Hashtag the Pirate

We always like to have some sort of skit at the beginning of chapel in the evening to make the kids laugh.  Sometimes we are successful, and other times not so much.  Because our theme was Treasure Island, Phil & I got an idea for a bit involving a pirate that grew into many good laughs over the summer.  We got the idea from watching Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show.  Jimmy has a regular bit involving guy in panda suit.  It's called Hashtag the Panda.  You can see some of the bit here.

So Hashtag the Pirate barged into the chapel every evening to wreak a little havoc.  Sometimes he challenged campers to games of skill.  Other times he kidnapped someone on the staff and held them for ransom.  He lobbed "cannonballs" on us from the loft of the chapel.  When asked why he was doing all this his answer was, "Because I'm a pirate."

Sometimes he made some of our friends walk the plank.  Fortunately we were ready for him, and we sent a submarine to save them.

During the last week we were trying to come up with some new things for Hashtag to do. (You get tired of doing the same bit every week.)  As we talked at the dinner table, someone mentioned sword fighting.  One of the staff kids, Alex, jumped all over that.  He spends a lot of time thinking of characters for video type games, the weapons they might use, and the moves they might make.  He will demonstrate them for you at the drop of a hat.  So we created a storyline that involved Alex fighting Hashtag.   When I asked Alex about the skit after it was over, he was beside himself.  "That was so exhilarating!" he told me.  It was one of my favorite moments of the summer. 

Another time I loved was our snack time entertainment on Thursday nights of camp.  Hashtag would come in and we would call up different campers to dance with Hashtag.  Random music would play, and they would all dance to whatever type of music came up.  At the end everyone who wanted to would get up and dance with Hashtag to "Cotton-Eyed Joe."  I don't have any great pictures of this because all the motion makes them very blurry.  But I did get a couple of the slower waltzes he did with some of the girls.

Hashtag ended up being quite a hit with all the campers.  All summer a host of different staffers played Hashtag, and the kids were always kept guessing about who Hashtag really was.  Hashtag even got mail once from a camper who said she knew who Hashtag really was.  Hashtag became a great part of our activities and our conversations, and I'm really glad he joined us for our summer fun.

The Story of My Haikus

I’ve been writing haikus.  Maybe you've noticed.

There’s a reason.

Christy and Ryan
Christy is crying because it is time to leave
and this is her last year as a camper.
But she found out she can come back next
year on staff!

Ryan and Christy are long-time campers, and they always bring lots of fun ideas with them when they come.  They came for Teen 1 week of camp and cooked up the idea of writing haikus.  Once they started, they got on a roll and couldn’t stop.  

They decorated their cabin with haikus and wrote one for every person in their cabin. 

They wrote one for the kitchen staff.

  

And they wrote one for me.

I'll have to explain about Hashtag in another post.

After I received their haiku, I wrote one back to both the girls.  When they received it in the camp mail I could see both of them reading it and counting on their fingers to see if I got it right.  (Some of you have been doing it too.)

So that is what got me on my haiku writing kick.  That and just being in this beautiful place.

For those of you that don’t know, the definition of a haiku is as follows:

1. a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world.

   • an English imitation of this.

I have found the natural world around me very inspiring this summer.  It always is, but I’ve spent more time noticing, paying attention.  And as I experience these moments, thinking about the writing of the haikus has made me focus on the experience in a deeper way than I might otherwise do.  Listening for the sounds, thinking of a specific word that really expresses what I’m seeing, paying attention to all my senses in the experience, has made all the difference.

Each year people, campers and staff, bring us gifts of talents and thoughts that bless us.  Ryan and Christy gave me a great gift this summer.  I am thankful for the treasure it has been for me.

What I'm Reading

I just finished reading this Pulitzer Prize winning novel.  I don't read enough fiction (Phil tells me) and so I went looking for something interesting.  I will tell you that it took me about 60-70 pages to finally get drawn into the plot of the story but in the end it was very satisfying.

The main character, John Ames, is a minister who is in his seventies and who is going to die shortly.  He has a seven-year-old son for whom he is recording some of his own history and that of his family because he will not be around to give his account to his son when he is of age.  The main plot centers around the minister's godson and namesake, who has turned out to be quite a rogue and a source of heartache to his family and to Ames.  It is a recurring plot in literature which you find in Legends of the Fall and A River Runs Through It and lots of other pieces.  And it is a common occurrence in families, so it resounds with people.

