This Woman Writes by Carolyn Henderson

Forgiveness

Posted on June 6, 2012 by This Woman Writes

A friend and I have developed a coping mechanism for forgiving reprehensible people in our lives who have hurt us. It goes like this:

Forget about trying to love these people. The warm fuzzy feelings just aren’t there and we’re in no mood to generate a substitute.

We do not love everyone in our lives like this — and it’s unrealistic to expect ourselves to do so. Madonna and Toddler, available as an original and as note cards, through Steve Henderson Fine Art

We will, however, refrain from actively hating them.

“How immature.”

Yeah.

Probably.

I am mature enough to acknowledge that I am immature. Like a plant in the garden, I am growing, still needing care, not quite the towering oak spreading a canopy of grace over the world at my feet. Actually, were I to describe myself as a plant, I would choose something shorter – like a pumpkin, or summer squash.

Meaning that, in my zucchini/crookneck world, if the realistic choice is between artificially generating feelings of bonhomie toward a reprehensible, arrogant, conceited, supercilious slob of a human being or just knocking that dervish out of my mind altogether, I’ll kick the bum out.

“You should love your enemies.”

(By the way, I know that it’s not you slapping me around with these admonitions, which probably grate on you as much as they do me. Some irritating invisible individual is blathering about in our brains.)

The notable C.S. Lewis, who by outside accounts was a crusty, irascible, impatient sort of being, mused on this issue of loving one’s neighbors as himself in his hallmark book Mere Christianity, which you can either download onto your e-reader or, since its cover won’t give away your embarrassing reading habits like 50 Shades of Grey, is safe to carry around in hardback or paperback form.

One way that we love ourselves is by cutting ourselves a lot of slack, trying to understand why we did what we did. Contemplation by Steve Henderson

“Well, how exactly do I love myself?” Lewis asks, reasoning that he does not exactly “. . . (have) a feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society.”

He continues, “. . . thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. So loving my enemies does not apparently mean thinking them nice either. That is an enormous relief.”

Indeed it is.

Years ago I shared a city that was much too small for the two of us with a woman who was outwardly gracious and kind to every citizen of the community but very, very different to me. As these situations usually go, we ran in many of the same circles, and when I wasn’t in the same room with her, I was listening to her praises cascading from the lips of others.

Early on I realized that schooling my outside features to pleasant neutrality was not enough; inside, I could either seethe at the woman or let her go outside the cage of my mind. Because she never did accommodate me by moving to another continent, I was forced to take the high road, for my own sake, and determine to not hate her, which I most effectively did my removing her from my thoughts altogether.

I loved her – my enemy – by choosing to not make her a substitute god to which I offered too many waking thoughts – bitter, acrimonious – as if they were a prayer.

Not the best solution, but one that worked, allowing my spirit to survive – even grow – to the point that before we parted company I was able to vaguely understand her, pray for her, sympathize for her hurts that I understood and sorrowed for.

But I never did like her.

So love your enemies and forgive them as best you can – and an acceptable place to start is by not denying that they hurt you and you don’t particularly like them because of this, and while it would be so spiritual to pray for their well being, you’re not there yet, and until you’re strong enough to resist eating the entire chocolate cake in one sitting and totally destroying your diet, you’ll just forgo temptation and keep the stuff out of the house.

Forgiveness is liberating, and for that reason, it’s worth working on. Spirit of the Canyon, available as an original oil painting, signed limited edition print, miniature study, and note card through Steve Henderson Fine Art

The paintings in this blog are all created by Steve Henderson, the Norwegian Artist, and are available through the Steve Henderson Fine Art Website — originals, signed limited edition prints, miniatures, and note cards. Owning fine art is a reachable reality.

Posted in Art, Beauty, blogging, Christian, Culture, Current Events, Daily Life, Encouragement, Family, Growth, Life, Lifestyle, News, Personal, Random, Relationships, religion, success, Uncategorized | Tagged C.S. Lewis, Christianity, coping, enemies, forgiveness | 4 Comments

Lost in the Box Store — Where Are the Socks?

Posted on May 31, 2012 by This Woman Writes

For years, whenever I wanted to fully express the abject monotony of a mind-numbingly tedious task, I drew upon the comparison of buying a pack of socks.

How wrong I was.

The path to purchasing socks, far from being straightforward and clear, winds and wends in an ever changing path. Expose by Steve Henderson

Humbled now, wrung by a recent shopping ordeal, I determined that never again will I discount so lightly an undertaking which, far from being simple, is intricately and multifariously complicated indeed.

