The healing journey of a widowed, unschooling badass in Delaware.
Isaiah 2:5 KJV — O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD.
Although this chapter is a prophecy of the latter days, the call to action is present. Today we can walk in the light of the Lord.
No matter the future, today is for living.
Chapter 1 focuses on the spiritual death and dryness of Judah and Jerusalem.
God declares that this “dross” must be burned away and that the people will be returned to faithfulness.
To renew, we must clear completely the habits that separate us from God. This is a difficult process that demands the sacrifice of our worldly attachments.
Since I started carrying a permanent image of a dreaming Jacob, he’s been showing up more often.
Isaiah 41:13-14 KJV — For I the LORD thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee. Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the LORD, and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.
This Scripture appeared in my devotional reading and it struck me that I have read very little of the book of Isaiah. My Student Bible contains a plan to read it in 63 days. I’m looking forward to my first independent study of one of the books of the Old Testament.
Our gifted programs were called LEEP and PROBE. I forget what the acronyms meant, but being labeled “gifted” was an invaluable experience.
I was an energetic kid (this won’t be this story’s last shocking revelation). Luckily, even with ADD (ADHD wasn’t mainstreamed yet) diagnoses on the rise, I had parents who inherently resisted systemic pressures and honored my Tazmanian Devil-style of learning.
Wildly sober, I wasn’t considered for the gifted program in early elementary. Midway through 4th grade, a teacher finally insisted that I be tested. I was excited to get to miss classes once a month with the smart kids (we were bussed to a special learning center). They were less enthusiastic. They all got tested in 1st grade, logically concluding that it wasn’t anything special to pass the entrance exam after three more years of school. It was an IQ test, not age dependent, but no one cared to explain the nuances to us subjects.
For the next eight years, I existed in a liminal educational space. The smart kids never accepted me as one of their own, but everyone else saw me get on the gifted bus and go to honors and seminar classes.
For good and ill, I had inherited an inclination to not give a shit about other people’s opinions.
LEEP and PROBE offered deep dives into subjects that were hardly broached in school. Genetics, computer programming, environmental studies, photojournalism, and filmmaking were highlights of those years. I also had my first experience with a Muslim convert, observing my favorite teacher, Mr. Lowe, change his name and appearance to conform to his new beliefs. These buildings became a symbol of a world of possibility where I was free to explore. The day-to-day of the regular school building was a constant battle to resist grey standardization.
The meme above has little to do with my experience. The late bestowing of the label “gifted” forced me to embrace my independent nature. God set me against these social anxieties (he had a whole other set of difficulties picked out for me).
I was blessed to be largely free of the academic pressures. I’m doubly blessed to be able to offer a similar freedom to my sons in our home education environment.
Homemade meat seasonings and an afternoon of lounging on our “tri-mock? Yeah, it was a good day.
There are two physical genders, but energy exists on a spectrum. We all contain masculine and feminine energies. We’re born with a certain balance. This balance is altered over time as trauma and healing minimize and maximize our potential, respectively.
Males contain more masculine and females contain more feminine, generally. I’ll mansplain here that this does not deny the fact that some females have higher masculines than some males, and vice versa. This is a nuanced conversation, jump out now if you are uncomfortable with generalizations.
I’m a male with a high feminine energy (some would say a high masculine as well, both due to my healing journey). I am very comfortable with my feminine traits. I became a widower six years ago and had to cultivate that energy to thrive as a single parent.
I also recognize where I lack work to do better.
Leadership is a masculine trait. Compassion is a feminine trait. The best leaders access their compassionate energy to understand those they are leading. Effectively compassionate people use leadership to direct action most productively (conscientiousness). This is the practical application of the masculine/feminine balance.
Leadership in humans has little to do with physical strength. Yes, it is a factor in male hierarchies, but not dominant in leadership roles (e.g., professional sports coaches). If the world was run by the physically strongest men, then evolution would have favored this trait and humans would be getting bigger and stronger. Instead, we see our species growing in head size and shrinking in body mass. Look at the men around you. Look at CEOs and politicians.
