Stealing Honey from a Swarm of Bees…

It’s been sunny three days in a row now.

The scary thing is, I’m starting to believe it.

In Seattle, where it rains upwards of 40 days in row, you really can’t get your hopes up about one sunny day. It could just be a 24 hours sanity break. But three days in a row? Now that’s temptingly Spring-like. Not to mention the crocuses are randomly blooming in my front lawn. (Remember that part in Generation X, where they throw playing cards on the front lawn and plant a daffodil bulb wherever one lands? I liked that.) Oh, and my neighbor’s ornamental cherry is all rosy…and this morning, at 7:30, it was vaguely pinkish in the horizon…and, to top it all off, last night we played in the playground AFTER dance class! Maybe Spring is in fact drawing nigh.

I got so lured into this possibility that I rolled my window down in the car and drove across the 520 (floating) bridge with Wild Honey (U2) playing at full volume. I even s tuck my arm out with window and waved it around like some sort of dreamy Honda commercial. I felt vaguely ridiculous, but what can I say. THE SUN WAS SHINING!!!! And we are ringed by not one, but two snow-capped mountain ranges. And “the mountain” (aka Mt Rainer) was “out.” And Lake Washington was all sparkly with the “Poseidon effect” thingy where it’s glass on one side of the bridge and all rippled on the other. So thus the hand waving thing and singing like a fool at the top of my lungs. I even spelled out “w-e g-e-t t-o l-i-v-e h-e-r-e” in sign language. (This = worship to me these days folks.) What did my fellow drivers think of this? “Weird Girl,” probably. Although one woman in a white sedan with her curly hair piled up in a bun rolled down her window too and I could see her singing along to something, so maybe kindred spirits are out there yet.

Seperate but Equal…
Eden qualified for advanced learning last week. Not the top 2% advanced learning, but close. The program she got into is called “Spectrum” and it’s only offered at one school. Not our neighborhood school, where she’s going now. So succumbed to the “shouldn’t we be giving our child every academic advantage possible” inner voice and went to visit the new school.

It’s a brand new building. There’s a dedicated music room filled with brand new key boards and tons of rhythm instruments. (Our school has a ¼ time music teacher paid for by the PTA). The Spanish teacher is full time and has her own classroom full of Picasso prints and Frida Kahlo paintings, and Salvador Dali. (Our school has a ½ time Spanish teacher who also doubles as the librarian.) Oh, and the library? It’s the biggest one in the school district with about 12 new computers and a budget that allows the teacher to buy any favorite book a child requests. And did I mention the full time art teacher? Or the before-school choral program? And what about this…there are a whopping 12 African American students there. (Our school is about 40% non-Caucasian) And what about free or reduced lunch? Seven percent. (Our school = 48%, last time I checked.)

What the fuck is wrong with this system??? These are Seattle Public Schools within 10 minutes drive from each other. How can there be so much inequity?! And trust me; I know we’ve got it good at our school, because drive 20minutes to the “south end” of Seattle and the students don’t even have BOOKS! I cannot believe we, the privileged middle class, are so blind to this inequity.

I won’t be a part of it — or perhaps more precisely, I’m choosing not to be any more a part of it than I already am. Eden is staying at her old school. She’ll do well enough academically, but more importantly, she’ll learn something culturally that the new school can never offer — that there are many kinds of families, many ways of living, many socio-economic situations, and all of us deserve equal access to education.

You know what the main difference is with these schools? The ones that are doing “better” have parents who can give money to the PTA and raise money from their employers. The other schools have parents who are living pay check to pay check, or maybe not even that. There’s no extra. There’s no employer to hit up for a donation. It’s food stamps, and two minimum wage jobs per person (maybe three), and sharing an apartment with your grandmother and your sister’s two kids. So how about this…let’s take all the PTA money and all the donations for the ENTIRE SEATTLE SCHOOL DISTRICT and divide it up equally between all the schools.

Can you imagine?

I bet giving would drop dramatically if parents and employees knew the money was going outside their “neighborhood.”

Sigh.

Then, to top it all off, I found out that the district may stop bussing kids to schools outside of their “clusters.” This means that low income families who manage to find the extra time and energy to get their kids into a slightly more supported school will no longer be able to get their kids there. Diversity will decrease. The rich kids will get the bells and whistles and the poor kids will get by on leftovers.

This was the pitch one of the parents at the potentially “new” school gave me for why I should come here instead of staying at our old school – because the old school might become less diverse too.

I stood in the brand new gym of that brand new school and cried.

Free Love Give Aways…
After going to the new school and ditching that idea, I went about collecting some art supplies for Monkfish Abbey tonight. We are going to make little love books to leave about in random places on Valentines Day. Mine’s going to be citrus colors with kitschy little japanamation figures on it.

I like giving love way randomly. In fact, if I had to use one word to describe my self it would be “Lover.” People give me flak about this on a regular basis. Some feel, that as a pastor, I should be less focused on love, and more focused on discipline and correction. The argument is that it’s not loving to be un-corrective – to “let” people continue on “in sin.”

The thing is it’s pretty much out of my control whether people continue on in “sin” or not. In fact, it’s pretty much guaranteed that’s going to happen. Because “sin” my friend, is just missing the mark, and we ALL do that. Now, if I see someone running headlong into a thousand year oak, sure, I’m going to try to stop them. That’s love. But correcting people – first off, I’m not that smart. And secondly, the people I love and am in an ongoing relationship with correct me as much as I correct them. We inspire each other to high/fuller/richer/more Godly living. That’s not just my job as a pastor – that’s OUR job as….as…as…people.

Anyway, back to being a Lover…I think that’s the most important thing I can do as a Jesus-y person, is to love others. And I don’t really care if that is in a specific and “known” way, or a random secret way. Anything that spreads a little love around brings about kingdom, even if it’s small, hidden, and a bit cheesy. So this year, on St. Valentine’s Day, we practice the practice of free love give aways. And no, it wont say “WWJD” or quote John 3:16. It will just be a message – pictorial or otherwise – from the heart, pasted and scrawled onto a piece of cardstock, dropped off at a coffee house table or in a random mailbox or on your seat on the bus. What the hell, it can’t hurt right?

The Wolfpup doth hiddeth something…
So some of you know that I’m sort of co-parenting this amazing sixteen year old boy, right? I call him “the manchild” or the Wolfpup, or sometimes, “my lord.” He’s on that amazing cusp between being a kid and being a brand new grown-up and it’s…what’s the world…heartstopping?…to watch.

I don’t know what I am to the wolfpup. I think I’m 40% mother, 30% mentor, 23% fairly-cool aunt, 5% weird neighbor and 2% unknown. Whatever we are to one another, on most days, it works.

But last night…there was this weird thing with computer…and a paper that had to be written, and then didn’t have to be written, or the due date changed or something. Whatever it was methinks I’ve been had. Or as I like to tell him, “My spidey senses are tingling.” So I’m waiting for the rascal to come home and fess up…or clear things up…or something….and I’m wondering, exactly how did I come to have a sixteen year old????

Postscript
Reading a back over this long and windy post I guess there’s kind of one overarching theme: Love…it’s a crazy thing. Now, go listen to the soundtrack to Moulin Rouge and let love lift you up where you belong, ‘cuz all you need is love.