Have you ever played the Lottery? I imagine at some point in life you have, give or take your enthusiasm in such sport. I have discovered that in life, Lottery participation is either more or less depending on how you fall into that play! I understand that it is much like gambling, a quick fix to a waiting for the end of money woes... fixing empty promises. Perhaps for some it is just fun... however I do know that it can be debilitating and dangerous for many. Today's blog is about my need to understand the Lottery culture, if you will... it is one that has perplexed me for some time and one that I cannot ever see me joining. But am I really different in my own need for instant fulfillment?? However intriguing, the quick-fix psychology is making me take a good long look at how we live...
I like to drink a huge fountain diet soda each day. My favorite, when they have it, is Diet Cherry-Vanilla Dr. Pepper otherwise I settle for my Diet Pepsi. Of course, I can fix it anyway I like. Typically for me... lots of ice, to die down the content of carbonation and caffeine, (that's why I need it so large... although my health guru friends often wonder why I drink this chemical concoction, as I eat very good foods all the time). But I know that I can prepare the drink myself, get it to the counter, fork over my $1 or exact change, and hit the road fast to wherever I am headed that day... except when I am usually behind a Lottery player! ugh...
You know this to be true. We have all been there. Me, I think even more. I am as addicted to my fountain soda, I think, as they are to playing the Mega-whatever!
Upon entering the convenience store I case the joint as though I am going to hold it up. I look down aisles, checking for suspicious Lottery frequenters or mere look-a-likes! I usually like seeing some at the counter when I go in. It makes me know that while I am powering up my Dr. Pepper to the brim they are nearly done purchasing their 40 Power ball combinations.
What is a quick pick anyway??? Whatever it is, it isn't very quick- is all I can say!!!
I can hear the requests being made to the clerk from the soda station..."I'll take 2 Baseball somethings, I'll "need" 6 Seasonal tickets.. (I guess if you scratch off enough Christmas presents or Easter baskets you may win a $1 off )... Would it have not been more cost and time effective to just buy your Christmas presents on a budget instead of trying to win them through a 50% chance?
By this time, I feel like this person may be near the end... I have rung up at least $20 in ticket purchases in my head while sipping my Diet waiting in line now to cash out. Could it be possible that this person is ready to go to his car and scratch them off instantly??? Cause I need to be work here pretty soon... Just as the transaction is completed... this machine begins to play a song.... "You're in the money!!" (Personally, The Floyd's cash register sounds in the song Money would be the one I would choose... they should ask you in advance of handing them a winning $1 ticket .. it could make us music people consider playing!
(sshh.. I think I just invented something here!)
Shite... That's a $5 win!!!!... ugh... I close my eyes and know what is coming next, "I'll take...." I look behind me and now see a line wrapped around the store of folks just like me with exact change, a loaf of bread or a complaint that their gas card isn't working right and they to need fuel up to get somewhere quick.
You then see heads drop... sounds of frustration, and me.. I just eyeroll out of my utter fascination and frustration that this sport is so tantalizing for people. My judgement seeps in which is now coupled with anger from being held up, ( a huge pet peeve of mine), and my own angst about what little money I earn... do I really need this $1 Soda pop?? YES I DO!!!!
Being the super efficiently organized person that I am I begin to think why stores haven't figured out how to do this better??? I can figure out 3 good solutions in that 5 minutes of standing there! Why can't there be a space at the counter for folks who just want to play the Lottery?? Like at Stop-n-Shop or BJ's.. the courtesy desk... just for them! It would be great. The person who could help them would know all there is in expediting their order quickly, or not.. I do notice that many of these Lottery players love attention . They love to come in and shoot the day's breeze, find out the daily scuttle but and talk to their merchant like in the old west days. I ask why don't they have a need to be somewhere quickly?? Retired, lonely I imagine. The clerks do need to be available to them immediately though if they should win, and require more instant gratification.
