chicagodads

So, this is our predicament. We want to reduce the unnatural steroids that are enlargining our baby. So, we decided to at least take control of the milk. It seems the most logical route. So, we’ve started feeding her organic milk.

Now, I’ve got some questions.

Is it a conspiracy that poor people can’t afford to eat healthy? Or is it just here in Chicago that that happens? Is the organic milk in farming/small town communities just as pricey? Is it more than, say, $7 a gallon in other regions of the country (as opposed to $3-4 for ‘regular’ milk)?

 Furthermore, is the government (the US gov’t) subsidizing organic milk as well? If so, is it equalized out? Are there certain farming corporations even within the organic movement who make out like bandits while everyone else just gets by? And if the need and desire for organic milk rises, will the price than drop?

hmm…

Our baby is big. Big like the Gooch. People come up to us with their two year olds and wonder why our not-so-little one ain’t talking to her peers. We inform them that she’s only thirteen months and they’re like, “Yeah…”

And then I have to refrain Joss from knocking down their toddlers. I’m sure we got a bad reputation in the neighborhood. I’m afraid to think what they name our jolly blonde giant.

But it’s mostly in the genes. There’s not much we can do about that, eh? Can’t compress her, can we? (Can we?) I’m six feet three and my wife’s about 5′10″. The baby, at this rate, though, may wind up being three meters tall. Goliath, for sure.

We figure that there’s too many steroids in the food nowadays. So we decided to make a small (or not) step towards reducing her unnatural inclinations.

No, it wasn’t really. It wasn’t a monsoon taking away some child’s father. Nor thousands of people trapped under the rubble of an earthquake. Or a volcano smothering a Pacific Island in its violent and ruthless wake.

It was of a bassinet. Made by the same company that made my daughter’s crib. The crib, we found, had some defective pieces which made it difficult to set-up straight. The company then (I think it was late last year) had called for a recall of the defective parts, but I don’t recall if we needed to or didn’t.

The bassinet (which I honestly never understood the need for, but I guess if you don’t have a lot of room… I don’t know. Somebody tell me why there is such a thing as a basonet) has an opening around the base that a child’s head can fit through, plus, apparently, some straps and whatnot.

Two babies died during the course of this year died by hanging themselves on this contraption. Yeah, that news is pretty horrible on its own. What made it horrible news (or rather, explotative news) is the fact that they showed a rendering of what this hanging would look like.

Here’s another kicker to this story, the manufacturers will not recall it, but Walmart (which, generally speaking, I detest) is pulling the model. Not, apparently, buying back any defective models that it sold to its consumers, but, one small step at a time, eh?

To finish his story on the show I watched (Chicago’s WMAQ at 4:30 Newscast), the reporter then opined that “Well, it seems like such an obvious thing, looking out for gaps in the base.” To her credit (and I’m forever obliged for her quick-wittedness) the anchorwoman (who has gotta be a parent) retorted that, “Well, you see a sign or a product for babies and you automatically assume that it’s safe.” You know, that the manufacturers and retailers would check, recheck, and quadruply inspect every facet of every device. You may be wrong.

 That should be the case.

Today’s word in community is problem-solving.

As I’ve hinted at earlier, it’s a viscious cycle, this world we live in (and I think some of the ideas and actions that I’ve highlighted in this series and the last are what the Bible refers to in speaking of “the world”). Since we make mistakes, blunders and big bombs, we tend to recognize that there is or at least that there may be something wrong with us. And since it looks like anybody who is important or good or right, any normal healthy member of society, does not have these failings, we hide our own failings. Our  weaknesses cannot jeopardize our standing in society.

But we fail to recognize that we are surrounded by fools like us and that it is only our need for validation and our low self-assurance that keeps us in the dark. However, having said all of that, when we come out of the darkness and realize that many of our social evils are (slavery, child pornography, prostitution, racism, immense poverty) an extension - nay, an intense volleying - of our individual failings and our failure to unmask them for what they are, we can begin to deal with them in the light.

Community is the vehicle for correct change, for peace, for health, for conflict resolution. Additionally, it allows us to be ourselves.

This infomercial has been brought to you by the fine people at Today.com…

Community is - to continue the unintentional vowel motif - accepting.

If my biggest hang-up is honesty and openness, then it seems to me that the biggest one of all people everywhere (in a law of averages, of course) is to be accepting. If, after all, it is hard for some of us to open up, it’s largely because it’s hard to entrust ourselves to people who would think of us as demons in tattered blue jeans.

The members of a community, however, are honest enough with themselves to know that we all are human, that we all have drastic, dramatic, and demonic failings. It’s just that people like myself are afraid of opening up because we can’t possibly believe that everyone is as hellishly messed up as we are. And yet there are those who would dare profit off of the failures of others, largely because of their own inadequacies.

