What advice would you give to your younger self?

Hey!  I did get around to it!  I'm answering the questions I posted for Thanksgiving, you know, the ones none of us has attempted to answer yet.  Actually, I did tell a couple of friends my answer to this one, and now I'll share it with you.

"What advice would you give to your younger self?"  I told my two friends, "I'd tell myself not to get married."  Yeah, I didn't do very well in picking a husband.  "But what about your three children?" one of them asked.  Well, there you go.  Back in the 1950s and 1960s, one certainly did NOT talk about choosing to be a single mother and raising children on my own.  It was not done.  Oh, no, no, no.  Unless, of course, one was divorced.  Which I was.  So I raised them as a single mother, anyway, albeit with their father getting them on weekends and such.

Okay, I may have to keep pondering this question.  Otherwise, this advice would impact my three children, their spouses, their seven children (and spouses of the two grandchildren who got married), and my six great-grandchildren.  Here's a 2016 family photo with all 21 of them in it, along with five people from my children's father's side of the family.  (He died six years ago.)

I guess I'll have to re-think this advice.  (Is that like recalibrating?)

Beginning ~ in the ghetto

Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America ~ by Chris Hedges, 2005

"I stand across from the Mission Main and Mission Extension Housing Project in Roxbury on a muggy July night.  Scattered streetlights cast out dim yellow arcs on Parker Street.  The remaining slate-gray metal poles, with their lamps shattered by rocks, leave the strip of asphalt gap toothed, with lonely outposts of pale spotlights and long stretches of darkness.  The unlit stretches are uncharted oceans of fear.  They are filled with dangers imagined and real.  At night, in the ghetto, I cling to light."

Here are the ten commandments, plus the epilogue, from the table of contents:

Decalogue I ~ Mystery
Decalogue II ~ Idols
Decalogue III ~ Lying
Decalogue IV ~ The Sabbath
Decalogue V ~ The Family
Decalogue VI ~ Murder
Decalogue VII ~ Adultery
Decalogue VIII ~ Theft
Decalogue IX ~ Envy
Decalogue X ~ Greed
Epilogue ~ Love

Chris Hedges, a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times and Harvard Divinity School graduate, explores the challenge of living according to these ten moral precepts we have tried to follow, often unsuccessfully, for the past 6,000 years.  The commandments, he writes, do not save us from evil.  Instead they save us from committing evil.  He illustrates how the commandments usually choose us ― and how we are rarely able to choose them.  We cannot protect ourselves from theft, greed, adultery, or envy, nor from the impulses that lead us to commit evil acts.  In honoring the commandments, we free ourselves from self-worship and are called back to the healing solidarity of community.  It is in the self-sacrifice championed by the commandments that integrity, commitment, and, finally, love are made possible.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.  Click here for today's Mister Linky.

Word of the day ~ HAD

Someone "explained" how the last sentence SHOULD have been written for clarity, entirely missing the humor.  The "fun" point being made, however, was that a sentence could actually use the word "had" eleven times in a row and be grammatically correct.  Count 'em ― ELEVEN.  The sentence needed careful punctuation, using commas, quotation marks, and a semicolon (not counting the period at the end).  But if it has to be explained like this, then it failed with lots of people.  Probably most people.

Thanks, Analytical Grammar, for sharing this on Facebook.  I started stringing "had hads" together as soon as I read your opening comment:  "The word of the day is HAD."

Around the table ~ conversation starters

Get your own PDF of this place setting here.

Choose a question and answer it for me.  Since the squares are too small on this blog, here's the list to choose from:

1.  Tell me about your parents or grandparents.
2.  What are your hopes for the future of this country?
3.  What is one of your happiest memories?
4.  Where did you grow up?
5.  What are you most grateful for?
6.  What are you proudest of in your life?
7.  How would you like to be remembered?
8.  What advice would you give to your younger self?
9.  Tell me about a family tradition you have.

Did you notice that the first and last on the list are not questions at all?  That's okay.  You can pick one of those, if you like.  Tell me a story, in the blog comments below, or in an email (emerging DOT paradigm AT yahoo DOT com), or on my Facebook page.  Do whichever you prefer.  I'm smiling in anticipation!

Oh, you want a story from me?  Okay, I'll come back here and share a story sometime today or in the near future.  What's "near" future?  I knew you'd ask.  The near future is whenever I get around to it.

No, silly, not a round tuit.

I'm a story teller, but I have to think about it ― a lot.  I'll be back.

In the meantime, I'm having a Thanksgiving meal with a friend.

The #metoo phenomenon

Why are women just now speaking up?

Here's the best answer I've seen:

"We’re not.  You are just now hearing us."

When scripture sets a bad example

from The Book of Genesis illustrated by R. Crumb

Genesis 19 tells the story of Lot residing in the city of Sodom, from which we get the word "sodomy."  Lot takes in two men who have arrived in town late in the day, rather than leave them to sleep in the town square.  The men of Sodom, however, are not deterred by Lot's having sheltered the strangers under his roof, and they surround the house shouting demands:  "Where are the men who came to you tonight?  Bring them out to us, so that we may know them."  That word "know" refers to sexual relations, which is why fundamentalists use this story to prove God hates homosexuality.  Determined to protect his guests, Lot says:

"Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof" (Genesis 19:8).

How honorable of him, people say, to have tried to prevent homosexual gang rape of his guests.  In seminary, I was taught that what Lot was actually championing was not the prevention of homosexual rape itself, but the hospitality he owed these strangers.  Here's a footnote from my New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (Oxford Annotated edition) for the verse quoted above:

"Once guests had eaten in his house, Lot felt he had to obey the law of oriental hospitality which guaranteed protection.  Thus his proposal to hand over his daughters showed his determination to put first his obligation as a host."

So this is an example of a good man, right?

No!  What father would do that?  His daughters are also "under the shelter of his roof."  We aren't told how old they are, but I couldn't do that to my daughters whether 6 or 16 or even 60 years old.  Why don't his daughter count?  Is this an example of where patriarchy has taken us, to a place where women (any females) are less important than men, even strangers?  And don't tell me how righteous Lot was when he himself later fathered sons by both of his daughters.  "Thus the daughters of Lot became pregnant by their father" (Genesis 19:36-38).  The first daughter bore Moab, ancestor of the Moabites, and the other bore Ben-Ammi, ancestor of the Ammonites (Genesis 19:36-38).

What I see here is that hospitality to a couple of men was more important to this father than his two virgin daughters being gang-raped.  He was a horrible father, not an honorable man.  Yet all some people can see here is that "God hates homosexuality."  Why don't we think, instead, that God would hate treating your daughters this way?

Caturday ~ Clawdia's advice

Clawdia stretched herself across my laptop and gave me a look that said, "Walk away from the computer, please."  That was a few months ago, but when I have read too much of the anger on Facebook and get frustrated, I should remember Clawdia's admonition and go for a walk.