Sophia (formerly known as Mother Laura) over at RGBP writes:
Earlier this week the U.S. celebrated Veterans' Day, known in many other countries as Remembrance Day. At this time last year I was commuting to a postdoc in Canada, and I was moved by the many red poppies that showed up there on people's lapels in honor of the observance. Unlike a flag lapel pin, which to me has political connotations and implies approval of our current war, the poppies simply honor the sacrifice and dedication of those who have followed their consciences by serving--sometimes dying--in the military.
This week's Friday Five invites reflection on the theme of remembrance, which is also present in the feasts of All Saints, celebrated in many liturgical churches on November 1, and All Souls--known in Latin@ cultures as the Day of the Dead--celebrated in some the following day.
1. Did your church have any special celebrations for All Saints/All Soul's Day?
on All Saints Day, November 1, I was preaching and leading worship, since it was a Saturday night. We had a table with candles, and the other associate pastor read names while I lit the candles. A bell was rung as each name was read - 24 this year in this parish. One was the first funeral I have ever done, last Thanksgiving, and her widower husband and daughter were there - I was so glad to see them. We also showed pictures of each one on our screen in the sanctuary. It was quite powerful. I preached on the All Saints theme as well.
2. How about Veterans' Day?
I did mention in during my prayers, but we had no special service or hymns during the service. I am a dove, but I strongly support those who have sacrificed so much. I wasn't quite sure how to deal with the whole issue during a normal church service though...
3. Did you and your family have a holiday for Veterans' Day/Remembrance Day? If so, how did you take advantage of the break?
The girls did have the day off from school, two of them, the four year old did not. Thankfully my parents were visiting and took the two older ones to the NASA museum nearby, a treat for my dad, who worked on rockets for part of his working life as an electrical engineer. I had to work.
4. Is there a veteran in your life, living or dead, whose dedication you remember and celebrate? Or perhaps a loved one presently serving in the armed forces?
My dad was a sergeant in the Army for two years, serving in the Army Corps of Engineers in Germany during the Korean conflict. It had a profound impact on his life, and especially made him angry when Vietnam vets were treated poorly on their return to the US. Other than that, most of the people I am around are, like me, pacifists.
5. Do you have any personal rituals which help you remember and connect with loved ones who have passed on?
I often share memories of my grandparents, especially my mother's mom, with my girls. And I see snippets of her in them. Whenever we go back to Wilmette, I make a point to stop and spend some time in the cloister garden of our church there, where the ashes of two of our born-too-soon sons are buried. I am not a "date oriented" person, but at times will remember their birthdates (December 31 and February 2) as well as their due dates, but it is a private memory.
Thank you, Sophia...
Friday, November 14, 2008
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Oil Reserves - sermon for Pentecost +26A
In our Old Testament reading for today, we come upon the Israelites as they have finally reached the Promised Land. We have skipped over much of the book of Joshua, including Joshua’s crossing of the Jordan into Canaan, the conquest of Canaan by Israel, and the allotment of Canaan to the 12 tribes of Israel. The Israelites have now settled in their new land, and so Joshua asks them, “whom will you serve?” What is your choice, now that you have finally gotten where you have wanted to go for so long? Will you choose to follow the Lord, or will you choose another way?
Choices. We have just gotten finished with making some choices, haven’t we? Whether you voted absentee or stood in line last Tuesday, the time for making choices for who will be President of the United States for the next four years, who our judges will be, whether or not we will have casinos in our state – all of these choices have been made. If you didn’t vote, then the choices were made for you. But I hope you did, and I hope you took the opportunity to make your voice heard.
Sometimes it seems as though we make a thousand choices every day. As a mom of three young girls, I am faced with not only my choices but their choices as well, as they turn to me for decisions. “Do I need to wear my winter coat today?” “Can I watch TV now?” “Can I have a piece of my Halloween candy?” Often, these choices don’t have clear consequences, and I find myself wondering if I should say “yes” or “no.”
The Israelites don’t really have a “mom” they can ask to help them make their decision. But they do have a choice. God isn’t going to force them to serve God. The Israelites can choose to be incorporated into the local culture, worship the local gods, or go back to serving the gods of Egypt.
