Brave, Anyway

Tag: accountability

  • What is Great?

    What is Great?

    I want America to be great. But sometimes that’s hard to even visualize when I look at where we are today.

    What does great even mean? That word has been co-opted by people wearing red hats and I’m not even sure that the majority of them can define the greatness we used to have that we supposedly need to get back to.

    Does great mean when we had prayer in schools? I think that’s what a lot of well-meaning Christians are holding on to. Prayer in schools is the panacea for drugs, pregnancy outside of marriage, respect for elders, vandalism, anger, and a thousand other things. But it’s not prayer in schools that’s going to fix those things. It’s prayer in our homes. In our cars at a stop light. In line at the market. And most importantly, in our hearts. “Prayer in schools” as the reason America has gone to hell in a hand basket is such a cop out – if you really want to point fingers, the end of prayer in schools began when we largely gave up on prayer in our homes and in our hearts.

    Does great mean before Roe v. Wade? Because abortion wasn’t invented in the twentieth century. It’s been around since the beginning of time, in the form of herbs and bloodletting and a dozen other precarious methods. And if Roe v. Wade is overturned it will still be around and practiced just as it is today, and just as it was before that Supreme Court decision – managed by individual states.

    Does great mean when women couldn’t own a home without a man’s signature? When men had a lot more “say” in everything? Or perhaps great refers to the time before Brown v. Board of Education or before the civil rights movement? Or does great mean before the immigration of people from non-white nations? Or maybe great means when the number of young people signing up to join the military was higher, when we were in the Cold War or just after September 11? I am a child of a veteran, I support our military, and tears still fill my eyes every time I see families waiting on piers for loved ones to come home. But sometimes I wonder if we are really a country that loves our military (wouldn’t we pay them more if we did?), or if we are more of a country of people that just loves to rally around a conflict and that live vicariously through the young people kicking some ass somewhere out there.

    I’ve yet to hear anyone who wants America to be great “again” define it in a way that makes sense to me, except for the people solely focused on money. And while I don’t agree on trickle down economics and tax cuts for wealthy people, at least they are real about their motives and I can respect that.

    I want America to be great. Not “again” though, because I think maybe it hasn’t ever been great for a lot of Americans. It’s been great for me, but I’m white and didn’t grow up in poverty or oppression. Part of being a good human, and part of being a good Christian for those of us that are people of faith, is not just caring about self. It’s also recognizing when other humans need help and providing that help if possible. And perhaps most importantly for today, it’s recognizing when other humans are discriminated against – by authority figures, by neighbors or colleagues, by laws and by systems – and standing against that. Setting WWJD aside, we should all be concerned about discrimination in any form against any American because history has taught us over and over again that if we allow discrimination against anyone, we risk being discriminated against as seasons change.

    As far as I can tell, “Make America Great Again” is about loving your neighbor if your neighbor looks and loves and prays like you, but sends cursory thoughts and prayers to everyone else. It’s a way to hide behind canned talking points because of motives surrounding faith and race and gender we don’t want to acknowledge, let alone speak about.

    Maybe this election cycle is more vicious and divisive because of who walks the halls of the White House and Capitol, maybe it’s because we’re actually at a tipping point morally, maybe it’s because we’ve all been quarantined and are just cranky and combative, or maybe it’s a combination of all of it. But I’m so tired of it all. I’m tired of “good” people – Christians especially – perpetuating the self-serving and idiotic belief that real Christians vote red and actively participating in or turning a blind eye to all the discrimination in this country. People are supposed to see Jesus through us, and we’re supporting and pointing them to politicians and programs and systems that do not reflect the love with which we are supposed to be filled.

    I’ve been reading Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne. I love how he characterizes the job of the disciples: “It wasn’t a call to take the sword or the throne and force the world to bow. Rather, they were to live the contagious love of God, to woo the nations into a new future.”

