Having Two Legs

I teach Rhetoric 2 to sophomores at Logos School here in Moscow, Idaho, and every year around this time, I assign the (now famous) Journal Project. The Journal Project consists of 30 days of journal entries on the same topic. The students are given one day off each week, so we complete the Journal Project over the course of five weeks (writing six days each week). Only this year my students asked me to do the Journal Project with them. So here we go… My topic is my family.

Day 7

In the beginning was a girl. She had blonde hair with locks hanging down her back. She grew up strong in the humid air of the mid Atlantic. Evenings catching fireflies and mornings chasing tad poles in the creek behind her house. And afternoons and weekends crabbing in the Chesapeake Bay with aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins. She was made from walks in the hills with her dad, and drives down windy New England roads with stories of the past filling the air she breathed. The dense deciduous canopy shaded her smooth, pale skin, and drenched her with its dew. Sandy summer beaches polished, camping trips burnished, while Civil War reenactments glistened, and the Appalachian Mountains did their part too. I met her when she was still a girl, still laughing and giggling with friends, just on the edge of womanhood. I saw her and couldn’t stop watching, wondering, starring, and I’m still entranced to this day.

You can’t plan a woman. You can’t build one and market her – like they do in the magazines and movies. Those are cheap knock-offs – someone’s daughter has been cheated out of life. But I think you can raise a woman, like my father-in-law somehow did three times. You can make a safe, warm place for these glory creatures to grow and flourish and thrive. I believe it takes warm air and insects, boat rides and hikes in the woods, vacations to the beach and stories of long ago, dress ups and car rides. These ingredients stick to the soul, hug the hair, and line the lips with sweetness that cannot be packaged, cannot be copied, grace that makes a woman strong and lovely and fierce.

I teach Rhetoric 2 to sophomores at Logos School here in Moscow, Idaho, and every year around this time, I assign the (now famous) Journal Project. The Journal Project consists of 30 days of journal entries on the same topic. The students are given one day off each week, so we complete the Journal Project over the course of five weeks (writing six days each week). Only this year my students asked me to do the Journal Project with them. So here we go… My topic is my family.

Day 6

My girls are fierce. That’s the only kind we make. When I hear my daughter on the playground unloading into one of the poor neighborhood boys who has happened unknowingly into the six foot perimeter of the slide she is on, well, it just brings a certain warmth to my heart. Then my wife nudges me and reminds me that in our culture a little girl screaming at the top of her lungs is little over the top and unladylike. I concede the point and make my way to the slide to assure her that the kid in question is not a terrorist or likely to do anything harmful, sinful, or outright dangerous. She quiets down, but only reluctantly and with a look on her face that indicates she is highly suspicious and doubtful. She thinks I’m rather too idealistic about strangers.

I think there is something holy about being fierce. Holiness is a certain kind of ferocity. Now I grant that my daughters don’t have the timing down. They need coaching and direction, and for the record, I really don’t encourage them to go around shrieking at people who give them bad vibes. Nor am I trying to claim that they are especially holy. But when God came down on Sinai it was a pretty terrifying experience. When the Spirit-glory filled the tabernacle and later the temple, no one could go near it. It was loud and blaring and threatening. I like that about my girls. They are not easily won or easily convinced. Their first instinct is to guard their space.

I have a picture of one of my daughters at around one years old crouching in the goalie net on a floor hockey court. She’s sucking on a pacifier, but her eyes say she’ll tear the big boy in front of her limb from limb. I love that picture. There’s a certain peacefulness in her stance, a certain firmness in her cheeks, chewing the pacifier like a mouth guard. I want my girls to be fierce. I want them to be determined, driven, unrelenting, intimidating.

I didn’t know this when the first one arrived. She came home from the hospital and let me in on it. She announced that she was here now, and by the way, watch out. And I was immediately in love.

I teach Rhetoric 2 to sophomores at Logos School here in Moscow, Idaho, and every year around this time, I assign the (now famous) Journal Project. The Journal Project consists of 30 days of journal entries on the same topic. The students are given one day off each week, so we complete the Journal Project over the course of five weeks (writing six days each week). Only this year my students asked me to do the Journal Project with them. So here we go… My topic is my family.

Day 5: The Circus

When my wife describes our children in church, she frequently uses the word “circus.” I loved the idea of the circus when I was little so this pleases me a great deal. A circus is not chaos. A circus is not bedlam or mayhem. The circus is a circle of finely crafted busy-ness. There are things going on everywhere. There are dancers, there are jugglers, there are gymnasts, there are clowns, there are acrobats and tight rope walkers and animal trainers. It’s live. It’s lively. And you’re always missing something, but it’s teeming with excitement, teeming with energy. That’s what we’re aiming for at church. I would really be rather worried if my children sat motionless, in tidy little piles, each carefully arranged on their chair, painted into precision, every hair in place, every tie just so. Actually I wouldn’t be worried; I’d be mortified. I may not want my family to be the Walmart family (visualize a bedraggled mom on a cell phone hurling empty threats at the three savages behind her grappling with each other, throwing fits, screaming, all disheveled, grimy – in short, a small soap opera on wheels). But I’m not going for Mormon either. The Mormons can have their shiny, spit-polished row of child-bots. I don’t want any. I want life. And I especially want life at church. It needs to be ordered, it needs to be directed, and I certainly don’t mean that families should put on a show to distract all six rows around them. I only mean that Jesus loves children, and He didn’t mean that they had to pretend they were adults. They need teaching, they need encouragement, and yes, sometimes they certainly do need discipline. But some wiggling is part of being three years old. Some whispering and chattering is part of loving each other and helping one another listen and participate. I’m a big fan of drawing pictures and note taking too. I was rather pleased to hear that my daughter giggled when I explained this past Sunday that the word “honor” in Hebrew is related to the same word for the “fat” that goes on the Lord’s altar. My daughter giggled and then proceeded to draw pictures of fat men. This is what I mean by a circus: a joyful, childish enthusiasm for what’s going on.

I teach Rhetoric 2 to sophomores at Logos School here in Moscow, Idaho, and every year around this time, I assign the (now famous) Journal Project. The Journal Project consists of 30 days of journal entries on the same topic. The students are given one day off each week, so we complete the Journal Project over the course of five weeks (writing six days each week). Only this year my students asked me to do the Journal Project with them. So here we go… My topic is my family.

Day 4

My son sits in his high chair looking from face to face, studying features, taking in the eyebrows and expressions. He has no words of his own yet, but he already reads faces. His own eyes open wide or squint to a grin. His face understands our faces. His face mimics our faces, but he’s also reading, learning, responding.

His siblings love to make him laugh. They laugh at him; he laughs back. His chin tilts back and he smiles at the sky and a baby laugh shakes his body. Again and again. It never gets old.

My wife points out that sometimes a new face enters the room or a new situation arises, and frequently his first response is to look at one of us. He’s watching our faces to see what it means; he’s watching to see how we respond. If we smile or nod, he smiles and goes with it. Sometimes a bit of hesitation or concern on our face can translate to the same on his. He’s speechless, and yet he’s already learning how to face the world, how to respond to life.

Moses was God’s friend. He talked with Him face to face, and even though Israel couldn’t handle that glory, Moses wore the fading light on his face for them, showing them a face they couldn’t remember, a face forgotten, a new face for them to learn.

My son is in the process of putting on his face, learning his part, and our prayer is that the face of his Father is shining through to his.