What makes it easy for you to make a choice? What makes it difficult? I am sure there are some choices we make every day, choices that are good for us or bad for us, that we make without a second thought. Things like what we will have for breakfast, what we will wear, whether we will return a phone call or an email, or even answer the phone. What does it say about the human condition that so much of what we are and how we define ourselves is lived out in the choices we make? What do the choice we have and the choices we make tell us about God?
And by the way, sometimes those little choices add up to becoming one big choice. Sometimes those little choices lead us to a place where we realize that we've made the wrong choices. Sometimes making small bad choices put us in a place where we are find ourselves with no choice at all. That little warning light on the dashboard means it's time to get the car serviced. It's a busy life, so we can put off the trip to the repair shop one more day, right? Then days stretch into weeks, and before you know it, you find yourself and your disabled car on the side of the road, facing a major bill for a new transmission, not to mention the towing fee and the fact that you just missed your critical appointment. Small choices sometimes lead to big consequences.
We as a nation have made those kinds of choices over the years. I have titled this sermon “Oil Reserves” mostly because of the gospel story, but when we think of this term literally, we are faced with the crazy shortage and supply and demand economics we went through this summer as oil prices topped $100 a barrel and gas prices were above $4 a gallon. At that point, many of us made choices – choices to stay home or combine our errands into one trip. Choices to not go on a car vacation or to walk to places rather than to drive. Some of us even made a choice to buy a more fuel-efficient vehicle, if we were able to make that choice. I thought about getting a motorcycle for my weekly trips out here from our home in Cleveland Heights, but then I realized that riding a motorcycle in the winter doesn’t really work.
How do little choices add up for you? Since you are here, I can assume that you have made the choice the Israelites made – as they told Joshua not just once, but three times “We choose to serve the Lord.” What does that mean for you? What does it mean for you to serve God? What does it mean that God gave the Israelites this choice anyway? If God is all-powerful and since the people of Israel were God's people, why didn't God simply command them to serve? You must serve God! End of story. Why give them a choice, especially when the Israelites have such a track record of making poor choices.
What does it mean for us today, as Christians to have a choice about how we will serve God. You may think that you have already made this choice. After all, here you are. But in fact, do we not need to decide over and over to what it means to serve God? Doesn't choosing to serve God mean a lifetime of making this same choice over and over?
For me, choosing to serve God can be reflected in a thousand little decisions that I might make every day. Little decisions, like whether we are going to have an Advent wreath in our home and do a devotion with the girls each night. Or whether I will try to say prayers with them before they go to bed, even when they don’t really want to and I am feeling pretty tired and not much like praying either.
What choices do you have to serve God every day? What are the decisions you must make over and over again? Decisions like whether or not it is just too nice outside to go to church this week, or whether you should call that person who sits next to you in worship who hasn’t been here for a couple of weeks. Decision about what it means to actually live out a life of service to God by serving our neighbor.
Perhaps can think of those decisions we make, the ones where we choose to serve God, as a kind of oil – oil for our lamps.
Our Gospel lesson for today is the story of the ten bridesmaids, and it can be a difficult passage to hear and understand. We read in the gospel that the bridesmaids were waiting outside of the banquet hall, waiting for the bridegroom. To gets some context, we need to understand the wedding customs in first century Palestine. Weddings in those days didn’t start at a particular time, but instead began whenever the groom arrived. The bride got herself ready and waited. And in this case, waited and waited. As the preacher Sharyl B. Peterson writes,
When guests received an invitation for, say, 4:00 Saturday afternoon, the wedding itself might start Saturday afternoon, or it might start some time Saturday evening, or perhaps on Sunday morning, or maybe not until Monday or Tuesday.
The possible hold-up wasn’t the bride but the bridegroom. Bridegrooms were busy, working people, and time was understood quite differently in the Middle East in those times from the way we understand it here today, and you didn’t hurry these things. So, the wedding ceremony started whenever the bridegroom got there, and you never knew just when that might be.[1]
So the bridesmaids wait. And they all fall asleep, despite the admonition at the end of our passage to “keep awake”. But then when they are awakened to learn the bridegroom is about to arrive, there is a problem. Some of the bridesmaids have extra oil for their lamps, just in case their wait was longer than they anticipated. And some have not.
Now, at this point, the bridesmaids who have the extra oil don’t share their oil with the others. Instead, they tell them to go out to buy some more. And by the time the “foolish” bridesmaids return, the doors to the banquet hall are closed, and they have been locked out of the festivities.