If this business model took place it keeps the rest of the populous happy and fast paced so we can plow through our day too!!! Thus, making 2 types of convenience people. The clerk on the other side could help the exact change person, fix the gas crisis, and get baby aspirin quickly to a parent who has a screaming baby home in pain at 10pm!! (Or a late night drinker who needs food before they don't have time or energy to create at 2am). Ah. Yes.. to have it all figured out. Meanwhile, now that I have a solution, I am still waiting and stewing even more that I have figured out their problem for them, leaving me still waiting!!
Once I see the last of their purchases, I really am annoyed by this part.. the guilt. The person will typically turn around and just when you think they may say that they are sorry for such inconvenience in a convenience store they project and BLAME you for their self-hatred in spending $40 unnecessarily, not to mention causing 40 people to stop moving ahead with their plans! I often love the comments proceeding, "I'll bet you thought you were going to be here all day!!" or even better, "Smile!" :(
The minute I get the chance to break to the counter and hand my money over, I am already out the door faster than Lottery boy can get to his car for the scratch-athon! That annoys me too! I then begin to talk to myself .. did they earn enough this year in winnings to make up for the losses? Is this really important? How is it they have so much free time and expendable income to do this? Then the questions get deeper and even more harsh. Then my guilt seeps in. Meanwhile, I wait and watch the person .. and there disability usually indicates why I was able to cruise to my car at clock speed.
Christian thing? Um.. not sure. Both the Catholic and Episcopal Dioceses here in RI have clear laws about gambling, raffles, auctions and the like. Of course, they would love for your to give/gamble your money on their brand of happiness. Hell, this week in California, Arnold just passed a law finally stopping folks to cash their welfare checks at casinos!!! wow.. that didn't happen instantly did it? Perhaps, the church is a wiser choice. I do question much about this, but ultimately my line waiting days often lead me to a place of serious contemplation about all this instant gratification world we live in. The notion of "free or won" fortunes that our government preys upon the have-nots making false promises for better days ahead if you just take the risk! (Again, sure this isn't rooted in old church philosophy??)
I was a poor economics student in college. I barely scraped by this class.. one thing I did learn though was that there are no free lunches! That was the most valuable piece of knowledge that surpassed most other tidbits in all my collegiate wisdom ironically. And it is true. Eventually a price is paid in life for anything... regardless of how you may see yourself deserving it.
It saddens me that we are a quick fix society. Those of us waiting to zip in and zip out of Walmart or the soda store aren't really any better I guess. Maybe we feel that getting to our next destination holds the same emotional value as thinking you'll get rich over night by taking chance?? As I stand anxiously waiting to get my soda I shouldn't wonder why this person is so in need of these instant poverty remedies.. need is in the eye of the beholder. I could easily place that $1 a day in the basket every Sunday and hopefully it will be given to someone who is REALLY in need!
Jesus reminds us that things CAN change over night, as well as He suggests that waiting to enter into the Kingdom of God is a lifelong process of living, trust, faith and karmic choices. In the meantime, we must wait and trust in God's time for what we want and need. God's Convenience Store is made up of inconveniences designed for the individual to bring us instant gratification with God's peace if we choose to wait in the line of life
Off for my soda,
Miss Dawn
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Don't force the bloom!
I have felt the need to blog all week and yet I just didn't' know how to tie it all up ... I kept saying don't blog until you really know what you need to say... tonite it hit me.."Don't force the bloom!" Ah... I haven't been reminded of this phrase in some time... and it just crept back in late this afternoon after I watched something happen I did not expect to occur.
Some of you know that I am an avid lover of the Christmas Flower ... The Amaryllis. It is a favorite stemming (hah!) back to my 9th birthday in 4th grade. My grandmother who was a prolific gardner, (among her other Martha Stewart-esq traits), grew Amaryllis in abundance each year. She was a great gardener and friend to me! One particular year just before Christmas time I was enjoying some tea and Scrabble with her and I offered that I wanted an Amaryllis for my birthday that year. I have a birthday during a time NO ONE feels like celebrating anymore- low key and even "I" am sick of opening presents just after Christmas, Hanukkah, New Years Eve antics.. it is just tiresome to have a birthday then! Yet... you never what may happen during a time you dont' force anything upon.