As always, I found a couple of passages and quotes that I liked, so I'll share them here.

"I believe that the old man had far too narrow an idea of what a vision might be.  He may, so to speak, have been so dazzled by the great light of his experience to realize that an impressive sun shines on us all." (Oh, I have known a few people of whom this is true!)

"The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning.  Light within light.  It seems like a metaphor for something.  So much does... It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within the great general light of existence.  Or it seems like poetry within language. Perhaps wisdom within experience. or marriage with friendship and love..."

Recalling an article he read from 1948 (it seems to me appropriate for today):
"...It says 95 percent of us say we believe in God.  But our religion doesn't meet the writer's standards, not at all.  To his mind, all those people in all those churches are the scribes and the Pharisees.  He seems to me to be a bit of a scribe himself, scorning and rebuking the way he does.  How do you tell a scribe from a prophet, which is what he clearly takes himself to be?  The prophets love the people they chastise, a thing this writer does not appear to me to do."  (I see many scribes today but not many prophets who love the people they are rebuking.)

"Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it.  I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave-- that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hand and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.  And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful.  It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing.  But this is pulpit speaking.  What have I to leave you but the ruins of old courage, and the love of old gallantry and hope?  Well, as I have said, it is all an ember now, and the good Lord will surely someday breathe it into flame again."  (I am so struck by the beauty of this passage but it may need more context than I have given it here.)

Happy Birthday, Phil Kiper!

Phil caught these walleye at
Tims Ford this spring.

Today we are spending another birthday apart since Phil is already in Canada for the summer.  I will be joining him in June.  I decided to share a piece inspired by him as I am so thankful for many things he adds to my life every day.

My friend Corrina is heading up an effort to write daily devotions for people hiking the Appalachian Trail.  In order to give people a taste of what this would be like and get them on board for this project, she has asked several friends to write pieces with Lake Junaluska (a Methodist retreat center) in mind.  She had a list of sites from around and about the property and each of us was supposed to select one.  Having never been there myself, I chose the lake... because I've spent a lot of time sitting beside a lake.

The other ideas in this piece come from conversations I've had with Phil about what fishing means to him, how he thinks about it, and the challenge it is for him physically, mentally, even spiritually.

Here is the devotional:

I have spent many hours sitting beside a lake and wondering at its beauty.  I revel in the shimmering reflection of the sunlight upon the water.  I enjoy the cool breeze that wafts my way.  I like the adventure of paddling along the surface in a canoe or on a paddleboard.  As I sit gazing at the water I see the head of a turtle emerge, or I hear the “plip” of a fish snatching a bug off the top of the water.  I see the ripples emanating from the spot, and it reminds me that there is much more going on here in this place than I can see from the surface. 

There is a whole world below the surface of the water.  A world where creatures are born and live out their lives.  A world where life and death battles take place every hour of every day.  A world hidden to our eyes.  It is a world that is alive and active whether we are tuned in to it or not.

My husband is a fisherman, and he focuses on the hidden world below the surface.  His boat is equipped with electronics that allow him to look for fish in the depths of the lake.  Because he has invested so much time in fishing, he has learned where the fish are, what weather will provide the best conditions for fishing, and what baits work to attract the type of fish in that particular area.  And because he knows all these things, he has become a very good guide and has been able to give many friends the best fishing experience of their lives. 

In the same way, there is a spiritual world that remains hidden to many people throughout their lives.  It is just as alive and active as the physical world in which we live, but unless people choose to see it, it will remain unknown and unexplored.  Our job as spiritual people, as spiritual guides, is to tune people in to this other reality.  Just as my husband guides people to explore and engage the world below the surface of the water, we are to help them see the clues and read the signs that reveal God’s work and purpose in the spiritual world. 

In order to do this, we must invest our time and effort in learning for ourselves how God works and reveals Himself to us.  We must develop the conditions that allow us to experience God in the circumstances of our own lives. And as we do this, we will be equipped to guide people to experience the invisible spiritual world in which God is always fully present and accessible in a meaningful way.

Hillbilly Elegy

I just finished reading Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance.  I always know it's a good book when I can't stop  thinking about it once it's finished.  To give you a summary of the book, here is the information on the book jacket cover:

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis-- that of poor, white Americans.  The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for over forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside.  In Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hanging around your neck.

