What Facebook Thinks I Want

     I understand that in order to provide free sites on the internet, such as Facebook, it is necessary to have advertising. What bothers me is what the ads reveal about what they, whoever they are, think I want.  Until I finally profiled that I am married, I regularly received ads telling me that aging male models live in Kalispell, Montana and want to date me. And though I try not to follow many internet rabbit trails, something I liked or clicked convinced them that I believe in the existence of magical fat busters and miracle beauty products. Are they judging by my profile picture? I certainly didn't profile my weight.
     But to me the most irritating ads are those telling me how easy it is to get disability over 50. As if it wasn't bad enough that welfare has unleashed a plague of entitlement mentality in our nation, lawyers are actively trying to infect more wage earners with "something for nothing" disease so they can profit from them in the short term and the rest of us can pay for them for the rest of our lives.
     I don't mind that Facebook thinks I'm politically conservative, God fearing and cheap--those things are all true. I'm not sure why Godvine thinks I want to cry. I can't blame Facebook for the online versions of chain letters--my cousin sends those. And the warnings against eating toxic substances (which for millennia were called food) come from friends who are caught up in the latest health fads.
    But those things are minor distractions. It doesn't matter what Facebook thinks I want. What I want from Facebook is a quick peek at news and pictures from friends and family and time left over to put my face in a real book--with no advertising.

Mixed Messages

     I fully believe that Christians should use every opportunity to speak up for Christ, especially in an increasingly darkened culture, but I worry about the message we may be sending. We are Americans after all, we have the constitutional right to complain. Yes, it is aggravating when schools, stores etc. try to politically correct Christ out of Christmas, but confronting some poor employee sends the following messages:  1) I am a Christian.  2) I am easily offended. This is a problem because it is the opposite of what we are supposed to be. Lemon is not a fruit of the Spirit.
     Neither is prickly pear. Another reason we should not be offended so easily is because Christ spent a lot of his ministry warning his disciples to expect opposition. The world has always been hostile to the things of Christ. America is in the world. Ergo we should not be surprised that our culture misunderstands, maligns and litigates against Christianity. Finding the balance between communicating God's truth and clobbering people with it is difficult. We are to be the light of the world, but a flame thrower is overkill. If I cannot speak up for Christ in the way that represents his nature, I should stick with just one message--I am easily offended. At least that way, I'll mix well with my mixed up culture.

Your Ladder is Up Against the Wrong Building

Your ladder is up against the wrong building:

     if your financial plan involves an increase in the minimum wage.

     if you think our country's hope for the future is in good politicians.

     if you think a diet, doctor, exercise or living will puts you in control of how long you live.

     if you think homeschool, Christian school or Christian parenting methods guarantee your child will follow the Lord.

     if you are counting on the government to take care of you/give you money/have money.

     if you think the Affordable Care Act will be affordable or care.

     if you think worship equals singing or an emotional state.

     if you think wealth, success, fame or a relationship will make you happy.

     if you think you can divorce, start over, and your children will be happy as long as you are happy.

And if you think Christians are not gullible enough to believe in these cultural myths, your ladder must be on a different planet.
     

     

     

     



    


     

       

Finding a Way

     Today I marked next year's calendar with upcoming appointments, birthdays and anniversaries, as I do every year about this time. When I got to March 14th, my mother's birthday, I automatically filled it in before realizing I did not need to do that this year--or ever again. My mother is dead. A day not marked on a calendar seemed such a small thing to evoke tears. Though I have felt sorrow at the fringes of my consciousness for weeks, though I let myself click on the touching Facebook links promising to make me cry, tears have eluded me. Until now. Marking a calendar. Missing a birthday. It is as if not having a birthday removes her even further from existence. And fresh from that sorrow, I attended the funeral of a friend's son and shared her grief.
     There is a story I like, in which a young man falls in love with his teacher. In those days, unlike our own, it was unthinkable to act on such feelings. The boy's family eventually moved away. His teacher said he would forget her. He promised to find a way not to forget her. At the end of the story the now grown young man brings his wife back to his hometown to visit. His teacher had been gone for years, but the description of his young wife was the same as it had been for the young teacher. He had married someone just like her. He had found a way. From my own experience, when my dear friend Elsie moved into a nursing home, I found a way not to forget her in the midst of my busy schedule by having a weekly Bible study with her.
      I did not know how to mourn the complicated double loss of my mother, but Jesus knew. He helped me find my grief through Garth's death, through small pangs as I'm shopping and see a gift mom would have liked. And I found grief again today, through marking the calendar. Jesus has been showing me that He will find a way to help me grieve. He's good at that--finding a way.

