[Belief] may be the battle of your life, but emotionally and intellectually, it could also be the most exhilarating one you’ve ever engaged in. Whether you experience God’s reality or are just intellectually intrigued by the idea, God can be a very real force in peoples’ lives – spiritual, emotional, supportive – that almost no other system can offer. But you must gird yourself for a fight and know that you’re going to have to try to reconcile very difficult things. Or at least hold them in suspension and bounce them back and forth and get tired. There’s no quick fix, but we have the benefit of drawing on thousands of years of religious thinking. You can’t learn it over a weekend. It’s an engagement for the rest of your life.
general
Rotary Phones and Education
I am increasingly politically and fiscally conservative in a lot of areas, but concerning education...
Ken Robinson
The real role of leadership in education … is not and should not be command and control. The real role of leadership is climate control, creating a climate of possibility.
Silver Car, Red Face
It was certainly an expensive car, that silver Corvette we saw coming home from Mass. And it was certainly a powerful car: I've never driven one, but a company and culture do not put that much hype into an American-made sports car if it only barely outruns a minivan. I'm certain the driver takes a great deal of pride in being able to own such a car, but owning such a car tempts people.
Having that much power at your disposal makes you want to show it off a little, to put the pedal to the metal, as the saying goes, and perhaps roar out of an intersection and leave behind all us mere mortals driving glorified aluminum cans. But having that much power and controlling that much power are two different things, so I couldn't help but giggle a bit when the driver of said automobile, in an effort to impress us all, roar out of the intersection, lost control of his car, and took out a line of hedges.
Fortunately nothing hurt but the hedges and a middle-aged man's toy and ego.
The Smallest Pets
The advertisement was on the back of every single issue of Boy's Life magazine, the offical publication of the Boy Scouts. I never really knew what they were, but Sea-Monkeys seemed like fascinating creatures. Of course it was obvious even to a ten-year-old that the ad was full of hyperbole. In reality, they're brine shrimp, incredibly small creatures with a short life span. I was fascinated but never enough even to broach the subject with my parents: I knew from the quality of the ad itself and its exaggerating tone that it had to be a scam. But how cool would it have been if they were only half of what they were advertised?
Had I really thought about it, I would have realized that there is a better alternative for small pets, a much more intelligent and interesting alternative: an ant farm. When K, L, and E returned home this afternoon with an ant farm, I wondered why I'd never thought of it as a kid.
But that's one of the many advantages of being a parent: one gets to re-live certain childhood by your daughter's side.
Anonymous
I'm not in teaching for the income but for the outcome.
Every Kid Needs a Champion
9
Happy ninth anniversary, my love!
Looking for Parts
L has become more and more interested in Legos of late.