I hope that by using the feminine/masculine energy paradigm, we can see that it is critical that we recognize those energy balances in ourselves and honor them in others.
I’m only halfway through this interview with former CDC Chief Dr. Robert Redfield, but there are so many bombs dropped, it’s hard to believe this isn’t a bigger story right now.
Watch for:
1. There was never any evidence for the wet market hypothesis, but there was early evidence for the lab leak hypothesis.
2. Fauci’s focus was protecting “Science.” Redfield uses the phrase “lack of transparency” as a euphemism for “lying.”
3. Fauci influenced the change in the definition of “gain of function research” to get around Obama’s ban on such research.
4. The definition of vaccine was changed to fit a narrative.
5. Redfield disagreed with vaccine mandates.
There’s more, but I wish this doctor had been more vocal during the Lockdowns. Normalizing the point of view many of us had in 2020 is small solace. Cuomo and Redfield exhibit a minimal level of bravery in discussing these ideas in 2024.
I’m a fundamentally optimistic person. I’ve had a lot ton of harrowing events turn out to be benefits and I’ve listened to a ton of doomsayers who turn out to be wrong.
Several interactions with young people have got me slightly pessimistic about the direction of our culture (hold on for the silver lining, I cannot help myself).
A few months ago I was at a bookstore looking for material by Carl Jung. I was unsure if he would be in Philosophy, Psychology, or Religious Studies. When I asked an employee, he had no idea who I was talking about. He wasn’t a kid, certainly well enough into his 20s to have heard the name of the second most famous psychologist of the 20th century, yet he struggled to understand the mere spelling of the name.
I wrote this off at the time. I’m a weirdo and I know Jung was largely ignored for Freud in my schooling. I thought he was experiencing a resurgence in popularity, but what do I know of modern trends?
A couple months later I was at a library and my son was interested in reading The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka. Libraries sometimes separate Literature, Fiction, and Paperback Fiction in ways that I don’t understand, so I inquired at the reference desk. Again I was met with ignorance. Neither the title nor the author seemed familiar to the employee.
Yesterday, I was looking for books by and about Desmond Tutu at another library. This time, a young lady at reference didn’t seem to recognize that I was saying a name, answering, “Oh, what’s that?”
I’ll grant that I’m not familiar with his work, but I knew the name and his fight for equality in South Africa.
I don’t expect most people to be aware of these important figures, but the employees of book stores and libraries should have a foundational education when it comes to general literature.
This is one of my problems with the “Banned Book” craze. When an institution decides to use one book, many others must be excluded. Scarcity of space, time, and resources requires choices.
Our educational institutions are excluding deep, important texts. Without knowledge of the texts that have shaped our civilization, we become ignorant of ourselves.
Here’s the good news. These institutions are crumbling under their own incompetence. People are asking, “Why didn’t I learn that?” Independent thought and action is on the rise. Through home education, students can forge their own paths and avoid the mind numbing propaganda of a failing empire.
Joshua 1:8 KJV — This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.
I’ve spotted a problem in a couple other translations.
The New Living Translation omits the prescription against speaking the Law.
The New International Version and the Bible in Basic English give the opposite direction.
I’m open about my faith and constantly sharing it. I’m more careful about the prescriptions. I use Jesus as my guiding light because He came to fulfill the Law and directed His followers thusly:
Mark 12:29-31 KJV — And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
The weight of these commandments is why we must spend more time meditating than speaking. Love is easy to feel, it is harder to enact.
That’s why I try to start each day here.
I breathe deeply, exhale, and hold as I gaze at the rising sun. I thank God for all the things in my life and ask for guidance. I do so with a loving heart and pray for the wisdom to love my neighbor as I love myself.
I’m tidying up long overdo piles and found a wealth of family memories.
