but still she fretted.

  "What kind of a woman am I?" she eventually despaired.  "I should be pregnant for Jesus, and I'm not.  What good is it being female if I'm not going to have a baby? I'm of prime child-bearing age.  I'm wasting it!"

  To try to improve her attitude toward her Special Burden (and to meet godly Christian young men), she took courses in Christian Women's Studies at venerable old, red brick Blessed Triumphant Savior College (not accredited).  For eight years she worked part-time at a little Christian book store to be able to afford these courses.  She went to bed early each night and woke up bright and early each morning, filled with an undying resolve to do what she'd been Designed For one day. To do what Jesus wanted her to do.

   Eventually Geoff, one of the professors at Blessed Triumphant Savior College, consented to marry her. He was young and keen, having himself only gotten his PhD from bible college (unaccredited by man's Academic system) the year previous. She'd come to his office wanting clarification on some of the finer points of Proverbs 31, but he'd wanted to lecture on the Song of Songs.  

  "The bible is a book filled throughout with lyrics of various kinds by sundry authors," he'd intoned, looking off somewhere above and an only occasionally stealing glances at her, sitting there in her jean skirt and pink "Abortion Is Murder" cardigan.  "But only that one ancient Semitic poem cycle commonly attributed to Solomon is sometimes called 'The Song of Songs.' Very telling. And that entire work is a quite frank, lyrical depiction of erotic love and acts associated with those ancient, very natural feelings.  So, according to the editors, translators and book titlers of the very Word of God itself, the best song, the arch-song, as it were, the over-song, a Song Above All Songs, is a song about...sex.  From this earth-shattering scriptoerotic epiphany we have to humbly agree that all of the very best songs, from time immemorial right up to the present day with its Katy Perry and its Justin Bieber, are without exception, always and only about that very scripture-sanctioned, divinely-approved topic. Eros."  And then he looked directly at her for just a moment, as if he'd said something daring.

  The wedding was all Jane had hoped for.  For that one day, she was the princess she'd always imagined she was when she was little and had imagined Jesus as her Fairy Godmother.  Everything was white.  The dresses, the tuxes, the cake, the chairs, the bunting.  All were the same radiant white.  Everyone there (besides the catering staff of course) was as well.  It looked so pure and holy.  It cost a fortune, but it was so worth it. It was just what Jesus wanted of a young Christian woman who just really wanted to please him.

  Jane breathed a giant sigh of relief in her life.  Now things were going to work out.  Now she could do what she'd been Made to Do.  Now she could REALLY serve Jesus, as a meek, submissive, grateful wife.  She could begin filling the world with the Christian-raised fruit of her very womb, just like the apostle instructed all Christians to do. And she could home-school her children to preserve them from the secular taint that less loving Christian mothers weekly exposed their wretched little get to, sending them daily on that big yellow bus to that reeking pit of rank humanism.

  Geoff continued to teach at the Christian college, where he was spending more and more time lately.  Every morning Jane took her vitamins and read her chapter of scripture (often reading Proverbs 31), and every Saturday night, she made love to her husband.  Just as Jesus wanted.  Naturally, she refused to engage in any kind of sexual activity which was unlikely to result in her conceiving a child.  

  But the months rolled on apace, and with every month came, as regular as clockwork, her inescapable menses.  Like wretched Hannah of old, every month she sat on their gleaming white toilet and wept bitter tears.  "How I have failed my Lord!  It is fitting that my eyes cry these salty tears even as my womb cries bloody ones, mourning the death of yet another potential Child of God!" she cried.  "What am I doing wrong?" she wondered. It had to be something.

  Had it been that time when she'd cut her hair shorter than usual and Geoff hadn't liked it?  Had it been her tendency to sometimes argue to an unseemly degree with her husband (strangely, often on Saturday nights)? Well, it was so difficult to submit to such an ungodly man!  Had it in fact been the result those few occasions she'd let her (clearly hypocritical, unloving and depraved) husband lead her astray into Unproductive Acts?  There'd even been that one time when she'd almost felt she'd liked... but then she cast that unworthy thought from her like a live viper, and continued weeping, soul-searching and praying.  Because that's what Jesus wanted.

  Whatever it was, she knew it was her fault she wasn't conceiving.  Oh yes, it was very tempting to blame Geoff and his depravity, but she'd been raised well enough to know not to act like Eve blaming Adam for her own disobedience.  Her duty to successfully bring healthy, pinkly Christian babies to term was hers and hers alone.  It was what a Christian woman did for God. Something was disrupting that delicate relationship between Jane and her Saviour...  Was it the presence of too many garishly secular woman's magazines in their house, like insidious tares among the good wheat of the more modestly hued Christian ones?  And sometimes the wrong kind of secular ones?  (The kind which told women how to orgasm, rather than how to make casseroles and sweaters?) Sometimes she just couldn't wait in line at the supermarket without being led astray by one of those... As her mother used to ominously quote from her old King James Bible "What hast thou in thy house?"

  Two years went by and she purged the house of all secular magazines in a manner which Geoff insisted was, but she denied was anything like, superstitious.  Either way, it was obvious that spiritually, she was keeping her fingers crossed.  She made it clear to her husband that if it wasn't Saturday evening, and if it wasn't a Saturday evening when his seed was likely to Take Root in her, and if the act wasn't even designed to implant a blooming heaven-sent baby in her God-given abdominal birth arena, then the pearly, glistening Gates of Heaven were closed to him, and that even Saint Peter himself would not have been able to prevail against them.

  She retooled both her diet and her husband's, forbidding him eating or doing anything which was not clearly conducive to conception.  Everything they ate was to be 100% organic.  She'd catch him drinking a beer, coffee or a caffeinated cola and wave under his protesting nose articles dutifully snipped from Fecund Christian Wife Weekly magazine.  Articles about studies somebody or other had allegedly done which strongly indicated possible connections between indulging in these kinds of things, and in somewhat reduced male fertility.  She threw away all of his usual underwear in favour of some mail order ones she'd bought him;, ones designed to increase male fertility.  Sometimes he refused to wear them and went to the college to lecture on Christian Women's Studies "commando."  Disgusting.  Childish. So unhygienic. If the young Christian women taking his courses had any idea what was going on, unbridledly unrestrained, in his pants... She barely suppressed a shudder.

  One time she actually caught him masturbating, just as her Christian wives magazines had warned in hundreds of articles with titles like "Self-Abuse: One Family's Private Tragedy!" and "How My Tragic Addiction To Interfering With My Own Body Robbed Me Of My Christian Marriage!"  (And it wasn't even Saturday!)  To make matters worse, Geoff had been performing the act while inspired by the diagrams in an article from one of her magazines entitled "How To Examine Your God-Given Child-Nurturing Breasts For Cancer Without Inciting Animal Lust In Your Heart!"
  Jane had had enough.  "Those are MY sperm!" she'd shrieked in delicate, submissive righteous indignation, holding aloft a squelchy Kleenex and waving it graciously at him.  "You have stolen them from my very birth canal!  You had NO RIGHT!  Clearly you don't even love Jesus anymore!"
  Geoff then had the unmitigated gall to look her straight in the eye while she was meekly laying out where he'd gone wrong as to scriptural precepts, and had actually mimed pleasuring himself, with a sneering disdainful look on his face the whole time, until she'd stormed long-sufferingly out of the room!  Jane didn't know how much longer she could go on.  She told everyone in her woman's bible study group all about the incident and they told her she'd need the support of every one of them to endure the man and his obvious war against what was clearly laid out in God's Word.

  Then, as eventually happened with the manna from Heaven sent to the Israelites of old, in May her period did not come.  It was almost too good to be true.  Had her dutiful submission to What Jesus Wanted finally made one of her Saturday Evening Scriptural Unions with Geoff fruitful?  She'd just known if she made the house as pure as she kept her body, that God would honour her obedience to what was so clearly laid out in His Word for her to follow.  Because it was all up to her.  Only her.

