Hope on a Rope?

Hello Everyone,

Those of you who have been reading these letters for a few years now may have noticed something: no matter how irregularly I write, no matter how busy I am with other things in my life, there will undoubtedly be a post about Advent.  It’s my favorite time of the year: the time in the Church calendar which leads up to Christmas.  It is a time of waiting and expectation and preparation, the way engagement precedes marriage or pregnancy precedes birth.  There are many reasons I like the church I’m attending, but to be honest, one of the main reasons I was initially drawn to it was because the first time I went, they gave out Advent booklets.  I love Advent and I love booklets, so I was sold!  This last Sunday was my one year churchiversary, which meant it was also the first Sunday in Advent, so here you have it, folks: this year’s Advent letter.

On the first Sunday in Advent, the Church typically celebrates hope.  What a simple, everyday word!  And yet this week, as I was listening to the sermon, I thought to myself, “I don’t think I really have the first clue about what hope is.”  After a while, a question appeared in my mind: “What would it look like to hope wildly?”  When it comes to hoping for things, I am a very careful person.  I tend to be a “don’t count your chickens before they hatch and graduate from high school or preferably college” type of person.  I feel the impulse to hope, but I don’t want to disappoint other people or myself if they don’t work out, so my hopes are tiny and contained and measured.  So when the question about wild hopes surfaced in my thoughts, I found myself wondering if I’ve ever really been completely hopeful.  It seems risky and totally counterintuitive, but also incredibly freeing.  I also felt a bit guilty: what does my lacking or inhibited hope say about my trust in God? 

When I’m confused about something, my first reaction (because I’m cool like that) is to research.  So I turned to that Advent booklet, as well as to several Scripture passages, and to some sermons and other resources I found online.  And I realized quickly that there is a difference between the way we usually use the word “hope,” and the way it is used in the Bible.  Normally, we mean it as a rough equivalent for the word “wish,” as in “I hope you have a good day” or “I hope I get this job.”  It might be a very profound desire, but it is for something uncertain.  Biblical hope is very different.  It is based on total certainty, specifically certainty that God will fulfill his promises.  (John Piper articulates this nicely in a sermon.)  

But I was still confused.  If Biblical hope is based on certainty, then why don’t we just call it “expectation” or “confidence”?  Or is it perhaps a question of a corresponding preposition (because I’m also cool like that): “hoping for” versus “hoping in”?  When I think of “wild hopes,” am I talking about Biblical hope, and if so, how is it wild if I already know that the thing will happen?  And somehow, this all seemed wrapped up in the great paradox of Advent: the idea of waiting (and hoping) for something that Christians believe has already happened, the coming of God into our world.  I kept going around in circles which is great if you’re playing Ring Around the Rosie, but it can make you pretty disoriented.

Another disorienting aspect of the week happened on Thursday.  I found out about the death of Nelson Mandela when a parent at the preschool mentioned it to me in passing.  I felt an immediate sense of loss, and when I had my break a few minutes later, I went to the kitchen and cried quietly while I unloaded the dishwasher.  I obviously didn’t know Mandela personally, but like so many other people around the world, I felt like I did.  Perhaps this is because more than any other public figure in history, Mandela’s life story has become almost synonymous with the story of his country.  To know and love South Africa (which anyone who has talked with me for more than two and a half seconds will know I do) is to know and love Mandela.  

I once told a friend that there are three stories that elicit a tearful response from me every time I encounter them: The Gospel, Charlotte’s Web, and the recent history of South Africa.  So while I was sniffling and sorting the cutlery, I reflected briefly on Mandela’s personal history, and how it connected with South Africa’s.  I was wondering why I was so sad about the loss of a man who I had never met, and who surely deserved a rest after a full and tiring 95 years.  Perhaps it was that if Mandela’s life story has become a metaphor for South Africa’s, what happens when we extend the metaphor?  Did something of South Africa die on Thursday?  Is the country somehow “less than” today than it was a week ago?  

And then it hit me: Mandela gave the world both kinds of hope simultaneously.   

His life obviously gave the world very specific hopes: that Apartheid could crumble, that South Africa could have a functioning democracy, that people could transition between the two nonviolently.  Long before he helped realize these events, he inspired deep, dear wishes in people across the globe that they may one day happen.  But he pointed to the other kind of hope too, the belief in the coming of something not-yet-but-definite, something to do with the marriage of justice and mercy, something to do with our ability to actually and actively love each other, despite the worst in all of us.  

