on birds

We added ANOTHER new addition to our family this last weekend. After a week of deliberation, Jackson decided he wanted a parakeet, too, and since he had the money for one (and, like his brother, promises to buy its food and so on), we figured it was a worthwhile investment in childhood responsibility and fun.



That was, until we got TO the pet store and were told we would need a MUCH bigger cage for 2 birds.



After THAT it became our investment, too...a Club Med for keets. sigh.

However, the birds are HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY and I have to say, it's the new family entertainment to sit in our "orange room" upstairs and watch them.

And so, for your viewing pleasure, Orilus' parakeet Flash (the yellow one) and Jackson's parakeet (what else?) Thunder, in blue. Both boys are doing a bang-up job at getting the birds tame (by sticking their hands in there quite incessantly, petting them, and trying to get them to sit on their finger). It's actually rather satisfying to watch them work so hard at something (although I keep wondering if our birds are going to be traumatized by the amount of "training" they are getting). "Feelings doctors" for birds, anyone? :)

Happy birthday

to Jason today! I told him this birthday marks a year of change in our lives...the ending of two years of anticipation, and the start of many dreams. "Rebuilding cities devastated for generations"...one of my favorite quotes from the biblical book of Isaiah, and a vision for what Jason's life has been thus far, and what it will be. In less dramatic terms, Jackson said after Jason opened a present tonight (Jackson has been memorizing his times tables lately), "Dad, you know what 6 times 6 is?! THIRTY-SIX!!!" Well, then.

happy easter

Our Easter weekend passed blissfully. Somehow, I feel today as if I had a week off, instead of just a long weekend. I LOVE that.

I was so refreshed this weekend by so many details. Dyeing eggs with the boys on Friday (and the feeling of HAVING time to dye eggs). Our last date swap night with our dear friends, who move to Maine next week, marking the closing of a long and lovely season in our lives. An unexpected phone call on Friday from my missioner friend Ellen...I haven't seen her in nearly 11 years (since my wedding) and haven't talked to her in 5?6?, and she lives in India so we may not talk again for some time. But we had time to talk meaingfully, and to pray, and it was so refreshing to speak to an old friend, to connect, and to encourage her in her work. Lunch with Val Friday. Out with the family Saturday. Bread making. Tart making. The preparation of our Greek-inspired Easter meal (oh, it was so delicious). The realization that after all these years, Jason and I finally share a "hobby" (of the ordinary kind, not the bringing-kids-to-Mexico kind, or the sure-we'll-be-a-foster-parent kind, or yes-let's-adopt kind). We are SO into cooking lately, and enjoying the newest experiments (lentil soups and gourmet pizzas and vegetables whose names I can't always pronounce). Oh, and laundry soap making--I made my first batch of homemade laundry soap this weekend! An inspiring sermon at Val's church yesterday. And such a fun, fun time with Mom, and DD, and friends at our house yesterday around an Easter meal. Yay for a new and emerging community of friends here in Lynn, even as old friends move on to other ministries and lives.

And in really big news...we welcomed a new member to our family on Saturday. Orilus' long-anticipated most-wished-for birthday gift, a yellow parakeet he's named Flash. Flash--because he's yellow (like a flash of lightning) and because he escaped us when we tried to put him in the cage and "flew like a flash" around his room for quite a while. Orilus was quite excited to have a pet to show off yesterday...and Jackson's talking about getting one himself to add ("Flash looks lonely," he told me yesterday). Oh, my.

proximate justice

A friend emailed me this week a series of articles around "proximate justice," and I have spent much of Holy Week reflecting on their meaning, and application. The concept is not new, but it is at the heart of faith: how are we, as people of faith, to both yearn for justice to come to the Earth, and also to live with it coming-in-part?

Last weekend proved to be a lovely way to reflect on these meditations, as I had opportunity to meet or communicate with other women who are asking the same questions of their lives. Sheryl, a friend I met in Haiti years ago, emailed me from a gut-wrenching conference on adoption advocacy. She encouraged me to keep yearning for goodness to come in the midst of all the suffering I see, and I was buoyed to know her companionship in this justice pilgrimage. On Saturday I sat with Lorrell, a missioner friend who is waiting for her visa to arrive so that she can return to her NGO work in Sudan. She spoke frankly of the pain of the wait--so much that she could be doing throughout the country in the work of literacy and literacy advocacy. Anne, a universalist friend who has been bringing her church to Mexico since I told her about our trips years ago. She told me about a safe house she visited last month for illegal immigrants in El Paso, Texas and the pastor who works there, a man so impassioned with justice (and with grace) I cried over my coffee.

These last few days I have made more peace with proximate justice. Yesterday I was able, after much advocacy, to work with some teachers in my building to get a student evaluated for special education services. There are a few others I know would benefit from such testing, but the system is slow, and often unwilling, and it is heartbreaking work. But yesterday, I was able to bring justice to this boy's life, and to translate for his grandmother, who told the team, "Finalamente, tenemos una escuela que puede ayudar a el...tuve esperanza" ("Finally, we have a school that can help him...I had hope"). I almost cried, to think how he close the student came to being overlooked.

It is not justice for all, and it is not justice in every situation. That, my Scriptures tell me, has not yet arrived. But I pray for the Kingdom of justice (of "enough," of healing, of grace) to come to this earth, and I work for it. And as I do, I'm learning to make my peace with proximate justice, and to offer my small works to God as great acts of hope.

happy birthday, orilus!

Friday was Orilus' 12th birthday! After school on Friday we took Orilus, Jackson, and two of Orilus' friends out for supper at Bugaboo Creek, where we met my mom...and had a GREAT time! The boys were SUPER entertaining...chatting, having thumb wars, opening gifts...what a good time we had! To think that at this time last year, Orilus was still at home recovering from a bone marrow transplant...and now, he is 12, and taller, and 71 pounds (a skinny muffin, but healthy), and not taking any medications...watching him open gifts Friday night, the miracle struck me all over again. Thank you, God, for our son! HE is the gift.