The Vance family story began with hope in post-war America.  J.D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love" and moved to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them.  They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in achieving generational upward mobility.  But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.'s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America.  With piercing honesty, Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his chaotic history.

A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility feels.  And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

I can't recommend this book highly enough.  Everyone who teaches school in our area should read this book in order to get just a glimpse of what some of their students go through on a daily basis and the effect it has on them.  I wish I could have read it when I was teaching fourth grade years ago.  Even though I was somewhat aware of the lives some of my students led, this inside look would certainly have added to my empathy for some of my toughest kids.  Even as a teacher of gifted children, I had extremely bright students who were coming from homes very similar to what J.D. described.  Some of them made it into the middle class.  Others did not.

Phil and I have recently been trained as volunteers in a juvenile court system program called CASA, court appointed special advocates.  In this program we are assigned children who are under the Department of Children's Services (DCS) protection.  Our role is to sort through all of the people involved in the child's life and advocate for a permanent placement that we believe will be in the best interest of the child.  The goal is to stay with this child throughout the time they are under DCS supervision in order to make sure the child doesn't fall through the cracks and get lost in the system.

Part of our training involved spending several hours observing juvenile court.  It has been quite an education, and in this setting we have observed many families who look like the family in this book.  It is easy for people in the courts (and teachers) to grow cynical in helping these families, but this book makes it clear how the system continually stacks the deck against these people. So Phil and I hope that we can interact with the people we come in contact with in such a way that we give them hope and a chance to make it out of the troubled situation that has brought them to court.  We want to think that anyone we meet might be a possible J.D.

The author makes a couple of other important points.  He firmly believes that blaming the system will never get you anywhere in life.  Everyone makes choices, and the consequences of those choices are the things that make our life what it is, good or bad.  J.D. also says that along the way he had key people in his life who made it possible for him to survive, and eventually, to thrive in the life that he has made for himself.  His story made me very aware of the difference one person can make in a child's life.

Another thought that I took away from Hillbilly Elegy is how fortunate I am that this is not my family's story.  My grandfather grew up in Kentucky and raised his kids there.  All of them left Kentucky just as J.D.'s grandparents and parents did and made it successfully into the middle class.  Many of my cousins are college graduates and have great careers.  But my family was not dysfunctional like J.D.'s, and I will always know that to their faith in God and their decision to live according to biblical principles played a part in their success.

Hillbilly Elegy gave me lots of insight, and I continue to think about the things I learned.  I hope many of you will check it out because, if you live here in Dunlap, there are people all around you who are struggling, and they need your empathy and understanding if there is going to be any hope of turning their lives around.

(If you're a person who is bothered by bad language, this may not be the book for you.  Mamaw Vance cusses like a sailor.)

Take Aways from My Trip to Haiti

Houses on the hillside in Port-au-Prince

You can't go to someplace like Haiti without having so many thoughts and ideas to take away from the experience.  Here are a few of mine.

Another view of Port-au-Prince

1.  Haiti is complicated.  

          Haiti is a devastatingly poor country and has been for hundreds of years.  Though billions of dollars of aid have flowed to Haiti, the people continue to languish in poverty.  There are several reasons.  Big families are looked upon as important in many parts of this country and the simple fact is that there are too many people for the environment to sustain.  Also, the fact that they have had so many corrupt leaders in their government has lead to a very small elite class and a very large percentage of people in extreme poverty.

Roadside stand selling souvenirs

2  Lives are impacted by a tremendous lack of resources.

          In the village we worked in we saw people struggling with a subsistence level of living.  Tremendous effort has to be put into growing crops, getting and cooking daily food, and getting to and from the places you need to go.  In the clinic, many of the prescriptions we dispensed to people were for everyday medications that are so readily available to us in the U.S.  These were things like tylenol, Tums, Claritin, and eye drops.  Without the clinic, people in this area can't get simple relief from headaches or heartburn.

Tilling the soil

3.  Having access to resources has made a tremendous difference in the village. 

          We saw very few cases of malnutrition in the clinic.  That is partly because so many of the children attend school and are able to have access to a healthy meal at lunch.  As I have been working on the mobile pack for Feed My Starving Children, it was really interesting to see the impact that a healthy meal can have on the entire population.