So does his death extinguish our hopes, whatever they are?  I didn’t want to think so.  After all, that’s the great thing about biblical hope: it may diminish, but it never dies.  Alexander Pope said, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.”  And that is why I find headlines like “Mandela’s Death Leaves South Africa Without Its Moral Center” (New York Times) inaccurate at best, and offensive at worst.  Saying this implies that the hope Mandela gave us was shallow, that it was dependent on him being alive, that the good he did was about what was in him more than it was about what is in all of us.  

On the contrary, Mandela’s life, at its best, gave us glimpses of that goodness now, even after his death.  Not only an inspiring story from our history, not only a glorious reality to wait for or work toward.  Richard Rohr said “The theological virtue of hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without closure, without resolution, and still be content and even happy because our Satisfaction is now at another level, and our Source is beyond ourselves.”  Of course, it would be lovely if Mandela could have died with the problems in South Africa and even the world neatly taken care of.  But if we are to learn anything from his life, it is to live in hope, to “live without closure,” knowing that there is a Source beyond ourselves.  

My favorite phrase that has emerged from my research on hope this week comes from a different Pope: Pope Francis as he gave his Advent address this last week.  He spoke of “the horizon of hope.”  I love the idea of hope being the looking toward a distant but real good, visible to those who would lift their gaze and look out.   

Mandela not only pointed toward that horizon, he also helped move us closer to it in very tangible ways.  It is right to mourn him, for there will never be another person like him.  But to truly honor him, we must continue to look out, beyond him, beyond ourselves, to a wild horizon that is coming and has already come.

Happy Advent, and have a good week,

Sarah/Mouse

The Whole Picture

Hello Everyone,

Last week, I had one of the most frustrating hours of work I’ve experienced since starting at the preschool, as well as one of the more important life lessons I’ve been given recently.  

A little background: I teach in the three-year-old class, which means that throughout the year, I get to watch some of the biggest transformations that happen in people.  Children can go from being quasi-verbal to being able to articulate themselves in full, complicated sentences.  They can go from having accidents multiple times a day to being able to regulate themselves without thinking about it.  They develop real friendships for the first time in their lives, and they are constantly discovering the world around them.  In a single day, they can go from being a total novice to being a total expert about a particular subject, whether it’s a spider they have found, or a story we are reading.  After all of the developments that happened over the course of last year, our new children this year feel like babies!  Most of them are at school and away from their parents for the first time, and have never been asked to do things like line up or pour their own milk, or sit quietly while their friend shares something at Circle Time.  But as I was reminded last week, they are already picking up on a lot.

My co-teacher was on her lunch break, and I was in charge of transitioning the kids from lunch time to nap time.  After lunch, we try to have several different types of “table toys” available to the kids.  These are small, manipulative toys which children can play with at the table.  This is intended to be a relatively quiet, focused time, when children can develop abilities such as sorting according to color, size, shape, or they can strengthen their memory, or their ability to understand opposites.  One of the options I’d put out for the children was a tub of colored milk jug lids which about half of the students were sorting according to color.  It was going exactly as I’d intended, and I was even hearing things like, “I’ll give you my blue one and you can give me your orange one!”  [In case you have not worked with young children, know that such expressions of cooperation are to a preschool teacher what crossing the finish line is to a marathon runner.]

I turned away briefly (yes, yes, I realize this was my mistake!) to talk with a parent who was picking up her child, and when I turned back, let’s just say I was given a chance to understand opposites.  The classroom was in complete chaos.  It was miraculous, really, how quickly all semblance of order had disintegrated.  The children who had been sorting were now throwing all of the caps into the air with wild abandon, confetti-style.  The children who had been using different table toys around the room had caught on and were throwing their toys up in the air too.  

This was annoying, especially since we needed to start getting the cots out for nap time, which we couldn’t do until the floor was clear, but this was nothing I hadn’t experienced before.  I announced that it was time to get our classroom ready for nap time, and set about trying to realize said announcement.  However, in the next twenty minutes, several things happened which thwarted my efforts:

1.) None of the children (most of whom have not yet transitioned into the phase where they follow instructions they don’t care for) actually listened to me at all.  Eventually, I was able to get a few of the more seasoned preschoolers on board, but the mess was so widespread, their efforts did not make a big dent.

2.) Several more parents came to pick up children, and though we had good interactions, it negated any progress we’d made on cleaning up.