It doesn’t seem really fair, does it? Why don't those bridesmaids who have the oil share with those who do not? Where is God's grace here? Where is the grace for those bridesmaids?
There is a children’s song that goes along with this passage that I most recently heard performed by the Veggie Tales – those animated vegetables that act out Bible stories. They sing:
Give me oil in my lamp keep me burning
Give me oil in my lamp I pray
Give me oil in my lamp keep me burning
Keep me burning till the break of day
It goes on like that, with the next verse, Give me joy in my heart keep me singing, and then - Give me love in my heart, keep me serving. I am sure you could think of some others (there is one “give me gas for my Ford keep me running for the Lord”, but that doesn’t really help me with my point here).
It's worth remembering that the story of the bridesmaids is a parable, and the oil in the lamps is a metaphor for something. And, to my thinking, it would be a mistake to think of the oil as some kind of transferable commodity, something that can be bought and exchanged, having monetary value. No, I think the oil instead represents something much less tangible, something that is not easily transferred from one person to another. To me the oil in the lamps might represent the choices that have been made, the choices over a lifetime, the choices we make to serve God. And each time we make a choice for God, we fill up our lamp with a little more oil.
Now, just to be clear here, I don’t want to say that it is our job to judge the foolish and the wise bridesmaids, or that somehow we can pile up a list of good deeds that will allow us to enter the banquet – to join Jesus at the heavenly banquet. I really do believe that the grace of God's love is available for all, everyone, and that there really are no actions we can take, no choices we can make, that can deny us this grace in the end. All of the bridesmaids had access to oil before the wedding. God's love is available to everyone.
The question for us, then is what we choose to do with the gifts of God. Will we chose to serve God all of our days? Or will we make foolish choices, choices make it harder to see and understand the love and grace that God has offered us. The gift of God is the ability to make a choice. The oil in our lamps are the consequences of our choices. When we do good things for others – especially when we join together in Christian community with one another – and when we spend our time cultivating our relationships with others and especially with God – we are adding oil to our lamps.
And what does this oil bring us? Why is it important to keep our lamps trimmed and burning? Because when we have lived a life of choosing to serve God, we are prepared for any eventuality. We know that God is with us, no matter what life's journey brings to us. When we reach times of stress or pain - as we all will - we will find ourselves turning to God for comfort and hope. That turning, that opening of ourselves to God’s healing presence, will not be an easy one. But perhaps it will be somewhat easier, if we have already spent our lives turning to God. When we have already taken the time to cultivate our relationships, to be there for others, to really know one another in our communities, especially our community of faith, then we have the oil we need to get through good times as well as bad times.
As most of you know, before I had my three beautiful daughters, my husband and I endured many pregnancy losses. Of course, these were times of great grief for us, times when we didn’t know what we were going to do next, times that tested our faith.
But the last miscarriage I had, on New Year’s Eve 1997, turned out to be one where I found out about spiritual oil. I started seminary in the fall of ’97, so after the miscarriage, I returned to the seminary one cold January morning, just in time for the chapel service. I hadn’t personally told anyone what had happened to me, but the community, a community of faith, knew. As I walked into the chapel, two of my friends found me. Each of them silently took one of my hands, and we sat together for the entire service like that, hands clasped together, hope literally flowing from them into me. My “oil” was replenished that day, because I was a part of that community of faith, because I had made the choice to make myself vulnerable, because I had chosen to take the path God had opened to me to go to the seminary in the first place.
Perhaps you have a story like that one as well – a story of how this community has helped you get through a loss or a disappointment in your life. Each week, as we sit together, as we share our joys and concerns with one another, as we worship together, we are refilling our lamps with more oil. If you think about it, this is really part of what worship is about. We come here to be in the presence of God and each other, to be renewed and refilled. God's love pours into us like warm oil into an empty vessel. We are filled with goodness and love. And that oil will be available to us when we need it. We can keep it in reserve all week long. We can take it with us wherever we go throughout our whole lives. It won’t even fluctuate in price. It is a great gift, and it doesn’t cost us very much at all.
Thanks be to God for the many ways in which God has filled our oil reserves each week – for friends who encourage us, for communities where we can share and support one another, for a God who longs to be in relationship with us. Thanks be to God who have given us this wonderful choice, a choice we make with all of our minds and all of our hearts and all of our souls. We have been filled. Let us make the choice, again and again, to serve God.
