immigration reform . . . from the bottom up

"Esteemed Mr. President, 

 "My name is María Dolores, but I can't give you my last name or anybody's last name or where we live because I am not supposed to be in your wonderful country. I apologize that I am here without permission, but I think I can explain. My teacher at my new school, Mr. B., said for our first big writing project we could write anything we wanted. So I decided to write to you because I understand you are the one in charge of the United States."

So begins María's letter. Her honesty is disarming. Her letter pulls me in.

"Mr. B. came around, checking on our first paragraphs. When he saw my blank paper, he suggested I write about my family and our culture. But I am too afraid to call attention to our family being from Mexico because my classmates might turn us in. And it is not as simple as all going back to our homeland, because there is a division right down the center of our family. My parents and I are Mexicans and my two little sisters, Ofie and Luby, are Americans."

Are immigration issues too complicated to explain to children? Here's a child ready to explain it to grown-ups.

"I have seen you on the television, Mr. President, saying that you want democracy for this whole world. I sincerely hope you get your wish. But that will mean that if everyone in this world gets a vote, the majority will not be Americans. They will be people like me from other countries that are so very crowded and poor. We would be able to vote for what we want and need. So this letter is from a voter from that future when you would want to be treated as fairly as I am asking you to treat me."

María's request is simple, though fulfilling it is not.

"Please, Mr. President, let it be okay for my father and uncles to stay here helping this nice family and helping our own family back home buy the things they need. Every week, my father and his brothers each contribute forty dollars to send to our family in Mexico. This total is more than their father used to make in a whole month. He was a farmer, working from sunrise to sunset. But now he is an old man, Mr. President, as old as you are—although he looks much older. But the companies that buy corn and coffee did not pay enough for him to be able to even buy the stuff he needed for the next planting.

I know this must seem like an untruth because coffee costs so much in this country. The other day Tyler's mother took us to Burlington, and after she bought us ice creams, she stopped by a shop where all they sell is different kinds of coffees. A big cup was almost two dollars! Mr. President, please believe me that those two dollars are not reaching my family. In fact, as Tío Armando says, we have come north to collect what is owed to us for our hard work back where we came from."

The complexities of immigration reform unfold in this award-winning book by Julia Alvarez. Her story, Return to Sender, is the story of two children — a young farm boy in Vermont whose family is on the brink of losing everything, and a young girl from Mexico whose father and uncles move up North to work on that farm. These families need each other to survive.

Tyler and María are only in 5th grade, but together they face big challenges that require every ounce of courage and generosity they possess.

We need stories like these — stories that help us to see the world through someone else's eyes, stories that make us angry and yet fill our hearts with compassion we didn't know was there. The plot takes a number of unexpected turns, so to find out what happens, you'll have to read it yourself! You won't be sorry you did.

on the lighter side

It's rare that I find a new children's book series that I can recommend. Those that are well written often have objectionable content. Those that are innocuous are often written poorly. A great many more suffer from both maladies. As a result we tend to favor the "classics" at our house -- Frog & Toad, Beverly Cleary, E. B. White, The Boxcar Children, and the rest of those listed to the right under "Best Kids Books." I've practically stopped even trying to find series I like.

But this week I've met an endearing new friend — Clementine. She makes me laugh page after page, and the prose is an absolute delight to read. The author is a genius at creating characters. No sorcery. No convoluted sentences. No (real) superpowers. No wildly dysfunctional family. Just a refreshing look at life through the eyes of an 8-year-old from a loving family – a sweet girl who is earnestly trying not to get sent to the principal's office . . . again. 

So if life is heavy and you need a few laughs, pretend you are checking out these books to read them to some children you know. I promise I won't tell anyone the real reason you have them in your possession.

Three cheers for great literature and good, clean fun!

shedding our (theological) skin

Summer spells more time to read with my kids, which I love. We're so spoiled to live across the street from one of the best children's libraries in the country! (But you would think we lived an hour away if you saw the stacks of books we lug home every time we go.)

As it turns out, children's books are a great source for theological reflection. While reading The Butterfly Story by Anca Hariton, I learned something new about caterpillars. And that new thing came in handy in a recent conversation with another student.

She came to me for help on a paper, but after that we chatted for a bit. She expressed that being in grad school has been confusing for her. She feels like the God she learned about as a child is different than the God she's learning about at Wheaton. Now when she prays she's not sure who she's praying to. And that's disconcerting.