When Grammy and I discussed the thought of this, her eyes literally lit up like the lights on her own Christmas Tree before us. She told me that she thought this could very well happen for me. And it did. There is a famous shot of me in the early 70's with my red, plaid bell bottoms, ribbed mustard-colored turtleneck and my newly hacked off hair...ugh...(I think Dorothy Hamill influenced that one).. proudly displaying the newly unveiled, (took the trash bag down), Amaryllis! Grown by love and hand by my Gram! I loved it... I especially loved that it was already tall and had a big red bloom! I remember gazing at it from all directions and wondering how she managed this task in so few weeks and magically could be delivered to me on January the 3rd in full bloom! I asked her. And she said I grew it for you and when it was ready to bloom, it was ready to bloom. It just happened to be the right time... on your birthday!
Sounds like the story of my life!
Funny. My Gram was a bit of a story teller. (hmmm. wonder if I inherited that trait?) She was a sucker for a good soap, ("Her story"), the Opera.. in which I learned to appreciate its' value and tales of times gone by... a history buff. She surely was an old soul. She loved a happy ending. She loved to make endings happy too. I never forget about the thought though through that Amaryllis that things happen in their own time. Happy endings are natural. True ones anyway!
Several years ago in Science I began to teach the story of the Amaryllis. Why this vibrant red flower blooms during a time when nothing else really is! I often found myself choking back tears relating this story to my own life and how it operates! It became a family comedy where each year now my sister-in-law Jesse gives me an Amaryllis, (or two), for my science lab each Christmas. (She now starts them for me- usually... as one year I got no blooms.. try that with a classroom full of anticipatory 4.5 year olds!) And a personality as mine is who reads into EVERYTHING!
We go through the process of planting one in the class in addition to using Jesse's pre-planted beautifully decorated Christmas gift. Of course we need to go through process but also require another plant to compare and contrast, act as a difference to help us achieve variables and statistical information. So we do. We talk about the parts, the bulb and roots. We plant and water. We speak of the 19 degree day we are planting it on, and speculate how on earth can anything grown under these conditions!? We chart, make graphs, observe and wonder.
We wait....
Soon a shoot! There is upward mobility. Could it be? DO I tell them I have failed this project a time or two before? How do I feel? Well, as any good teacher I act as though NOTHING too spectacular has occurred... although I am not sure I can curb my enthusiasm for anything that is showing positive growth! So. we observe some. Its hard to be 4 and 5 and watch life pass so slowly. It's still hard at nearly 45~ Once the kids are hooked and we go into observation time during science we are noticing larger and larger results! Well, why not? With that much positive law of attraction surrounding it I am surprised fields of Amaryllis' weren't popping out of every desk and table!
I asked them to take out their rulers now and measure weekly growth. Amazing! Amazing that we have engineered such a simple device to measure growth and positive movement for an object but not for spirit! We are all so excited, 16" .. anybody likes those numbers.. then 18.. then 21 or 22". WOWZA! Then it stops and we are left with the top bud. What does it hold? Brilliant red... like my grandmother's favorite handbag or her beautifully manicured nails? Maybe we got a pink one this year? or.. Mixed? How many blooms??? That was the question of all questions. And there is absolutely no way to know until the day arrives. We are now focused on the bloom. When? What? and How? How many???
This one particular year I was waiting and hoping for an outcome to something I wanted so badly to happen. (Not the Amaryllis.. but in my own life). The plant was my living metaphor! Every day I would watch and feel it growing. Other days it just drifted and wandered, or no growth at all. When that year, this particular Auntie Jesse plant grew its' bud, I waited and watched as intently as the children. I wondered how that would look when it finally ripped open and joined the ranks of the loveliest winter flower ever. It peeked. I began to see leaves spreading apart ever so slowly. I began to see color. JUST a tad though. I was anxious for the bloom in my life to happen!
So were the kids...