And if we are all so bad - and truly good - and we are not so embedded in our own worst social tendencies, we can sympathize, empathize and commiserate in our broken humanity. And if we can together admit our brokenness, we can head towards healing and wholeness.

Isn’t that a legacy worth working for?

Community is open.

Also simple, right? Doesn’t need clarification, does it? A community is supposed to be a safe place, with guarding rules and boundaries that keep its members from harm. One benefit of this zone of safety is that participants can feel that what they allow in the open air not only stays in the confines of the zone, but is treated with dignity - is free from the insidious harm of sarcasm, malice and gossip.

That should be how it works, and I’m sure it does some places. Actually, I’m sure it happens all the time, in bedrooms, living rooms, and pubs all over the world.

It’s just that I’m the biggest cynic when it comes to this. I’ve always held these cards close to the chest.

But I don’t want to. I want to both heal and be healed. I want our daughter to be honest and open with us. I want to be able to trust my daughter and wife fully, with no inhibitions. And that takes work, a life’s worth of work. I certainly can’t wait until she’s in middle school until I get my act together.

Community is open.

That’s it, that’s my big idea for today. At first blush, it sounds so simple, so obvious, so… d’uh. But then you think further on it and realize that most of the communities that we know - or I guess what we would term communities - are not open, are not inviting, are stand-alones and pretty content with things and people as they are. Heck, how many neighborhoods are termed ‘gated communities’?

And if they are gated, are they truly communities?

Community life cannot and must not be sheltered. Once we close off life, ideas, action, and perspectives that are at-odds or just different from our own, we stagnate our own relational lives. Relations are like water. Stagnation leads to death.

Furthermore, if we suggest that those with differing opinions, lifestyles, etc. belong on the outside in the first place, what does that do to those who are on the inside who begin to have a dissenting opinion? Must the ‘community’ (read: clique) now die from both internal bleeding as well as lack of fresh blood?

Let’s open up. We’ll all be stronger for it. All of our families.

This president has given an unusual amount of space during his career to the war hawks, much to the chagrin of some others in his administration. And much to the detriment of - at the very least - his popularity.

Two very different ways to look at the subversion of - and check on - the more hawkish are seen by the actions of the two Secretaries of State under Bush - Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice. Former General Powell had used his reputation to help sell a war that his policies did not back. In return, he lost much and shortly resigned, realizing that he was not able to commit to his vision nor agree with those whom had the ear of the president, noticeably Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and U. S. Vice President Dick Cheney (not to mention Paul Wolfowitz, an under-secretary in the State Department who unmitigatingly called-for initial attacks on Iraq). So, him leaving at the end of Bush’s first term was entirely justifiable as well as forseeable.

Rice, for a diplomat, seemed entirely too docile, too ready to accept whatever the fates would send her way, including, again, justification for an unprovoked war (which a true diplomat would never call for) and for the lack-of-preparation for the Sept. 11th attacks.

Rice surprised me - pleasantly. She’s got Bush’s ear, she’s his man-on-the-ground. The White House has taken her advice and started to mend necessary fences and bridges, while overthrowing others (look at the changes in direction in Iraq, Pakistan, North Korea). As a result, international relations are starting to look up, the president’s popularity is starting to rise, and the next election is starting to take a different form.

It may be a big case of too-little-too-late, but there’s no doubt that if Dr. Rice did not decide to stick it out - to be gunned down for things that she probably should never have accepted - then as the truth wore on that the hawks’ views of world reality could not hold, international relations would be drastically worse than they already are and GWB’s presidency would have a legacy even lower than what it currently is and the US would suffer dramatic relapses and deficits in the world stage.

So, lesson is… stick it out?

Maybe… Or maybe, get rid of the idiots in the first hand.

(So much for my initial statement of apolitics…)

The community thread is the second series in a projected - and very open - three-part series on relationships that I’m planning on doing (the first was love; the next is on respect). I’ve yet to define or outline what community is but I wanted to throw this picture out there, even though - and partially because - in many ways it is the opposite of community, or at least what I think that community should be.

The White House.

Again, I don’t want to be political. Me saying that the Washington White House is not a community is not a throw-down on the Bush presidency. Nobody could make a community out of a brood of vipers, to be honest, no matter their intentions, philosophy, or management skills. Every single individual in the service of the president’s cabinet vies to get the ear of whichever man (up to this point) runs the ship. There’s more daggers in that single address than in all the soap operas and telenovelas combined. Not a community.

Yet, there are unmistakable alliances and identifications having to do with community within such a grouping. There are constant checks and balances, and each crazy corner needs the others for their own operations - whether or not they ever allow for that.

