Thursday, March 19, 2009
Things are on my mind today. Death, children and the endless repetition of life’s day to day demands are at the fore of my thoughts.
News accounts tell me a movie star died yesterday and it is tragic. A friend’s e-mail tells me someone I knew in my youth was murdered several days ago, that too is tragic. To those who were intimate with these people, their families and their friends the loss is the same. The passing of these people leaves a huge a gaping hole in life’s fabric for their survivors. Somehow the murder seems worse to me because it wasn’t just the flow of life that brought the person to an end, but rather the warped and twisted will of another. Both of these people are to be mourned by those who loved them. I don’t get the cult of celebrity which mandates that every act by any person who has ever had contact with the movie star must be chronicled in the mass media. She was just a human, no more so than the murder victim or a thousand other people who died over the past days.
Children are a completely different kettle of fish. Raising them, appreciating them and mentoring them; it is both non stop and exhausting. You tell them one thing about the value of a open and questioning mind and the school comes back and says question, but not too much. Education today seems to me to be chasing its tail. However I guess that is the perfect preparation for work in today’s America. No passion, no vision and no progress.
Secundus is going to have to participate in a healing circle/justice circle because of a playground incident. Apparently the parents of a LDS kid is at the edge of his social circle on the playground have an issue with a recent school yard conversation. It seems that while out on the playground where Loren and posse hang out (mostly children of professors or other academics) they have been talking comparing their religions. It is a pretty wide group including Jews, Catholics and given Loren one at least titular protestant. As it has been related to us one day the LDS kid asked Loren what he thought of the Mormon faith. Loren said it really didn’t matter to him except he would have trouble accepting any faith that was so clearly anti-gay. He then went off to rattle on about the LDS church insertion of itself into the debate on Prop 8 in California. I don’t care where you stand on Prop 8 it is a matter of fact that the LDS church inserted itself in a big way into the funding and framing of the debate on that proposal. Check out the Utah papers on this one if you need support for the proposition. No fun was made of the LDS child (that we have been made aware of).
Apparently the kid’s parents have called the teacher/principal/school board incensed at the implication that the Mormon faith was depicted so wrongly and ergo the healing/justice circle. I am going to see what the parameters of the healing circle are. If anyone other than just the kids and school staffs are to be there (read if the parents suffering the offense are going to be there) then I most likely will go. If the kid’s parents try and give Secundu grief over that point I am going to be in his corner. Is it possible to suspend a parent?
Finally there is housework. I close with this housework sucks. It never ends until you shuffle off this mortal coil. No matter how much time you allow for it, these tasks always want more. Again, housework sucks.
5 comments:
What the heck is a "healing circle/justice circle"? Back in the day, the kids worked it out. or not. When I was one of those kids.........not so much. Parents got a call, kid got a few days off, and that was usually that. Until it got handled behind the swing set on the playground.
Too much circling, not enough rational thought.......
We've been talking a lot about this one over the dinner table, not to mention when I was hanging out with Mark & Sue yesterday.
I must be missing something here.
As far as I know, the Mormon Church teaches that homosexuality is an abomination.
Your son says he could not support a church which so teaches.
His position sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
I don't see any insult, any injury to the Mormons.
Hence, I'd be inclined to tell the kids' parents to fuck off, but that woulb probably screw up the "Healing Circle" or whatever the fuck it's called.
Good luck with all this and sorry to hear about your friend.
Oh, I forgot. Check out von Ebers joint: "A Friday Musical Interlude." Small world...
Guess Richard summed it up accurately. What a wordmeister!!!
My kid did nothing wrong? I would be suspicious of the whole thing and would probably turn it down flat. But I am like that. What happened with it anyway?
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