Our Lego club guests had a blast as us parents let a bit of mayhem go down with the building.
The product of aforementioned mayhem.
Time to Build, 7 December 2020
Dark December
A lot of Facebook memories popped up today. 2018 an 2019 were tough, but they finished in quietly spectacular ways.
I’m in a low place. It feels like there is more loss than gain this month. More isolation and loneliness. Too many deeply personal emotions to share with clear words.
This is the place when the light is dim and the wood is dark. I’ve been through enough of these dark nights to know how bright the sun is on the other side. I don’t wait for it, I push into the ever darkening path, for that is the way to the light.
The Costs
This week I read a post from a Lockdown-enforcing friend. She said that she would be avoiding those who are not strictly complying after “this” is over. Firstly, what is the metric for that? When do we stop trading germs, bacteria, and viruses? When do we stop sharing bad habits? When do we stop poisoning minds with ideas we deem “bad?” When do we stop being human and fallen and full of snakes and mistakes?
Aside from the philosophical absurdity of pretending that humans (and eveything else in existence) aren’t dangerous, I’m deeply troubled. Her children have been friends with mine for years. Her and I have stood as vocal homeschooling advocates and I consider her an ally in promoting educational freedom. We disagree on fundamental political and religious fronts, but we’ve found our common goals to outweigh our differences.
She was at Mary’s memorial and made her way to me through a daunting crowd to deliver a message of support that I will never forget.
The home education community is small and diverse. We have serious divides on serious issues, but we’ve always been able to discuss them while our children play and learn together.
I pray that this is emotional manipulation to acquire a desired behavior. I pray it is an empty threat. My children have no control over my choices, why should they be further isolated from friends after this difficult year?
Grateful for How God Made Me
They change the rules arbitrarily and give you a few days to comply.
Regular people are just trying to get by. They’re trying not to screw up their kids. They’re trying to keep their businesses afloat. They’re trying to stay in shape. They’re trying to fix their relationships. They’re trying to learn a new skill to help create a better world. They’re trying to make their way in a world full of suffering.
The Doomers lack compassion for how radically society has been forced to change in a few months. They don’t see the substance abuse, suicides, and crippling loneliness that people are experiencing. Doomers have taken people’s joys away from them and told them they are selfish and ignorant to complain about it.
They are willing to “beat the virus” at any cost. Whether that is possible is a real scientific debate. What’s not debatable is how far someone will go if he thinks he is saving the world. Fascism enters the human heart when you think you are the charismatic leader here to save the People. You don’t see individuals anymore, you only see the Compliant and the Noncompliant. You discover it’s okay to yell at, shame, and lie to the Noncompliant in order to meet your righteous goal.
That’s why these governors, mayors, and bureaucrats sound like dictators, because in their hearts they are. Then the compliant armies march, taken in by propaganda delivered by experts and validated through corporate media.
They are tearing apart society with their dictates and telling those of us trying to be responsible for our own lives and the lives of our families that we are the threat.
The only things the Noncompliant are a threat to are the centers of power and control.
I’ve got my priorities of responsibility in order: God, myself, my children, family, friends, and community. I seek truth and liberty in each of those responsibilities, not power.
I’m thankful for the way God made me. My soul craves freedom, not just for itself, but for all it can touch.
Don’t Lie to Yourself
“We didn’t even have a lockdown, and the impact of Covid is very minimal compared to other countries … but still we see this big increase in the number of suicides,” said Michiko Ueda, an associate professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, and an expert on suicides.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/28/asia/japan-suicide-women-covid-dst-intl-hnk/index.html
Japan has the data on suicides that must be occuring all over the world. Harsher Lockdowns, arbitrary measures, and hypocritical politicians and virtue police are driving deaths of despair to unconscionable heights.
My 30 days of gratitudes has been a rocky path. I started later than most, missed a day or two, and have been side tracked by my own rough goings.
Today I’m grateful that CNN doesn’t have a Biden foreign intervention to sell yet and is reporting on a critical story that may sway some of the Doomers.
Yep, my lamest gratitude of the month.
I’m also grateful that I’ve gone through intellectual, spiritual, and physical transformations. I’ve changed my perspective on major aspects of life and still love and respect that old Jason who was wrong as shit. I also love myself now, even though I may still be totally full of crap. I’m not afraid to see the truth and repeat it. That’s the only way to grow into harmony with existence. Lies separate you from reality. They twist it into an unknowable thing. Reality is dangerous. Existence is suffering. If you don’t see those facts clearly, they will level you and you won’t know where you are.
I don’t have a lock on truth, but I’m heading in the right direction.
Thankful for Unschool Adventures
We met with a new group of home educating families today. The children learned about their bodies and had a lot of fun. It was a simple exercise and we followed it up with a hike through some interesting woods at Killens Pond State Park.
Grateful for Time to Build
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We’ve been hosting unschoolers for a weekly Lego club called Time to Build and I’m going to start documenting their creations and our experiences.