This particular shopping fiasco started when the Norwegian Artist announced that all of his socks had died, interred in holey ground, and since I was the next lucky family member to be heading into town, would I pick him up a packet please?

Black. Crew length. Not cheap. The Norwegian is a man of simple tastes.

I picked a box store, any box store (they call them this, by the way, because these one-stop-to-shop-until-you-plop centers are rectangular and windowless, like a box) and headed to the men’s section where I found myself awkwardly surrounded by smiling cardboard cutout males in boxers, briefs, thongs (disturbing, I know), jammies, t-shirts, muscle shirts, a-shirts – but no socks.

Thrice I orbited the undie wall, captivated by the stuff that men wear out of sight under their jeans (Sage and purple stripes — Really? And down to your knees? I don’t think so) until the awkward glance of the sales associate young enough to be my son brought me back to reality. I wouldn’t want to ask someone who looked like my mother either why she was wedged, Twilight-Zone style, in the second most boring section of any store, the first being the sock department.

Which, in this store, apparently did not exist.

I would have had more luck finding the sock department in the midst of Bryce Canyon National Park than I did in the box store. Descent into Bryce, available as an original and a limited edition signed print, through Steve Henderson Fine Art

I left the smiling men, skirted through women’s lingerie, somehow found myself in the toothpaste aisle, ducked past the potted plants, and was ready to leave, defeated, when I decided to use the bathroom and found the sock section buried in the back corner with restrooms.

Who designs these floor plans anyway?

Unbeknownst — seriously, that’s how you spell it — to me, the hard part of the task was yet to come.

Do you know how many varieties of black, crew length, and definitely not cheap men’s socks are out there?

One brand divided itself into bronze, silver, and gold multiplicities, with updated market prices to match.

Another had an industrial, extra industrial, and super industrial strength, leading me to conclude that the plain industrial product must be flimsy in comparison to its brothers.

A third had a blue stripe across-the-toe, green stripe, and red stripe varieties, but no elucidation.

There were socks with tennis player on the packaging and suit-clad businessmen, with hikers and lumberjacks (side by side – is that a good idea?), and one giant bag with SOCKS blazoned across the front. I knew enough to avoid that one.

So much variety, so much color, so much beauty in one place — this describes the ocean, not the sock department. On the Horizon, available as an original and a limited edition, signed print through Steve Henderson Fine Art

I felt as if I were taking some massive multi-choice test in which all of the answers – A through K — looked exactly the same except for an extra comma in Sentence A, a semi-colon in B, a period in C, I could go on forever because I really do like punctuation, but I won’t because I see your eyes are getting glassy.

What I did do was close my eyes, grab a package, and run – not suspiciously so as to attract more attention than I already had – to the nearest and only functioning check stand in the store, where the woman ahead of me and the store associate were staring down, transfixed, at a pair of black men’s pants. They looked like they had been standing that way for a long time, and were planning to continue to do so for an equivalent duration.

There is a reason why I hand-knit all of my own socks.

By the way, if you like the artwork in these posts, feel free to check out the Steve Henderson Fine Art website, from whence (wow, it’s possible to actually use this word in every day communication) the works come. Steve, the Norwegian Artist, offers an impressive selection of signed prints, making art for real people’s walls an affordable reality.

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I Am (amazon) Woman — Hear Me Roar!

Posted on May 23, 2012 by This Woman Writes

It was — literally — a small thing that I wanted, but my entire family gaped at me in horror, as if I had brightly announced,

“I think I’ll sell my body on the streets to pick up a little pin money.”

“I can’t believe you’re serious,” was the general consensus.

I put a significant amount of thought and care into the concept of buying an e-reader. Catching the Breeze by Steve Henderson

“Where are your values?” the Son and Heir challenged.

Even the Norwegian Artist looked shocked.

Before you join them, relax. My knees are not designed for short skirts, and when I clomp around in heels I look and sound like a rhinoceros in a thong.

All I coveted was a Kindle e-reader, which, in this family of voracious literary fanatics who run their fingers over high gloss pages, murmuring, “This is typeset in Calisto 12-point with one-inch side margins on heavy weight, high gloss cotton stock. You can smell the quality emanating from the tome,” went over with a thundering thump of censorious opprobrium.

“I’m shocked,” commented Tired of Being Youngest, looking up from whatever it is that she does all day on her Ipod.

