A Pastor’s Perspective
By Sharon Latour
This is the final installment in defining “fair” so we can rethink the old truism that life isn’t fair. We settled on Webster’s fifth entry to find: “Marked by impartiality and honesty,” as the best definition for “fair” we were likely going to find in a reference book.
Because dictionaries have limitations, I decided to offer an acronym. So, here’s what we’re working with: Fully Alive In Reality. Fair. Because if we get this defining business right, we might be able to imagine that life can be fair. It’s a perspective thing.
We decided in the first week that “Fully,” for the “F,” takes a belief that we each have the ability and right to positively impact our circumstances. The next week we added “Alive” for the “A.” And by putting the two in order, we had “Fully Alive.” Fully alive has to do with being fully awake to a life worth living, so that being fully alive is worth the undertaking.
Last week we looked at “in” which, technically, means “inclusion, location, or position within limits.”
I concluded that seeing life as having a chance at being “fair” involves being “all in” and fully participating wherever our life calls us to be. We can’t be everywhere and do everything, but we can try to do our best in our piece of the world. Life, when we stand a “safe” distance away from it, can look, well, chaotic, random, or “unfair.” But I think we have a completely different perspective if we decide to be on the inside of difficulty and challenge. That being fully alive, and “all the way in,” might help shake our collective sense of helplessness. I know I’m not the first one to make that observation.
With that summary, we complete our series by tackling the final term in FAIR: Reality. I’d been dreading writing about how we might reasonably describe “reality.” Then, based on its definition, a thought occurred to me.
In Webster’s college dictionary, “reality” is: 1. actual existence 2. someone or something real or actual 3. the characteristic of being true to life or to fact.
I kept myself from looking the word up until I could consider how many ways we in So Hum might think about reality. And then my impressions and Webster’s definition collided: The most real thing, the thing that might help us get up and do the best thing in our lives every day rests on an embodiment of reality: It’s all about the children.
While in seminary, I went to a coffee shop one morning and sat near a young woman with a curly-headed toddler. I like quieter corners as a rule, but that day I decided to sit near the child. Her mother went to the coffee counter, after sizing me up as a non-threatening presence, to get a refill. While she was gone, that smiling, innocent, gentle little child effortlessly held my gaze until I had to look away.
Have you ever experienced such purity, such unashamed, unvarnished, un-self-protecting availability that it shamed and regenerated you all at once? I’ve heard people describe this sort of encounter in very spiritual terms.
I didn’t have that much time to process my experience before noticing a boy and girl, perhaps 4 and 6 years old, together, at another table. In seeing them, I think I left the ultimate-real for the more average-normal, courtesy of only a couple years more socialization.
They were with two conversing mothers and the children’s demeanor was already filled with “attitude” and careful boundary awarenesses with their tabletop playthings and juices. Absent was the serene, almost celestial beauty the 2-year-old had shared with me. These children simply took brief notice of me and quickly returned to the enterprises at hand. They were preoccupied.
A friend of mine has invited me to be in her kindergarten-first grade classroom at Redway School one morning a week. It took a while, but after gaining the children’s trust, now I can see the celestial light in their eyes. It’s still there if we patiently wait for it to filter through.
And so I am convinced the most important thing, the most real thing, is our little people. Our fully-formed, totally amazing, smallest people. And we’re heading from hot to scalding water in a tragedy slowing taking place: The public education budget.
Shame on us if you stop reading at this point, and shame on us if you find a good excuse to do nothing. You’ve probably heard the one about the frog put in a beaker of water that is so gradually heated to boiling that the frog never realizes the lethality of his situation until it’s too late. He is boiled alive.
I was 23 when Proposition 13 passed. It seemed everyone got so excited; even other states got excited and adopted it for themselves. And then, a few years later, when there weren’t enough public services (i.e. fire, police, paramedics, teachers) we were concerned, for a while. Remember? Then we adjusted. And adjusted. And adjusted some more. Thirty years worth, now.
At what point does that much rationalizing and accommodating turn into mal-adjustment? I don’t know. But in an opinion piece on March 30 in the Times-Standard, a father of twin junior high girls, Mr. Jeff Katz, related that 229 of the 1,440 credentialed teachers in Humboldt were given pink slips. And he also told us that letter writing is better than 50 e-mails.
So let’s give our well-intentioned elected lawmakers the legal and appropriate ammunition only we, the citizens, can give them: write Sen. Wiggins at 510 E St. #150, Eureka, CA 95501, or Assemblywoman Patty Berg at 235 Fourth Street, Suite C, Eureka, CA, 95501. Mr. Katz also suggested calling the Governor at 916-445-2841. Tell them our children deserve better. Right away.
In closing, I want to quote Mr. Peter Peterson from the “Turning Point” section in the April 7 Newsweek. I liked his entire piece, but the end is especially good for us. Mr. Peterson said, “We need to remind ourselves of the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who was instrumental in the resistance movement against Nazism. ‘The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world it leaves to its children,’ he said. It is time we become moral and worthy ancestors.”
Fully Alive In Reality. After a month of probing, I’m convinced life can be fair and full of wonder if we hold nothing back in nurturing our ultimate reality: our children. A total commitment to intentionally loving all our children might well lead us to perceive our own lives in a more empowered way. Let’s decide to do all we can, all in, and to start right away.
Shalom!
Sharon is pastor of the Garberville Community Presbyterian Church. Services are open to all on Sundays at 11 a.m. Comments or questions should be addressed to: Dr. Sharon Latour, c/o A Pastor’s Perspective, P.O. Box 65, Garberville, CA 95542.
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