Amen.
[1] Sharyl B. Peterson, “Oil Crisis”, found at www.goodpreacher.com, http://www.goodpreacher.com/journalread.php?id=627
Been A While
I started this blog mainly because I admired the people and the blogs over at RevGalBlogPals but I haven't written much lately...for no good reason other than I seem to be in major writer's block. I've been up to little snippets over on Facebook but that is about it.
So, nothing deep nor profound, but I'm still here, thinking, praying, writing sermons, figuring out what to do next.
So, nothing deep nor profound, but I'm still here, thinking, praying, writing sermons, figuring out what to do next.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Singing Owl at RGBP writes:
My daughter, her husband, and their toddler, Trinity Ann, are moving from Minneapolis, Minnesota to our place. It's a long story, but the short version is that they will be loading a Ryder truck on Saturday, and on Sunday afternoon we will unload it into a storage unit in our town. They will move themselves, their two cats and their BIG dog into our place. Yes, there will be issues, but this Friday Five isn't really about that. (Prayers for jobs for them and patience for all of us are most welcome, however.) This post is about locations. My husband has lived at 64 addresses in his life so far (16 with me) and he suggested the topic since we have moving trucks on our minds.
1. Definitely the co-ed fraternity Epsilon Theta at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I lived from 1984-1988 with about 30 other people in a big Victorian house in Brookline, MA. Always someone to do something with, lots of trips out for ice cream, lots and lots of studying. I met my husband Starman there on the first day I stepped foot into the house, and my two best friends to this day, one of whom Skye is named after. It is a beautiful house, but more than that, I love co-operative living, and we did it well there.
2. For two years after that, I lived with Skye's namesake and two other friends at a neat little apartment in Somerville MA - above the mom of one of our church friends. She was a wonderful landlady, and it was such fun to set up house with good friends.
3. My parents' house, where they still live in a small town north of Boston, is a great place. I had a very small room to myself, a mate's bed with the drawers under it, a desk where I could write, two windows looking out on a big oak tree....I still love going back there.
Can you guess, I miss New England? I love the sea and the mountains, I love the hills and the woods. We go back once a year. It is never enough...But
My last favorite place is where I live now, in the first house Starman and I have ever owned - I love the family we have created with little girls and critters...I love our bedroom up on the third floor where we can go to escape the chaos.
In my dreams, I would live in a snug cabin in the mountains of New Hampshire, near a rushing stream, somewhere like Zealand Falls Hut. It will never happen. But it is a dream.
Thanks Singing Owl!
My daughter, her husband, and their toddler, Trinity Ann, are moving from Minneapolis, Minnesota to our place. It's a long story, but the short version is that they will be loading a Ryder truck on Saturday, and on Sunday afternoon we will unload it into a storage unit in our town. They will move themselves, their two cats and their BIG dog into our place. Yes, there will be issues, but this Friday Five isn't really about that. (Prayers for jobs for them and patience for all of us are most welcome, however.) This post is about locations. My husband has lived at 64 addresses in his life so far (16 with me) and he suggested the topic since we have moving trucks on our minds.
Therefore, tell us about the five favorite places you have lived in your lifetime. What did you like? What kind of place was it? Anything special happen there?
Wow
Wow, 64 places - I can't even imagine....I have lived in three different states, and 9 different places in my life. Not very many, especially because I lived in three of those places for less than 3 months. So, the five favorite:Wow
1. Definitely the co-ed fraternity Epsilon Theta at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where I lived from 1984-1988 with about 30 other people in a big Victorian house in Brookline, MA. Always someone to do something with, lots of trips out for ice cream, lots and lots of studying. I met my husband Starman there on the first day I stepped foot into the house, and my two best friends to this day, one of whom Skye is named after. It is a beautiful house, but more than that, I love co-operative living, and we did it well there.
2. For two years after that, I lived with Skye's namesake and two other friends at a neat little apartment in Somerville MA - above the mom of one of our church friends. She was a wonderful landlady, and it was such fun to set up house with good friends.
3. My parents' house, where they still live in a small town north of Boston, is a great place. I had a very small room to myself, a mate's bed with the drawers under it, a desk where I could write, two windows looking out on a big oak tree....I still love going back there.