But recent events have made me think about what has been going on the last seven or so years there. I’ll share more later…

In addition to the series on love (of which this is a sort of an extension), I’ve also been doing some reading / discussing / dwelling on this idea of what makes community.

And I guess, like love and a lot of other things, I have some ephemereal ideas, but not really a good solid foundation. In other words, it’s kind of up there, where I can start to think about it and focus in on what it means, but it isn’t - yet - substantial. I don’t know yet how to practice community nor how to practice - at least not at all times.

Which is not a bad thing, mind you. That’s how I operate. I need to remove myself from the situations I am in and begin to think of things tangentially. It is only afterwards, after I spend some time thinking on such things, that I can imagine myself doing those things. And then I can.

Because, after all, I’m a bit of a hot-head. And we hh’s don’t tend to operate too well on a plenary level.

Ok, so she was taking two naps a day - one in the morning and one in the afternoon. And then she wouldn’t take the morning nap and would be really, really cranky by the afternoon. So, we consolidated down to one nap a day, mid-day. And she would take long naps, usually. Slumbers, more like it. Two to three hours. Sometimes even longer.

But now she vascillates between the separate naps (where she sometimes sleeps for two hours each time) and the noon nap (where she will sleep for two hours, if I’m lucky).

And, as long as I know when she’s getting up and going down, and as long as it’s consistent - that coupled with the fact that y’know, she acts in a decent and usual manner (which is, actually, happy and curious) - then I’m okay with that. But this, this I’m not so okay with.

I need some kind of schedule. Not because I’m a Type A personality, but because of the precise opposite. I need a schedule because otherwise, I’ll flounder my day away and will only, occasionally, get to the stuff of work and pay (the fact that before I left for Medellin I only finished these posts around midnight each day is a testament to this).

Anybody got any ideas? I wonder if there are programs out there to set your children to sleep like clockwork. MS Doze…

Love gets angry. Sometimes really angry.

 And sometimes love hates. Sometimes it hates people.

But love is not bitter. Love does not seek revenge.

The loving person is a person of emotions and sometimes, oftentimes, mistakes. There is no doubt about that. Anger is not a mistake, though. Sometimes it can reached in a flash, though. Sometimes it can directed at the wrong entity. But anger and even hatred (short-lived and done with the purpose of ending that which must be stopped) is not against the law or practice of love. 

Love is saying that emotions are not enought, though. Love is not restricted by her emotions, nor is he identified by them. Love supercedes all of those to act in the best, despite and inside the trapping emotions. 

Love is not jealous, is not easily provoked, and does not feel threatened.

It is this last one that I want to focus on. To feel threatened means that someone is interrupting your power flow. It means that the person who is acting is not in control or does not feel in control. The truly liberated loving person- although I am sure it always wants to be in control, because it wants the best for all - knows that what is truly best for all is to allow others to grab the reins of their own destinies for awhile. He knows that if it has truly been a faithful lover to others around him, if he has fed, clothed, cared for, prayed over, shown proper affection towards, and thoughtfully nurtured those under his care, then he will not need to worry about trying to control every last single outcome.

Not that that is easy in the least. I could not imagine it would be when my daughter is old enough to make those decisions. And I pray that she makes the right decisions. And I pray that my wife and I make right decisions daily for her and for us and for others. I pray we demonstrate wisdom. I pray she learns from our mistakes and - hopefully more strongly - from our humble spirits and thoughtfulness.

May we guide in love. And never control.

Love is costly. Plenty costly. But it will save your dear life.

The trade-off is to the lover´s favor. A loving person knows that she is living with purpose, maybe perhaps the finest way and maybe perhaps the only way possible. The loving person has vision, has clarity, has a kick in his step, knows deep down inside that his works are in alignment with the way things ought to be - not as they are. For the way things are are not - and we all know this somewhere and somehow - the way things were meant to be.

The loving person, in other words, is not only doing the right thing and doing good deeds so that she can feel good about herself and make her mommy proud. The loving person, the sacrficial person who looks out for others - strangers, even - with the same love and care she has for herself, her God and her family, is a part of making things right with the world.

I´m using an English keypad with a computer that understands Spanish commands in an internet cafe using a computer system that operates largely by floppy.

Weird.

And now is my first time logging back in in a long, long time. I´m in Bogata, Colombia, South America. It´s beautiful around these parts. But honestly, the neighborhood that we are staying in is not beautiful and is rather drab and dull. It´s not the people, for sure. It´s more the conditions that they find themselves in.

In fact, the children here are gorgeous and wonderful. Many of them come from situations that we would find hard to believe much less sustain.

