Blog Archives

The Hand-me-down hitch

9/26/2015

When I was a child, seemingly gigantic garbage bags would appear at my doorstep; the bags were full of clothes, toys, books, and the odd pair of roller skates. These treasures, lightly worn out by my cousins, were free shopping. It was my prerogative to take what I wanted from the lot and to pass my outgrown items on in turn. In our household, hand-me-downs were never something to be ashamed of, though as an adult my mother has said we may have actually had nicer clothes, (certainly more clothes) because we received so many second-hand gems.

So, it has been surprising for me to realize, now that I am a mother, that hand-me-downs have actually started to get on my nerves. The process of receiving hand-me-downs is not so much the issue. Rather, because I actually believe hand-me-downs are the more ethical choice (better for the environment, avoiding child labour, simpler living etc.), I feel pressure to put my daughter in whatever clothes we receive despite the fact that at least half of them might not be what I would choose to have her wear.

Permit me to elaborate. I have a ten-month-old daughter. And my husband and I, as students and people interested in living simply, are both in favour of hand-me-downs and somewhat dependant on them. We are also intensely grateful that we have a community that supports us by basically clothing our daughter for free. For us, the catch lies in the prevalence of pink, bedazzled, puppies-with-bows-on-their-heads, ballerina-tutus, halter-tops, and lace bodices which our baby receives à-la-garbage bag.

Let me be clear: I am not pink bashing. A bit of pink and sparkles here and there is great amid a myriad of other hues and fashions. But, as Jo B. Paoletti author of Pink and Blue: Telling the Girls from the Boys in America states, by the age of 3 or 4 children have begun to associate themselves with the gender binary preformed through our wardrobe choices. Just as lessening our consumer footprint is a matter of justice, so are the unspoken messages we send our daughter as she discovers who she is. Many messages we may send unconsciously, but we do get to choose what clothing we put her in for the next couple of months. These clothes will help define what she perceives as her options as she grows and tells us, her parents, more about her identity. I hope we are able to give her the tools (not only clothes) she needs to express herself – and mostly in hand-me-downs.

1 Comment

Key Jar conversations around the table

9/22/2015

0 Comments

It’s hard to get kids talking after a full day of school or programming. In our family our son is a fan of the one syllable answers. How was your day? Good. What did you do? Stuff. We came across a great free resource called the key jar. It’s a set of forty- eight questions that you can print off and stick in a jar on your table and when it’s mealtime conversation you have a place to start. Our son loves to be the one to dig in and choose the question. The conversation is more varied – fuller and often we learn more about each other. Try making your own key jar – create those open ended questions that will enable good conversation. What are your hopes for today? When did you feel loved?

Here’s the link to this resource;

www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/FREE-The-Key-Jar-48-Questions-to-Ask-Your-Kids-1826364

0 Comments

The afflicted are at our gates, and God pleads their cause. We cannot un-see them.

9/6/2015

0 Comments

Do not rob the poor because they are poor, or crush the afflicted at the gate; for the Lord pleads their cause.

A big part of me wishes I could un-see that picture. You will know the one I am talking about, and perhaps you feel the same. The picture of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi lying face down in the surf in Turkey, the soles of his shoes making clear just how little he was. But that picture travelled so far and wide, it is so heartbreaking, that we cannot un-see it. The afflicted are at the gate; what shall we do for them?

It is uncanny how our lessons for this morning speak to the recent turn of events in the migrant crisis that has finally forced us to decide: what kind of people we will be? Will we will be those who wish good fortune on the poor – who say, “Go in peace, keep warm, eat your fill,” – but do nothing to combat war, to fight the cold, the stave off hunger? Or are we people of faith inspired to do good works? Are we to be blessed as those who are generous, those who share their bread, as Proverbs tell us? Will we choose to see what we would rather un-see?

In our gospel, we are offered the story of a poor woman at the gate, asking to be let in. This woman’s daughter is terribly sick and she is doing whatever she can to save her. But Jesus is not kind to her. Yes, it’s true, in the original Greek, “dogs” actually translates to housepets, not strays on the street, but that’s splitting hairs: Jesus uses the negative description of an animal to describe a person. And, yes, he is tired. He has finally taken the disciples away from the crowds to rest, and here is one more desperate person, an outsider, pleading for his time. And what does he do? He acts like a jerk. Basically, he tells her to get lost. He has other priorities right then – and she isn’t one of them.

But the woman refuses to go, and she stands up to Jesus. She plays upon his metaphor and says: but don’t the dogs get the crumbs that fall from the master’s table? Some theologians have interpreted the woman’s response to be some larger metaphor about the abundance of faith, but let’s put ourselves in her shoes. She wants to save her daughter. She believes that Jesus, this miracle man of God, can do it. She will say what she has to make him pay attention to her. Who wouldn’t?

That is exactly what we are seeing happening across the world among Syrian refugee families. Parents so desperate to save their children that they send them alone on leaky boats to cross dangerous water, and hope for the best. Families willing to risk everything to escape poverty and war. People willing to be treated worse than animals in container ships for the slimmest of hope. These families are the woman who has come to Jesus, who is begging him to help her. Call me what you want, she says to Jesus, but throw me just one small crumb.

And Jesus sees her. He hears her. “For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter,” he says. For some, this has been interpreted as an example of the woman’s faith earning the mercy of Jesus. But the woman’s response forces Jesus to see his wrongdoing in that moment. By turning her away, he was rejecting his own teaching, he was failing his own gospel. Her words were not so much a testament to her own faith but a challenge to the capacity of the faith of Jesus in that moment.

When we are overwhelmed, and exhausted, when the problem feels too big to solve, it is harder to be generous. Just like Jesus, in our humaness, we all know that feeling. But, as Jesus realized, that is no excuse for not helping someone in desperate need when you have the power to do so.

A month before we knew the name Aylan Kurdi, I was sitting among friends in Nova Scotia, who were unanimous in their laments for the death of African lion, whose picture also travelled the world. Something should be done, everyone insisted – criminal charges, sanctions, new laws. It felt easy: the shooting was deliberate, the perpetrator named, the crime clear.

Now this week, the sorrow was so much deeper, and so much more complicated. As someone suggested to me this week: this death wasn’t deliberate, the perpetrator shamed on Facebook. But is that true? Throughout history, we know what happens when people pretend not to see persecution, when nations avert their eyes from first flames of war, when those who need help don’t get it quickly enough for those able to offer it. In this current crisis – have we opened our gates? Have our humanitarian efforts been enough? So what would make Aylan Kurdi’s death deliberate? Aren’t we already realizing the collaborators who should be ashamed?

We cannot un-see the need around us anymore – just as Jesus realized he could not put off the woman begging for his help. Did healing her daughter, destroy all the demons in the world? No. But he fixed a problem that he had the power to fix. Let’s not kid ourselves. We also have power in this situation. We, living in a prosperous nation built on immigrants, can insist on our governments accepting more refugees – and we can reach out to those refugees when they arrive. We can make foreign aid an election issue. We can send more humanitarian aid – we can take the money we might use to eat out, or to paint the kitchen – and give it to Canadian Lutheran World Relief.

The afflicted are at our gates, and God pleads their cause. We cannot un-see them.

0 Comments

youth power change

The Hand-me-down hitch

Key Jar conversations around the table

The afflicted are at our gates, and God pleads their cause. We cannot un-see them.

Joel Crouse

Archives

Categories