Choices…we all have them. In our personal lives we accept that there are natural responses to the choices we make. You know, the yin and the yang of life. If I eat an apple I’ll feel better than if I eat a cheesecake – yes, the whole thing. (Although, there are definitely times when the cheesecake seems like the better option…particularly, when the complexities of life have taken hold of my better judgement!) Choices.

Then, there are the big-deal choices we hear about in the media. What power source is the right one? How do governments make the choice to promote one source over the other? Can we look at only the desired result – energy without byproduct. Or, do we need to look at how the energy source is developed, transported and implemented? And, are there hidden unfavorable results once the system is in place? For example, once in place, wind energy seems innocuous. Yet, wind energy farms have changed the migratory patterns of some species of birds. Will this ultimately affect the ecosystem they – and we – live in? Like, will certain bugs proliferate when they cease to be a favored avian entre? Will the birds themselves begin to die off as their deeply patterned lives are disrupted? Choices.

Everyday we are faced with choices. Should I get up early or sleep in? Do I go to work or call in sick? Show up at the gym or read a book? Change the sheets on the bed or simply pull up the comforter? Leave the comforter where it is and worry about it later? Buy the organic milk at a premium price or go for the milk on sale? Forget the milk and buy ice cream?

The thing is, how do we decide what choices to make? Some are easy, right? They are simply the ‘right’ thing to do. But, how do we decide what is ‘right’? We can rely on our culture to guide us to the responsible choice. Yet, how does that explain atrocities like slavery; holocausts; and discrimination against skin tone, gender and sexual orientation? 

Our religious beliefs can be a guide, although we can fall into traps here as well. Does our faith structure guide us toward love and acceptance of others? Or, do we have a list of standards we use to judge whether or not someone is ‘worthy’ of our compassion? 

When we read the story of the woman at the well (John 4:1-41), we enter into God’s world to learn something about love. Jesus shows us what it looks like to have compassion for another – to see need without judgement. We see a woman – an insignificant female – who has been deemed unworthy by a community that is considered by another group to be vile. It doesn’t get much lower than that!  But, Jesus sees her value as God’s beautiful creation in spite of who she has become as the result of choices made by her and the environment she lives in.

Let’s think about this one, how much sense does it make for community living in a culture that treats them as inferiors to, in turn, discriminate against another group of people because they are different? I mean, where is God’s message to us in this scenario? This is nothing but a caste system of exclusivity. You’re either part of our ‘in’ group, or you’re not worthy of our time. 

Who doesn’t love the story of the woman at the well? We can all resonate with parts of it. We have all been her in some form…a clique we can’t break into, a boss who demoralizes instead of mentors…choices.

Some of our choices are the right things for the wrong reasons and vice versa. It gets complicated with the demands of our culture and our religious structures. Yet, Jesus never seemed to get caught up in the rules. His example of life showed us that to live as fully as we were created to live is to simply see; to love the hopes and dreams and good in others; and to have compassion without judgement. Pure…uncomplicated by expectations…based in love for God and therefore God’s creation…based in love for others as part of God’s beautiful and diverse creation…singleness of heart…simple…choices…

I read a book this summer that made the statement, “God doesn’t really care what you do, God cares why you do it.” Choices…every moment of every day. How will you make yours?

I guess change is always happening. We only seem to notice the changes that we didn’t choose or the ones that affect the direction we hope our lives are going in. Some are better at riding the waves of change, while some of us sputter and resist it as if we can alter the reality that change will occur – whether we are ready for it or not. I guess it’s a lot like surfing. Those who love surfing know that their job is to simply balance and let the waves carry them forward. You’ve seen it, right? A wave that is just short of a tsunami with a lone surfer who moves skillfully on the board, adjusting their balance as they accommodate the power of the ocean.

And, then there are those of us who would lay plastered to the board, hanging on for dear life with hopes of getting through this experience so life can get back to normal. (Or, at least, get us back to the shore for a mai tai to calm our nerves…)

Either way, our surfers are changed – making ‘normal’ an elusive quest. I imagine our talented surfer would complete their ride energized through the knowledge that they became one with such a magnificent force of nature, while the novice might shut down…maybe just a little…from being so terrified that their future response would be avoidance. The experience changed them both.

I didn’t want my children to go to college. Oh, I did…but, I didn’t. I knew they needed to go as much for learning adult life skills as for the academics. Yet, it threw the balance of our home into chaos and I didn’t know if I could ride that wave and survive it with grace. I received a plant at a celebratory lunch prior to graduation at my daughter’s high school. It was an odd looking bulb plant with spiky leaves. New to gardening, I was confident I could grow anything. The leaves grew longer and longer over the summer months. I guess that’s okay, but it was boring. August came and it was time to take her to school – a mere thirteen hour drive from home. Did she know everything she needed to know for dorm life? Were her study skills adequate for a university curriculum? Would she be able to find her way safely around a new city? Was she ready for life away from parental influence? Okay, she was ready…but was I? She was like the first surfer – ready to move with the changes before her. I wanted to embrace the change, but found it intimidating and difficult.

