And Now, Bragging about my Kin...

Will Clark Green (my cousin) won the Lone Star Music awards!  Here's a clip of the song that won him the award.  Give a listen, I think you'll love it.  Unlike many songs on the radio these days, this one includes humor, gives a sense of time and paints a long scope of a relationship.  

Enjoy  "She likes the Beatles" and if you like it, go check out his whole CD, Rose Queen.  The rest of the music contains similar narrative stories of pain, love, loss, regret and family.    I'm not normally a CW fan as far as music goes, but I love the poetry of his work, and would even if he weren't my cousin.  

My second brag involves my son Peter.  He struggles with many things, not the least of which is being that hard age of 14 in a large family, athletic where most of us are bookish, and surrounded by as he puts it, "too many girls." This weekend, he ran in a 5k --piece of cake for him really, with his older sister.  The run had approximately 200+ people in it, to raise money for Good Counsel, the high school his sister attends.  

He came in second.  He didn't want to let me take his picture or I'd have it plastered over the internet by now.  The cool thing was the young men who came in after him, all six inches taller, four of them walked over to Peter.  They asked how old he was, and said if he came to Good Counsel, he'd better be on the cross country because he just beat half the team, and by quite a margin. 

It was a moment of what just happened here?  Wow! for me.  

7 Quick Takes

 

1.  So I didn't post Small Success Thursday on Thursday as I didn't want it to crowd an already written post.  So here's your link to participate in yesterday's celebration of everyday victories over minutia, schedules, clutter, exercise, resisting the urge to hunt down your children's hidden stashes of Easter Chocolate, etc.     Stop over at Catholicmom.com and visit by clicking here.

2. This week is Prom week for our second oldest.  She and I went shopping and found her whole outfit.  She's going with friends tonight, but I'm posting the "selfie" she did for Facebook so you can see, she looks lovely and happy, all you could ask for.  

 

 

3.  What am I reading?  Well, this week I finished rereading Watership Down, and polished off A Kitchen House.  The former was a dream, the later, not so much.  Now I'm working on a book my husband gave me, "How the Irish Saved Civilization."  Can't pour out what I don't put in.  Which leads to the next part of this post. 

4.  What's in a review?   I belong to the community of Catholicmom.com and as such sometimes get books to read and review.  In January, I received Daughters in Danger by Elayne Bennett. I wanted this particular one, given I have 6 daughters and one is going off to college. 


I read it in February and prepared to post it when we got to March.   It is now April.   I am posting the review here and at Amazon, I wanted to give 4 or 5 stars because I know the blood, sweat, time and energy that goes into writing a book, I know no one ever feels good when they get something other than 4 or 5 stars, I wanted to really dig into the topic.

The Good: 
Bennett's assessment of the multiple threats facing children growing up in the cyber age is spot on. Her work and writing indicates a sincere desire to help arm today's youth with the tools to maintain their innate dignity and security, and she has twenty years of serving at risk populations to back up her solutions. Her message is good, we must do better by our daughters as a matter of justice, if not love.

 



 I know the culture we must raise them in has serious threats that must be vigilantly met, and the author has the history and background chops to really dig into this topic. She gives good qualitative examples of the problem torn from the headlines of recent years, I remembered most of these cases and understand the problem of how to teach our girls to be alert, to be aware, and to be savvy not just about the world but themselves.
The Mixed and the Frustrating:
However, her solutions would be better received if they were bolstered by quantitative research, which it would seem she could add given her 20 years of running a nationwide program that reaches out and seeks to help at risk children. I kept waiting for the stats, they came but late in the book. The stats bolster what she asserts and if she were to illustrate from the 2 decades of providing community based support the before and after or the outcomes 5, 10 years out, of those who participated and those who didn't, statistically speaking, she could win people easily. I also think, the politics of the issues, while facts, unintentionally distract and detract from her presentation. Stick to what you do and why, reveal why it works, make the case for why it should continue.

I still agree with her premise and the promise of this book. I believe to help all teens thrive, we need to engage them on a personal level, to teach them that they must have respect for their minds, hearts and bodies if they want to break out of the shackles of low expectations that can often plague girls in particular and foster a cycle of poverty hard to break.

