Good Thursday to you all,
What to write about this week? The SBC Sexual Abuse Investigative report? The tornado that traveled through our neighborhood on Monday? Gun violence in America?
How about I start with a stupid mistake I made, and we take it from there?
Courage, everyone.
The Part Where There’s an Essay: Mea Culpa
This is less an essay and more an admission of guilt.
Remember back when I wrote about cleaning up the leaves (or not)? I related a story about how my neighbor dumped some leaves on our yard after he had cleaned them up on his side of the fence.
This past Saturday, David and I rented a stump grinder and were cleaning up that side of our property, getting ready for some landscaping. In between turns on the noisy machine, he glanced down the fence line and said, “I wonder where.... Hmm. Is that the property line?”
Reader, it was.
We discovered that we were working in his yard, not ours.
That he had dumped the leaves on his yard, not ours.
That we had, in fact, cut down a tree that was in his yard, not ours.
Because of boring details that I won’t relate here, his fence is in a place that made this a little hard to understand. We could have taken the time to try to understand it before taking action, but we didn’t. Take from that what spiritual metaphor you will.
Thankfully the man is quite gracious. He and my husband had a nice talk over the weekend, and I think we are friendlier than we were before. All it took was one huge, humiliating mistake.
As a bonus, that evening at a church event, I got to share on what the following verse means in my life:
“The boundary lines have fallen for me
in pleasant places;
indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.”
Psalm 16:6
So that was kind of funny.
The land is given for our good; the boundaries are given for our good as well. And sometimes the freedom to foolishly tread across the boundaries are for our ultimate good.
For the Anglophiles
A couple weeks ago I drew your attention to Wisconsin’s Jesse Marsch, current manager of Premier League side Leeds United. There was a danger that the team might be relegated, but they narrowly escaped on Sunday. Here’s the moment that the coach realized they were staying up:
A temporary farewell to Premier League soccer — we will miss you, but not for long. With what I think is the shortest off-season of any major sport, the players will be back in competitive action the first week of August.
Reads & Listens of the Week
I had a bunch of links here for your benefit, and then Tuesday happened. I think everyone has a place in their mind they go to when these horrors occur; for me, it is Reading II class at Messiah College, where I first heard about the Columbine shooting from my professor, Mrs. Voelker. I lacked the perspective she had that day, as she was an elementary teacher for two decades before she took up the mantle of training us education students. She walked into class weeping and led us in prayer. We didn’t have any training for — nor any idea that we would need training for — these situations. It was 1999.
Fourth grade was hands-down my favorite grade to teach back then — the kids are just young enough to want to please you still, but they are old enough to do some “big kid” fun activities. Plus, they could zip their own snowsuits for winter recess (I was in Massachusetts, remember).
The teacher that died on Tuesday was probably also in her junior year of college in 1999; she was my age, teaching my favorite grade, and was a mother of four.
This week is the most violent one in recent American history (not to mention that SBC report in the middle of it all), and it should give us pause. Some items for you to read:
David French believes we should consider Red Flag laws.
Perhaps you saw coach Steve Kerr’s impassioned plea to Congress to do something regarding gun access in the United States. Perhaps you don’t know that Kerr’s father was killed by a gunman when Steve was eighteen.
A roundup of how other countries have responded to mass shootings.
I’ve contacted my representatives and senators about such a wide range of things recently that my political mail is hilarious. It seems no one knows where I stand on anything. I don’t fit neatly into a party, at least as far as the mailers are concerned. An easy way to contact your senators and reps — Democrat, Republican, or other — is by using ResistBot.
I am of the opinion that thoughts and prayers are still worth something, so you can download a free copy of A Liturgy for Grieving a National Tragedy here.
Perhaps in the soul, as in the soil, those growths that show the brightest colours and put forth the most overpowering smell have not always the deepest root.― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
Morning Kelly! I LOVE You and enjoy reading Your Blog. My favorite grade grade levels for student teaching were grades 4 and 5. Such great enthusiasm and skills!!! We did a big unit on Native Americans in new England with emphasis on their lives, especially arts! So good. Thinking of You and Yours and glad Your neighbor is a kind one. Blessings this day.....love, Karen