  Four pregnancy test kits and a doctor's visit confirmed her wildest hope: she was pregnant!  Just as Jesus wanted!  God was honouring her obedience and rewarding it with blessing, as He had promised in His word always to do!  She stopped the Saturday night activities entirely at this point, of course.  After all, what was the use?

  Geoff left her a month later for a nineteen year old Christian Women's Studies major who shared his love of the Song of Songs. He claimed it was over the magazines.  He actually had the nerve to say they were weird.

  "Imagine if someone had a collection of magazines about nothing but Christianity and cocks and balls and getting women pregnant.  Someone not gay, I mean," Geoff clarified with a snarl, as he got into his car.  "Don't you see how weird that was for me?  Maybe you shouldn't have thrown out my magazines about women's private bits!" And with this completely unfair sally he drove away putting, Jane felt, an unneccessarily forceful pressure on the gas pedal.
  What was wrong with men?  Were they completely blind to the Wonders of God's Creation?  Were they such slaves to their own Equipment that they had no interest in what God had designed women's bodies to do for Him?  When would they learn to take an interest inside Women's bodies?  Men truly looked on the "outward appearance" only.  They were all just penises with shoes, the lot of them.  If she hadn't been a submissive Christian woman, she told herself, she'd have called him a misogynist. He obviously hated women.

 

  The months wore on.  Jane was, of course, on some level, heart-broken, but at least, she told herself, the question of who was really following Jesus (and just really being obedient to God Word each day) was now settled once and for all.  For all Geoff's claims that she made an idol of children and pregnancy and the family in general, now there could be no argument.  It was she who was truly, meekly, submissively following scripture.  The ladies in her woman's bible study group all agreed.  Geoff was actually filing for divorce, unheeding of how clearly against scripture this was.  This made her feel even better.
  As the tiny life grew inside her, Jane was aglow with the possibilities.  She bought many, many Christian Pregnancy books. She took special "Expecting Christian Moms" vitamins and Quiverfull Supplements.  She took Christian Pre-natal classes, explaining to everyone there on a weekly basis that sadly, her husband had forsaken the things of the Lord and followed the mute, primal calling of his own depraved flesh with a wanton Jezebel from the college.  Jane positively lived for ultrasounds and doctor's appointments.  She managed to get her doctor to agree that she was a Special Case which bore scheduling thrice the usual number of appointments, particularly for ultrasounds (or her "Family Pictures," as Jane called them).

   Above all, Jane read books with charts which told her about the normal development of a God-fearing Christian fetus.  She regularly entreated Helen the ultrasound technicians as to whether Helen felt the development of her little one was going according to schedule.  If things were going perhaps even slightly ahead of schedule, Jane filled with the satisfaction of knowing that her dutiful attention to the tenets of scripture were truly paying off.  If Helen felt that perhaps the child was a pound less than the statistical average (as happened at 17 weeks, 27 weeks and 29 weeks), Jane panicked and just knew that if she'd lived the previous week more according to what Jesus wanted, she would have made her child develop more normally.  It was all up to her and her alone.
   But in week 29, Jane knew that if she continued in her current path of occasionally wavering faith and inconsistent devotion to scripture, her child could well be born with webbed toes like that Hall girl.  Jane's path was clear.  More reading.  Stricter diet.  No reading the covers of supermarket magazines at the checkout.  If she'd been occasionally making her womb such an inhospitable environment for a Christian fetus, what was she expecting?  It was time to really get serious. Jesus wants us to get serious.

  And so she kept at it.  She ate mountains of broccoli (God's Cure-All, Pregnancy Wonderdrug!), avoided seasonings of all sorts (including the leeks and garlicks of Egypt), and ate only Ezekiel bread (baked perfectly according to the original recipe laid out in scripture by God Himself, minus, of course, the human excrement).

  Eventually Jane's due date loomed tantalizingly closer.  On average, a woman as far along as Jane was would tend to give birth, the doctor felt, this coming Wednesday somewhere around three in the morning.  Jane was ecstatic.  This Wednesday she'd finally meet her little boy outside her body, after having given birth to him completely naturally, having felt each and every blessed birth pang without benefit of drugs, and then would continue her good work of raising him to just really value the special gift that God had given to women!  For months she'd been putting her CD player against her swollen belly and playing inspirational music and "Focus on the Family" sermons so he could be born already steeped in knowing What Jesus Wanted.

  On Tuesday Jane faithfully and quietly packed her things in a small bag and took a taxi to the gleaming metal and glass hospital late in the evening after watching Dr. Quinn.

  "What are you doing here, Jane?" the medical receptionist in the little powder blue E.R. waiting room asked.  "Have your contractions started?"  Jane's contractions had not started.

  "I'm just going to sit here and wait until it is The Lord's Time for me to give birth in the wee hours of this morning," Jane said. "It should start at any point now.  I just have a really good feeling about it, y'know?  It's just so clear in scripture."

  "Why don't you just go home and wait until the contractions indicate that it is time," the receptionist suggested.

  "Because I'm a Christian," Jane explained.  "I'm just really living for my Lord and acting in faith, truly trusting Him to bring His little one to term when it is His Own Good Time in a few hours. Everything is going to work out as it should.  I just know it, with the eyes of faith. Do you know Jesus?"

  The receptionist left Jane there reading Wombs For Jesus!, and walked away to get some coffee, shaking her head slightly. What a phenomenal testimony Jane knew she was being!

  The next morning, an exhausted Jane woke up to find the sun had risen and was shining in through the off-white venetian blinds in the waiting room at the hospital where she sat slumped in a not-particularly-comfortable waiting chair.  She looked down at herself. Disappointingly, the baby had not come in the night.  First Jane was confused.  Then suddenly she was angry, as only a woman who truly believes in God can be:

  "How could you do this to me?!  What is wrong with you?  Haven't you seen what I've done for you and how obedient and dutiful I've always tried to be?  What I've sacrificed for you and given up and endured?  I've always done my very best, and now this... I cannot believe this...It makes me doubt positively everything!" Jane shouted at her round belly.

  Then the self-doubt and recrimination that had been trained into Jane from birth slowly took hold.  "Here I am doubting.  How awful.  And what have I done?  Like Peter, James and John I have fallen asleep just when I was supposed to be watching!  Shame on me!  Shame!"  

  Jane took a taxi home, with her head held low, tightly clutching her small overnight bag, baby firmly in utero.

    Jane sat on her brown couch watching the clock on the microwave.  She slept some more.  She watched Road to Avonlea.  Still, not a thing.  She felt ashamed of herself for sleeping, but though the spirit was willing, the flesh was so weak.  She threatened to call her son "Lazarus" if he didn't blessed well come forth immediately.  Thursday evening came and went.  And Friday dawned clear and bright.

  Jane's doctor phoned to ask "Anything yet?" and Jane had to admit that though the Christian fetus within her had stirred from time to time, it had clearly not heeded John Piper's recorded advice to "rise early and be diligent!" which Jane had been broadcasting to him through her belly fluid.  Infant sluggard.  "Okay.  We'll give him until tomorrow, and then we'll have to talk about inducing," the doctor said before hanging up.

  Inducing?  Jane was at first delighted and reassured at the very idea that she need not to be held captive by nature, by the Little Tyrant within her.  Then her self-doubt and recrimination training predictably caught up with her racing thoughts:
 Would this be natural, though?  Wouldn't it be cheating God?  Wouldn't it be trying to snatch the reward from His Reluctant Fingers before His Own Good Time had Come?  Jane wept bitterly, feeling horribly ashamed at the very things she'd actually been considering doing. Why, she was no better than an abortionist!  Apart from actually killing a Christian baby, she was agreeing to let the doctor do almost precisely what abortionists did every day of their heinous lives! Laying a finger on what was not Man's place to meddle in.

  Jane now knew what she had to do.  She didn't know why she hadn't thought of this before.  There were no hospitals mentioned in scripture.  Not even one!  No obstetricians or gynecologists.  She was pretty sure there was a midwife in there somewhere, though.  She didn't remember where, but she did remember an inspiring interview with an elderly Christian midwife in January's My Ovaries Are His!  This pillar of faith had delivered four hundred and fifty three babies in her lengthy career, and had never once in all that time missed cooking her pastor husband his supper.