Eldest Supreme tore away from Facebook on her phone long enough to add her DisLike button.

“Y R giving in 2 the electronic world” College Girl texted.

The Norwegian Artist, who is old enough to remember, and have read, Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451 and George Orwell’s 1984, looked concerned, an expression similar to the one he wears as he trolls through the library’s audio books section in search of the next volume he will download to listen to while he’s painting.

It’s because I love reading so much that I pursued this e-reader thing over the vociferous objections of my tribe. Provincial Afternoon by Steve Henderson

What is the problem with these people?

Every Sunday — when the library is closed along with the rest of the village — I find myself book-free, having stayed up late the night before to find out who-dun-it, so desperate for reading material that I scour the newspaper classifieds for “Animal Feed and Hay,” “Aircraft,” and “Appliances” (there’s a swamp cooler for $75; is that a good price?). I have not yet dropped so low that I pick up the sports section, but I do pore over the Wal-Mart and K-Mart ads, comparing sock prices.

I would seriously pity a person in this condition.

But pity doesn’t get you anywhere; action does, and on a day out to the Big Town with Tired of Being Youngest we stopped at a magic store, a Ben Franklin birthday bill in my pocket, and I bought the thing. Its arrival to the household was greeted with the same enthusiasm shown toward the abandoned, pregnant, stray gray kitty that someone dumped on our porch.

I don’t care. I don’t care. I spent an exhilarating afternoon learning my new toy, downloading an addictive game, and checking out as much free stuff as I could find. That next day — Sunday — I selected from four different novels, and the game, and I played and played and played.

And then I put the Kindle down, just for a moment, and didn’t see it for several hours.

Tired of Being Youngest had discovered the game.

The Son and Heir pored over The History of Ancient Numibian Culture (it was free!).

Toddler was over — dang if she isn’t taller, with a longer arm reach than I realized — and we all know what toddlers do when they see buttons. We also know what adults do when they see toddlers pushing buttons on expensive electronic items.

When the Norwegian Artist rescued the item from Toddler’s grasp he stopped to look at my home page. “Did you download any Zane Gray?” he asked.

That’s enough. It’s mine. And so is vengeance.

Kindle, you have kindled a fire in the quintessence of my concupiscent literary soul.

My mind is free to run, wild and free — whether or not the book is printed on paper or electronically. Wild Child by Steve Henderson

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The Formidably Frightening Car Alarm Fiasco

Posted on May 15, 2012 by This Woman Writes

So I’m sitting in the car when I hear the tell-tale snick of all the doors locking.

“All the doors just locked,” Tired of Being Youngest announced helpfully from the back seat.

Calm, gracious, and superb around young children — this is Tired of Being Youngest’s usual state. Dandelions by Steve Henderson

“I noticed that.” We are vaguely disquieted.

I’m in the passenger seat, holding the keys, waiting for the Son and Heir, my apprentice driver, to finish looking at blocks of wood in a friend’s yard. As a woodcarver, he’s in the equivalent of my yarn shop, debating the merits of walnut over oak, locust over birch.

I hit the button — click — and unlock the doors.

Two minutes pass of the Son-and-Heir critically viewing blocks of wood, hefting this one, peering at that one, setting two side by side and stepping back for a better view, when the doors lock again.

Snick.

The sense of mutual disquietude in the car deepens.

I unlock the doors with a click. Two minutes later they lock again.

Surrounded by silence, except for Snick, Click, Snick, Click. Autumn Sail by Steve Henderson

Snick. Click. Snick. Click. Eventually, understanding and motherly patience exhausted (there’s a reason why no one ever accompanies me to the yarn store), I click a last time to unlock from the inside and open the doors.

Big mistake.

Apparently, all this time the car has been trying to tell me something — concerned that no one is in the driver’s seat but someone is on the passenger side, fiddling with the keypad — it launches the alarm, that loud, raucous beeping people generally ignore because it happens so frequently, but which is outrageously overwhelming when you are sitting in the midst of it.

Simultaneously, the Voice in the Back choruses with my own to screech out the obvious:

“The car alarm is going off! The car alarm is going off!” (I’m sure that the neighbors appreciated this concise explanation of the situation at hand. We really should have been there for Paul Revere’s ride.)

Despite the illusion of being cool, calm, and over the age of 40 (this last one no illusion), I am not immune to feeling like an idiot in the midst of a boisterously rollicking fishbowl. It is the unrelenting noise, however — which reminds me of a newborn with colic and the instinctive response of “Make it stop! Just make it stop!” — that freezes my brain and fingers.