Below is a fun scene I found after club that involved the LEGO Marvel Spider-Man Far From Home: Molten Man Battle set.
This challenge was equal parts fun and dangerous and produced a laser canon that my son was happy with.
I got in on the building when one of our younger guests requested a giraffe. I grabbed The Lego Ideas Book and copied this design as closely as I could.
I love this time with friends. The home education community is incredibly diverse and I love getting to know other parents and how they go about facilitating their children’s education.
Most Grateful For…
Love.
On the night my wife went to Heaven I was connected to God’s transformational love. Mary and I had recently accepted Jesus into our lives and lived our lives with a focus on love for each other and our sons. I feared losing her love in death. When it came time for her soul to leave this world, a cascade of love poured over me. A rainbow followed her to Heaven and I was filled with light and love. I’ve stood imperfectly on that rainbow bridge ever since.
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It was a super power. I felt like Green Lantern with a ring that could cover the world in love. I said as much at her memorial and lived like that for months, loving on everyone I knew and met.
But there was another comic book character that inhabited me when no one was looking. Frank Castle, The Punisher, had been a favorite of mine as a boy. Now I was watching the TV show and wondering why the darkness of this man who lost his wife and children to violence was speaking to me. I chalked it up to the vagaries of grief. Mary’s death hadn’t felt like heartbreak (I was far too afraid to admit that to anyone), it was a psychological break (didn’t share that either). My ego was scaffolding bolted to a wall that read HUSBAND AND FATHER. When most of that was smashed, there wasn’t enough to hold onto. My mind slowly shattered and I lost a sense of Self as I fell.
I was drinking and hating myself like Castle at night (or morning, or whenever I could). I put on Green Lantern’s ring for the world to see, to cover up a brokeness I could only partly see. For a full year I acted the Jeckyl and Hyde routine. Even after sobering up, I was addicted to the power of the ring, exploiting my imagination to fill the world around me with love.
A heartbreak shook me from the cover up game. I had been showering love on a woman and her children and that was taken away. The hollowness of it left me confused, “I’m better at loss than this.”
I don’t know why I picked up Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life. I had carried it around for more than 20 years, a gift from my father. Maybe it was the rainbow heart on the cover.
Rereading the dedication now gives me all the answers. Self-worth, pure love, and self-acceptance were missing from my heart. I saw God’s infinite love as something external. A force or tool to wield, perhaps a weapon at times. I hadn’t personally accepted His love for me. I hadn’t seen the folly in trying to reciprocate a love that I wouldn’t accept for myself.
Through the reading, mostly done in early mornings on my kitchen floor, I turned my gaze inward and began to love the parts of myself that I had been hiding away. I didn’t need Green Lantern’s ring or The Punisher’s toughness to thrive, I needed to accept my own special place in an infinite love that flowed through, from, and around me.
It’s all still imperfect. I’m only a guru to myself. The self work is the thing.
As Hay would say, “All is well in my world.”
The Lockdown is Inhumane
My sons and I were supposed to go on a hike today with other families who have lost loved ones. Delaware’s governor imposed regulations this week that forced its cancellation.
This is not okay. These children and parents are facing crushing loneliness. Some of them lost a mother, father, sibling, child, or other close family member during the Lockdown and have had little contact with others.
My children have made friends in this group and meet new, wonderful children each time we get together.
After having met outside several times this fall and summer, there have been no reported cases of Covid-19 within the group.
This group is invaluable to families who have had much of their support structure taken away during the hardest time in their lives.
This is not okay. Children have been kept away from their schoolmates and all of us have had our grief groups and therapists reduced to Zoom, at best.
It’s very difficult for me to connect with someone through an image. In person, I have anxiety and detachment when one, or both, of us are in masks.
I’m concentrating on gratitudes this month, but today is hard. I’m grateful for this outlet. I’m grateful for my widow friends who will meet in person. I’m grateful for the many connections we made before Lockdown and have been able to maintain through it. I’m grateful that I’ve got a lot of fight in me. I’m grateful for my health.
I have an infinite number of things to be grateful for, but today is still hard.
Grateful for 2020
I got dumped last night and this is one of those posts that I hope no one reads.
I met my now-ex-girlfriend days before 2020 began. We had an instant connection and our romance bloomed quickly. She had met my children and we were in a pretty great place when the Lockdowns hit.
I’m radically full of Love and not inclined to fear death. I lost my wife to complications arising from respiratory infections, so this wasn’t a new threat in my life. I feel like a minority in this view and I was pleased that my girlfriend was accepting of my perspective. There’s no way that two people can have the same risk assessments, but we were pretty close.
We each wrestled with the anxieties and confusions of the mainstream narrative and the Lockdowns. We stayed together through tough times and supported each others lows.
That romance has come to an end, but I don’t have animosity. I am filled with gratitude that I had a supportive and loving partner through most of this year.