Meeting at Moonlight Bridge

     No one has asked me about the process I use to write poetry--if only so it doesn't happen to them, but I am going to tell you anyway. Poems come to me in one of two ways:  I have an idea or feeling that is too big for prose and I simply need to find the right words to express it. What I value most in those poems is accuracy, they must be true to what I am trying to express. The other way I am afflicted with poetry is when a line comes to me and I, as the author, am curious to know what the poem is about. Those poems may be a composite of different things that have happened or even things that never happened. The following poem is one of the latter. It began with one line, the first. All that was left for me to do was find out what the poem was about. Turns out, it was a love poem. A young person might find it cute that someone my age could write a love poem. Apparently, I have a either a (please excuse font problem, I can't figure it out) good memory or a good husband. I have had some beautiful moments standing on that bridge in the moonlight, but it is hardly part of our regular married routine. Now that I've both bored you about my writing and removed the mystique from this particular poem, enjoy!

 Meeting at Moonlight Bridge

It was all of silk and silver,

the clouds in moonlit sky

the gurgling of the river,

like laughter, passing by.

That is the place I meet him

 when our day’s work is done--

the bridge between the refuges

of island and of home.

                                      

I revel in the beauty

and romance of the night,

my body is old and heavy

my heart is young and light.

When my lover comes to me

the moonlight hides the truth,

he sees me as I looked to him

when we were in our youth.

And I see him through eyes of love

the years have made more clear.

They bridge the space between the hearts

that meet in moonlight here.

Our laughter mingles with the sound

of river and of wind,

our hair like silk and silver

our hands and hearts entwined.

This bridge shall be a witness

when love’s great tales are told

of meetings in the moonlight,

of lovers young and old.

Just So You Know I Know

To the ice cream makers:  I know that your 2 quart container was downsized to 1.34 quarts, and then to 1.5.  I still buy your ice cream, but I know I am getting less. This is not because you worry about my weight.

To potato chip and cracker makers:  I know that all that extra air in the package is to increase profits, not decrease breakage.

To the city transit bus my tax dollars support:  I know the difference between paint and passengers. The number of passengers did not magically triple when you painted over the windows.

To hybrid owners:  I know your "green" car battery was built with toxic chemicals by underpaid "expendable" foreigners and with the carbon footprint of volcano farts.

To environmentalists:  I know that the products you use to live off the grid were made by the people you are trying to prevent from making a living off the land.

To groups sending surveys:  I know you only value my opinion when it is written on a check.

To charities:  If wealthy supporters have promised matching funds, I know you do not need mine.

To OSHA and HIPPA nazis:  I know you are not trying to protect my safety or privacy, you are trying to protect your jobs.

To those contingency lawyers who advertise on TV:  I know the only financial needs you care about are your own. But then, everybody knows that.

To the ACLU and other anti-Christian activists:  I know the future that awaits you. Good luck with that.

I know that writing this won't help or change these situations, I just want them to know I know.