(photos: Orilus, Jackson, & friends; Orilus opens his new parakeet cage, a gift from Grandma; Orilus opens our gift to him--Red Sox tickets!)

hilarious

Thought you'd enjoy the latest goings-on here at our house. On Saturday, Orilus got an (early) birthday present from his grandparents (his actual birthday is March 14th)...a much-anticipated chin up bar. The bar was installed yesterday (of course) and since then, we have heard non-stop about chin ups and push ups (the bar can also go low to the floor) and growing pecs (what IS it with all the talk of pecs lately?!). Thought you'd enjoy seeing both boys in action (Note: they videoed each other, and you can see here which is the better videographer).

P.S. We are all finally healthy here, and my stitches came out today!

on justice

The theme of my week has certainly been justice.

Not only have I been re-writing my essay for graduate school around this very theme (as "doing justice" is THE reason why I switched from teaching AP and honors English courses to teaching ESL, and what I am trying to explain to admissions), but I have also finished reading an unforgettable book this week based on the true life experiences of a refugee from Sudan.

If you are looking for a book you won't put down, and a book that will change your perspective entirely, please read What is the What by Dave Eggers. Since so many of the refugee students I have taught in the past year are from Sudan, and even more of my students have lived in the refugee camp that is the setting for 10 years of the narrator's life (Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya), the book was of great personal and professional interest to me. Lately I have been helping one of my own Sudanese students write her life story. She began the project with the accounting of fleeing her village, suddenly, as soldiers descended upon them. As she runs, a five-year-old with her mother, her mother tells her, "God will help us." And this is the title of the book she is writing--God will help us. I am stunned by her faith, honestly.

Two weeks ago I finished reading another remarkable true story. You may have seen the book featured in Starbucks last year (my reason for thinking, actually, that it might not be so great). I was wrong. It was extraordinary. The book is A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah, and it is one of the most disturbing and hopeful things I have read in a long time.

So justice is on my mind lately. Sometimes at night, when I am sitting at home in a quiet and warm house, I wonder how it is that I can inhabit the SAME world as so many people I have met, whose stories are so traumatic, so gruesome, so terrible. I drink tea, and think about the refugees I know who used to eat only one meal a day, who have been raped, or tortured. One of my student's fathers had acid poured into his eyes by rebel forces because he refused to fight with them; he is now completely blind. How can this be the same planet? How can we let people suffer like this?

This week I have nearly cried at work every day. Today, I couldn't help it, and finally did. It's the injustices that get to me. Last week one of my favorite students--a refugee from Burma--moved to Ohio (we have seen a large migration of this group of people leaving our city, as they cannot afford to live here; a loss for our city entirely). Her school called me yesterday to ask for a missing piece of paper, and the woman on the phone complained to me about how many of "these people" they have in their school now. She refused to pronounce my student's name, though I said it nearly five times for her--she prefered to rushedly spell it instead (as in, "Can you send M-Y-A's paper to me?"), and I have a sinking feeling that my students will remain nameless in their new city. Other injustices, of just this week: the school personnel who yell at my students, imagining that if they yell louder, my students (who are learning English) will understand them better. Or the student whose family is barely eating each day, here in Lynn, in my own city. Today a student comes to me to tell me of a grave incident--something said to her by a person in our school who had no motivation to say any such thing (unless you include bigotry, racial prejudice, socio-economic assumptions, gender bias...). The student was demeaned, and degraded. She came to tell me because she wanted me to know, NOT because she expected me to do anything about it. And that's when I cried. I couldn't help it. It's one thing for a person to take another person's insult, or bigotry...but it's another for that person to be so beaten down by so much insult that they no longer expect that justice CAN be done. They no longer will fight, or will allow people like me to fight for them.

On days like today, I remind myself that at least I can tell the stories. I am challenged in my thinking to read these words from a Sudanese refugee, the closing paragraph of What is the What, as the narrator/refugee speaks directly to his reader:

"Whatever I do, however I find a way to live, I will tell these stories...I speak to these people, and I speak to you, because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelieveable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us...I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don't want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist."

On days like today, I am at least comforted to know that I am not pretending the refugee students I serve do not exist. I cry, and I care. I remember their stories.

quite a week

Well, I almost had time this week to post that my herb garden is beginning to grow (so exciting...it's been so long since I've made anything from seed, so I am unusually amazed). But the week turned out to be challenging. As I'm typing with limited mobility, I will post a list of prayer requests below, and keep this brief:

* On Wed, I sliced open my left hand while teaching my ESL biology class (my first day doing so without my co-teacher, who fell and broke 2 bones on Tuesday, needing plates and screws...pray for her, she is in for a long recovery, and I am sad without her). Off I went to the ER for stitches...
* On Friday Jason and I went to a cooking class (his Christmas present from me), and while chopping fennel on a Japanese cutter thing, I sliced off the top of my right index finger (hence the difficulty typing). Bled for HOURS. Pain-full.
* Sick, sick, sick this week. Orilus' fever lingered much of the week, and his cold. And I'm sick with a sore throat, cough, and laryngitis.
* And truly, my friend and co-teacher does need prayer for her leg to heal. Also, since this is the couple who was looking at our house, many of our plans to proceed with buying are obviously and indefinitely on hold. Pray that their lives will not be "on hold" for too long, for the sake of their own sanity! We are trusting God has a plan for them, and for us, in all this.

A week in which we see how quickly life can change...

Love from a quiet and healing Winchell house