“Make it Stop! Just make it stop! Everyone’s looking at us!” I’m not sure which of us shrieked this, but it represents the general consensus of our collective thoughts.

Frantically pushing buttons — the lock button, the unlock button, the panic button, the lock button twice, then the unlock with obsessive compulsive finesse — none of these make a difference. Although the entire fiasco involves less than 15 seconds, everything moves slowly, like a dream — except, mercifully unlike a dream, I don’t look down and find that I am unexpectedly topless, or have wandered into a public bathroom with unstalled doors and toilets set about, randomly, in the middle of the floor.

“Push the panic button!”

“I did!”

“Then lock it and unlock it and push the panic button!”

“I am!”

This all happened because of wood. Alpine Spring by Steve Henderson

“Then put the key in the ignition and start the car!”

That’s actually a very good idea.

I follow through. Start the car. Relieved that the proper key is in the proper place, it stops the alarm.

Ah, Silence. You Dogood.

The only sounds are the thunk of a piece of wood dropping to the ground. The Son and Heir discovered some maple in the pile.

Posted in Art, blogging, cars, Culture, Current Events, Daily Life, Family, Humor, Life, Lifestyle, Motherhood, News, Parenting, Personal, Random, Relationships, technology, Uncategorized | Tagged alarm, button, car, key, wood | 3 Comments

Reality TV Shows: Your Real Life Is So Much Better

Posted on May 9, 2012 by This Woman Writes

I’m sure that you’re all very nice people, but please don’t be offended if I say that I’m not interested in watching your lives on a reality show.

You certainly don’t want to see mine.

If you watch too much reality TV, it’s easy to overlook that you have a colorful, amazing, beautiful and unique life that is far more interesting than anything on the screen. Autumnal Reflections by Steve Henderson

Like now — I’m sitting in front of the keyboard, typing. I’ll do this for hours, occasionally taking a break to put on a load of laundry (it’s underwear day), lift a few weights (10 pounds, three sets of 8 reps this week), or walk the dog with the Norwegian Artist.

As for the Norwegian, he’s out at the studio, painting, which shouldn’t be tremendously surprising. It’s also not a flashy demo — you know, Mick Jagger getting satisfaction from splattering paint or Tom Cruise hanging upside down from the ceiling while he dabs.

Oh, wait — I’ve got a message for the Norwegian Artist from the website tech. Why don’t you follow me out to the studio and watch us in action?

Back again. That was exciting.

We didn’t fling things, yell at one another, stomp, curse, or rend our garments. The Norwegian nodded and said, “That’s good to know. I’ll get on it later this morning.”

I know — watched from the outside, it seems tremendously boring, but it really isn’t — it’s reality, our reality, the reality of two people who have been married a long time (30 years, this year), run a business together, take walks, talk, eat dinner around the family table, do the dishes, discuss our dreams and aspirations one moment and the need for new socks (white or black? crew or calf?) the next.

It looks . . . ordinary, which is supposedly what reality shows capture but really don’t, because if they did — even distilling one week’s worth of life down to an hour — nobody would watch them because they’re so . . . ordinary.

But like most of what Hollywood pipes into our homes and we accept, the reality of reality shows encompass oddly dysfunctional people, hurling dishes at one another, pulling hair, histrionically acting, demanding, wailing, sobbing, emoting.

Otherwise, why would we waste valuable time watching them?

Actually, why do we waste valuable time watching them?

I have no problem about escaping, mentally, to a peaceful, beautiful place. A good painting takes me there more easily than a TV show. Shore Leave by Steve Henderson

While I have no problem with escapism — I love a couple hours with car crashes and yachts leaping 200 feet through the air and sinister people out to blow up the world — I know that this is make believe, allowing myself a brief indulgence in caloric-dense, nutrient-free mental sustenance.

But reality shows trick us into accepting that the make-believe is real, that Ozzie’s “real” life is so much more compelling than our own, that Snookie is fun and we are not, that our ordinary lives are dismal failures, lived in quiet desperation of inconsequential and tedious ennui.

This is so untrue.

The ordinary lives of ordinary people are beautiful, honorable things — the work we do to put food on the table, the preparation of that food, the sitting around and consuming it — the laughing, talking, crying, joking, observing, doing push-ups, answering phones, replacing light bulbs, mowing lawns, plopping doggie doo in plastic bags, vacuuming, sleeping — these are what make up the bulk of many of our days, and they are good things.

