I Need More Double Dip!

I am always getting onto lil' one for double dipping when we are eating pretzels or chips. You know how kids do- suck off the salsa or ranch dip and then... So, she was just sitting at the table eating tortilla chips and hummus and she ran out of hummus and said, "Mommy, I need more double dip!"

All of the Jobs I Have Ever Had

Occupation.............Age.......Duties

Babysitting..............12-14....Eat food and watch T.V.
McDonald's............14-15.....Throw cheese on the roofs of cars as they
..........................................come thru drive-thru
Hechinger's ..............15.......Load heavy bags of cement into cars hoping
..........................................to get tips
Outback ..................16 ......Cut potatoes while looking at hot waitresses
Flooring Company......17-19......Learn bad words in Farsi and smash walls
..........................................with a forklift
College Workstudy....19.......Do little for little
Telemarketing ..........20.......Get hung up on and quit after an hour
Domino's Pizza ........20.......Run my boxcar 87 Maxima into the ground
Burger King...............21.......Moved and was only job I could find
Wendy's ..................21.......Simultaneously w/ B.K, now I was raking it in
Hardees ..................21.......Was closer to apartment than Burger King
..........................................and thought that would be awesome to
..........................................have worked the "Fantastic Four"
Local Restaurant ..............22-23 ....Wait tables, watch people drink, and find
..........................................Jesus (he was lost)
Construction...........23 ........Learn that beer is something one can live for.
Food Lion ................23.......Why not check out the grocery store industry?
..........................................(Loading beer on the back of pick-ups
..........................................scientifically proven to raise intellect).
K.C. School............24.........Clean toilets, cafeteria (Blue-Collar
..........................................quadfecta now complete- restaurant, grocery,
..........................................janitorial, construction)
Cafeteria .....24-28.....Learned that there is no difference between
..........................................this and a nursing home and that purple hair
..........................................is cool when you're old.

Would probably be a good time to point out that it was here that I finally finished school.

Wholsale Furniture.....28-31......Sell, load trucks, pretend to like
...........................................merchandise, hate owner, sell, learn that the
...........................................customer is not always right.

Teacher...............32-?......... See job from age 14, just add paperwork.
...........................................Learn that parents are the anti-christ.

MLK Day

People all over the country will look forward to tomorrow because they will have the day off. I certainly am one of them. How many of us though, will stop and contemplate why we have the day off. I hope to stop and reflect on the life of a man, a man who was a champion for the equal rights of all people. When I hear reruns of his speeches and sermons I never cease to be awed. I sense the historical significance of the man, I hear the prophetic power of the man, I am fascinated by the magnificent display of rhetoric and believe he would have rivaled the greatest of the ancient Greco-Roman orators. In the process of fighting for the rights of his people and all people, he did so non-violently, and so followed in the footsteps of two great teachers, Jesus and Gandhi. He stood unflinchingly in the face of great opposition and was so convicted in his beliefs that he died for them.

And as impressive and inspiring as these traits are, the one that motivates me the most on this particular MLK Day is defined as follows- the quality or state of being worthy, honored, or esteemed. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was truly that- a man of who believed first and foremost in the DIGNITY of man. He saw that while equal rights involved things like life, liberty, and property it was also much more than that. For in the 1960's, black people had life and property and you could make the argument that they had some measure of liberty, i.e., things may not have been as bad for them as they were a hundred years earlier. But, MLK understood something that the founders of this nation missed, that in reality there were no rights without dignity. He understood that when one was deemed valuable by society, it was only then that the pursuit of happiness was attainable. When one is oppressed, persecuted, or discriminated against because of their color, religion, gender, sexual preference, economic status, or educational level, they have been undignified, and have had their rights violated.

Dignity is one of the longings in all of our hearts. We desire to be seen as worthy and we want to be valued and esteemed. As toddlers and children we sought the approval of parents, relatives, older siblings, etc... And as adults we still seek to be dignified. The great thing about MLK was that he did not just seek to be dignified by others, but he sought to bring dignity to the entire human race. I find that in my own life, I am most alive and am the most happy when I am conferring dignity onto someone else- whether it be my wife, my daughter, a student, or a friend. You see, life only becomes an equal right to an individual when they see it as valuable, and many times it is our humble privilege to bring them the dignity that they desire.

So, thank you MLK for your life and the legacy that you left America and the world. Thank you for bringing a dignity consciousness to the human race. As I stop to remember you this day, my hope is that I can take what you taught me and do my small part to help your dream be realized.

SKINS WIN!!

Bring on the Seasquawks and their MVP running back. When you are on a 6 game winning streak, have a coach who has won 3 Super Bowls, and you get to play a team who has never won a playoff game, then you have good reason to be confident. Bring on the trash talk Seasquawks because your feathers are gonna get plucked. GO SKINS!

The Problem of Lacking a Cultural and Historical Self-Awareness

My wife was relaying to me an on-line discussion she was having on the topic of wives submitting to their husbands. It sounded like it was getting hostile and so I asked her what people were saying. One individual suggested that she questioned the validity of those Pauline texts in our current world context based on his immersion in a patriarchial society. I tend to agree with this statement. For too long many such discussions have lacked a historical understanding of time, context, and culture. Paul believed things that reflected the culture in which he was raised, trained, and educated in. I am continually frustrated by people who don't stop to ask several simple questions before reading these writings, questions that should have been learned in elementary and middle school English and History classes. These questions are: who is being written to, when was it written, what was going on in the culture at the time the letter was being written and does that give some insight in to why it is being written. These statements of Paul's have often been turned into hard and fast rules for all time when originally many of them were specific letters written to specific people at a specific place in a specific time. I think that any discussion about a topic like the aforementioned one needs to start here. In doing so, it allows us to be informed about the complexities of various contexts and should make us less prone to throwing judgments all over the place. In questioning the validity of these statements in a current context, however is not to dismiss them entirely in the first century Mediterranean context or to cast stones at Paul for being a pig-headed male chauvinist. And even if he was (a pig headed male chauvinist) what difference does it make, why do people have to put so much stock in what he said, he was just a man? The statements are what they are and I don't feel the need to make value judgments on them, particualarly in light of my own 21st century biases and assumptions. To throw out everything Paul had to say, however, is to make the same mistake on the other end of the spectrum. To dismiss his writings because they do not fall in line with one's current modern cultural context, which many do, is equally unfair and dangerously narrow and arrogant. Furthermore, it fails to realize that perhaps some of his words are in fact universally relevant in all contexts, e.g., love is kind, love is not rude, believes all, etc...