  One phone call, and an hour later a Christian midwife was at Jane's door.  Susan was a sturdy young woman who'd never had a child herself (not being married, despite going to bed early every night, and taking vitamins every morning with her daily chapter of scripture.)  She was a duly certified Christian midwife, having received her training at an institution whose credentials are, amazingly, still unrecognized by the American Medical Association to this day.

  That evening was the best evening Jane had spent in recent memory.  She was finally doing things just as Jesus wanted.  All of the doubt was blessedly gone.  She had a Christian midwife rather than a somewhat snarky, coldly clinical, science-obsessed unbelieving female doctor.  The house had been purged of magazines which were about...that...instead of about nearly virginal Christian childbirth. The walls rang with songs about singing about Jesus and cervix dilation.  Susan even had a hymn which she was happy to teach Jane, written by a godly midwife precisely to be sung for the glory of God while the Gates of Motherhood parted like the Red Sea, gracing the world with yet another Christian to sing His praise!

  When the baby finally came, Jane felt completely fulfilled.  She endured the suffering of the pain of childbirth brought about by Eve's disobedience without resorting to any drugs or other aids besides a bit of Tylenol and some ice packs.  Her problems were over. Her life was on track for good.  No more backsliding.
  Her little boy would grow up understanding about the bible and women, and would serve the Lord as no man had ever served the Lord before.  He would be a Mighty Warrior for God.  This little boy wouldn't be nasty like so many of the other Christian men Jane and Susan had known.  He wouldn't steal glances at women's God given chests while he was talking to them.  He would value God's Special Gift to women, and would one day seek out a godly, virtuous, submissive help-meet like her, just like the one described in Proverbs 31 (only with less unbecoming focus on entrepreneurship and export/import ventures) and go on to plant an army of stalwart Christian Soldiers in her obedient, on-fire-for-Jesus belly.
  If all went well, as Jane now trusted her Lord it would, due to her adherence to His Word, she could raise her little one to be just as giving, gracious, forgiving and mild as she was, and not like his lustful, hypocrite of a father who, sadly, only wanted One Thing.  She had only the one child, so he would be fortunate enough to be receiving her full, undivided attention right through childhood.

  Jane called his name Ephraim, and as she suckled him in the darkness after Susan left, the silence broken only by a CD of John Piper laying a beat-down on Christians who weren't Serious For God, she knew she was doing exactly what Jesus wanted.

Did Jesus Sparkle? (Okay, twinkle)

A guy who writes a pretty good blog was writing about Jesus lately, and he said (I believe) that he pictured Jesus calling stuff bullshit, but with a twinkle, like a fond old grandfather.  This clashed with my own understanding of why people wanted to nail Jesus to things.  So I wanted to comment on that.  Because I'm like that.

After a perhaps somewhat sacrilegious phone exchange in which a friend and I imagined that some Christians (not blogger Dave, of course, he's smart and probably hates Twilight) might picture Jesus nowadays as being Edward from Twilight, having died, but now still living, going around without blood (having lost his own) and having supernatural powers and perhaps sparkling (or twinkling), we settled down a bit and some stuff came out.

The original blog posting David did was in response to this viral video that's out there.  It really seems to be drawing together religious and irreligious alike.  I haven't watched it, of course.  Because I'm like that.  I have always really liked Chris Tse's "I'm A Christian (I'm Sorry)"  when it comes to poetry about Christianity which reaches everybody in the way that Johnny Cash and C.S. Lewis seemed to be able, magically, to do.

Whenever anything draws us together that, whenever something makes us feel like maybe we're all the same, and that we're united, some people inevitably tend to feel their identities threatened and want to say "No!  THEY'RE just [the one dubious thing], but I'm [the right thing]!"  I think maybe David was doing that a bit, not that my judging yes or no matters in the matter. It is equally possible he wasn't.

He was saying that this video was creating a false dichotomy (and goodness knows that gets done all the time) between claiming some kind of connection to Jesus, and being religious.  He felt, understandably enough, that loving Jesus and being religious (according to the dictionary definition of the term) weren't mutually exclusive.  That's a popular opinion, but one that seems to not work for a lot of people, to judge by the success of this video. This stuff I was now thinking about connected (in my head anyway) to some other good stuff that other Facebook acquaintances have linked to, (looking at you, Brandon) mostly talking about the difference between simply believing something is a fact, and believing it in the sense of it changing your life in any way.  I don't think believing in Jesus is supposed to be like believing there is Australia.

But anyway, I did one of my things where I wanted to respond to his blog to disagree slightly, share different opinions, put our heads together and the like, in hopes of us learning stuff from each other and I commented, and the comment got so long I decided "this comment is long enough that it should be a blog entry, and I haven't blogged since last year, so..."

So (edited and added to it a bit.  There's stuff in there that I've said before):

I think at all times when people are differing vocally from one another, there are two things going on:

-a very up front 'us vs. them' thing, which in modern times has become less of a "I would die for our side" and more a matter of cheering for one hockey team or another.  Flag-waving.  T-shirt support.  Bumpersticker fealty.  "Like this link if you'd give your life for Jesus!", "Share this video if you support supporting stuff" stuff.  It always confuses me when your average everyday American republican or democrat voters fling nasty, spiteful-sounding 'we're it and you're shit' stuff at the other side, and then if you try to have any kind of serious talk about it with them, suddenly they kind of reveal that, to them, although they kind of claim to care about it, mostly it's just kind of a game to them.  Kind of cheering for our side and booing theirs.  It's maybe nothing more than childish name-calling without any desire, interest or even ability to discuss any of it, or back any of it up any more solidly than to look right.  Ideological competitiveness, satisfying itself with burning the other side or simply making them look bad, with dismissing them out of hand as not worth thinking about, let alone talking to.  They want to say "end of discussion" to make sure there isn't one, because they're not into comprehension and understanding each other, but just competing.  Us vs. them.

-a much harder to see, and in my opinion easily missed and very valuable thing.  A situation where understanding between two quite different human beings, and their very different ways of thinking and feeling about important stuff ,is pretty much waiting to happen.  Pretty much being handed to you on a plate if you get through a discussion without being sidetracked by washroom breaks, nutritionist appointments and texting.  It would be very worthwhile to make sure it does happen, I think.  I tend to think that connecting is The Point in a way that disagreeing, differing and "taking a stand against" stuff really just isn't.  It's natural.  If you're willing to stop feeding your ego identity with the labels ("*I'M* a Christian/an atheist, while you're just the OTHER thing, you loser!") you will see how much the same you are, and how much you agree upon, and how much you can connect and work together, so that when you do find things that you differ on, stuff you care about enough to discuss, you can have a working relationship together that supports a discussion and will tend to lead to growing understanding and learning from each other.

That being said, I think Jesus wasn't very twinkly all those times when he was going around saying all those things about what he thought was weak, self-righteous, fleshly, empty religious bullshit.  You know?  The stuff "they" wanted him dead over?  The stuff people were offended at?  I can't read the gospels without seeing someone who ranted and raved enough to upset people.  Very political, very acerbic.  Prone to biting rhetoric.  Not tactful.  Certainly not consistently "positive."  Like Christopher Hitchens.  But only toward religious stuff.  Not toward ANYTHING else.  When it came to drunkards, whores and extortioners, he'd either:

-not talk about their vices at all (he simply wasn't on earth to go around stopping people from doing these things nor making them feel guilty if they did them.  Not a whit more than we are here to do that either, for that matter) 

-or blankly mention it ("and the man you're living with right now is not your husband") if it was on topic and worth talking about for another reason.  Certainly not in the same ranty, name-calling way he is reported to have frequently used when publicly standing up and loudly attacking religious practices and figures like Pharisees and Sadducees.  He never called a whore a whore, let alone referring to her as a hypocrite, a white-washed tomb, from a generation of vipers or anything like that.  He called whores "Mary," or whatever their names were.  And he called the Pharisees "the Pharisees", generalizing boldly and without reference to any single men who were shining examples of being exceptions to the problems in that group.  He'd just say "Those religious guys?  Don't live like them.  It's not good enough.  It's self-serving hypocrisy."  We don't dare generalize like that nowadays.  Except when talking about Nazis.  Because who's going to have the nuts to stand up and say "I'm a Nazi and I resent the bigotry and insensitive ignorance seen in your comments"?