We didn't go into detail about the particular differences between her childhood theology and what she's hearing in class. But I've felt that tension before, too. You don't want to turn your back on your childhood faith and the people who instilled it in you. But you trust that your professors know what they're talking about, at least most of the time. The choice between them is sometimes awkward and painful!

Everything seemed so simple before seminary. Your job was to read your Bible, pray, and tell other people about Jesus. You were supposed to tell them that he died on the cross for their sins and that if they ask him into their hearts they can go to heaven to live with him forever.

But then you discover that reading the Bible is not that simple. The Bible never talks about "asking Jesus into your heart." And "Jesus" doesn't make any sense without the Old Testament background. Furthermore, you're told that Westerners tend to over-emphasize individuality and miss the corporateness of the Bible. It's not about "me and Jesus" but about identifying with the believing community. And then your professor points out  "heaven" is not forever. It's only temporary. The real forever is in the new creation. All that makes sense, but it's crippling, because you're not sure how to talk about the gospel anymore. How can I encourage people to read the Bible without getting stuck in hermeneutics? What is the gospel if it's not "me asking Jesus in my heart so I can live in heaven forever"? What do I tell them?

Here's where the Butterfly Story can be helpful. Everyone knows that a caterpillar turns into a butterfly while it's in the chrysalis (a.k.a. cocoon). But did you know that while it's a caterpillar it outgrows its skin several times? It starts out small, but as it eats and grows larger its skin gets tighter and tighter until it splits open, allowing the caterpillar to wriggle out, fill up with air, and keep eating and growing.

The first skin was not defective. It was right for beginning. It did the job. But it's not big enough to accommodate all the growth the caterpillar needs to experience so that it can become what it was designed to be.

Faith is like that. Our simple ideas about God work for a season. By God's grace they get us where we need to be to learn more. But they can't accommodate everything. We must keep eating and keep growing and not be afraid to shed our skin when things get tight. God hasn't changed. But sometimes our picture of who he is and how he works needs filling out. And that's ok. It's all part of growing up.

The Waiting Place

Are you in The Waiting Place?

Waiting for healing
Waiting for test results
Waiting for a tax refund
Waiting for clear direction
Waiting for interest rates to go up
Waiting for the phone to ring with a job offer
Waiting for a pregnancy test to turn out positive
Waiting for good news from graduate admissions
Waiting for me to write another blog post (sorry to keep you waiting!)

I've never been good at waiting. When God doled out patience I was nowhere in sight. In fact, I remember my grandma giving me an embroidered wall-hanging when I turned 9 or 10. It had a pretty little girl in a pink dress, surrounded by flowers. Across the top these words were carefully stitched: "Patience is a Virtue." Ouch. Apparently it was already obvious that I was allergic to The Waiting Place.

Fortunately (or unfortunately), we live in an age that has radically minimized waiting and radically transformed the way we wait. Anything I want to order on Amazon shows up on my doorstep in 2 days. We don't stand in line doing nothing, we text or check Facebook. Our kids don't look out the car windows, they watch DVD's. We don't wait for food, we don't wait for news, we don't wait for election results. It's all ours in a matter of seconds. (Which is why I like blogging. I can say what's on my mind and immediately everyone on the planet can hear about it. Aren't you glad about that?)

But even with all these technological advances, we still have to wait for the hard things. And I'm afraid we're so unaccustomed to waiting that it's become even harder for our generation.

Dr. Seuss describes The Waiting Place in Oh, the Places You'll Go!, and as usual he can make it all rhyme beautifully.

"The Waiting Place" in Dr. Seuss' Oh, the Places You'll Go!

"Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting."


But Dr. Seuss is dead wrong about something (am I allowed to say that?). He expresses what most of us feel about The Waiting Place, calling it "a most useless place." And it's not true.

Waiting is good for us.

Even when (especially when) we don't like it.

Waiting reminds us that we are not in control. We do not pull the levers on the great machine of life. We are not the source of new life, good health, clear thinking, or vocational satisfaction. We are small.

And what we do with our smallness is important.

We can kick and scream, whine and complain, worry and stress. Or we can learn to live in a place of faith, hope, and love. We can admit that we need God. The Waiting Place brings out our most selfish selves. It is prime time to let him transform us so that we can listen longer, think more clearly, care more deeply, and share more freely. That doesn't make it easy, but it does make it useful.

And so, for all my waiting friends . . . you know who you are . . . I am waiting with you. And trusting God to work it all out for his glory. May He answer quickly . . . but not so quickly that we miss the good gifts He has for us in The Waiting Place.

what makes a good book good?