One day that year, in observation, one of my favorite friends who has trouble with waiting approached our Amaryllis and began to "help it" and pry it apart!!! " EEKS!", I screamed out... "stop right there little sir..." He stopped and looked sheepishly at me and said, "But Miss Dawn it is nearly ready to bloom I am just helping it!" And I sympathized. And empathized. I agreed with him... it was just about ready.. and yet IT WASN'T~
I immediately resorted to this phrase that I believe I was inspired via HS, (Holy Spirit), and said, "You can't force the bloom.!Do you understand that?" The child stood there, with his friends, and of course was saying to himself.. "Sure I can.. what the hell are you talking about lady move over???" And I gathered them around for a religion story about things happening in God's time. I asked.. "What would happen if I were to let you open that bud right now?' The answers were funny and profound for this teacher who is always on another plane when she delivers these lessons. A teacher, who is ALWAYS aware that God can break the barriers with her when she is teaching to young minds! I went on to say.. that there was great potential that the bloom would either never grow and die, or grow a bit, but never realize its full potential. It would never be the vibrant and large blooming flower it was intended to be if I were to not care for it responsibly and force it to do what I wanted! Again, WOWZA!
Don't force the bloom!
Comically it took over my life... and anyone I worked with after that knew the meaning of that phrase when I mentioned it.
I was reminded several times this week of the bloom story. Ironically it happened during an egg hatch in school and in witnessing the growth of a school I am affiliated with now. It also occurred in a moment of my own personal life with someone that was my muse for the 1st time around!
I hatched eggs this week with my Pre-K. I have done this 4x now and still find it intriguing each time. I worry that it really "isn't' going to happen." One year I lost a batch.. same as the Amaryllis.. it never budded. I worry that I' ll never be in situations and moments that I know I can be very effective in. I worry that the people surrounding me won't notice what I am doing, what I am able to accomplish. I worry that I won't witness that big red Amaryllis... the Holy Spirit in full bloom.
It's been a hard year for me. I witnessed a few births this past year. But also waited like the eggs and the Amaryllis. I was careful to not open things jus yet to be opened. And unfortunately when I did It resulted in no bloom or a very small version of it. I have learned that forcing blooms was a lesson outside of Christmas time and was lifelong.
My eggs this year.. even though I experienced some fatality, were the biggest litter" ever!!!!
I was still hatching unexpected ones today and those that I thought might go... lived longer than I gave them credit for! There were a few late bloomers. They sat in the egg for a long time! Way longer than the rest. They were still pecking away today. One teacher asked me if we should go get the forceps! HAH! I laughed out loud!! And said, "No, I'd love too. But because I hate to see something suffer and work so hard for survival. I retorted with, "The manual insists we do not "help" anyone along... it means there is a weakness somewhere and it probably won't survive". That maybe true... But I am a late bloomer and I see the beauty in unforced blooms! I am praying that my new friend lives through her toughest hatching.
All Saints Academy, this wonderful little hidden secret in Middletown has struggled with the numbers in the last few years. I am not sure why. I sat tonight and I listened and cried along with these 8th graders who gave such wonderful testimony to their own hatches in the last years there. I felt renewed and positive and I left feeling like I knew something Holy called me there. I feel very confident in my ability to bloom and hatch eggs... still a bit hesitant and doubtful in the beginning though. There are lots of pecks for me in order to remove that shell but I am most positive to know that that if I don't force my bloom it will all unfold in the the Spirit has intended.
My good friend Jon explained to me this week his desire for a chicken coop. He has many times before. He wants to raise chickens and yield good eggs for sale. Don't we all?? We were thinking about funny names for his business... Coop, and Co-op and Coop. His name being Coop, the business being cooperative and then the obvious, the "Coop". I liked it a lot. He was willing to go into a business with others... human and bird, build a home for all their needs and sell a productive that would be valued the highest around. I am still sticking to that unforced bloom for us all~
Happy Summer everyone, may your growing season bring you into perfect peace with your calling and your waiting time. The harvest is just beyond the shell.
Just wait...
And by all means "Don't force the bloom!"