As to the difference between a connection or identification with Jesus, and with what we normally think of as "religion," the apostle Paul actually defines what he calls "true religion."  In writing.  For serious.  He was defining it to correct people's existing definitions.  He defines it as doing things that Jesus actually isn't documented as spending much time doing.  According to Paul, true religion wasn't showing up at synagogue/church and singing and praying and reading.  It was helping the widows and fatherless.  Jesus certainly healed the sick and handicapped, but we don't read of him turning the widow's two mites (coins) into "an hundred and twenty mites," nor making sure that the beggar's purse kept coming up with coins.  He only did the "coin in a fish's mouth" trick to handle taxes for his own sake, and more importantly, to make a point. He fed people if they were right in front of him, hungry because they'd followed him to hear him talk, when he hadn't asked them to, and was known for trying to get away from them.  We never read of him going around feeding the poor as a routine thing.  In fact, when a woman spends money on him and a "religious" dude (Judas Iscariot) lectures her for not spending the money on helping the poor, Jesus actually tells him off, stands by what she did and pretty much pooh-poohs the concern for the poor being presented as paramount.

So, given what Paul said, I don't think going to church or singing hymns or worshiping or bible-reading is anything we are encouraged by the bible to think of or call "religious."  That's personal stuff between us and God, and it's far too intimate and personal to be merely "religious practice."  True religion is charity work.

And we seem to need continually to un-confuse discussions which blur Jesus and church together.  Probably why that guy made the poem and the viral YouTube video.  There's for a very simple reason for this needing to be done over and over: in our culture, what we call religion (in direct contradiction to any biblical definition of religion) has become for many, what the bible would call idolatry.  Idolatry is a thing you do instead of directly dealing with the divine. It's a way of abstracting things, of inserting a series of buffers, or intermediaries between you and God so you dilute the intimacy of the connection.  Instead of talking to God and seeing if you think He has anything He wants you to know, feel or think about, you focus more on your singing about Him with other people.  Instead of feeling about Him, you sing about, read about, talk about and do PowerPoint about how you feel about Him.  And then in charity work (true religion) you spend huge amounts "raising awareness" of poverty, without having to actually talk to any dirty people.

Christianity as a practiced, idolatrous "religion" is mostly talk nowadays.  A propaganda machine endlessly selling itself to its own people.   An infomercial which lowers your self-esteem and increases your guilt, while always promising to fix that for you, if you do (or don't do) certain things for it.  It's reading the Cole's notes for a book without reading it, and then writing a blog about how much you like the book you haven't read from beginning to end. (trying not to twinkle while typing any of that)

I am what you would tend to call a Christian.  But I am really not very religious in any conventional sense of the term.  The amount of time I spend in a designated church building on a yearly basis is nil, barring weddings and funerals.  I am much more about wrestling with doubt than I am about singing happy songs.  If you made a list of Christian things to do:

-plastic fish on car (in case you don't know what that is, think a rainbow sticker for a lesbian couple)

-Christian music in my iPod

-retreat/camp/missions t-shirts

-spending a lot of my money on third world problems instead of paying off my debts

-taking one of my bibles around with me wherever I go

-preaching unsolicitedly 
-telling everyone how much I claim to love Jesus (find me any New Testament author who tells his readers that he claims to love Jesus, in those terms.  I dare you.)

-dressing business casual

-citing chapter and verse to look righter when referring to concepts and situation depicted in the bible

-giving any of my time to church committees, meetings, services or initiatives

and so on,

you would find that I just don't really do any of that.  Not really.  At all.  Am I really a Christian, then?  What Christian stuff do I do?  

A better way to word that, I think, is "What stuff do I do most weeks for reasons that have to do with trying to live a life which is influenced by Jesus Christ, perhaps even working as an agent for the now-departed person of the Godhead?"  

Here's the funny thing: because of my belief as to what Jesus wants/would want (depending on your views as to the afterlife), I'm generally going to avoid talking to anyone about that stuff.  Because it's personal.  Because I'm working it out.  Because I don't know you like that.  Because I'm afraid of ever using it to look or feel Christian in order to boost my self-esteem or self-righteous piety a little bit.  Because I think it's cheating.  Because I think Jesus gave some very specific advice to his disciples to the effect that they had to do the work of being his followers, and try to make that work, but they didn't get cred or props for it.  He didn't send them out, two-by-two, with matching t-shirts about their "outreach mission."  He didn't entice them with the suggestion that they could put their work with poor people in Guatemala on their resumes.  He didn't say they could go to bible school and then write letters like MDiv or titles like Rev. before and after their names.  He didn't encourage them to ask "What religion are you?  I'm Christian!  Wanna come to my church and watch me be Christian?!"  Because it's not a club.  And it's not the Klan.  And it's not the Montreal Canadiens. It's not about identity.  It's not about you.

I just really don't think it was ever meant to be like it is now.  And that's why it makes no sense to me. (Start of discussion. Only if you really mean anything you say you do.)

The Christmas Question

  I was brought up, as I have often said, by religious fanatics.  This is another way of saying they were superstitious about a great many things.  Rock music.  Fantasy and horror novels.  Television.  Movies.  Dancing.  Vulgar/Emphatic language.  Alcohol.  They didn't so much think indulgence in these things would bring "bad luck" so much as that they'd mess up your life karmicly.  If you went to the movie theatre, your life would take a downturn.  Stuff would stop working out.  You wouldn't be blessed with success.  Okay, I guess that means they did think indulgence in these things would bring bad luck.

  They didn't like us having anything to do with Halloween.  They didn't like the religious connections of Halloween to Samhein and other stuff like that which they knew little about, but disliked and were deeply, unexaminedly superstitious about.  They only discussed it with their ears wide shut.  They were concerned and wanted to distance themselves and take a firm stand against the pagan/druidic roots of Halloween.  They didn't like us to even SAY Halloween.  They were upset by anything that happened at school that would make us have to take part in Halloween.  One time in art class our teacher had us make construction paper masks on Halloween.  Of course I got black and made a Darth Vader mask.  I then wore it at recess.  My parents had sent me to school sans Halloween costume "to be a good example to nonChristians", and they got wind later that I, at age 11, had done this and they were all wigged out by it.  Mad at me.  Feeling tricked and betrayed.  Scared that I'd done something unlucky/worldly/not Christian.  More upset than some people get when they break a mirror, spill some salt, have a black cat cross their path and walk under a ladder, all in the same hour, on Friday the 13th.

  Over time my parents got more and more relig...superstitious.  About Christmas too.  We'd never had any Christmas decorations, nor a tree or anything like that, but over time they kept cutting back on what we were allowed to do in December too.  There was even a year or two there where they made us refuse any Christmas candy or presents from others.  Mostly they made up for this by taking us out and buying us presents on Boxing Day or for New Years.  But we were NOT to call them "Christmas presents."  If someone asked "What did you get for Christmas?" we were to say "We don't celebrate Christmas" to superstitiously distance ourselves and be a good example, and then we could say "But on Boxing Day they got me..."

  Because, just like with Halloween, they were superstitious and concerned and wanting to distance themselves and take a firm stand against the pagan roots of Christmas. The tree, the gift-giving, the winter solstice.  All the stuff that would have confused anyone in the bible (apart from the guy who wrote that observant Jews were NOT to go into the forest and cut down a tree, decorate it with silver and gold and sparkly things, set it up and worship it.  Because God hated that.)  I knew many other Plymouth Brethren families with a similar Christian prohibition against Christmas.  Some Plymouth Brethren kids laughingly said they'd got things for "Snow Day."  Because they weren't supposed to say "Christmas." It was beyond stupid.