    I want America to be a place where all my neighbors – especially our nation’s veterans and children and elderly – have food and shelter and medicine. I recognize that’s a bit of a pipe dream given our current financials but is that so much to ask that we work toward? Why would those basics even be tied to one political party instead of core tenets of all political parties? I don’t care if your shirt has a donkey or an elephant on it, I have and will vote for you if you can show me you believe in the equality of all people, that you haven’t purposely mistreated people, and that you have empathy for people not like you.

    We have to stop being afraid of one another, of differences. We have to catch and stop when deeply rooted beliefs of favor or better rear their ugly heads in our hearts. We can love, and are called to love, our neighbor regardless of how different they are so that people see love through us, regardless of whether we are a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew, or Hindu.

    If we allow ourselves to continue to buy into canned talking points and excuses, which we tell ourselves and others to make us feel better, we will never actually work to make anything great. We need to start accepting responsibility for all the beliefs and generalizations and fears that we secretly harbor about people who are not like us, for all that we’re voting for, for all that we’re voting against, and for all we’ve been allowing.

    Sydney Ellen Wade, played by Annette Benning in The American President, said exactly how I’ve been feeling for months and maybe years: “How do you have patience for people who claim they love America, but clearly can’t stand Americans?”

    Our vote is never just for a policy we’re passionate about, it’s for the whole person whose name we choose. No matter our choice, some things about that person will be good and some will be bad. But we can’t say we’re voting just to save unborn babies or for health care, and think that absolves us of responsibility as it relates to supporting the character and integrity of the person we chose.

  • It’s Not Me, It’s You

    It’s Not Me, It’s You

    What if the one to blame is actually me? Or us? What if what we think is the fault of others is actually the fault of ours?

    We and us are Christians. Me, and maybe you.

    I’ve spent a lot of my adult life retraining my brain to not first think of God as the Old Testament punishment guy. He is the Old Testament angry guy, but He is also the New Testament love and peace and turn-the-other-cheek guy – and perhaps most importantly the forgiveness guy.

    We are in a crazy time right now in the United States. COVID, racial injustice, unemployment, hurricanes, fires. It seems like our nation is under attack. And, indeed, it may be.

    How’d we get here, and who’s to blame? Is it the radical left? The radical right? The looters or the KKK? Most of us live somewhere in the middle, and yet it seems like all of our talk is only about the folks on the fringe.

    We can’t ever allow ourselves to forget that the folks on the fringe are not and will not ever be in control unless we have allowed them to be. That’s the power of the middle, especially when it’s the size that it is. And perhaps our main issue right now is that many of us don’t see each other as fellow citizens, or as comrades, in that powerful force that is the middle.

    I am so very tired of hearing Christians say we need to turn back or we need to change our ways or we need to focus on values – with the implication or even the clear and intentional statement that if we don’t, our country is doomed to fall or fail.

    Maybe that’s correct, actually. But here’s the thing: when Christians say that, they are always pointing the finger at others. The implication in the statement is that others who sin need to turn from their way. Others who don’t go to church or don’t go to a church like ours need to get with the actual God program. Others need to have politics like ours. Others who are gay need to be straight. Others who have abortions need to stop. Others who commit adultery need to not do that. Others who protest need to be thankful for what they do have and love their country more.

    What about us? The Christians. Perhaps we should turn that pointing finger back at ourselves. What if the reason this nation is struggling is because we – the Christians – have set a very bad example in this supposed Christian nation.

    What if the issue is our failure to show Christ to the world? That we haven’t been the hands and feet. That we have failed to love our neighbor as ourselves. That we have failed to lead with love. That we have failed to be the light. That we have failed to forgive and have empathy and show compassion. That we have failed to live by the ten commandments. That we have put other gods before Him. That we have made idols. That we have supported and elected leaders who live in ways very contrary to the tenets of Christianity. That we have failed to preach and live the actual gospel. That we have been disobedient. That we have failed to take a stand when we should. That we have failed to recognize and act when some of our fellow citizens, including our fellow Christians, have not been treated fairly.

