$2, what can it do?

What could you do with two dollars?  Maybe buy a cup of coffee.  Or a donut.  Not both.

This is the bill I didn't loose

At our church this last Sunday, we had a reverse offering.  Each person there was asked to take a $2 bill from the offering basket for each member of their house hold.  We were challenged to see what good we could do in the world with two dollars.

I took three $2 bills, one for me, and one for each of the kids still at home.  I imagined that I'd hand them out to my teens and we'd talk about our favorite charities.  It would be a very intellectual and meaningful conversation.  Maybe we'd decide to match the $2 donations to send to one of them.  Or maybe we'd use the combined $6 to buy some baking supplies and sell sweets at church   Even though it was a small amount, it was fun imagining what we'd do.

However, being me, being us, that's not what happened.  First of all, the teens weren't that much into charity, and while the Hot Dog (now 13 yo) thought a $2 bill was cool, Lego Kid was pretty blase.  Second, I had the bills in the side pocket of my purse, and at some point, while I was unloading groceries, two of the bills fell out of my purse, never to be seen by me again.

Of course they did.  That's my kinda of wiener dog luck.  Or, well, I'm a bit of a klutz.  Whatever.

Now, it's not like the loss of $4 is really a big deal, and it's not even that the loss of two $2 bills is really that upsetting.  After all, I can take my money to a bank and ask for it to be exchanged for $2 bills if I want.  It's just... I had plans for it.  Those. Exact. Bills.

I was sad when I got home, and I told Hot Dog about it.  That kid.  He was awesome.
"But maybe they were found by someone who could really appreciate it"

!!!
Right.
That's exactly right.

Now we got the fun of imagining what happened to those $2 bills.

A homeless person found them and was able to get some hot food from the grocery deli.

A little kid found one and thought it was play  money, until his mom told him it was real, and he could keep it!  He was so excited!!

A squirrel found one, carried it to it's nest to become part of the insulation that will keep it warm all winter.

It got caught in a car, drove away, and fell out, right in front of a little girl who picked it up and give it to her big brother.  He had been sad because his team lost last week, and she was so happy to be able to make him smile.

None of our stories was particularly brilliant, but we had fun imagining what happened to those two bills.  I felt better of the little loss of our bills.  We're so lucky, we know that we'll be able to continue to give to support the work of our church, even with out our $2 bills..  Our church is doing so much good in the community; Faith Family Hospitality, One Family One Village, the Larimer County Mobile Food Bank, becoming a Sanctuary church, these are just some of what we're doing right now.

Now it's your turn.  What would you do with your $2?
Leave your stories in the comments, and if you are moved, make a donation somewhere, maybe even Foothills Unitarian, and tell us what good you hope will come of your donation.

Character

I'm participating in NaNoWriMo. Man, characters can be hard for me. It's hard to build a character in a novel. (Not as hard for me as plot, but that's another post!) Characters need depth, nuance, and color - not easy for a techie type!

It's even harder to build character in a real person. How do you teach integrity? What do you do with a kid who knows how to play the game but doesn't understand - it's so much more than a game? If a kid follows the letter of the law, but finds every loop hole and bend the rules when it's convenient and not observed, how do you respond?

I try to explain to my kids rules are just tiny specifics we come up with for immature minds. Principles are what grown ups try to live by. I posted a question on facebook recently.
(FB, from here on out known as TGTS "The Great Time Suck")

"What house rules do you have that you'd never thought you'd need?" I got some great responses. So, as an exercise, here's the rules and the principles they're based on.

What we said:
"No cleaning the white board with the cat"
"You may not throw the pet rat in the air to see how it lands"
"Don't hit your sister with a burrito"
What we meant:
Be Kind to Others


What we said:

"Don't lick... " the seat belt, your sister, your brother
"No kids with sledgehammers"
"No spoons in anyone's butt"
"No picking your brother's nose"
"No body slams on the baby"
"Never jump on a person holding a knife"
What we meant:
Be Safe, Stay Healthy

What we said:
"No sillybandz in your food"
"No lunch meat on the soccer ball"
"You may not paint the kitchen cabinets with lime jello"
What we meant:
Don't waste resources

Now obviously there's some over lap. One could argue that it's wasting the burrito to hit your sister with it. Certainly body slamming the baby isn't being kind to that baby. But you get the idea.