The lunch served at the school

4.  White privilege is striking.  

          I found myself in a culture where my white skin put me a pretty small minority, but everywhere around me I saw the privileges that were afforded me because of my color and my nationality.  I had access to the nicest accommodations and services anywhere I went.  One of the friends I traveled with told me that last year they went to a nice grocery store which had armed guards outside to determine who would be allowed to enter. 

5.  Do everything with great love.

          I tried to keep this thought at the forefront of my mind the whole time I was there.  Without love, anything I do is wasted effort.  I often thought of the way Jesus interacted with the crowds that came to him for healing and felt privileged to be a part of His touching those who come to Him.  I tried to look in their faces and see Jesus ("Whatever you do the least of these, you do to me.").

Dr. Mark showing great love

6.  Put your drop in the bucket.

          It is easy to go to a place like Haiti and think, "What difference can this small thing I am doing make?'  Nothing ever seems to change.  But we were told to just come and put our drop in the bucket and do what we can do, and leave the rest to God.  He will multiply our efforts as He sees fit.

Highlights from Haiti

I had many great experiences while in Haiti.  Here are a few of the highlights.

1.  Working in a medical clinic.  All my experience has been in the field of education.  It was a pleasure to step into an area that was entirely new to me.  I thought the medical staff was very good at what they were doing, and it was a pleasure to watch them do their thing.  The conversations you have around medical people are very different too.  Often they are pretty gross, but always interesting.

2.  Meeting Willem and Beth.  I think they are doing excellent work that is making a huge difference in the lives of the people in the area.  Willem has dual citizenship in the U.S. and Haiti.  He could have made a much easier life for himself, but he and Beth have committed their life to Haiti.  Their faith and faithfulness is very inspiring.

This book chronicles the work Willem
and Beth do in Haiti.

3.  Bearing each other's burdens.  Even though we were only together for one week, I felt a strong connection to these new brothers and sisters in Christ.  We had a lot of time to talk and to share.  Each of us had our own issues, and we grew to feel very comfortable letting people see us in our most vulnerable moments.  We shared lots of laughs and lots of tears.  It was a privilege.

Me and Lori

Me and Paul

Me and Julia

4.  Going to church.  The Haitian church had a very vibrant congregation of at least 300.  The music was very good but very loud.  The first song they sang was an old one I knew, "Count Your Many Blessings," and so I was able to sing in English as the Haitians sang in Creole.  (How awesome that people with so little worldly goods could still sing about their many blessings from God.) There were some testimonies, and some awards were given for Bible memory (I think).  Our little group got up and sang a couple of verses of Amazing Grace.  I enjoyed being there.

5.  Visiting an orphanage.  I had never been to an orphanage before.  This one was very nice, much nicer than most you would find in Haiti.  There were about 20 children, from little babies to toddlers to the oldest child there, a nine-year-old boy (it can't be easy being the oldest one there).  One of our team members brought several bottles of bubbles, and that was what broke the ice between us and the children.  They were beautiful children, full of life.  One little boy in particular was a heart stealer.  He was about 3 years old.  He would just go down the line of us ladies who were seated in a row.  He would climb in our laps, snuggle with us for a while and then move to the next lady.  Later he came back to go down the row and kiss us all on the cheek.  It was very sweet! I am not allowed to post pictures from the orphanage.

6.  Emily.  The pharmacist on our team brought his wife and 8-year-old daughter on this trip.  Emily was a delightful little girl, and we all had a soft spot for her.  The first night she came up with us to our bedroom to play some games with Cheri on her iPad and to have a story read to her by Carolyn.  But Carolyn was trying to download a story to read, and she was having trouble with the internet.  So I said, "Why don't I just tell you a story?"  Emily agreed, and I told her the story of Lazy Jack.  She was such a good listener that she repeated the story from memory after I was finished.  From then on we had "story time" every evening.  It was great fun for me to be able to tell some of my old stories,  and I got the impression that the ladies liked it just as much as Emily did.

Emily, Carolyn, Cheri and me

7.  Beautiful people.  I was surrounded by beautiful people all week long.  I loved all the people who served with me.  I also found the Haitian people very warm and friendly also.  As we walked to and from the clinic, most people greeted us with "Bonjour" or "Bonsoir."  Children would smile and wave.  I felt very safe as we walked and traveled among the people.

The view from my post

School children in their uniforms

One sassy girl

Next time I'll tell you about my take aways from this trip to Haiti.