    Tweet that moved me most this week:
    Stop using Dr. King as an example of a peaceful protest…you shot him, too.

    What if WE are the issue? What if what we’re doing or not doing is to blame? Because as Christians, we have a responsibility that’s clearly outlined in Luke 12:48. To whom much is given, much will be required. We are and will be held responsible for what we have been given.

    We’ve been acting like the sinners are always the others. The sinners are us, too.

    We’ve been acting like we are above reproach because we are believers, when actually we’re more accountable because we know better.

    We’ve been acting like everyone should believe and behave like we do because we’re better, when the reality is that we’re not behaving very well at all. And worse, everyone sees it.

    I believe Jesus, if He were walking on two human legs in America today, might be found walking amongst that big crowd in the middle, in the group made up of most of us. There are differences in how we believe and look and think and act, but we commonly seek a place of peace and safety and healing. And perhaps he’d be speaking words like these, appropriate two thousand years ago and still today: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”

    There is surely Jesus in many Republicans and in many Democrats and in many Libertarians and in many Green supporters and in many people who don’t vote at all. Any suggestion that Jesus would side with a certain political party in America is simply a lie. Any suggestion that the fault for where we are lies with the others is a half-truth. The truth is always somewhere in the middle.

    Seeing God in America is one of my favorite devotionals right now. From a reflection on Maroon Bells, Colorado: “A murky, weed-choked pond won’t give back a reflection of even the mightiest mountains that tower nearby. But a clean, calm lake surface will shine out with the image of the majesty that surrounds it.”
  • Back To School?

    Back To School?

    There’s no way we can go back to school and keep children and educators safe. I’ve resigned myself to this, and at the same time it makes me really frustrated and really angry.

    There are tourists and locals filling restaurants here every night. Bars are open. The local water park is hosting kids and their families each day. Music lessons and gymnastics practices and dance classes have resumed for kids. How is it that so many unnecessary elements of life are functional and school is a giant omnishambles?

    I’m thankful that businesses have been able to re-open and that people have been able to get back to work. I’m thankful that people can start to pay their rent and their bills. But I can’t shake this feeling that while it’s great that my daughters and I could get our hair done and have acrylic nails put on, that’s not what we – meaning our government and leaders – should have chosen as the stuff to focus on.

    It’s clear to me that we’ve put lots of thought and energy and resources into many wrong things since mid-March. We have kids back on balance beams and to practices for whatever sports they play, but what the hell were we doing focusing even one ounce of energy on those things before we figured out how to safely educate our nation’s children?

    In the last four months that we’ve known about this coming problem, it just seems like we’ve done a whole lot of nothing. And now we have proposed the couple paths of least resistance, giving parents (but not really teachers) a “choice,” and we are calling that our best.

    1. Students can attend school in person, full or part-time, with safety protocols.

    or

    2. Students can opt for 100% online, with parents committing to this plan for the first half of the year.

    Source for local options in Chesapeake, Virginia.

    In some districts, school is 100% virtual for the first quarter with the goal of 50/50 later in the year – meaning 2 days a week for some, 2 days a week for others, and 1 day a week teacher work day. In some districts, no decisions have officially been made yet – although I think they have been made and elected cowards are delaying the inevitable backlash as long as possible.

    Distance learning, as we’ve had it, was not learning. Learning is the acquiring of new knowledge. At best our distance program was maintenance. Maintenance with really crappy technology that was not designed for the volume it’s been seeing. Maintenance because maybe it kept some children at the level they were on when they walked out of schools on March 13. Maintenance that really only benefitted those children living in the best of circumstances, with technology at home and parents or siblings or caregivers to help.