  Today I went to my folks' house, where the TV was on, playing movies, and their Christmas tree was lit.  Thing is, it wasn't hypocrisy; it wasn't them "giving in."  It was them growing up.  Developing spiritually.  Demonstrating an understanding of what actually matters.  Showing a better relationship with joy and yearly opportunities to share and celebrate.  'Cause when others are enjoying themselves in something that isn't actually hurting them in any significant way that's your business, and you want to superstitiously distance yourself, state your concern and warn people about it, you really need to STFU and GTFO.

  So you can imagine how I feel when various people get all concerned and superstitious about the Christian roots of Christmas, don't want their kids to be subjected to Christmas songs that are about angels (though dancing snowmen and flying reindeer are JUST fine) and who don't want anyone to even SAY the word Christmas.  I really wish they'd STFU and GTFO.  In no meaningful way is there any real "war against Christmas."  Not in my area, anyway.  It's a mythic thing spoken of, an urban legend, as far as we in the country know.  It's not real to us.  Not any more real than the idea that Christmas started out 100% Christian, with no input drawn from pagans and other religious stuff revolving around winter solstice.  But I know there're idiots, on both sides, being all weird about something that can mean whatever you want it to mean.  It can mean something or it can mean nothing.

  If Christmas is only a Christian thing, then no one else should have it, probably.  Christian kids should get Christmas Day off and other kids should go to school.  If Christmas is only a Christian thing.
  That would be dumb, obviously.  If it is for everyone (which we're trying like hell to make sure it is), then everyone should be able to enjoy it without anyone getting embarrassed or superstitious about where it came from (pagan, then Christian, and then commercialized roots).

  This is one of those things I find so stupidly reactionary and vacuously unthought-out that I could barely bring myself to even weigh in on it.  It's December 25th.  Do whatever.  Or do nothing.  And leave me alone.  If I don't want to go to a church, don't bother to tell me what you think of that.  And if I sing a song with Lil' Christ in it, don't bother to tell me what you think of that either.  Because I don't want to hear it.  I'm busy living my own life.  Don't start (or make up) a war on or against something and want me to jump in.

  At what we unabashedly called our high school's "Christmas Assembly," I sang "Oh Holy Night" (anti-slavery verse and all) and John "Imagine There's No Heaven" Lennon's great song "This Is Christmas/War Is Over". There was a reason for those choices.  I loved singing both of them.  I got lighters waved and huge applause for both, equally.  There was no contradiction.  People got into both.  No one even commented on me singing a Christian Christmas song.  No one commented on me singing John Lennon.
  Like most things, Christmas isn't only one of two possible things that you have to decide between.  It is many things.  And it's what you make it.  You can make it what you want it to be.  If you want to make it a special thing you don't want anyone outside your religion from having a right to partake in, go ahead.  If you want to make it an evil, creepy, source of creep, go ahead.  And have a big hot cup of (unChristmas) STFU while you're at it.

 

What Kinds of Kids Fail High School Courses More Regularly Than Others?

I wrote this at school, after fretting over the fact that, every time a kid fails, we act like that's never happened before, it's very confusing and must be explained.  Actually it's a reality of the job, and I think we should know more, generally, about it.  I don't think the habit of looking at every kid as a unique little snowflake is always helpful.  Sometimes profiling means you have more tools to bring to understanding stuff.  Here's what I wrote (it starts out more dry and academic than I usually am on here):

Any number of factors far beyond a school’s sphere of influence (and sometimes even its knowledge) have undeniably huge effects on student success.  A sobering question is “What, if anything, could we do about any of this?”

 Since the divorce rate skyrocketed in the 50s and 60s, extensive research has been carried out exploring links between parental splits and juvenile crime.  It is very seldom that one sees a student who is in trouble with the law, but experiencing no problems in the classroom.  When it comes to explaining why certain kids end up getting into trouble with the law, the parents and the home are most often pointed to.

A study by Kolvin et. al in 1988 concluded that parental splits were just as significant a factor in juvenile crime as family income, lack of parental supervision, IQ, overly large families, or hyperactivity and related disorders.  The fact that all of these factors have been routinely used to explain why teenagers end up committing crime suggests that it would be only sensible to expect to see them having an effect on success in school as well.

When there is a divorce or separation going on (and in each class, there always are), many kids find their entire lives turned upside down and dumped onto the floor, and this is usually seen in their classroom performance as well.  Serious illness in the family may have a similar effect, though often to a lesser degree. It is telling that several studies (among them Amato and Keith 1991; Wadsworth 1970) indicate that the death of a parent has a significantly less disruptive and lasting negative effect on a family and its members than a parental separation does.

  Kids dealing with illnesses or injuries of their own, from emotional and psychological problems such as depression or eating disorders, right up through epilepsy, surgeries and cancers, predictably find that school becomes (of necessity) less and less a main focus. 

  Studies such as one by Hirschi (1969) indicate three factors which protect children from falling through the cracks and becoming juvenile delinquents:

·        identification with parents (as fellow human beings),

·        intimacy of communication with parents (two-way),

·      supervision by parents. (structure, routine, boundaries and protocols)

  It is interesting to see that the risk of social and legal rule-breaking is provably increased by kids not having a personal connection to, open lines of communication with, and supervision by the authority figures in their homes.  I would suggest that in a classroom, teachers are as much parent figures as they are anything else, especially in the psyches of the kids.

  Problems can be predicted with kids who aren’t identifying with their teachers and administrators (not seeing them as people, not accepting them as having competence or authority over kids, not sympathizing with their struggles and not feeling that they are being, nor are even capable of being, helpful or supportive in any significant way).

  Equally if kids do not communicate freely with their teachers, avoiding any kind of meaningful dialogue, this cuts off any number of avenues for help and makes educating them almost impossible.  Kids can use anything, including purposely topic-changing small-talk, wild stories, profanity, surly silence, belligerence, humour (and simply leaving the room or the school) to avoid any meaningful two-way communication about their success ever happening.

  Also at risk are kids who are either not supervised in their classrooms, or who remove themselves from being supervised by being truant or leaving the classroom at every opportunity.  Just as some students use extracurricular activities (or in-school duties related to sports or other events) to learn new skills under the friendly, looser and more personal supervision of teachers, others use them to avoid time spent in the classroom being supervised as they learn.

What is seen in the classroom when kids are “at risk” of failing?

Uninvestedness: Kids Who Don’t Hope or Care

After the first ten formative years of education, most kids have learned that adults seem to care about (to them foreign) things like savings accounts, income tax, parking, mortgages, elections, pension funds and education.  Kids often have trouble identifying with anyone who is going to be talking for any length of time about these topics, let alone taking any interest themselves, though it could be argued that these things will (one day, at least) be of great importance to most of them. 

Many of our students have learned that when it comes to these things, if they know nothing about them and never try to make changes to them or not, as far as they’re concerned “nothing happens either way,” so it “doesn’t matter.”  If they think people should vote liberal in Lanark County, a conservative will still win anyway, every time. They’ve seen it happen their whole lives.  And they’re too young to vote. So caring about things in which they don’t feel they have any say seems pointless.  Getting emotionally invested in any of it seems risky, wasteful and foolish.

  The depth of their understanding as to how they’re doing financially, socially and educationally goes no deeper, often, than a passionately felt “She loves me!” or “She hates me!”  Their reality can be colourful and brutal, painted with the broadest of strokes.  It isn’t, to their minds, that they spent all their money and then tried to make a cell phone payment and so a lady is phoning from the bank, or that they gossiped about a friend and so are now getting the cold shoulder, or that they didn’t do any school work and so are now failing a course.  That cause and effect relationship simply doesn’t seem real to many of them.  To many, it’s simply “She hates me.” 