If they gave half stars, I would feel more comfortable, 3.5. 

Final Opinion: 

My impression was that the final chapter should have been the outline for the structure of the book, to give it a sharper focus, because the book gives good stories, outlines the problems young women face today, and provides suggestions for solutions, but those strong points are marred by the method of presentation which feels bloggy in style, jumping topics. I wanted more meat to the bones of the argument being put forth, and I felt it could have been given, so it frustrated me as a former educator of at risk students, I wanted to delve into it deeper. This should be a better book given the hard work being done and being proposed, the daughters in danger deserve our attention.

5.  I follow an  Archeology site as part of ongoing research for Penelope. They found a statue of Demeter in Turkey owing to two people doing an illegal excavation.  You can read the story here.


I thought it cool, you have to wonder, how many other treasures are lurking under our feet around the world? 

6.  This weekend, in addition to Prom, we have two teens running in a 5K, two birthday parties --one of which we're hosting, and the normal every week stuff that tends to crowd up the weekend.  Next week is 1st Communion, and then we get into the super crazy part of May, with Confirmation, exams, graduations, a birthday, Mother's day and still the ordinary stuff that makes up life.   Writing may become more scarce as a result. 

7.  I missed the sign up sheet for swimming lessons, which always fill up early around here, with sign ups being some time in March, but I always forget to think Swimming and Summer until some time in April.   So I'm now searching for a place to sign up the 7, 8, 10 and 12 year old for lessons, the 14 year old to learn lifeguard skills, and the 3 and 5 year old to start water safety.   Some day I'll remember that every season is best planned two months before, but I'm almost always playing catch up.  

Hold onto the Nails, not the hurt.

Facebook brings us many people talking about and linking to many things, not all of them just, kind or beautiful. One had an angry screed at the top because the person felt outrage at the callus laughter of those who beat a man as the description of his beating and injuries were discussed in court. He called them not human.
 
Another posted smugly about her politics, and how uneducated the other side stubbornly remains for daring to think otherwise.
 
I received an email demanding I stand up against my own Church because it does not sanction what the world has decided must be.
 
In every case, and I saw people rallying to the other side, people assembling on the internet in camps of left and right, Republican and Democrat, White and Black, Christian and non Christian, those in favor and those who oppose the redefinition of marriage as recognized by the state, and in every place, I saw people declare the other side, Not Human. Or less worthy human. Or even worthless. All matter of civility and principles, manners and charity were exchanged for vitriol, I'm right, you're a dunderhead. But in less gentle terms. Everyone everywhere felt entitled, justified to hold onto the hurt. 
 
And all I could think over and over again is Human. All too Human. Human. Human. Human.

As are all of you. And yet, we keep discarding that belief in others and presuming to keep it for ourselves. Even if what they did was wrong, callus and horrific, they remain human, like all of us, human, broken, sinful, wrong, capable of great wrong, and still, fully human. One does not lose humanity by daring to think differently, or by opposing what is popular, or by being flawed, or being old, or being young, or being unborn or by having failed mightily, or by having engaged even in great evil.  Even the abortionist, even the pedophile, even the terrorist, remains human. Nothing divorces our souls from being souls. 

Praying and even loving our enemies, foreign and domestic, political and social, is a direct command from Christ, a direct instruction on how to "turn the other cheek."  Hate can only be diffused by love.  Christ willed himself to stay on that cross to the end, until the last drop fell, until He knew he could say, "It is finished." because of love.  He didn't hold onto the hurt, He held onto the nails.  He could have come down from that cross, but He didn't, because He held onto those nails for our sake. 

And then I went to a blog where a mother journals her struggle to care for a child with a condition that fused her fingers into mittens, and her cranial plates, and I can see from her pictures, from her writng, this is a family that has embraced their daughter and seeks to love her as fiercely and as perfectly as possible.

And I know, this is what we are called to be, to be fully human. All made in the image of God, and beloved by God and made to love as God loves, even those we see not doing their part, not seemingly worthy or educated enough or polished enough or beautiful enough, still supposed to be beloved by us. Human. Human. Human.

Hold onto those nails.  Hold onto the words, "Father Forgive them, for they know not, what they do." It is the only way to remind the world, of how it was truly intended to be.