    I realize that the plan for “learning” is supposed to be different for the fall session than it was back in the spring, but I just don’t see how it can possibly be that effective – especially for children who aren’t privileged in some way. In the spring, Audrey’s elementary school teacher was absolutely fantastic. She sent regular updates, she gave clear directions for where to find everything, and she even scheduled one-on-ones with her students and showered them with love and attention and encouragement. From my vantage point, she did everything she could and more with the limited resources and guidelines she had. And yet on the weekly zoom calls she hosted, many – like roughly ⅓ – of the children didn’t attend and some of the children from Audrey’s class literally never attended. I wonder how those children are faring? I wonder if anyone making decisions about school wonders about how those children are faring and really considers them in these decisions?

    At the high school level, I experienced three categories of engagement from teachers. Some sent no status until the end of the year. Some sent a progress report every 2-3 weeks. One teacher sent a consistent weekly report or check-in. That regular check-in was from Ella’s PE teacher, and while I was thankful for the update that’s not the class I was wondering about. But the bottom line is that each of those levels of engagement for my high school student was fine because she’s an honor student. She got her work done, which I was able to check online at any time, and she will likely always do so with little-to-no prodding by me. Learning is not hard for her and she lives in a home with high-speed internet and with a parent who can work from home. She has the ability to ask questions of dozens of smart friends and adults any time. (Although I could not help with trigonometry if my life depended on it.) She is privileged.

    Distance learning is not ideal for large portions of our population now matter how you cut it – for children who struggle with learning, for children who don’t struggle with learning, for children who have fewer resources, for children who have IEPs or 504s. Distance learning is not ideal for many children who are privileged and downright not possible for many children who aren’t. And yet if distance learning is truly the only safe option, why have we put so little effort into making it feasible for as many children as possible?

    I understand that to some extent our leaders are reacting to a situation that is constantly changing, but how did we not have even a basic disaster plan for education in a time of war or crisis that we could have built upon for something like this health crisis? How did companies around the world send millions of people to work at home and we can’t figure out something better than the constantly-crashing Schoology? How come other countries have figured this out and we haven’t? (I do know that in part the answer to that last question is that citizens of those other countries acted like adults, put on their big-people panties, and wore the damn masks to prevent the kind of health crisis we’re facing in the U.S.)

    It seems like we just put all the wrong people on this task force. This is not the fault of teachers. This is the fault of leaders. And this is the fault of voters. We’ve made some very poor leadership choices, and now our children are going to suffer the consequences of that. That weighs on me. I pay a lot of attention to national elections and state elections, but not as much to local school board stuff. That is a bad, bad, bad habit.

    I don’t have any answers. Just frustrations. And regrets. And foreboding. And sadness. And a growing worry that at some point we’re even going to expect our teachers to pay for their own PPE.

  • How To Be A Good American

    How To Be A Good American

    July 4 has me thinking about what it means to be a good American, and all my paths of thought seem to end with people who are really disappointing right now. It’s not that hard to be a good citizen, to be a good American, to be a good human. So why are we having so much trouble?

    When you bump into someone, say you’re sorry. Even if the other person is grumbling or glaring at you, you say you’re sorry because you did the bumping. You never ever pull out a gun, or point your gun at children. And you never ever make excuses for that sort of behavior.

    Don’t say All Lives Matter. I’m giving most people the benefit of the doubt here and just assuming you don’t realize how awful that statement really is, but let me be clear: no matter how you try and spin it, you’re showing your rear-end when these words come out of your mouth. All lives don’t currently matter equally, and they never have in this country, which is why the statement Black Lives Matter is important. It’s not a statement that white lives or police lives matter less, it’s not a statement that you endorse people who riot, and it’s not even a statement that you believe in protesting or civil disobedience. It’s a statement of love for your neighbor, and of recognition of wrongs.

    Examine the roots of why you believe strongly in the things you do, and if there are inconsistencies or things that are downright wrong in your heart about your beliefs. Do you believe that good Americans or good people don’t publicly question the President or leadership? That good Americans don’t protest? That good Americans, good people, are from one political party or another? Because those things are not rooted in our founding or declaration at all, and while we’re at it they are also not rooted biblically. Do you think because there are people in your life that you love that are not like you that you don’t harbor any racist or hateful thoughts or feelings or versions of history? That’s a lie. We all have some learning to do and some work to do. We have to commit to understanding our inconsistencies and our convenient little lies, to ourselves and to others, and to the work to do better. And we need to understand that until we do, all our arguments to convince people we’re right are falling on the deaf ears of people who know we don’t have our act together.