As childish as this sounds, kids who fail courses quite often honestly believe that they have “been failed” because the teacher “hated” them. They are quick to point out students whom they feel to be lazier and less intelligent than themselves who did better in a course, as evidence that “she loves him, so of course he did better than me!”  (And things like that have actually been known to happen.) Kids have a strong belief that the world isn’t fair and can see dramas and conspiracies everywhere.  They also sense the importance of healthy communication and personal connections.  They know that identifying with people determines whether we can work with them.

Some parents have (sometimes in a practice handed down through several generations) just as little investment as their kids in the idea that school is necessary and good, and worth doing right and for real.  Some parental figures, if quizzed, would not be able to tell you which courses their child is taking this semester.  In some extreme cases parents wouldn’t actually know what grade their child is in (or what previous grade their child is still making up courses from.) I had one parent come in to demand why I was assigning exactly the same novels to her son again this year in English as I’d assigned him the previous one.  She hadn’t remembered that he was taking the same course again because he’d failed it the year before. At the end of the term he hadn't attended school for two months, nor was he living in the same town as his mom.

For parents who see school as a formality, and as something to give lip service to, but which doesn’t actually matter in any real way, phone calls from teachers are just about teachers shaming parents for their child’s lack of success.  For some of them, their kids are doing poorly because clearly, we “hate” them.  There is some truth to this as, if no personal connection has ever formed between teacher and student, and there is no communication, and the student will not work within the structures of the classroom, success is doubtful.

  Actually wanting to pass and simply being made to feel ashamed of having failed are not the same things at all.  The effect of not investing emotionally in getting school credits is pretty predictable, of course.  If your passing of courses and graduating high school is merely someone else’s hope (rather than your own), you are free to say “I don’t care” whenever you are urged to do work you don’t want to do.  In fact, “I don’t care” becomes a magic, good-for-all-eventualities shield against troublesome authority figures.  Because it works.  Stumps them every time.  If you really don’t care, no one can really help you at all until you do.

Disengaged Kids

A number of studies indicate that despite everything we put into teaching them, kids mostly teach each other.  We are not part of their inner circle, and so we are often just talking heads to them.  It is commonplace to see students daily paying no attention whatsoever to teachers and administrators who are earnestly talking away (including what PA announcements and written instructions are saying).  We've all seen that.  Still, we assume that if any kid is working, they must be doing what the teacher asked, or what is written on the sheet.  Not so.  What happens is that after having not listened, if they later feel they need to know anything, the first student who thinks s/he’s got it figured out often guides the work of anyone who gets in any way curious about it all.  Fortunately for students, so many handouts, sheets, essays and assignments are so uneducatingly identical one to the other throughout the school experience that, with a quick glance at a sheet, they can develop some kind of wild guess as to what they maybe should do, and do that, after perhaps conferring with whoever is sitting nearby, working confidently away.  Any teacher who routinely assigns work which isn't routine, and which has little "assignment easter eggs/powerups/hidden levels" built into it, will quickly see how on auto-pilot kids are, and how much they are relying on each other's guesses rather than teacherly instruction.  Students generally prefer asking each other what we meant, rather than simply asking us, standing beside their desk at time of asking.  They certainly do not trust that every single thing we tell them is very important and which they should listen to, actually is important and that they should listen to it.  And they are right in not so assuming. We really do repeat ourselves, filled as we are, generally, of the correct conviction that we're not being heeded.

  A kid who is ostracized or reluctant to engage with others is cut off from this network of peer support.  Students who feel no connections to any students or teachers may simply not ask anyone anything, even if they need to know something in order to succeed.  Even if they didn’t listen or weren’t there when instructions were given.  These students may give up on assignments at this point, or may hand in what are (diplomatically speaking) brave, wild guesses at what they are supposed to be demonstrating mastery of.

To complicate things, some kids have irregular phone service at their house, or no land line.  Some kids have no computers at home, or no printing and/or internet. Some don’t know how to use any of these things properly.  This means even if they do schoolwork at home and have a home computer, they often can’t/don’t know how to print it or transfer the data to school for further work on it, teacher or student help, or handing it in for marks.  All of this further cuts them off from being able to connect to the school, the other kids, and teachers.

A Problem Identifying with Formality

To many kids, people who are dressed “business casual” (or even more formally than that) or who use even slightly formal language, tones of voice or jargon, and who avoid conflict with odd platitudes and placating "I" phrases are simply not people they know.  To these kids, people dressed this way and acting like this are about as real-world as Mickey Mouse.  Many kids literally cannot identify with people painted with a veneer of formality, paper-thin courtesy and a shellacking of professionalism.  They cannot view them as real human beings in quite the way they themselves are real human beings.  They can't see through the candy shell, but are fairly certain it's not a person under there.

Undeniably, when it comes to people who work with addicts, gang members, teen moms and victims of any stripe, the first thing that needs to be thrown out is formality.  At adult high schools, all teachers are called by their first names.  Therapists do not have their patients call them “Dr.” At Alcoholics Anonymous, nobody gets called “Ms.”or "Sir."

So a strong negative response to middle-class formality and professionalism is understandable: these business casual folks who don’t swear are not anything like anyone in the families many of our "at-risk" kids come from, nor even like any friends of their family.  These authority figures are, to them, dressed like landlords, lawyers, police, Jehovah’s Witnesses and politicians.  Like the evil, digital Agent Smith from The Matrix.  Formal language is a foreign language to many of the kids having the most trouble with school.  They understandably cannot identify with administrators who spend the day coming onto the P.A. as disembodies voices, saying things such as:

Your attention please: This is an important reminder for all senior students that the third floor is out of bounds during period 1A at this time until further notice for all students not having Trent University bursary application surveys proctored on flip days this week.  And a reminder as well to all students to not go up the “down” staircase at any time, particularly during lunch B or during Flex periods. As well, could the members of this year's ZOOM Student Advocacy Team report to the cafetorium now for briefing and reorienting. Thank you. TGIF.

 They equally cannot identify with teachers who say things like:

Listen up, guys!  This is essential to your future!   You need to buy into your own success and have an Action Plan for achieving it!  
Alright folks: get out your Personal Passports for Guaranteed Success (that’s your PPGSs) and turn to the "SHOOT! Action Registry" section.  (It’s the section colour-coded periwinkle.  Right after the sunflower "Ideas! Idea! Ideas! CURVE is your friend!" section on maximizing your own potential and formulating strategies for success…)

Paul, don’t tell me you lost your Passport to Success again?!  How will you succeed now? 

Okay, just go get another one from the pile.  In the lavender “Totally Essential Resources You Need to Help You Succeed!” bin, yes.  TERYNTHYS.  That’s right.  Lavender.  Beside the taupe one.  The big pile of papers, yes.

 Many of our students didn’t learn talk like that in their homes.  It sounds foreign to them because it is.  It sounds like elves from Mirkwood, or Star Trek Klingons speaking their own, wholly made up tongues.  Because this is made up language.  It is, generally, a failed attempt at communication.  It isn’t remotely from the culture these kids are from.  They're too busy thinking "WTF?!" to hear and decipher a word.  In their heads, people who speak it aren’t real people being real.  They feel that people who talk like this (and who never swear, though they often look angry) are fake and are probably lying or selling something.  (and they're not far wrong)  They cannot identify with the people spouting this arcane argot, so they are mostly going to simply pretend these people aren’t there at all and hope they go away.  Failing that, they can mock them for seeming so foreign to what is the culture 'round here.  They feel there is something simple, honest and virtuous in what some would consider slang or vulgarity.  A warm, appreciative laugh of recognition and identification rings out whenever a bit of it creeps into any conversation they hadn’t until that point been accepting as genuine.  Suddenly they identify.