3.) One child decided that his role in the cleaning up process was to go around and empty out each bin of toys (presumably to give the other children something to put away?  “Simba, let me explain.  When we make a mess, our mess becomes the mess that the other children have to clean up, and so we are all connected in the great Circle of Preschool Life.”).

4.) Another child, who is still getting used to the idea of being away from her parents all day, had her daily meltdown which she exhibited by following me around as though attached to me by a one-foot long tether, wailing, “Miss Sarah! Miss Sarah! I want to go HOOOOMMME!!!”  She was utterly inconsolable, and at one point, I turned to her and said, “I do too!”

5.) We found a giant spider (about two inches) right by the nap time cubbies, and I had to capture it and release it outside.  I’m not the world’s biggest spider fan in the best of circumstances (“the best of circumstances” in this case being when I am far, far away from any spiders), but this was not a welcome addition to my morning.

Eventually, of course, it all got sorted out, but needless to say, when my co-teacher came back from her break, the children were not all sleeping peacefully, and I was not in the most gracious of moods.

The next day, one of the girls who had instigated the Mardi Gras-like atmosphere asked if we could get the milk jug lids down again.  I told her we could, but only if they stayed on the table.  At this point, Annie (who for reasons none of us understand, has a Bostonian accent) piped up:

“But who will be the ped-lah?”

“Sorry, what?” I asked.

“Who will be the ped-lah?”

“The ped-lah?”  I repeated.  “The peddler?”

“Yes.”

There followed a pause that lasted for about twenty seconds as I figured out why she knew the word “peddler” and what that had to do with our table toys.  Gradually, it dawned on me.

“Annie,” I said slowly, “Are you talking about the peddler in Caps For Sale?”  Caps For Sale is currently one of our favorite picture books to read, and it involves a peddler whose hats disappear when he takes a nap under a tree.  

After looking all around him, he finally looks up and sees that a bunch of monkeys have taken the hats.  The peddler then tricks the monkeys into throwing the hats to the ground so he can recover them.

“Yes,” she said.  

“Annie,” I said.  “When you and the other children were throwing the milk jug lids into the air yesterday, were you being the monkeys from Caps For Sale?”

“Yes,” she said, as though this were as obvious as the fact that nap time is not for sleeping.

“Ah,” I said.

And with that conversation, I’d stumbled upon the rest of a picture I didn’t even know was incomplete.  I was no longer angry or frustrated about the day before.  In fact, I wished I’d known about the reenactment at the time so that I could have taken a photo!

One thing this exchange taught me, which I sincerely hope the children (or any nearby spiders) did not pick up on is that it can be quite easy to distract me when I’m upset:

Me: “I’m frustrated and angry!”

Children: “But books!”

Me: “Oh, that’s true.  Never mind!”

But a much more important lesson was that while my new knowledge wouldn’t have solved what seemed to be a perfect storm of problems the day before, it did remind me that my view is incredibly limited.  So often, I don’t remember that there is usually more to a given situation than I know, and that if I did know the whole story, I might feel completely differently about the situation.  If I don’t remember to ask questions, or look more carefully, or simply to just be patient with people as they figure themselves out, I will certainly miss out on the bigger picture.

If I don’t look up, I won’t see the monkeys in the tree.

Have a good week!

Sarah/Mouse

The Blind Leading the Blind

Hello Everyone,

I was in Union Station in Washington DC a few weeks ago, when I saw something that has stayed with me ever since.  A group of about five blind men were navigating the crowded hall, partly with the help of their canes.  But they were also holding onto each other with their free arms.  Chatting back and forth jovially, they had both the graceful ease and the remarkable efficiency of migrating geese or a first-rate basketball team.

When I was little, my mom told me about a conversation she’d had while teaching Sunday School.  The class was learning about Jesus restoring sight to a blind man, and she wanted the four- or five-year-olds in her class to understand what it felt like to be blind.  So she blindfolded them and had them move around the classroom a bit.  She asked what it was like to not be able to see.  When they concluded that they didn’t like it, she asked, “What would you do if you were blind?  How would you get around?  How would you do all of the things that you like to do?”  One boy had the solution:  “I would just take off the blindfold!”  Simple! 

If only it were.  Even at my early age, I understood the naiveté of that response.  I understood that losing my vision would be devastating for me in so many ways, both practical and aesthetic.  And though I blame the Laura Ingalls Wilder books—in which Mary wakes up one morning unable to see—for some of my childhood fear of blindness, it continues to terrify me because observing the world is one of my very favorite activities.  