Rather than sit around and watch other people either 1) do strange things to give the illusion of being extraordinarily exciting or 2) be exploited in their genuine weaknesses by sociopathic producers of pain, why don’t we focus on living our honorable, beautiful, one-of-a-kind, worthy and valuable lives?

Your life is uniquely yours. Celebrate it. Spirit of the Canyon by Steve Henderson

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Something Different: a Community of Independent Thinkers

Posted on May 3, 2012 by This Woman Writes

I know it’s frustrating when people say this to you, but it’s actually a good sign:

“No one else has ever had a problem with this.”

All by yourself — sometimes you gotta be — standing on your own, holding ground. Riverside Muse by Steve Henderson of Steve Henderson Fine Art

This tiresome phrase, calculated to squash you down and shut you up from whatever observation you just made, is a subtly manipulative means of repressing dissent by middle managers, politicos, administrators, teachers, in my case, the public works director of the small town we lived in years ago.

“There’s sand in the toilet tank,” I told him. “The plumber says that it comes from your lines, and it’s something that the city needs to address.”

“No one else has ever complained about this before,” he told me. End of argument. Go away, Lady. Just pay your bill and call the plumber in twice a year.

“Perhaps they were afraid that they would be put down and discounted with a sentence similar to the one you just said,” I replied.

(Rarely — rarely! — do we ever come up with a fitting riposte at the time we need it!)

Do you remember that line in the Lord of the Rings movie, when Bilbo says at his birthday party, “I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve”?

Well, the effect of the one and only well-timed snappy comeback I have ever made in my entire life was gratifyingly the same.

Not only that, but I got what I wanted, which was the city fixing its broken lines and no more sand in the toilet intake, and I learned a valuable lesson long before I turned 40 and no longer cared so much about what other people think:

Thinking for yourself and acting upon the decisions of your own judgment brings about a liberating sense of exhilarating freedom. Spirit of the Canyon by Steve Henderson

Independent thought is not a valued commodity amongst the authoritative amphitheater — be it political, educational, social, religious, or business — in this country. That’s why, for so many years, we have been assaulted by images of “team playership” (have you noticed that you’re never the quarterback?), and “working together as a family” (you’re not the patriarch, either); being subtly pressured as parents to rely upon “a village to raise a child” (how many African villages are peppered with social workers, administrative clerks, petty bureaucrats, and other disinterested, dispassionate, and detached outsiders who want to walk into your kitchen and criticize your tuna casserole?), and the latest — community, which brings to mind people gently rocking in chairs under wraparound porches, calling out “Good evening, friend!” to their neighbors walking by.

So sweet.

Global community, work community, church community, educational community –sometimes it’s difficult to remember that the collective stories of our heritage include hurling boxes of tea into a harbor; arriving — gritty, worn, and poor — to Ellis Island; burying children and parents at the side of the Oregon Trail; running a different kind of railroad — one that didn’t involved unscrupulous robber barons but people with hopes and dreams; working long, hard hours so that the next generation could tackle opportunities the first one was denied.

We even have a holiday — Independence Day — that encapsulates how we used to feel about ourselves.

So go ahead — think, and say aloud, the things that “nobody else has ever had a problem with,” knowing full well that more than enough people are ready to tell you that you’re being difficult, unreasonable, non-collaborative, and out of harmony with everyone else.

You might start a trend.

You may be the first person to walk a particularly different path, but you probably won’t be the last — because many people watching will want to follow in your steps. Catching the Breeze by Steve Henderson

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The Weakness of PowerPoint

Posted on April 25, 2012 by This Woman Writes

In order to extract maximum impact from today’s literary essay, you need to pretend that you’re sitting in a crowded room, staring at a PowerPoint presentation on the giant screen in front of you.

You’re staring at a PowerPoint presentation on the giant screen in front of you.

Gracious.

Because PowerPoint presentations are so irritating, you might want to soothe yourself by viewing an image of calmness and tranquility. Catching the Breeze by Steve Henderson

Did I just repeat myself, word for word?

I do believe that I just repeated myself, word for word,

lending impact to our simulated PowerPoint presentation

Our simulated PowerPoint presentation

Which mimics the real thing – an interactive slide show that may or may not include poorly drawn spot art but is packed to the gills with bulleted sentences on the big screen repeating, word for word, what you’re reading in the handout you were given as you walked in the door.

You are given a handout as you walk in the door.

I know. It makes me want to scream, too.