Unaccustomed to Structure or Boundaries

What is the effect of kids not having much parental supervision?  These kids may sleep on as many as three different beds/couches in three different towns, all in the same week, every week.  The word "home" doesn't mean much to them.  They may have personal belongings, including school work, in all of these various places, and also in a number of motor vehicles and in their locker.  (of course some fix this by never taking school work with them when they leave the building.)  This lack of a home base can result in a simple “Where is your novel, Sarah?” being answered quite honestly with:

Novel?  Oh that one?  I dunno…I’m still mad because the principal said I did stuff I totally didn’t.  I hate him, but he hates me anyway, so that’s okay.  He better watch out.  Anyway, my dad’s stupid girlfriend picked me up from bingo last night and I might have left it in her car, but she dropped me off at Judy (that’s my foster mom)’s house and it could be there, but then I had a fight with her doucebag son Jacob so I had to crash at my boyfriend’s step-mom’s place (her name’s Destiny) instead, so it could be there too.  Bitch stole my lighter.  Or Jess might have it.  I’m not talking to her anymore.  Such a skank.  Took my weed and thirty dollars.  I’ll see if I can get Jane (that’s my real mom) to drive me around and look for it, but she’s not in town again until next weekend, if she gets her license back, I mean.  I’m having a super tough week, so don’t bother me or I’ll just totally lose it, okay?  I SO have PMS right now... Just go ahead and teach your class or whatever and I’ll text Mark (he’s my worker) to maybe go get it or something.  That book is so boring and pointless anyway.  I can't read it.  Oh, and plus I’m going to be away tomorrow for court. Can I go the bathroom?  I need a drink.  Also Stacy needs her smokes.

There are no boundaries.  Persons, places and things blur together and slip and slide over into and back out of each other all week long, with no specific time and place for anything.  These kids may have been raised with no regular meal times, no regular bed times, or in fact, bath or laundry days.  Things like tattoos, smoking, piercings, drug and alcohol use, promiscuity (and kneejerk reflex, physically combative responses to any perceived affront to their dignity or mood) may unfold throughout their formative years, completely unsupervised (or even observed) by any parent figure, starting at a shockingly low age.

  It is also possible that they are imitating their parent figures when showing immature or immoderate approaches to these. However the adults around them act is their “normal.”  If the adults around them demonstrate no capacity for delaying gratification, no understanding of boundaries, and little personal restraint in most areas of their lives, kids grow up with that being normal.  If failure and apathy are a child’s culture, it’s no wonder that colourful, peppy, acronym-infested brochures about maximizing one’s potential for excellence tend to fall on deaf floors.

These “absent parent” kids are often badly nourished, and their sleep habits and indulgences in junk foods, cigarettes, alcohol, pot and energy drinks/“coffee milkshake” beverages aren’t helping their brains develop nor function.  For many, a strong admixture of stimulants and depressants (often along with a great deal of aspirin and other pharmacy stuff) has been the formula for getting through their day for longer than they can remember.

To expect these kids to show up to school and then to five different classes at specific, not-on-the-hour times (many kids cannot read the hands of the school’s clocks) without being late, and having brought different expected materials to each, having worked on various assignments “at home” is simply beyond some of them.  Schools with "flip" timetables, in which students are not in the same class at the same time from day to day, are perhaps not really considering this.

Others have literally never had to remain within any environment in which someone else had the right to decide where they sat, whether or not they were allowed to talk or swear or eat, or what they were allowed to do with their cell phones.  Some of them have been allowed to smoke at the dinner table for some time.  For some, pajama bottoms, yoga pants or sweats can be worn 24/7 without being washed or removed for a week. To them, teachers who let them sit in the back of the room zoning out and playing games on their phones are acting normal, while teachers who encroach upon their accustomed liberty in these areas “hate them” and are clearly bad people with emotional problems and control issues.  The fact that there are so many teachers with emotional problems and control issues does not help this impression.  The experience seems no doubt like they have been sold into indentured servitude.

It’s Not Just About Class

Although a glance into the “resource room” of any school will reveal how direct the correlation between “kids in jeopardy” and kids from lower income, broken homes really is, that’s not the whole story.  Sometimes kids from fairly affluent homes have many of the same problems getting through high school as their less moneyed counterparts.

First, it should be obvious that some kids with a surprising amount of disposable income can still display trouble in the three aforementioned areas.  Kids from rich homes can equally be accustomed to being left unsupervised, with no regular times for eating, sleeping, homework, laundry, changing clothes and all the rest.

They can also get very emotionally cut off from their parents and end up living with closed lines of communication.   Some kids communicate mostly digitally.  They can, often, equally fail to identify with their parents as with students and teachers at school.  Sometimes having affluent, influential, highly educated and successful parents is daunting and can cause children to despair of ever being that kind of person. Parental success is a lot to live up to, and can be its own burden.
  Conversely, children of "successful" people may learn only the use of the money, the influence and the power, without having been around to see how it was earned or how it is maintained.  They may come into a school feeling undeniably entitled to success simply because they are themselves.  Also, children of affluent families may be unwilling or unable to connect to students and teachers who are clearly from a lower financial bracket.  Hard to take a teacher seriously when your car is nicer.

No matter the reason, it is a serious problem when any child is not even slightly invested in success (as defined by a teacher or school population with which they may not identify or communicate with in any genuine way) and is also completely disengaged from most of what goes on in their classes each day.  More sobering, there is no guarantee that any strategy is simply going to “fix” this situation for all affected students.  At the root of the thing, if you can get the student to accept you as part of his or her life, part of his or her culture and story, that you are a genuine human being and you mean what you say and are competent and capable of communicating and genuinely helping (and willing to boot), then you may well make a difference.  Or not.  And you have to be prepared for both eventualities.

It would be nice to feel that we have all the control, and enough ideas to save the day pretty much every time or know the reason why, to be able to insightfully and eloquently outline the reasons for "lack of success" on forms, to be able to ensure it doesn't recur.  The grim reality is that this is and always has been a two-way thing.  Until a student chooses to identify with you, to communicate with you and "work with" your boundaries and structure and supervision, you can’t succeed with them on any level.  And you won't have much of a clue what went on, let alone what went wrong.  You'll just know that the lines of communication, the personal connection, the identifying with each other and working together instead of being at loggerheads, simply never happened.

These People Like Glee, For Goodness Sake...

  I've mentioned before on here my experience at the first staff meeting of the year, held before the school year started: administration was announcing a stripped-down, "kids just walk in and go to their classes" kind of first day, with a "welcome back" assembly to be held later in the week once we were all settled in.

  This was met with relief by many of us, but an outcry went up from a few.  "What about when we get the school mascot in, and do the school cheer, and really, really just welcome everyone back to our school, and just really make everyone feel how we're US, and we're the best school in our region and everything?" They spoke wistfully of colour-coded schools with uniforms and school songs and marching bands and cheerleaders and other things. 

  These are, too, the same people who squawked when our school's Latin motto was being looked at, in terms of "is 'Enter To Learn, Go Forth To Serve' kind of old-fashioned?  Do we still think that word "serve" has the same context and meaning for us that it might have once had?  Is this something a few of us might be into, but it's not saying anything that is reaching any of the kids it is supposed to be talking about?"

  I didn't judge them, but I looked at them with new eyes and realized they felt as different from me as if they had come from a different planet.  You see, the majority of teachers seem to be individualists.  Every year, zippy, snappily-dressed, smiles-set-to-stunned people from who knows where show up to a hastily-called special meeting we don't want to attend, and these freaks announce "exciting new initiatives that we're very excited to be a part of this year, moving forward."  We see them once and never again.  We don't even know how long they hold their oddly-worded job titles. They promise the sky, and hand out fistfuls of colourful, glossily printed things that will most likely never be mentioned again.  Because we go into our rooms, we do what seems best to us in there, and we resent being bothered by people who don't know what we do in there, not even getting our names, but showing up and telling us what "we're" all going to be doing.

  We don't WANT to "team teach" or "standardize the whole department" for the most part, if it means interrupting or ceasing doing stuff we're trying that seems to be working.  Many of us don't like time away from our classes to attend meetings, leaving our classes in the hands of fill-in strangers who can't do what we've been doing, so at best babysit their way through a placeholder day, and at worst, re-instill the idea that adults don't know kids, don't know what they're doing, and just get angry and demand things kids aren't going to give them, and then threaten things which likely aren't going to happen, and it they do, who gives a fuck?  Rapport is the coin of the realm in a classroom and its sometimes hard won, and it always takes time and can always be cheapened.