I've been reflecting lately on what qualifies something as "good literature." I admit it, I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to books. I have been known to hide children's books in closets and under furniture, hoping to avoid the painful experience of re-reading them. I've also been known to get home from the library with a new book, read it to the kids, and then hop on Amazon to buy a copy for our family. Good books ought to be owned, re-read, and treasured!

The kids and I have discovered a few new gems (and a few groaners) this month from our public library, and that's what got me thinking. Here's my proposal for a definition of good literature. I'd love to know what you think!

A good book is one that gets better each time it is read, and invites readers to notice more and more intentional artistry. Sometimes literary art comes through in perfectly delightful rhyme, other times through playful allusions to other great books. Sometimes pictures are literary masterpieces themselves! The story must be well-told and well-crafted so that subsequent readings don't uncover "holes" in the plot or characterization. Above all, a good story must speak to the reader about herself in a way that illuminates her own life experience.

This last sentence is reflected in a book I've just finished reading by Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative. Alter calls narrative in the Bible "prose fiction," not because he doesn't think it's true, but because he sees it operating in similar ways. Ingeniously, he says, "We learn through fiction because we encounter in it the translucent images the writer has cunningly projected out of an intuitively grasped fund of experience not dissimilar to our own, only shaped, defined, ordered, probed in ways we never manage in the muddled and diffuse transactions of our own lives." (156) In other words, good fiction is good because it tells us about ourselves in a way that we can't see from our own vantage point. A good writer is a deep thinker with insight into how things really are. That's what makes Arnold Lobel one of the most brilliant writers of 'I Can Read' books who has ever lived. Frog and Toad make us laugh because they are like us. (Who really wants will power anyway?)

A bad book, on the other hand, is one that parents loath re-reading to their kids. The rhyme doesn't really work. The pictures lack creativity. The plot has holes or is entirely absent. Life is too short to read bad books. I recommend hiding them (or donating them to your local Goodwill).

Perhaps this is why after all these years I'm still studying the Bible and loving it. The Bible is not the only good book, but I have to say that the more I read it, the better it gets!

a beautiful thing

There's nothing more beautiful than to watch someone doing just what God created them to do.

We spent 5 wonderful hours with our friend, Mindy, yesterday.  She absolutely exudes the joy of the Lord.  Just being in the same room is inspiring!  Mindy is one of only 10 foreigners living in a city of over 400,000 people in the developing world.  For her, all of life has one purpose: introducing others to Jesus.  Like the apostle Paul, she doesn't want to build on another man's foundation.  So she has her sights set on moving to another city, one where no foreigner has ever lived.  Her eyes sparkle as she tells us one story after another of recent opportunities to share her faith.  In less than a year, before she has even grasped enough language to talk freely about spiritual things, a fledgling church has been born.  She insists that it was others who sowed the seeds, she was just in the right place at the right time to catch the fruit as it fell off the tree.  But she makes it look so easy!

That's usually how it is with spiritual gifts.  The evidence of the Holy Spirit's empowerment is obvious.  After our time with Mindy I mentioned to Danny that I couldn't help questioning whether getting a PhD was the right thing to do.  Maybe I should just tell people about Jesus all day long.  Danny quickly reminded me of what I already knew:  each of us has different gifts.  It's easy to look at someone else who serves so effortlessly in some capacity and think, that's what I should be doing.  But the Spirit empowers each of us uniquely, using our personalities and life experience to contribute something beautiful to His kingdom.  We can't take our cues from someone else, because what looks effortless becomes a mess in the wrong hands.

So, in the words of Dr. Suess*:

"So that is why
I think that I
Just wish to be
Like me."

May His Spirit empower you today to do precisely what He has created you to do!

*Theodore Geisel (aka Dr. Suess), writing under the pen name Theo. LeSieg in I Wish That I Had Duck Feet.

giving kids the big picture

I can hardly contain my excitement about a new book that just arrived in the mail (in time for Emma's 5th birthday tomorrow)...

'The Big Picture Story Bible'

Unlike other children's Bibles that give a random assortment of Bible stories, this Bible tells the 'BIG' story that begins with creation and ends with God's promise to be king of the whole world.  It's the best of biblical theology, presented in a clear and winsome way for kids.  The story is told in such a way that kids will be able to make connections between key events - like the Passover and Christ's death - and really understand the significance of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. 

This book is not meant to be the only Bible your family owns.  It picks very few of the stories and does not present many details.  The goal is to give the big picture, so if you have another beloved children's Bible (like this one) you can keep reading it and allow 'The Big Picture Story Bible' to tie it all together.