In the Same Vein

     After more than four decades of being a blood donor, my good vein has finally been pumped dry.  I like donating blood. It's desperately needed, free, and comes with refills. And it's not as if I had other plans for bleeding on my to do list. I could not give blood in college because, believe it or not, I did not weigh the requisite 110 pounds. I started donating when we moved to Helena. The retired nurse volunteers who assisted donors to the snack table (in case they should faint) were so feeble they would have blown over in a stiff puff of wind. After that I donated at a state-of-the-art facility in Denver where I got such a bad poke, the bruise lasted for days. Later I donated at the old courthouse in Kalispell, accompanied by my toddlers who volunteers spoiled with snacks while I lay bleeding. In those trusting days, your donor number was also your social security number. Church ladies and service organizations supplied sandwiches and cookies for the required post-bleed feed.
     Then we got fancy--bar coded donor cards, computerized check-in, with a scanner the elderly volunteers manning the entry desk treat like a deadly, but sacred cobra, tilt donor chairs, television so you can veg and hemorrhage at the same time, monitors that beep when the bag is full and store bought snacks to protect us from the dangers home cooked food.  Before leaving the entry desk you have to at least pretend to read 15 pages of donor instructions, restrictions and prohibitions. In the donor area, a phlebotomist verifies your I.D. and asks what sex you consider yourself. If you consider yourself a woman but have an Adam's apple, you flunk. They take your temperature and blood pressure. To check iron levels they place your swabbed finger behind a plastic shield lest blood should squirt out of your finger and into their unprotected eyes, though the only time this occurred  was on "Dracula, Dead and Loving It".  Then you take a computerized (and extremely politically incorrect) test about the restrictions you just reread in the waiting area to see if you qualify to give blood. This is why I will not miss donating. Paperwork. The assumption that you are unclean. No matter how many times you donate, there are no shortcuts. It's like volunteering to go through TSA security after your flight has been cancelled.
     But, as I said, I am tapped out. My only good vein is in my left arm and, sometime this summer, it shriveled. I have been deferred before--low iron level. I can fix that. High blood pressure. Meds fixed that.  At first, they blamed my inadequate vein on dehydration and, since it was blistering hot last summer, I could believe it. But the heat has gone and my vein has not come back.  It succumbed to the same phenomenon that has claimed so much of my body--old age. So the next time the Red Cross calls, I will ask them to remove me from their list. I'm sure they will be disappointed, they are disappointed that I don't bring a buddy with me to the bloodletting. After 40 years in the same location, Lefty has left the (body) building. And I don't even mind that my sacrifice was in vein.

There's Trust, and then There's Trust

    I trusted Jesus as my Savior in 1972 when I was 16 years old.  I trusted Him to save my soul, but I didn't really trust Him to direct my life. That has been a much longer process.  For many years through my daily quiet time, the Holy Spirit whispered into my heart the same message, "Do you trust me?  I eventually found it easy to trust His guidance in my own life, but I wasn't sure He could do the same for my family--not without my help. It took me years to discover that not only am I not the Holy Spirit's little helper, but that my interference was getting in the way of what He was trying to do. He used people and circumstances I never would have thought of and got way better results. I was especially disappointed that I was not my husband's Holy Spirit because I had so many good ideas about how to change him.
     After all, I was practicing on my children. When children are young, parents get to be their Holy Spirit. We apply Biblical principles to their behavior. We convict them of their sins. We administer discipline. We begin to like the role of Holy Spirit, but it is a job that we need to increasingly work ourselves out of. Just as we do when we move from holding our babies, to walking beside our toddlers, to coaching our teens from the sidelines, to blessing and releasing our young adults. It is God who will see them when they're sleeping, know when they're awake, and know if they've been bad or good for the rest of their lives.
     I think the reason God doesn't change our loved ones' hearts through our nagging is because, like a parent, he doesn't want to reinforce bad behavior--ours. Do I trust the Holy Spirit to work out God's plan in my life? Absolutely. Do I trust Him to work out God's plan in my children's lives? Certainly.  Do I trust Him to work out God plan for them without my words?  Well, I need a few more years to work on that one. There's trust. . . and then there's trust.