Can you guess, I miss New England? I love the sea and the mountains, I love the hills and the woods. We go back once a year. It is never enough...But
My last favorite place is where I live now, in the first house Starman and I have ever owned - I love the family we have created with little girls and critters...I love our bedroom up on the third floor where we can go to escape the chaos.
In my dreams, I would live in a snug cabin in the mountains of New Hampshire, near a rushing stream, somewhere like Zealand Falls Hut. It will never happen. But it is a dream.
Thanks Singing Owl!
If you have lived in less than five places, you can tell us a about fantasy location.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Swim test Update!
I am so proud of Skye! After the terrible Monday swim test, she told me she wanted to try again. Tuesday she worked with Miss Mermaid, and Thursday, she, her friend, and I went to a pool that had a 12 foot end. She held on to my back and we swum to the deep end together, then her friend and I went under as far as we could. Then we used kickboards, and finally she did the swim test twice with me - treading water and then swimming to the end. She felt much more confident.
Yesterday, we went back to the pool for the real thing. She tried it once, but got water in her face and couldn't breathe. The instructor let her try again, and she did it! She still stopped about 3 yards from the end of the pool, but the instructor recognized that she was nervous and passed her anyway. She starts practice Monday, and she is excited!
I was so scared that she would freak out again, I was almost beside myself. Miss Mermaid recognized that there is a very deep emotional connection between Skye and me, more than with the other girls. She is my first child to survive, after 5 previous losses, and I have a very fierce love for her. I need to learn how to separate that, and how to separate emotionally from her. I know that.
BUT! I am so happy for her to have succeeded, and glad she took the opportunity to try again. I am hoping she will enjoy the pratcices and understand what it means to be able to trust your body, and to know what she is capable of physically, which is a lot! Yay!
Yesterday, we went back to the pool for the real thing. She tried it once, but got water in her face and couldn't breathe. The instructor let her try again, and she did it! She still stopped about 3 yards from the end of the pool, but the instructor recognized that she was nervous and passed her anyway. She starts practice Monday, and she is excited!
I was so scared that she would freak out again, I was almost beside myself. Miss Mermaid recognized that there is a very deep emotional connection between Skye and me, more than with the other girls. She is my first child to survive, after 5 previous losses, and I have a very fierce love for her. I need to learn how to separate that, and how to separate emotionally from her. I know that.
BUT! I am so happy for her to have succeeded, and glad she took the opportunity to try again. I am hoping she will enjoy the pratcices and understand what it means to be able to trust your body, and to know what she is capable of physically, which is a lot! Yay!
Friday, October 10, 2008
RGBP Friday Five - Business Trip!
Mother Laura over at RGBP writes:
I spent a good bit of time today registering and making travel arrangements for the American Academy of Religion meeting in Chicago at the beginning of November. (Anyone up for a meetup? Shout out, okay?) I'm not presenting this year, so I'm busy sending out resumes and cover letters, but at least I'm not stressing about getting a paper written.
I'll see friends and teachers from grad school, try to resist temptation in the book hall, attend some presentations if time permits, and, God willing, have some preliminary interviews in the everlasting college-teaching-job-search process--prayers welcome, as always. And, thanks to my dear Mom who agreed to babysit and donated some frequent flyer miles, it will also be a busy-but-happy getaway with my sweetheart.
So for today's Friday Five, you're invited to share your experiences with the exciting, challenging world of business travel....
1. Does your job ever call for travel? Is this a joy or a burden?
Typically, I don't travel at all for my job as associate pastor - but the church where I work is 35 miles from our house, so I do commute! The commute is becoming a burden more and more as I spend more hours there, as gas prices go up (and thankfully recently came down) and as I want to be at more of the congregational activities...
2. How about that of your spouse or partner?
Ah, this is different. Starman is an experimental astrophysicist (sounds impressive, doesn't it?) and his current experiment is in Argentina, a long way from the upper midwest US where we live. He has always traveled for his work, from South Africa, to two three-month stints in Australia just before we were married, to Albuquerque where his last experiment was. Because he works with international collaborations, he often goes to meetings overseas - last month he was in Switzerland for a week working at CERN, where the Large Hadron Collider was turned on and then broke right away (nope, he didn't break it!). It is because of his extensive travel (up to one week every month) that I have chosen to dial back my career to half time or less while our three daughters are young.