Miss Dawn
Some of you know that I am an avid lover of the Christmas Flower ... The Amaryllis. It is a favorite stemming (hah!) back to my 9th birthday in 4th grade. My grandmother who was a prolific gardner, (among her other Martha Stewart-esq traits), grew Amaryllis in abundance each year. She was a great gardener and friend to me! One particular year just before Christmas time I was enjoying some tea and Scrabble with her and I offered that I wanted an Amaryllis for my birthday that year. I have a birthday during a time NO ONE feels like celebrating anymore- low key and even "I" am sick of opening presents just after Christmas, Hanukkah, New Years Eve antics.. it is just tiresome to have a birthday then! Yet... you never what may happen during a time you dont' force anything upon.
When Grammy and I discussed the thought of this, her eyes literally lit up like the lights on her own Christmas Tree before us. She told me that she thought this could very well happen for me. And it did. There is a famous shot of me in the early 70's with my red, plaid bell bottoms, ribbed mustard-colored turtleneck and my newly hacked off hair...ugh...(I think Dorothy Hamill influenced that one).. proudly displaying the newly unveiled, (took the trash bag down), Amaryllis! Grown by love and hand by my Gram! I loved it... I especially loved that it was already tall and had a big red bloom! I remember gazing at it from all directions and wondering how she managed this task in so few weeks and magically could be delivered to me on January the 3rd in full bloom! I asked her. And she said I grew it for you and when it was ready to bloom, it was ready to bloom. It just happened to be the right time... on your birthday!
Sounds like the story of my life!
Funny. My Gram was a bit of a story teller. (hmmm. wonder if I inherited that trait?) She was a sucker for a good soap, ("Her story"), the Opera.. in which I learned to appreciate its' value and tales of times gone by... a history buff. She surely was an old soul. She loved a happy ending. She loved to make endings happy too. I never forget about the thought though through that Amaryllis that things happen in their own time. Happy endings are natural. True ones anyway!
Several years ago in Science I began to teach the story of the Amaryllis. Why this vibrant red flower blooms during a time when nothing else really is! I often found myself choking back tears relating this story to my own life and how it operates! It became a family comedy where each year now my sister-in-law Jesse gives me an Amaryllis, (or two), for my science lab each Christmas. (She now starts them for me- usually... as one year I got no blooms.. try that with a classroom full of anticipatory 4.5 year olds!) And a personality as mine is who reads into EVERYTHING!
We go through the process of planting one in the class in addition to using Jesse's pre-planted beautifully decorated Christmas gift. Of course we need to go through process but also require another plant to compare and contrast, act as a difference to help us achieve variables and statistical information. So we do. We talk about the parts, the bulb and roots. We plant and water. We speak of the 19 degree day we are planting it on, and speculate how on earth can anything grown under these conditions!? We chart, make graphs, observe and wonder.
We wait....
Soon a shoot! There is upward mobility. Could it be? DO I tell them I have failed this project a time or two before? How do I feel? Well, as any good teacher I act as though NOTHING too spectacular has occurred... although I am not sure I can curb my enthusiasm for anything that is showing positive growth! So. we observe some. Its hard to be 4 and 5 and watch life pass so slowly. It's still hard at nearly 45~ Once the kids are hooked and we go into observation time during science we are noticing larger and larger results! Well, why not? With that much positive law of attraction surrounding it I am surprised fields of Amaryllis' weren't popping out of every desk and table!
I asked them to take out their rulers now and measure weekly growth. Amazing! Amazing that we have engineered such a simple device to measure growth and positive movement for an object but not for spirit! We are all so excited, 16" .. anybody likes those numbers.. then 18.. then 21 or 22". WOWZA! Then it stops and we are left with the top bud. What does it hold? Brilliant red... like my grandmother's favorite handbag or her beautifully manicured nails? Maybe we got a pink one this year? or.. Mixed? How many blooms??? That was the question of all questions. And there is absolutely no way to know until the day arrives. We are now focused on the bloom. When? What? and How? How many???
This one particular year I was waiting and hoping for an outcome to something I wanted so badly to happen. (Not the Amaryllis.. but in my own life). The plant was my living metaphor! Every day I would watch and feel it growing. Other days it just drifted and wandered, or no growth at all. When that year, this particular Auntie Jesse plant grew its' bud, I waited and watched as intently as the children. I wondered how that would look when it finally ripped open and joined the ranks of the loveliest winter flower ever. It peeked. I began to see leaves spreading apart ever so slowly. I began to see color. JUST a tad though. I was anxious for the bloom in my life to happen!