I just returned from one of those not officially mandatory but obviously obligatory parental information education meetings, and sure enough, as we walked in the door, I was handed a parental information packet (the progeny prospective college student was given a coupon for pizza – is this fair?) and ushered to a seat in front of a large white screen.

The screen announced “WELCOME! Parents and Students.”

The front cover of the information packet said, “A Warm Welcome to Prospective Students and Their Parents.”

So warm, so welcoming, so inviting -- my mind wanders about on a lazily wending county road while my tushie is stuck to a carpeted chair. County Road by Steve Henderson

Sigh.

The packet was 20 pages long.

The PowerPoint presentation, which repeated, in bulleted form, everything in those 20 pages, was three times that many minutes.

Years ago, there were slide shows, in which speakers flashed a picture on the wall and talked about it. The good speakers said a salient sentence or two and moved on; the poor ones talked . . . and talked . . . and talked about five smiling strangers staring at the camera before clicking to the next slide, a photo of the entry sign to a scenic monument, besides which stood five different smiling strangers.

But at least there were the pictures to look at.

Now, with PowerPoint, anyone and everyone slaps on a background image – like an entry sign to a scenic monument, say – and superimposes the same sentence that they speak, which mirrors the sentence in everyone’s handout, bulletin, prospectus, or report.

It’s shudderingly dreadful when the title of the presentation is something like

Eight Crucial Strategies for Increasing Sales
Mistakes College Freshmen Make – 13 Simple Ones and 6 Complicated Ones
The 15 Attributes of Jesus

Given that the average sixth grader is routinely assigned the project of creating a PowerPoint presentation, is it possible that we assign, also, the requirement that the presentation be vaguely interesting? Better yet, we could add a caveat that the speaker NOT read from the screen like a politician giving a heartfelt speech off of the teleprompter.

Ideally, we could hand people the packet of information that we want them to read, written, I fervently hope, in a reasonably organized and engaging manner, and just let them, well, read it.

What an unusual, novel idea.

This idea is novel and unusual

If you want novel and unusual, then check out Zion National Park in Utah -- in real life, if you can, not a PowerPoint presentation. Blue Ribbon by Steve Henderson

Posted in Art, Beauty, blogging, Business, Culture, Current Events, Daily Life, Education, Humor, Job, Life, Lifestyle, Motherhood, News, Parenting, Personal, Random, Social Media, success, Uncategorized, Work | Tagged college, education, parent, PowerPoint, student | 11 Comments

Facebook: Sometimes I Like It, Sometimes I Don’t

Posted on April 17, 2012 by This Woman Writes

So many people want me to like them, I feel as if I were back in high school or junior high. Thank God I’m not; once was enough.

It's definitely been awhile since my high school days, and I'm totally good with that. Carolyn by Steve Henderson

This time around’s a little different though. Instead of being accosted in the hallowed halls of social education to vote from a limited ballot for Prom Queen or Homecoming King, I am approached at the gas station, or the carpet store, the pizza take-out, the shoe shop, the computer repairman.

“Like us on Facebook!” It was a Gas-n-Go quick stop in a town so small that the back half of the building, with the bathrooms, must have doubled as the community center, and it sold Thai food on the side. Considering that the main thing I associate with gas stations are reader boards with ever increasing prices, what on earth is there about this place that I could possibly like? And what does it post?

“Economy looking up? So are gas prices!”

“No job? That’s okay; you’ll drive less!”

“Deep fried gizzards tossed with Pad Thai noodles! Hot cocoa and a cookie on the side!!”

Everybody these days has a Facebook page, and while, as a writer and a business person I understand this (by the way, Like Middle Aged Plague on Facebook! And Like Steve Henderson Fine Art, too!), I simply don’t comprehend what the cement company has to say that is so important that I need to see them on my phone, regularly.

Just for fun, I visited the page of my favorite hamburger joint which posted . . . very little. It serves hamburgers, which I already knew, and somebody raved about a peanut butter peppermint shake.

I associate peppermint with snow, and Christmas, but not peanut butter. If only the hamburger place did as well.

On a roll with cynicism, I checked out my favorite grocery, which has been urging me to Like them for years (and I have, in real life), only to find that, amazingly, their Facebook page is fun, quirky, entertaining, and actually worth reading, probably because

1) they schedule cool events at this place and

2) they designate someone to keep the page up to date and

3) if they sell peanut butter peppermint shakes, they’re very quiet about it.