Supersize Surmise

     There has been a lot in the news lately about supersizing. Michael Moore even made a movie about it, and he should know, he is supersized. Our bigger portions rest on our bigger plates in our bigger houses that we drive to in our bigger cars. This is all attributed to greed--greed for food, greed for space, greed for power. I'm sure some of that is true, but I discovered something while sorting through some of my mom's old mail, cards have gotten bigger too.  Christmas cards used to be what we now consider "money holder" size. And there was no money--I looked. Wedding and baby congratulations cards she received in the mail were about two inches square, the size I sometimes stick in the bag with a shower gift. The size the post office won't even deliver anymore lest it get stuck in their machinery.
      I just can't chalk this one up to greed.  I have never met anyone greedy for bigger cards. For women it just means more to store, for men it just means more to throw away. Phones, computers and Christmas lights have actually become much smaller. So I close this blog with a Suessical sound.

                                   I surmise that supersize
                                   isn't always greedy and unwise.
                                   Some things get bigger,
                                   some get small.
                                   Is that a bad thing?
                                         Not at all.
                                  

Between the Lines

     It is amazing to me how quickly a parking lot goes to pot (or looks like the drivers were on pot) when snow covers the lines. Customers who have been using the same lot for years will suddenly forget if the parking is straight in or diagonal. Not only do orderly rows become car cacophony, but the carcophony holds fewer cars.  The lines do not confine the cars, they confine the chaos.
     If a parking lot is a microcosm of our culture, why are we trying so hard to erase the lines?  Many today want to blur the lines between right and wrong yet those are the guidelines that keep our society orderly, efficient and safe. If we cannot handle something as simple as parking without guidelines, perhaps we shouldn't remove them from language, sex and violence.  "No rules, just right" makes both the enlightened and criminals feel better about themselves, but it only works for people living in the outback--alone.  Besides, there is not enough snow to cover the lines the conscience draws.  I could expand upon this premise, but you are probably smart enough to read between the lines.

20 Captions You Will Not Find Underneath My Picture

Any phrase with the words:        (unless accompanied by standing next to)

• accentuating her toned arms
• deeply tanned
• tall
• slender build
• athletic looking
• Mensa member (more like Sensa user)
• Pulitzer prize winner
• Nobel prize winner
• Rhodes scholar
• intrepid explorer
• computer geek
• long tresses
• leading authority
• staunch liberal
• fitness guru
• well known musician
• from the reality show
• fitness model
• doctors hate her
• avowed atheist  (so thankful for that)

A Cozy of November

     My November blogs consisted of titles with no words under them.  Although this was a time saver for myself and for those few who actually read my blog, it seemed a little terse, even for me, the word miser.  November, like February, is a rather dreary month in Montana, a place holder for the holidays to come. Until Thanksgiving November is just the cover band for the main attraction--Christmas.  The grass is dormant, but not yet covered with snow, the trees are bare, naked against the cold, the cold is uncomfortable, but not brisk enough to be challenging.  Yet there is a certain coziness to November.
     It is a month for baking and book reading. I can remain inside without guilt because there are few outdoor chores requiring my attention. It is too early to worry about decorating, gifts, and goodies. November demands little more of us than food and gratitude--to our veterans, to our God.  Our language has many words for groups of things:  a herd of bison, a convocation of eagles, so I have coined a word for a collection of November days--a cozy of November.

November has its place to keep

when autumn beauty's gone to sleep,

enters bleak, but leaves well fed 

and Christmas wonder lies ahead.

The First Thanksgiving

     I have been too busy since Thanksgiving to post about Thanksgiving, so today is the day. By the first Thanksgiving I am not referring to the pilgrim/Indian kind.  This was the first Thanksgiving I can remember spending at my childhood home in Missoula that was not shadowed by my mother's mental illness. She was not there to sit at the table, there were no strange noises coming from her bedroom, I didn't even have to dread the duty visit to her dementia facility on the way out of town.  Our daughter and her husband drove over from Helena, my sister's family came from Kalispell.  We ate.  We took pictures.  We laughed. I have wondered since my mother's death in June if the Ghost of Christmas Past would pay me its annual holiday visit--the remnants of sorrow from childhood Christmases long forgotten. The Shadow. 
     The Ghost has come, but it came much later this year. It did not even make it to our Thanksgiving dinner. That is why this Thanksgiving was so different for me. Perhaps it will be the first of many.