And yet, a few years after my mom told me about her Sunday School lesson, I began to understand that there are many different kinds of blindness.  I was in fifth grade, and I had been trying to impress a boy I had a crush on.  I told him that I had been doing some thinking in the middle of the night (classic Sarah Jackson pick-up line) and something had reminded me of him.  He responded by singing the chorus from Billy Joel’s classic song, “The River of Dreams.”  I was embarrassed because I hadn’t heard it before and he didn’t seem to appreciate my late-night musings.  But when I finally heard the whole song, the line, “I know I’m searching for something, something so undefined, that it can only be seen by the eyes of the blind” sent shivers of profundity up my fifth grade spine.  “Blindness can actually be a strength?” I thought. I suspect it was somewhere around this time that I stopped scowling at paradoxes and started delighting in them; I was beginning to understand that the vision our eyes give us is only part of the picture.  

None of the synonyms for “blind” in my computer’s thesaurus are at all flattering: visionless, unperceptive, obtuse, unrestrained, careless of, stupid, irrational, and so on.  Both literal and figurative blindness are things we want to avoid.  But as Mr. Joel articulated, sometimes a lack of physical sight can allow people to see something beyond the tangible world around us.  

I have just finished up another (and alas, my final) summer as a student at Hollins, the University where I am earning my Masters in Children’s Literature.  

And as I reflect on my experience there and on my attempts at creative writing and scholarship, it occurs to me that the image of the blind men in Union Station might be a rather fitting way of describing my time at Hollins.   

I’m beginning to think that being a writer involves a certain kind of blindness, that none of us really sees what we’re doing.  If we did, we’d quit, in either despair, awe, or some mixture of the two.  It might seem a bit worrisome after four summers and more than four dollars in tuition to conclude that I don’t know what I’m doing.  After all, our classes have given us many tools to help us navigate our way through the murkier parts of the writing process.  And sure, our professors have given us much advice and many assignments that have provided essential experience as we leave grad school.  We are as well equipped as we could ask to be, no doubt about it.  But writing is a creative act, and so, in a sense, we are blind to every as-yet-unwritten word.  It can be scary and frustrating and lonely.  It can feel like trying to make your way through a crowded and overwhelming train station without being able to rely on your eyes.

The beauty of the Hollins campus will sustain me for the rest of my life.  

But the best part of Hollins is that it isn’t over when it’s over, that as I stumble blindly forward, I know I am joining a whole community of other blind people holding confidently onto each other.  They are fantastic writers and even more fantastic human beings.  

So keep your eyes open, folks.  There is a whole crowd of very talented writers heading to academic journals and bookstores near you!  

My friend-peers will make you think and ask good questions.  They will make you laugh and cry.  They will spellbind you with creatures and stories and lands that you’ve never dreamed of, except that maybe you have been dreaming of them your whole life without knowing it.  

And on occasion, like all good writers, they will show you something else, something undefined.  They will show you what it means to take off the blindfold.

Have a great week,

Sarah/Mouse

(Thanks to the folks whose photos I swiped!)

Facebook Hiatus

Hi Everyone,

As tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, and Lent will be upon us, I thought I’d take the chance to talk about one of my goals for Lent this year: I am choosing to give up Facebook for the six weeks leading up to Easter.

Christians approach this season with a number of different priorities.  Some people will fast from something, a certain type of food or from cigarettes, for example, to remind them of the enormity of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.  When you understand how hard it is to give up something like chocolate or meat, you will more fully appreciate what Jesus gave up in order to save people from their own sinful natures.

Others give up things during Lent in order to purify their bodies, thoughts or hearts.  Perhaps someone might try to give up anger during this time, or comparing him or herself to others.  These kinds of attempts are trickier to measure, but they too aim to focus one’s attention on Jesus, who, Christians believe, was the only example of pure holiness in human form.

Others choose to focus not on what they can give up but on what they can add to their lives (though, of course, this is really just the other side of the coin, since it’s impossible to add anything to our lives without taking something away, and vice versa).  Perhaps they might aim to take five minutes to pray every morning before work.  Or perhaps they might choose to tithe regularly for the first time.  