Okay, so I was wrong — like that doesn’t happen on a regular basis — and some of these businesses are truly worth following, but that still doesn’t mean I’ll be Liking the Gas-n-Go shop anytime soon.

Social Media: It's a wild, wide open landscape we've got right now, and we would be wise to be vigilant about preserving the freedom that it gives us. It's very easy to have it eroded away. The Pataha by Steve Henderson

Nor do I plan to follow any government pages — yes, there’s my university alma mater, whose Facebook page is more dull than their quarterly magazine, truly a feat of administrative panache — but the twice yearly mandatory trip to the county assessor’s office to pay state rent on land we bought and theoretically own outright is enough for me. I really don’t Like these people, even if they do put out a bowl of candy.

The Department of Homeland Security (more than 42,000 likes, surprisingly), the Transportation Security Administration (when I looked, they were in the Under-10 Club), the myriad of federal, state, and municipal regulatory agencies — while I am obligated to tolerate these people, it is highly unLikely that I will Like or Follow them.

And this is good. For the moment, Facebook, and its sibling social media sites, are filled with ordinary individual people and private businesses, a hodgepodge of grassroots humanity that is relatively uncontrolled and unregulated — although not necessarily unmonitored, untracked, and unwatched — and while diesel fuel and red curry do not go together in my mind, I’m glad that, for awhile at least, there is some venue where the market place and people’s thoughts run relatively free.

Posted in Art, blogging, Business, Culture, Current Events, Daily Life, Economy, Encouragement, Family, Growth, Humor, Life, Lifestyle, News, Personal, Politics, Random, Relationships, Social Media, success, Uncategorized | Tagged Facebook, gas, government, Like, Social Media | 12 Comments

The Artificial God

Posted on April 10, 2012 by This Woman Writes

In one of those genie-in-a-bottle stories, a poor man wishes for a million dollars, and he really should have been suspicious when the genie acceded so, shall I say, genially? to his request.

Oh, how we love gold, often to our detriment. But the golden sunset on an isolated beach heals our scarred souls. Golden Beach by Steve Henderson

Sure enough, the hapless hero receives one million gold coins in a showering cascade over the top of his head, resulting in death by burial under suffocating treasure. But he did receive his wish.

While the surprise ending is clever, what’s not so amusing is that in many ways, the genie represents the kind of God that many of us unwittingly follow — capricious, cruel, unpredictable, unkind, to the point that when we ask Him for something, we are compelled to add all sorts of caveats:

“Please help me with all this stress at the office with that new manager.

“But don’t get me fired.

“Or on disability leave because I have terminal cancer.

“Or have the manager quit because he runs off with my wife and cleans me out of everything I own.”

If you forget a caveat, you’re doomed, because sure enough that’s the one God will pick, as well intentioned people remind us when things turn really bad and we can’t understand why, to the point that our prayers sound like groans:

“Well you know, God’s ways aren’t our ways, and His thoughts aren’t ours.” (In order to get the full impact of this, you need to hear it with the trill at the end.)

I’m sure if you’ve been slapped by this paraphrase, at a really low point in your life when you were seeking comfort, as in the God of Comfort, you weren’t comforted.

Good shepherds treat fragile creatures gently. The Blue Poncho by Steve Henderson.

It’s not so odd, however, that many of us battle such a touchily fickle God, since this is the image nudged gently forth, intentionally or unintentionally, by such statements like,

“God’s taking you out of your com—–fort zoooooooone!” (There, I added the trill.)

This favorite phrase, mercifully not found in any holy book, is trotted out with tiresome predictability when recalcitrant group members push their heels in about teaching a class, say, or coming in on their day off to provide hours of free labor, or wondering aloud how they will pay for a short term mission trip without setting the whole thing on their credit card. (Apparently, that’s fine.)

What is not fine is questioning someone else’s idea of what is right for you, and the one verse that could come in handy in cases like this is generally not brought up:

“Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone?” Jesus asked rhetorically in Matthew 7:9-11. “Or, if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you . . . know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?”

Dragging people out of their comfort zone and depositing their limp bodies on the rocks is not the action of a benevolent father, but then again, the Jimmy Kimmel idea of giving young children brightly wrapped Christmas presents with dreadful things, like rotten bananas, inside, just to gauge their reaction, isn’t such a benevolent deed either. Sure, the kids responded like brats, but the behavior of their parents — who were theoretically grown-ups — wasn’t much better.

Maybe the parents should have put a garter snake in the styro-foam fish-wich box and seen how the kid responded to that.