    There are no white people in the Bible.

    Stop fighting over symbols of hate and inequity and injustice, and recognize instead HOW MANY OF THEM EXIST. Our land – our hearts and minds – are literally filled with symbols of racism. Statues and mascots and team names and confederate flags. Even people who don’t want to take them down or change them acknowledge what they are, and they argue not to take them down or make changes on the basis that they are historical or because those men were veterans. Symbols of oppression and hatred, even if they are a part of our history and even if they are of people who fought in a war and even if you believe the original meaning to some people may have been something else, cannot be glorified in public places as if the men and symbols were or are great.

    Wear a mask when you’re in a public place. It’s not a sign of oppression, or that you’re a snowflake, or that you don’t believe in God enough for protection and healing. The vast majority of you are wearing seatbelts and getting vaccinated for polio so just stop with the I have rights on this topic. No one wants to do it or likes to do it. It’s a pain in the butt for everyone. But the reality is that Covid numbers are the only way in which the south is rising again.

    Before you repost or post on social media, take 10 seconds to google for truth. Grandma Sandy from Topeka is not necessarily the most credible source of info on crime, history, who’s holding secret fundraisers for politicians, or voting laws in the state of Idaho. Stop spreading false information. It’s us, average American citizens, that are spreading the vast majority of fake news.

    People are so frustrating right now.

    We are so much better than this. We are so much smarter than this. And I refuse the notion that this land is filled with mostly selfish and crappy people.

    My company has been conducting town halls and small group discussions about all that’s happening in our world right now, and our moderator introduced the sessions with some really smart guidance that I think can apply in all sorts of situations.

    1. Assume positive intent from others when they say or do ignorant things.

    2. Take accountability for the impact of your words and actions, because you don’t get to choose how they impact others.

    3. In this time you may find yourself feeling uncomfortable. Ask yourself why and really think about it. Is it because you learned that what you used to think maybe isn’t totally true, that perhaps you have biases that you were not thoughtful about, that behavior or thoughts in your past when you didn’t know better make you feel ashamed?

    4. And above all, don’t hide from those thoughts and feelings – use them to change.

    Freedom means we have “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.” That also means we have the freedom to see when we’re on the wrong path in an area and get on a new one. We are free to change our minds, change our thought patterns, change our behaviors, and change our tired old ways to be better.

    Maybe change is how we best display our commitment to America.

  • Super Tuesday in Virginia

    Super Tuesday in Virginia

    We voted this morning. Taking our time, reading every name on the ballot with me whispering explanations about what I liked/disliked about each candidate and why who can win is sometimes just as important as who should win.

    Our children need to see and hear us talk about real issues, and know that we think and we research – not just that we blindly support a party or a person. Most importantly, I want Audrey to see and know that I will always vote for candidates who support her and the thousands of kids who will eventually enter adulthood with some sort of pre-existing condition.

    We talked about everything from socialism to racism to sexism, in littler words. She asked Are there people who won’t vote for a girl? Yes. And it made me sad to answer.

    But in only the way she can, Audrey summed up voting on Super Tuesday with this question/statement: So basically, though, we really don’t care as long as it’s not Trump. Yes. And, again, it made me sad to answer. It makes me sad that we have a leader I wouldn’t leave my children alone with for even 30 minutes because he’s such a poor example of humanity. I have voted red, blue, and Ross Perot, and have never felt that way until now.

    No candidate and no person is perfect, and yet I have always had this desire to really believe in the people I vote for. At the same time, it’s very often hard to find someone that doesn’t have skeletons and wasn’t at some point on the wrong side of an issue. But it’s never, ever been easier to vote for someone, anyone, as a comparison to what we have now.