It does, unfortunately, depict angels with wings, and I noticed that the story of David and Goliath did not incorporate what scholars now know about that event (i.e. that Goliath was likely over 6 feet tall, not 9, and that David's stone probably hit him in the shins, not the forehead).  But these are very minor complaints in light of the huge contribution this book makes to a family's grasp of the message of Scripture.

Hurrah for a forward leap in children's literature!

slow and steady

The kids and I read 'The Tortoise and the Hare' this morning.  I have always liked that story where the unlikely turtle wins the race through discipline and perseverance, while the rabbit, who takes for granted his victory, naps in the shade.

It made me think of my seminary experience.  I am often asked, "How do you do it?"  The idea of managing a home, mothering 3 active children, keeping in touch with friends and family, volunteering at church, and adding a masters degree to all that is rather overwhelming.  But I, like the tortoise, just take it one step at a time.  One book at a time.  One paper at a time.

Every day is full of choices about how we can spend our time.  Being a student means a lot of those choices are made for me (and Danny!).  During Easton's morning nap I study.  During the kids' afternoon rest I study.  After they go to bed I study some more.  It's true, there are no time slots left for TV or scrapbooking or facebook or manicures.  But all those 1 hour chunks really do add up!  That's the steady part.  As for the slow part ... consider this:  Just 18 months from now I will graduate with a 2-year degree ... that I started in the spring of 2004.  For those of you who are not math whizzes, that means I've crammed two years of study into seven.  :) 

And that, my friends, is proof that the Ethiopian proverb is true:  Little by little the egg will walk.
Or to put it in American jargon: Slow and steady wins the race.

Historical Criticism meets "Panda in the Park"

I am currently reading Craig Keener's commentary on the book of John. More accurately, I am reading the INTRODUCTION to his commentary on John - all 363 pages of it. How is it possible, you ask (at least I did!), to write that much without getting to the text itself? Allow me to illustrate with one of Easton's current favorites, Panda in the Park. It does not contain the usual authorial designation on the cover, which raises a number of questions. Was this book written anonymously? Was the text of the book merely generated by the publisher, indicating that readers should not expect a high degree of rhetorical style? Was the author's name accidentally excised from the original manuscript? Do we have access to other surviving copies of this work? Are those copies similarly anonymous? An important preliminary question, of course is the nature of literature from the period in which we assume this book to have been written. Did children's books from this period normally indicate authorship? If we can ascertain the location of the publishing house, this too could shed light on our project. Perhaps a regional preference for anonymity in children's literature could be demonstrated. Better yet, have any subsequent works quoted from this book? Do those works give us any ideas about who the original readers assumed the author to have been?

In the course of our very exhaustive analysis of every available source of information about this book and others written in its time, we make a startling discovery. The BACK cover of this book includes the following designation: "Written by Anna Milbourne". We find this fascinating. Now we have a hypothesis which we can test. How reliable is this designation? That remains to be seen. In the absence of any other specific proof of authorship (either internal or external), we must return to hypothetical reconstruction of the milieu in which the book was written. We are aware of the possibility of ghostwriting and even pseudonymity. To what degree was either practiced during this period? We find that ghostwritten books did account for a surprising percentage of sales during this book's publication, but in every case the author listed on the cover was well known. This spawns a host of other questions. Have any other works been attributed to Anna Milbourne? Were they widely distributed? Would the average reader have recognized her name as an author? Does the genre, vocabulary and style of this book significantly overlap other works proportedly written by Anna Milbourne? Can we verify that she was even alive when this book was published? If not, is there a plausible explanation for its posthumous publication?

As you can see, writing an introduction which well exceeds the length of the work itself (in our case 49 words exclusive of the title) without actually commenting on the text is not as difficult as it may sound. And these are merely the questions which need to be addressed; we haven't even hinted at the answers! However, in the absence of any strong supporting evidence to the contrary, we will probably conclude that Anna did, indeed, write the book entitled, Panda in the Park, as John likely wrote the gospel that bears his name. As Keener thoroughly demonstrates, no compelling evidence exists to exclude the possibility that he was the author. And the best evidence we do have points to him.

By now it should be abundantly clear how much this reading of Keener has enhanced my role as reader of bedtime stories to my little ones. In case it's not obvious, I will put it plainly. A book which for years has brought delight to my children, now intrigues me as well. As I recite its lines over and over from memory, my mind can engage with more fascinating questions which previously did not occur to me. And such a small price to pay!