  Many of us are as I describe.  But a few of our teachers are different.  They love being on as many committees as possible. They don't think school committees (laughably called "teams" lately, like we're all going to actually wear shorts and not be sitting in chairs the whole friggin time) are most often attention-getting, ego-stroking, claiming-things-and-having-zero-effect, getting out of classrooms filled with teens to sit in rooms with adults kinda things.  Many of us do feel toward them as I have just described.   But some people love teams, committees, groups, collectives, initiatives and coalitions.  As many as possible.  Until they're goggle-eyed with stress and need heavily colour-coded schedules as badges of how sought-after their time truly is.  When you need a union rep, they're on that.  Any "you get a job title and a whole lot of duties and time-committment, but no extra money and probably no real benefit will be seen, nor will what you're doing still be around in three years time" kind of position, and they're first in line.

  They like church.  They like Girl Guides, Scouts, Rotary Clubs, Legion, Civitan, Monarchist Clubs and town council.  It makes their eyes light up.  I really don't get them at all.  They're not bad people.  Sometimes they're almost a quarter as effective and important and influential as they are letting on.  And that's certainly not nothing.  But I don't get them.  They don't seem like part of my species.  They think if one person singing or dancing is cool, twenty or fifty people singing or dancing is magic!  Not to me.  I think the more people involved, the less impressive.  If one singer can bring a tear to my eye, I'm deeply impressed.  A massive choir?  Never going to bring anything to me eye.  These people like Glee, for goodness sake.  So, where I'd like one voice singing "Don't Stop Believing," they'd actually prefer a choir doing it.  Why?  I do not get that... The Beatles singing "The Long and Winding Road" or "Here Comes The Sun" has a quiet, understated soul that is amazing.  A school choir of people who can certainly sing, being conducted lockstep into an acapella, robotic, watery, plastic version?  Not my idea of fun.  Musicals, to me, have no soul.  To me they are cheesy.  Like Cheez Whiz is cheesy.  Fakey.  Insincere.  Painful.

  I think these mysteriously collectivist beings define their own identities very much in terms of what role they play in what groups of humans.  I guess I don't do that very much.  If I listened to what groups tell me, I'd have to accept, for no very good reason (besides "for the good of the group") that I am gay, a Satanist, a religious fanatic, clinically depressed, evil, cruel, lazy, perverse and any number of other things I must conclude I simply really am not.  I've been told I am any number of things my whole life, by any number of people, in groups and individually.  I have had to learn to accept that they don't know who I am, and then I have to just go about doing what I'm doing as a free agent.  I have noticed that the better, deeper, more passionate and more astute my choices are, the more stupid and bad things they can be misattributed to.

  I am a chronic lone wolf.  Many teachers are like this.  One lesson that is dying slowly and hard is that I can just go do what I want, and I don't need to argue with people before doing it, and I often don't need to get permission, and I don't need to announce why I'm not doing what has been done before, or by others, or might generally be expected.  I can just go ahead and do my thing.  Better that way.  Avoids conflict.  Spends the time in possibly succeeding rather than in talking to others about trying to succeed in ways they don't like/understand/approve of.

  Every time I say "Now, I know you're used to..." or "Now, instead of..." or "Now, usually...", I'm kinda drawing attention to a potential fight we could have, or inviting comments as to "Well, what's wrong with the old way?" or "Why take the extra trouble for no reason?" or "Do you think you're better than..?"  I might sound terribly arrogant also.  I have actually worked with people who assumed that if I didn't do pretty much exactly what they were doing, the way they were doing it, that I clearly disrespected them and didn't think what they were doing, and how they were doing it, was any good.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Fact is, I'm not paying much attention to what they're doing or how they're doing it, unless I for some reason want to steal and retool some bits of it. 

  But I have offended people by adapting the current way of doing stuff to something a bit more me.  They have felt that I was arrogant or disrespectful.  That really upset me.  I have had to explain to many people over the years that I'm a lot like that kid who feels a whole lot better once she's drawn the logo of her favorite band on the front of her binder.  Now it feels like mine.  So, when I work, I like to make things up and try them out and learn and innovate.  In fact, that's the only thing that makes my job something I'm into. Inventing.  Experimenting.  Adds suspense.  Means I am often wondering "Now why did this thing work so well?  I don't get it..." while others are wondering "Why does this thing never work?  Kids sure are stupid and horrible."

  This has been called "re-inventing the wheel" in the past, usually in the context of "I don't see why we(you) need to be..."  Thing is, it's about growth to me. It's about having a class that is changing each year, and maybe adjusting and being flexible enough to show the mark of whatever kids are being run through my little system, for good or bad.  Some classes are more red-necky than others.  Different things fly with different groups.  Increasingly, I teach very differently depending on who my audience is.  It's like if you play music in various different venues.  It's like being The Blues Brothers and singing "Stand By Your Man" and "Rawhide" because you're in a bar with both kinds of music (country and western!). 

  So I'm an individualist.  Every time something says "Alright everyone..." they've lost me.  When they say "You know what would be so fun?  Let's all..." they've once again lost me. My whole family's a bit like that.  I remember growing up and every time there was a one-size-fits-all, or "go on, try it.  I guarantee you'll like it because how can anyone not like it?" thing, whoever was offering this turned out to have no clue about me at all.  How could I not like football?  How could I not like coffee?  How could I not like Armageddon?  Pearl Harbor?  Transformers?  The Tragically Hip?  I could alright.  I could not like the shit out of anything anyone tossed at me.  Because someone was tossing it at me and assuming I was enough like everyone else that I'd like it?  Maybe a bit.  But it certainly couldn't be explained wholly by that.

  Was I weird?  Yeah.  Liked things many others didn't.  Didn't like things many others did.  But I'm not that weird.  Every single thing I like (and I like so many, many things, many of them nerdy or dark) is liked by an awful lot of others, and not just weird people on the Internet.  How can I like Babylon 5?  How can I like Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore?  How can I like Pink Floyd?  Are those even questions?

  I don't like packages, I guess.  I want to pick and choose.  I have paid extra so as to avoid getting fries with that.  I don't understand why I should compromise when I'm signing up for something I could just as easily have nothing to do with.  When it comes to cable TV, I want the package that gives me only the few premium channels and none of the others.  No such package exists.  To me, it looks like a scam to make you have to pay maximum rate to get any two good channels.  Not into that.  I don't like the radio.  I'm not willing to listen to the talking, and the songs I don't like.  I don't like network TV.  I'm not willing to have to watch things at a certain time, and have to spend an hour doing it instead of forty minutes, just because someone wants to try to sell me life insurance, toilet paper and lady razors.  

  I don't like church.  I'm not willing to try on that one-size-fits-us-all thing.  I will meet up with Christians and discuss stuff and talk about the bible and write stuff and worship or the like with a great deal of contentment.  But I don't join things.  I don't like being a member.  Membership has its fees, responsibilities and obligations.  If you're an individualist, you really start to notice just how many compromises are made to maintain groups and status and peace within them, how much of who people are and how they live their lives are molded by the groups they find themselves in.

  When you meet people, they try to slot you into an identity based on what groups you're part of.  Protestant or Catholic?  Modern or traditional worship?  The "married with small children" group?  The gay group?  The hockey fan group?  They Star Trek nerd group?  The stoners?  The jocks?  The preps?  It's like high school all over again.  Like any good little angst-ridden goth/emo/scene kid, I gotta be me, and if you think you know me by identifying some group you think I fit into, go ahead and see how well that works.
  If you want to actually know me of course, you'll have to be willing to hang out with me.  And I'm not willing to hang out in groups.  I won't be at your church.  I'm not going to the Rotary Club meeting and paying membership dues.  You'd have to actually go out for coffee/a beer with me.  And if you're not willing to do that?  Don't worry about it.  But don't judge me and don't tell others who you think I am.  Because you don't know me.