3. What was the best business trip you ever took?
When I was an environmental engineer, I spent three weeks in Kalamazoo, Michigan, floating down the Kalamazoo River in a small motorized rowboat, doing oversight for the EPA while another group took sediment and water samples. I became good friends with the crew I worked with, and we had a great time together, joking and laughing and getting to know one another on the river, eating and even dancing together in the evenings. That was the time I loved my job the most.
4. ...and the worst, of course?
Hard to say. I like to travel, but I guess the hardest time for me was the month I spent in Detroit, living at my inlaws and working in the city an hour away on a sewer mapping project. I was working by myself, in another consultant's office, and they were not as friendly as my rowboat crew, so I spent my long days alone, poring over maps, and my nights trying to get some sleep away from my new husband and not put out my in-laws (who were very gracious). I was exhausted and bored.
5. What would make your next business trip perfect?
Well, I leave Monday for three days at an Order of St. Luke Convocation/Retreat - but I don't have any close friends in the Order, so I will not have any joyful reunions. I am looking forward to attending the Lectionary Homiletics gathering in the spring, when I hope to be able to meet some RGBPs, see some old friends, and stay with a friend from our Chicago days...springtime in Atlanta sounds just about right!
Thanks Mother Laura!
I spent a good bit of time today registering and making travel arrangements for the American Academy of Religion meeting in Chicago at the beginning of November. (Anyone up for a meetup? Shout out, okay?) I'm not presenting this year, so I'm busy sending out resumes and cover letters, but at least I'm not stressing about getting a paper written.
I'll see friends and teachers from grad school, try to resist temptation in the book hall, attend some presentations if time permits, and, God willing, have some preliminary interviews in the everlasting college-teaching-job-search process--prayers welcome, as always. And, thanks to my dear Mom who agreed to babysit and donated some frequent flyer miles, it will also be a busy-but-happy getaway with my sweetheart.
So for today's Friday Five, you're invited to share your experiences with the exciting, challenging world of business travel....
1. Does your job ever call for travel? Is this a joy or a burden?
Typically, I don't travel at all for my job as associate pastor - but the church where I work is 35 miles from our house, so I do commute! The commute is becoming a burden more and more as I spend more hours there, as gas prices go up (and thankfully recently came down) and as I want to be at more of the congregational activities...
2. How about that of your spouse or partner?
Ah, this is different. Starman is an experimental astrophysicist (sounds impressive, doesn't it?) and his current experiment is in Argentina, a long way from the upper midwest US where we live. He has always traveled for his work, from South Africa, to two three-month stints in Australia just before we were married, to Albuquerque where his last experiment was. Because he works with international collaborations, he often goes to meetings overseas - last month he was in Switzerland for a week working at CERN, where the Large Hadron Collider was turned on and then broke right away (nope, he didn't break it!). It is because of his extensive travel (up to one week every month) that I have chosen to dial back my career to half time or less while our three daughters are young.
3. What was the best business trip you ever took?
When I was an environmental engineer, I spent three weeks in Kalamazoo, Michigan, floating down the Kalamazoo River in a small motorized rowboat, doing oversight for the EPA while another group took sediment and water samples. I became good friends with the crew I worked with, and we had a great time together, joking and laughing and getting to know one another on the river, eating and even dancing together in the evenings. That was the time I loved my job the most.
4. ...and the worst, of course?
Hard to say. I like to travel, but I guess the hardest time for me was the month I spent in Detroit, living at my inlaws and working in the city an hour away on a sewer mapping project. I was working by myself, in another consultant's office, and they were not as friendly as my rowboat crew, so I spent my long days alone, poring over maps, and my nights trying to get some sleep away from my new husband and not put out my in-laws (who were very gracious). I was exhausted and bored.
5. What would make your next business trip perfect?
Well, I leave Monday for three days at an Order of St. Luke Convocation/Retreat - but I don't have any close friends in the Order, so I will not have any joyful reunions. I am looking forward to attending the Lectionary Homiletics gathering in the spring, when I hope to be able to meet some RGBPs, see some old friends, and stay with a friend from our Chicago days...springtime in Atlanta sounds just about right!
Thanks Mother Laura!
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Swim Test
This is a post that is hard for me to write, but I am trying to work through some things, and I would love to hear any comments or suggestions.