Youth and adults have rules too. We have too often ignored speed limits on the roads, ignored marriage vows, plagerized papers, cheating on tests.... Yes, there are rules that are limiting and don't always deserve to be adhered to, but most rules are something that someone saw a legitimate need for. Rules are applied principles.

I want to teach all my kids that we can see a person's character , not just through their rhetoric, but through their behavior, not just the behavior they have when their in the public view, but their private behavior.

Who do you want in your life, a person who follows the rules or a person who adheres to principles?

Who do you want to be?

Living in a creative society

We live in a consumer society, yet what I want with my family is a creative society. It's important to understand the difference and realize that with our daily actions we not only choose, we create, the life we life.

A person in a consumer culture looks outside of the individual for entertainment, education and survival. A person in a creative culture looks to each individual for the entertainment, education and survival.

Today as I write this, my husband is showing a friend and his brother how to use his table saw to cut the wood they need to build a small sail boat. The friend's children are here playing with our children. The older two are on an ancient laptop, programming in python. They are laughing manically - it must be a funny program! The younger 4 kids are outside burying and then digging up treasure, occasionally throwing a ball for our big mutt. I sit here typing up posts in advance, having just discovered that I have the power to pre-schedule blog posts. (Yea me!)

We are making our own entertainment. We are creating our own community.

A Homemade Life

Tonight I was asked to label my passion. I was baffled. To me, my life is all of one piece. It has theme and coherence, but I couldn't put a name to the thing that connects my passions.

Learning, creating, sharing, writing, making music, gardening, cooking, hiking, camping, kayaking, sailing, being with my kids - the list is truly endless, and while some are more important to me than others, I wouldn't want to leave anything out. So, I looked for a base commonality and now I'm trying this idea on:

A homemade life, a do it myself life, an examined life, a not quite perfect but entirely my own life - that's what is my passion.

Embracing all of life, even death

We've been pretty busy here. One of the things keeping me busy is that I've accepted a position helping with music in our children's worship services at church. This month we're working our way up to Dia De Los Muertos in November.

One of the songs we're singing is "Circle of the Sun". It's a great song about the life cycle, being born, living, and dying. I know that dying is a taboo subject for many people. It's certainly not talked about much in social situations. Yet, it is as important a part of our lives as birth. In our church we don't offer the comfort of a promised eternal salvation. We acknowledge and honor the many beliefs of world faith traditions, while respecting the independent search for truth of each individual.

I'm just singing with the kids, but here's what I'd say if I were speaking.

Who here was born? Ya? Me too!
Who has a family? Me too!
Who here is going to die? Me too!

Wait.
Did I see that some of your hands didn't come up so quickly? Why? I know you're going to die. I'm going to die. We will all die, someday. You. Me. Everyone here. Everyone we've ever known.

It's normal to feel sad and lonely when someone we know or love dies. It's normal to feel worried and scared to think about your own death or that of those you care about. But I want to tell you something.

IT'S OK. Dying isn't the worst thing that happens to a person. Those who have died are beyond pain and sorrow. It's those people alive who suffer when a loved one dies. When someone we care about dies - we hurt. We can see that other people are hurting too. Hurting is scary. Sometimes we don't know if the hurt will ever stop. We can feel alone and isolated in our pain. So when someone dies it's up to us to reach out to other people -to offer comfort - to ASK for comfort. When death takes a loved one we need to acknowledge that loss. We also need to be present in our community. We need to experience the human condition together, acknowledge our vulnerability and take solace in the company of fellow travelers.

Let's celebrate death as one more part of our circle of life. Death will come to us all. Let's not ignore it. Let's play with it. Play tag with it! Let's have so much fun, love so many so hard, that when death finally catches us, breathless and laughing, we have no regrets that we're finally "it".

I don't know how that would go down in Sunday school. But it's what I believe, and what in essence I've told our own children. It doesn't make the pain of loss any better. I don't think it takes away the fear of death. But I do think that acknowledging the place of death in life honors our lives far more than ignoring it.