For example, domestic violence is tolerated here and the mothers are expected to be domecile. Children in the last city we were at don´t have enough money to eat regularly and rely on the meals from the schools, which they all have to pay for as there is no such thing as a public school system in Colombia. Things in this country cost maybe 80% of what they would in the States, at least in Chicago. But most people make a fourth of what we make, if not a tenth. Or less. Entire families and generations were displaced out of their homes in the country (and therefore, out of their financial existence and subsitence) and live in run-down shanty towns until they can somehow scrap enough money to get a place. If that.

My daughter is fortunate. She is wonderful and brave and strong and full of joy (we were hoping that for her when we decided to name her Jocelyn). But others don´t have that luxury. We desire to make this world a better place. We desire that our daughter recognize that life for most isn´t what it is for us. We desire that our daughter recognize that it doesn´t have to be as bad as it is for most people. We pray that our daughter has the same desires as we do, and will work to make this world a better place.

That´s love. Not selfishness.

One inescapable fact of the world is that everyone is aware of their need for love. We are all aware of it in a bones-meets-soul deep way and a goosebumps-surface way. The problem is, few people know what it truly is or how to find it. I’m not here going to divulge my secret ways of knowing your one-true-love or any such ridiculous matter. I’m a pilgrim with a very steep learning curve and a very low learning speed. Which is why these are ruminations and not action points.

Rare is the man or woman who knows how to love or even how to be loved.

Case in point, as a youthworker and a teacher, I would witness child after child bare children of their own. If pressed, a few of them - though certainly not all - would admit that they became pregnant so that they would finally have someone who loved them. Since they do not know what love is in the first place, and since the babies don’t quite self-operate, the method is all madness here.

We should not be creating people so that they would love us, we should cultivate love in the home first, and then out of that love should come another child.

I love my child very much, and she loves me very much. But the duty of love should never rest on her shoulders, certainly not at her age.

In yesterday’s post, I kind of started to take a paranthetical argument, but then seemed to shut down all at once. This is that shut-down-worthy parenthesis.

About “free love”: Love is sacrificial and covenantal. It is not free, it is not cheap. It is a bond that people agree to engage in and it can, and should, change lives for the better. It’s long-term. Additionally, the type of love that I express to you will be and should be different than the type of love that I express to my daughter, to my neighbor, brother and stranger and certainly my wife. Seriously, I just think that some people wanted an excuse to justify their lack of self-control and their selfishness. In regards to that type of “love” being “free”, well, the seventies and eighties kind of proved that whole concept deadly wrong, certainly physically.

Having said that, though, the hippies are right. We should let love be our guides, we should run our affairs and even our policies through the auspices of love.

I mentioned that I specifically left off references to Bob Marley and the Beatles songs. Add to that the Staples Singers, say. And some of Stevie Wonder. And then there’s that other staple of sixties hippie-dom, “What the World Needs Now (Is Love)”.

These are message songs, not romantic songs (although you could argue that the way they were putting across the message - or that the means of the message - were overly romantic, simplified, and/or optimistic). Marley’s “One Love”, the Staples singing “Love Is Plentiful”, Stevie Wonder conjecturing that “Love Is in Need of Love Today”: these songs are anti-war, specifically the Vietnam War. Let’s add to that the late catalogue – and associations - from the Beatles, sentiments and catchphrases like “Make Love Not War”, “In the End, the Love You Take Is Equal to the Love You Make”,  and “All You Need Is Love.”

They were right. I’m not advocating “Free Love” (which the musicians at times endorsed) because it was neither free nor love.

Some would say that love is meaningless and mushy and talk of it is drivel. I would beg to differ.  I would like to dwell on the word and what I think its implications are for awhile. (By the way, we are leaving for Colombia today, so hopefully I can get these posts up in time… but I may not be able to comment for a while… Ruminate…)

I typed in the word ‘love’ in the search box on my iTunes player just now. It’s flooded. Here’s a few titles: “Strong Hand of Love”, “Love and Happiness”, “L-O-V_E (Love)”, “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”, “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me”, “I Feel Love” (by Donna Summer, of “Love to Love Ya” fame), “Modern Love”, “Friday I’m in Love”, “I Love Your Mind”, “About Love”, “This Is the Way of Love”, “Love is a Dead Language”, ”Can’t Get Enough of Your Love Babe”, “Love Shack”, “I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)”, “Strong Hand of Love”, “Love Is So Blind”, “Slave to Love”…

These are just a smathering of the titles from the artists A-D. I purposefully left out all Beatles and Bob Marley songs (although I did want to put in a Beach Boys song. Alas, having a member named Love was probably good enough for them).

But tell me, what, besides that single syllable word do all of those titles have in common? Why so popular? I’m not just asking why the supply is so high, but why the demand for songs – and books, movies, and other elements of popular culture - about love is so high.