Though the intention of Lent is good, it can, like anything, be abused.  People can approach it with self-centered motivations (“If I give up snacking for Lent, I’ll surely lose weight!”).  People can use it as a way to try to gain God’s favor (“If I can just give up coffee this year, I will show God that I’m really dedicated.”).  Probably most common, people can use this time to show off and to boast about their own self-perceived holiness (“So for Lent this year, I think God is calling me to meditate for two hours each day because last year, when I did only one hour, it just didn’t feel challenging enough.”).

As with Lent, people approach Facebook with a wide variety of motivations, some more worthwhile than others.  Facebook has been around for less than ten years, but there are already over one billion people who use the site, and it has already changed the way we communicate, the way we run our businesses, and even the way we think about ourselves.  Precisely because it is so widespread, Facebook is many different things to different people.  It can be used to reunite long-lost friends, to organize an event, to learn about major happenings in the lives of friends, to share videos and photos, to express an opinion, to discover entertainment or information on the internet, to chat with people, and the list goes on and on.  

What’s more, people all have their own Facebook protocol or etiquette, which can lead to embarrassment (“How could he tag that photo of me without asking?”), or to confusion, (“Does ‘It’s complicated’ mean we’re together or that we’ve broken up?”), or to anger (“She knows I hate bringing up my political views in public -- why would she write that comment on my wall?”).  

So why, exactly, am I giving up Facebook for Lent?  This summer, The Atlantic Monthly published an article entitled, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?”  [Here’s the link to the article if you’re interested.]  The general conclusion was that though studies have shown that people can feel more lonely after using Facebook, they can also use it to boost their social life.  In other words, like all forms of communication, it is a neutral tool, able to be used for positive and negative ends.  And I believe this to be true, based on my own experiences with Facebook.  I certainly don’t think using Facebook is a sin in an of itself, but I do believe there are better and worse ways of using it.  Furthermore, I also believe it to be a luxury, and I think it’s good to have periods without luxuries every so often, so that we understand a.) that we can function without them, and b.) how best to appreciate them.  

There is great freedom in the way that Christians can celebrate Lent, just as there is great freedom in the way that people can make use of Facebook.  The important thing is  to examine your own life and discern what degree of restraint is appropriate for you.  I know enough people who I respect greatly who have given up Facebook altogether that I have been wondering whether I too should give it up for good.  But my litmus test is: does it help relationships or hurt them?  Is it making my relationships more superficial or more profound?  For me, Facebook still provides enough opportunities for genuine connection to people for it to be worthwhile.  My hope is that by giving it up for six weeks, I’ll be more attuned to the ways it can foster relationships, and more ready to ignore the ways it can trivialize ties between people.

Though the methods of celebrating Lent may vary, the common denominator is that they  all prepare us for and point to Easter.  So what does Facebook point to?  In the end, it seems that Facebook is about connections, whether between one friend and another, between a company and a consumer, or between a grandparent and his faraway grandchild.

And in the end, Lent is about connecting too.  It’s about realizing that our sublimely profound God, who we, in our utmost triviality and depravity could never approach, has deigned to look our direction; He has “friended” us.  

To those who celebrate it, peace and joy during this Lenten season, and to everyone, have a good week!

Sarah/Mouse

Human, Only More So

Hi Everyone,

When I was living in South Africa in 2008, someone told me something that helped explain some of the frustrations I was having: “Every major problem in the world exists in South Africa in full force.”  I’m sure this could be said of many countries, but it definitely rang true with South Africa: it seemed that everywhere you turned, you faced corruption, environmental degradation, racism, greed, devastating poverty, educational apathy, sexism, serious health crises, and on and on.  However, I had to acknowledge that the opposite was also true: South Africa is saturated with potential, kind people, gorgeous scenery, thriving creative centers, promising youths, wise elders, a recent history that provides examples both of how to be and how not to be.  I came away from my year there with an admittedly biased conviction that South Africa was a microcosm of the world.

Since I’ve been working with the three- and four-year-olds at my work, I have started thinking similar thoughts about preschoolers.  Ideas about childhood have varied drastically throughout the millennia and usually reflect more about the society that came up with them than the children they describe, so I understand that it is highly presumptuous and ridiculous to put forth any general theory about childhood after working in a preschool for four months. Nevertheless, when people ask why I love working with young children, I’ve started saying, “I love that they’re just like other humans, only more so.”  I’m beginning to suspect that all of what it really means to be a person can be found in a preschool classroom. 

