Today's quote

"I have found my comedic voice. I have yet to find my comedic audience."

- Chris Paul, 16, defending his sense of humor.

Only = lonely?

Blogging from the iPod again so forgive the typos. The kids are
winding down from the year and all I've really given them is review
work from previous lessons. Naomi showed some weakness in grammar so
I'm reviewing that with her. Marcus has finally got the hang of turning
in virtual school documents (I hope). They both test next week so I'm
not sure how they'll react to being reintroduced to standardized
testing. Hopefully they will remember that tests are designed to show where we have progressed and where we need to progress further, not as an end to progress.

Now for the introspection.


I've been thinking a lot lately about my lot in life and the unlikely roles I play - full time dad, full time minister, musician, homeschooling dad, husband and father for most of my adult life, homeowner at the age of 24, etc. I start to think about how few people I can really share some of these experiences with. Dad? Of course there are plenty of dads I could talk to, but how many are homeschooling? Homeschooler? Yes, I thank God for the opportunity I've had to be in my children's lives, but being male and African American means again I'm not exactly the prototype. Musician? Most of my contemporaries are either striving to make millions or are content to play on the weekends.

At each point where I am in the center of a group, I am on the outside in some way.

So is loneliness the obvious result? Is the fact that I feel somewhat - well, different - at each point of my life a sign of progress beyond the norm, or a sign of my ineffectiveness in connecting with likeminded people? As one matures, should finding peers naturally become more difficult? And if so, what determines how you move on? After all, you have to be a stranger before you become a friend, and you have to be willing to introduce yourself into other circles before you can be accepted among new groups and be introduced to new opportunities.
But it's the comfort of the familiar that usually frees one to be one's self.

There seems to be an implicit uneasiness that must accompany the progression from complacency to challenge, from knowing who you are to knowing you are becoming something else. When I realize that I am in a unique position, it verifies both that I'm a independent figure, created like no one else in the world by God, but it also verifies that I am dependent on the relationships and the people around me to help me see who I am. Without learning to adjust in situations in which I am not the same as everyone else, I would not able to handle the adjustments I've had to make to changing situations in my own life. When you can be around others that are not like you, it can help you see other perspectives - even when you begin to adopt them. To be in the sinkhole of sameness keeps you unable to re-imagine yourself. So I'm grateful for the only-ness, if only for the reason that it means I'm willing to grow beyond what I am now. It confirms that I can be comfortable around others while knowing I am not, and should not, be the same myself.


That's enough for now....

Looking unto the hills, acp

Tests, Texting, and Testiness

Random thoughts of a cluttered mind....

- When did my most frustrating moments become my inability to text a person as fast as I could say the same thing by calling? and...

- Why do I insist on texting them anyway?

- When I tested my kids on information they learned last year, Naomi's comment was "Dad, my brain is getting too full."

- Am I getting frustrated because it's been a long year of school, or because I realize the kids are a year closer to leaving me and I've wasted countless chances to bond with them?

- (For teens only) How can you send 1000 texts in one month? Do you have some kind of training program? Is their a textathon somewhere my teenage son is preparing for?

- At what point did my favorite phrase become, "It's not like I'm so much older than you, but..."

- The highlight of any man's day is finding two matching socks on the first dig into the mismatch sock basket. (Admit it, you've got one too.)

- Proof that I should make the kids pay for stuff...

Marcus - "Name something in life that isn't free."

Naomi - "well, everything in my life is free b'cause my parents pay for everything."

- The simpler a concept is, the more you have to explain it.

- The only time I miss childhood is when I'm witnessing someone wasting theirs.

- At this pace of life, I have to get to know myself everyday for fear I'll forget who I am.

- What could God do with our lives if we weren't in the way?

Looking unto the hills,
acp

The future is on a 3.5 inch screen.

Since I have been unable to consistently blog with my laptop, maybe my
new iPod touch will motivate me to write more often. It seems all our
technology is designed to make our eyes unable to focus on anything
bigger than our hand.

We are completing our science fair abstracts, after successfully
spilling enough soda to start a bottling company. The kids chose to
replay the diet coke and mentor soda geyser experiment made famous by
Mythbusters and youtube videos. Maybe not the most practical of
topics, but certainly not a boring one. It also gave us opportunity to
work on the scientific method, which I was worried about not covering
enough.

As for family life, Miki and I continue to weigh our options. We both
see the need for more time for ourselves, but it's always a struggle
to break away long enough to really recharge. Jesus made a habit of
taking time for prayer away from the crowds, so we have to be able to
leave the kids in good hands once in a while and regroup as a couple
for both faith and fun. I mean, He was all God and man, so I know we
mere mortals need rest too. Now to schedule that is another story.

Looking unto the hills...

Acp

Continued solutions....

First off, thank you Mylinda for encouraging me to pick up the pace... (smile)

We've had some interesting educational quandaries lately. One involves the kids and and their tutors at our ministry. (I pray they're not reading). Apparently one of the teen tutors is having a little difficulty in division, a subject Marcus mastered with Math U See. I came in one day to deliver a book to Naomi and found her at the board working on a division problem. The teenager told me Marcus had been interrupting her as she was trying to explain problems, so I asked if I could stay and watch his classroom behavior. Naomi worked out the problem, leaving a remainder larger than the original divisor (i.e. 20 / 3 = 5 with a remainder of 5). In typical ADD fashion I myself pointed out the error without raising my hand first. (Talk about the apple not falling far from the tree. ) The teen vainly tried to explain to me that "this is the way they tell them to do it at school", and pointed out some new anagram of the steps. The saddest part is that the tutor and all the kids thought she was right!

This easily could become a post about the failures of public schooling writ large, but I was more influenced by Marcus' comments. He stated that he might want to wait to start (public) middle school because he was noticing the issues of some of the older students.

You see, the most important thing about that statement is that he is taking responsibility for his own educational choices. Not whether it was in homeschool or public, but that HE was making the choice based on his needs and not social, emotional or family pressures. It reinforces my belief that the greatest gift of this family learning journey is the identification of identity, the response to the understanding of responsibility over your own life. There can be no greater aim than the true meaning of ecucere, the Latin root of our word 'educate'. It means 'to lead out'. OUT. What are we leading out of our children? You can only lead out what is already in, not what is put in. To put into our children what is not naturally there can only lead to a rejection or a stagnation of the information. Knowledge must connect to wisdom, which must connect to real life application of God's natural order in our lives and in our greater existence. Without that connection, our education throughout our lives is simply an appendage to our real selves, a tool outside the box only picked up out of curiosity and not necessity. As Agrippa falsely accused Paul, "Much learning has made you mad." Or if not mad, at least bloated and unfulfilled, as I think many of our children are today with the information overload they are experiencing. I really hope someway we can encourage educators of every stripe to sense the great need for the removal of victimization in education to be replaced by the desire for individual responsibility, and with it the freedom to be one's self as God intended.

Perhaps it is fitting then that we are reading a chapter of Proverbs each day in our church - one for each day in January. Wisdom is still calling in the streets in 2008. I think many in all walks of life should answer her call with the understanding that she holds us individually accountable for how we handle her teachings. And with that I will bid adieu until next time I'm inspired (or goaded :-) into writing more often.

Unto the hills,
acp