The thing is, during our absence from home my plant had sent up a long stem which was full of flowers. When I saw it, it was as if I was being offered reassurance by God that she, too, will bloom – just let her grow into that which she was created to be. Change…

Ironically, ‘change’ is often wrapped up in a conversation that attempts to place God as the author of the change. Like, God causes the problem, the illness, the move, the conflict, the accident…well the list never ends…just so God can test us?  God, the same God that is described as, “kind and true, patient, and ruling all things in mercy,” (Wisdom of Solomon 15:1) will pick an occasion to cause us pain just to see if we somehow learn from it or pass some divine rite of passage? That doesn’t sound much like a kind, true, patient, merciful being!

When we see such a glaring inconsistency, we have to question our conventional ‘wisdom’ or understanding. My daughter – who, by the way did graduate from college with a degree in engineering – will frequently say, “correlation is not causation.” Maybe the belief that, “God is present in all situations” has morphed into the inconclusive hypothesis that, “If God is present in all situations, then God must cause all situations.” Our human rationalization for this leads us to the assumption that God wants to judge us through tests – or assaults – targeted toward disrupting our lives. Remember, “correlation is not causation.” Just because we can connect two dots doesn’t mean we have the full picture. Maybe our real test is not the situation causing us to have gut wrenching stress. Maybe it is to see God’s presence in and around and through the situation, redeeming it, not causing it, and to simply trust that God is.

Change. We can fight it or we can embrace it. Either way, it happens around us, through us and within us. The only thing we have control over is how we react to it. We can be energized or we can wither. We can live in worry or we can accept God’s assurance that God’s presence, grace and love is aways and everywhere in this amazing creation. Look for the blooms on the plant. You will find them!

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.

– Nelson Mandela –

I remember the tears that came unexpectedly while sitting at my cousin’s wedding. No, it wasn’t the vows or the beautiful bride…although she certainly was beautiful! They came at a point in the ceremony that typically announces things are beginning, but doesn’t carry much weighty emotion. My cousin was simply ushering his mother,  my aunt, to her place of honor in the front row. She looked happy and beautiful. He looked like a typical groom – dapper in the rented tuxedo and a bit nervous. It was the song that broke me into a million pieces – You were the wind beneath my wings… Of course, I had seen the movie it came from (Beaches), and heard Bette Midler sing it many times on the radio. It was a song about friends, right??? Or was it…

I saw a mother and a son. Although, it could have been a father or a daughter or an entire family. I saw her pride as she looked at her little boy – all grown up. No doubt her thoughts were a composite of memories – his accomplishments, his pains, her fears, her hopes, his hopes, his dreams, her dreams…

The song said it all –

Did you ever know that you’re my hero?

You’re everything I wish I could be.

I could fly higher than an eagle,

’cause you are the wind beneath my wings.

We watched the movie Parental Guidance last weekend. The grandparents were coming to take care of the kids for a few days. The parents were worried that Grandma and Grandpa would ruin their children and their perfectly constructed lives if they said or did the wrong thing…which they did over and over again. Oh no, not intentionally! Rather, it was out of ignorance to the philosophy of raising children that the parents embraced – a philosophy that insidiously valued self over others.

Recent events in Kansas City resulted in teens being taken into custody because a community curfew was violated. Parents protested that the curfew was silly; that a movie theater was at fault because a movie time resulted in the children being out after the curfew; that traffic on the street  caused a mother to be late in picking up her daughter; and that the police profiled the kids for political reasons. No one took responsibility for the fact that the children (teens…) were in an area that had a curfew (for teens…) and they were out after the curfew. No one seemed to see how they could have avoided a problem by understanding the law, realizing it was for a good greater than their desires, and taking appropriate measures to live within the law. What they thought about the value of the law was not the question.

Back to Nelson Mandela. What does the way we treat our children say about our society?

Our faith calls us to live within the belief that we indeed love God above all things. When we truly embrace that belief, we cannot help but ooze gratitude for the abundance of God’s love for us. In turn, we then cannot help but to love God’s creation (our neighbor) as ourselves. After all, God not only created everything, God paused to see that all of it was “good”…everything…even the people we don’t like, brussel sprouts and mosquitoes.

So – how do we treat our children? What does it say about the soul of our society? Of course there is a balance here. Some children live in horrific conditions and that has to change. But what about the other children – the ones who have solid homes and families to guide them? What direction are they learning to look? Towards their own comfort? Or towards others with compassion? Are they taught to respect others rights and opinions – even when they seem different or odd? To share their time to help others? Even at home? Are they learning how to accept consequences for their actions and, even more importantly, how to think through a situation to avoid unwanted consequences?

As a society we must do the same.

Do we want our society’s soul to be a place where people care for others – where compassion and relationships are the norm and we all work for the common good? (Of course, there will be times when we have different views on the common good! Mr Mandela had a quote for that as well, “A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don’t have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial and uninformed.”)  What do our children need to know to be responsible members of society and good leaders? Are the choices we make for them today leading toward that goal?

The wind beneath my wings? We need to teach our children to soar – to become all that they were created to be. But, as we do that, let us never forget Mr Mandela’s caution that the soul of our society will be a direct result of how we treat our children. The wind beneath them? It’s up to you.