On a daily basis, these kids embody both extremes of virtually any adjectival spectrum I could imagine:

They can be so kind to each other one minute (welcoming a new student to the class by showing her where to sit at circle time) and so ugly the next (“I’m not your friend.  Get away from me!”).  

They experience extreme sadness (wailing at the top of their lungs because a classmate has ripped one of their drawings in half) and extreme joy (jumping on a mini-trampoline cures all woes).  

They can be others oriented (“Oh, Zach! You’re here! I’m so glad! I’m your friend today!”) and totally self-centered (I ask, “Who lives on planet Earth?”  And James replies, “I do!”  When his friends also claim to live on Earth, he bursts out crying, yelling, “No fair! Only I lives on planet Earth!”).  

They are at once optimistic (Kevin: “Hey, one day, I was swimming and a shark came up to me.”  Ryan: “And did you die?”  Kevin [elated]: “No, I didn’t!”) and pessimistic (“Jenny is on the trampoline and it’s my turn and she won’t give me a turn.” I ask, “Have you asked her for a turn?” “No, but she won’t give me one”).  

They are brutally honest (“Someone is making a pooping smell!”) and imaginatively deceptive (My co-teacher asks Megan what she is going to clean up during clean-up time, and Megan says, “Maybe my head is gone.”  She looks around for her head for a while, then says, “Maybe it’s around here somewhere.  I know... follow me!”) 

They are logical (“When I grow up, then I’m gonna be a Mommy.” “When I be little, I’m gonna be a baby!”) and totally nonsensical (After measuring me with a yardstick, Kristin declares, “You’re a humpback whale!” — at least, I hope this wasn’t based in reality!).  

They are easily excited (“Jordan’s sitting by me, and I’m sitting by me too!”) and easily bored (While reading Baby Baluga together for the fourth or fifth time in a row, Peter tells James, “This is Baby Baluga,” and James replies with a tired sigh, “Yes... I know...”).  

They are meticulous imitators (Sophie pretends to be a receptionist at a doctor’s office and as she escorts me and two other children to “the back,” she assures us in a comforting tone that “the doctor will be back soon.”) and they are fabulously creative (“My socks have red stripes on them. Do you want to know the red stripe song? [humming] Mmm-mmm, mmm-mmm...” [I later learned that this boy loves listening to the band The White Stripes]). 

They are frightened (being scared of the toilet flushing) and they are brave (“If the Big Bad Wolf messes with me, I’m gonna smack him like this!”).

They are naïve and inexperienced (“If you have a sister, you’re going to be a mom.  If you have a brother, you’re going to be a dad.”), and they are wiser than they’ll ever know (While reading a picture book with me and Kelly, Allie points to a character who is walking off the page and says, “That’s God.”  I ask where God is going, and she says, “He’s going home.”  I ask where God lives, and Kelly chimes in: “In a tunnel.  Wanna see?”  I say, “Definitely!” and she says, “Well, we can’t.”  Though they obviously didn’t know it, in this brief exchange, these girls summed up much of my theology.).

Every major emotion or characteristic people can exhibit exists in the extreme in our classroom every day.  They are fiercely human, these tiny people.

Recently, I reread C.S. Lewis’ essay,"The Weight of Glory," which is one of my very favorite pieces of writing.  In it, Lewis discusses the Christian concept of glory, and how it is manifested among people.  The whole essay is worth reading, but my favorite part is when he says, “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.”  Lewis reminds us that all people are human, only more so.  We certainly can’t spend our entire lives in speechless awe of humanity — we would lead incredibly unproductive ones if we did.  But I, at least, am never in danger of that.  More often, I’m tempted to forget that anyone I encounter — whether I have known them my whole life or am passing them momentarily in a grocery store parking lot — is a gift.  In those rare moments when I remember to remember how sacred people are, I feel a deep and thrilling honor, and under my breath, I whisper, “Wow! I get to be in this world with you!  With you!”  

The trick, of course, is remembering this while cleaning up the third milk spill of the day, and trying to prevent World War III from breaking out over a particularly desirous Lego.  But that’s the great thing about kids.  Just when you think you’re going to have to ship one of them to another country so that he doesn’t make any more of his classmates cry, he will “do teamwork” with one of them, putting away a puzzle, or constructing a rocket ship out of blocks.  The longer I spend with these inconsistent, mysterious, holy little humans, the more of that sense of honor I feel.  

And know that far more often than I make time to relate, I remember that I am profoundly honored to know each of you.

Have a great week!

Sarah/Mouse