Last night, Freckleface (our 7 year old daughter) and Skye (our 9, almost 10 year old daughter) went to a pool in Next Door Town to "try out" for the swim team. I say try out in quotes because there really was no failing, as far as I could see - all they had to do was tread water for 1 minute and then swim one length of the pool. Now, Skye has been taking a private 15 minute swimming lesson every week for the past 6 years. That's right, 6 years - every Tuesday, we go to a nearby nursing home with a 92 degree pool and all four of us (Brown Eyes included now, she is 4.5) get in the pool, and our wonderful teacher, Miss Mermaid, gives the girls each some part of her time. Every Tuesday.
We had been working with Miss Mermaid for weeks to prepare for this "test" - Skye and Freckleface had been swimming laps, working on strokes, and when they weren't working with Miss Mermaid, I had them swimming laps with me. They were ready.
The pool was a lot bigger than they are used to, but they have swum in big pools before. And all they had to do was get to the other end
Freckleface went first. She easily tread water but had trouble getting to the other end, so she got out and tried again, and made it.
Then Skye got in the pool. She easily treaded water too, but then as soon as she started to swim she stopped. The pool was too deep, she said (12 feet). She didn't want to look down at the bottom.
I told her not to look, but she got out, crying. She got in again, but got out right away, sobbing that she couldn't do it. It was over.
I can't even hardly write about this without crying too. Skye is extremely bright, does very well in school. But she will not push herself phsyically. Or in any other way. She had the chance to take up an instrument this fall, but refused, because she didn't want to practice. She had the chance to play piano and take lessons, since we recently were gifted a piano, but she also refused to practice that. She said she would play soccer this fall, so I bought her cleats and shinguards, and signed her up, and she played for one week and now refuses to play. She can't ride a bike yet, despite many hours of my and Starman's working with her, and now she refuses to try.
I am getting tired of all these refusals. I know she can swim, and I know the team will be a good thing for her. She doesn't need to compete, just practice, no one is forced to enter a meet. I think she needs the physical activity, especially as she heads toward adolescence, and swimming is a sport you never have to give up. In short, I am considering forcing her to keep going to the tryouts until she makes it, and then to keep going to practices.
But part of me just wants to give up. Stop pushing her. Let her face her own consequences.
Sigh.
Last night, Freckleface (our 7 year old daughter) and Skye (our 9, almost 10 year old daughter) went to a pool in Next Door Town to "try out" for the swim team. I say try out in quotes because there really was no failing, as far as I could see - all they had to do was tread water for 1 minute and then swim one length of the pool. Now, Skye has been taking a private 15 minute swimming lesson every week for the past 6 years. That's right, 6 years - every Tuesday, we go to a nearby nursing home with a 92 degree pool and all four of us (Brown Eyes included now, she is 4.5) get in the pool, and our wonderful teacher, Miss Mermaid, gives the girls each some part of her time. Every Tuesday.
We had been working with Miss Mermaid for weeks to prepare for this "test" - Skye and Freckleface had been swimming laps, working on strokes, and when they weren't working with Miss Mermaid, I had them swimming laps with me. They were ready.
The pool was a lot bigger than they are used to, but they have swum in big pools before. And all they had to do was get to the other end
Freckleface went first. She easily tread water but had trouble getting to the other end, so she got out and tried again, and made it.
Then Skye got in the pool. She easily treaded water too, but then as soon as she started to swim she stopped. The pool was too deep, she said (12 feet). She didn't want to look down at the bottom.
I told her not to look, but she got out, crying. She got in again, but got out right away, sobbing that she couldn't do it. It was over.
I can't even hardly write about this without crying too. Skye is extremely bright, does very well in school. But she will not push herself phsyically. Or in any other way. She had the chance to take up an instrument this fall, but refused, because she didn't want to practice. She had the chance to play piano and take lessons, since we recently were gifted a piano, but she also refused to practice that. She said she would play soccer this fall, so I bought her cleats and shinguards, and signed her up, and she played for one week and now refuses to play. She can't ride a bike yet, despite many hours of my and Starman's working with her, and now she refuses to try.
I am getting tired of all these refusals. I know she can swim, and I know the team will be a good thing for her. She doesn't need to compete, just practice, no one is forced to enter a meet. I think she needs the physical activity, especially as she heads toward adolescence, and swimming is a sport you never have to give up. In short, I am considering forcing her to keep going to the tryouts until she makes it, and then to keep going to practices.
But part of me just wants to give up. Stop pushing her. Let her face her own consequences.
Sigh.
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