A real sailboat on real water with real waves and a real breeze -- it's a lot scarier than the model in the bathtub, but it's worth a lot more as well. Zephyr by Steve Henderson

But I digress. Or maybe I don’t — maybe the reason we follow an artificial God — one that is margarine as opposed to butter: looks like butter, sort of tastes like butter, but definitely isn’t the real thing — is because we allow ourselves to be content with the poor substitute set in front of us, as opposed to putting aside other people’s opinions, other people’s voices, other people’s books and interpretations and sermons and workbooks and study notes and seminars and DVDs — and actually seeking out God for ourselves.

As intelligent human beings, we are free to read, and analyze, the words of our holy books without the distraction of outside voices, which may or may promote valid points, but which definitely affect our final thoughts, if we let them.

So don’t let them.

Strike out on your own and look for the real thing, the real God, the real Father — who loves his children to the point of distraction.

I mean, isn’t that how you love your own kids?

Posted in Art, blogging, Christian, Culture, Current Events, Daily Life, Encouragement, Family, Growth, Life, Lifestyle, Personal, Random, Relationships, religion, Uncategorized | Tagged father, God, Jesus, prayer | 5 Comments

What Does It Take to Be an Expert?

Posted on April 5, 2012 by This Woman Writes

I have no letters after my name.

Okay, officially I have a B.A., which in today’s climate stands less for Bachelor of Arts as it does for Buy Additional — credits, tuition, college time — leading to more letters (like M.A. or PhD) if you actually want to get a job in the field. I think the B.A. might qualify me to work at a fast food restaurant, but since the degree was in English and not mathematics, I’m not officially educated to run the cash register.

You don't have to be an English major in order to read a lot. You don't even have to be a college student. The letters in the book are more important than the letters behind your name. Provincial Afternoon by Steve Henderson

In a society that equates letters after one’s name with expertise in the subject, I am constantly reminded of my lack of credentials and subsequent inability to express my opinion on anything other than the train dream sequence in Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, and whether or not this represents the loss of the heroine’s virginity. (Do you care? I don’t.)

If only I had taken a different path and spent a little longer listening to bored, ready-to-retire-tenured-professors reading from 10-year-old notes, I could have earned enough letters after my name to officially enable me to say something about raising kids.

For awhile, I wrote for one of those ShallowInformationPresentedInListForm.Com sites — you know, the ones that pay 2 cents or so for every thousand hits — and an especially enthusiastic editor continued to send back an article I had written about communicating with teenagers. Having lived through two and currently working through two more, I figured I had some experience in this area.

She didn’t see it this way, critiquing me for making generalized statements like,

“They don’t need you to be their buddy. But neither do they want you to be the authoritarian figure you were when they were two.”

Teenagers: seeking and finding their path in life, and what better companions than parents? Catching the Breeze by Steve Henderson

According to the editor, I was unqualified to make this statement. However, “If an expert says it, that is different.”

Oh.

Years ago, when Eldest Supreme was a newborn trying to figure out breastfeeding from a woman whose only experience with milk was that it came in plastic jugs or waxed cartons, I turned to the experts. This is what I found:

1) A 60-year-old male pediatrician who recommended that I “stick the baby in her bassinet in the backroom, shut the door, and get on with your life. She’s not nursing? Give her a bottle. You’re just no good at producing milk.”

2) A 22-year-old unmarried, childless, sibling-free health department social worker with a master’s in early childhood nutrition. “It looks like you just can’t produce proper breast milk. Half of today’s women have this issue. You’ll have to use formula.”

Fortunately, a friend of mine introduced me to an actual expert, a woman with eight children who had breast fed each and every one of them. Because she was just a mom who stayed home and didn’t really do anything and had no proper education in anything regarding children other than actually raising them, she had no letters after her name.

She did have good advice, though.

Within 24-hours I had a happy, full-of-breast-milk (mine!) baby that contentedly suckled (isn’t that a quaint word?) for two-and-a-half years. Three more breast-milk-sated babies followed.

The best resource to find out about being a mother is generally . . . a mother. Madonna and Toddler by Steve Henderson

Sometimes, the experts are valuable. The auto mechanic comes to mind, and I do like my ophthalmologist. But other times it helps to remember that letters after a name are just that — letters — and they are not necessarily accompanied by a true interest in the field, a voracious desire to read and keep up with research, or, most significantly, common sense.

That latter is one we can all cultivate, regardless of our educational path. It seems to be missing these days.