So were the kids...
One day that year, in observation, one of my favorite friends who has trouble with waiting approached our Amaryllis and began to "help it" and pry it apart!!! " EEKS!", I screamed out... "stop right there little sir..." He stopped and looked sheepishly at me and said, "But Miss Dawn it is nearly ready to bloom I am just helping it!" And I sympathized. And empathized. I agreed with him... it was just about ready.. and yet IT WASN'T~
I immediately resorted to this phrase that I believe I was inspired via HS, (Holy Spirit), and said, "You can't force the bloom.!Do you understand that?" The child stood there, with his friends, and of course was saying to himself.. "Sure I can.. what the hell are you talking about lady move over???" And I gathered them around for a religion story about things happening in God's time. I asked.. "What would happen if I were to let you open that bud right now?' The answers were funny and profound for this teacher who is always on another plane when she delivers these lessons. A teacher, who is ALWAYS aware that God can break the barriers with her when she is teaching to young minds! I went on to say.. that there was great potential that the bloom would either never grow and die, or grow a bit, but never realize its full potential. It would never be the vibrant and large blooming flower it was intended to be if I were to not care for it responsibly and force it to do what I wanted! Again, WOWZA!
Don't force the bloom!
Comically it took over my life... and anyone I worked with after that knew the meaning of that phrase when I mentioned it.
I was reminded several times this week of the bloom story. Ironically it happened during an egg hatch in school and in witnessing the growth of a school I am affiliated with now. It also occurred in a moment of my own personal life with someone that was my muse for the 1st time around!
I hatched eggs this week with my Pre-K. I have done this 4x now and still find it intriguing each time. I worry that it really "isn't' going to happen." One year I lost a batch.. same as the Amaryllis.. it never budded. I worry that I' ll never be in situations and moments that I know I can be very effective in. I worry that the people surrounding me won't notice what I am doing, what I am able to accomplish. I worry that I won't witness that big red Amaryllis... the Holy Spirit in full bloom.
It's been a hard year for me. I witnessed a few births this past year. But also waited like the eggs and the Amaryllis. I was careful to not open things jus yet to be opened. And unfortunately when I did It resulted in no bloom or a very small version of it. I have learned that forcing blooms was a lesson outside of Christmas time and was lifelong.
My eggs this year.. even though I experienced some fatality, were the biggest litter" ever!!!!
I was still hatching unexpected ones today and those that I thought might go... lived longer than I gave them credit for! There were a few late bloomers. They sat in the egg for a long time! Way longer than the rest. They were still pecking away today. One teacher asked me if we should go get the forceps! HAH! I laughed out loud!! And said, "No, I'd love too. But because I hate to see something suffer and work so hard for survival. I retorted with, "The manual insists we do not "help" anyone along... it means there is a weakness somewhere and it probably won't survive". That maybe true... But I am a late bloomer and I see the beauty in unforced blooms! I am praying that my new friend lives through her toughest hatching.
All Saints Academy, this wonderful little hidden secret in Middletown has struggled with the numbers in the last few years. I am not sure why. I sat tonight and I listened and cried along with these 8th graders who gave such wonderful testimony to their own hatches in the last years there. I felt renewed and positive and I left feeling like I knew something Holy called me there. I feel very confident in my ability to bloom and hatch eggs... still a bit hesitant and doubtful in the beginning though. There are lots of pecks for me in order to remove that shell but I am most positive to know that that if I don't force my bloom it will all unfold in the the Spirit has intended.
My good friend Jon explained to me this week his desire for a chicken coop. He has many times before. He wants to raise chickens and yield good eggs for sale. Don't we all?? We were thinking about funny names for his business... Coop, and Co-op and Coop. His name being Coop, the business being cooperative and then the obvious, the "Coop". I liked it a lot. He was willing to go into a business with others... human and bird, build a home for all their needs and sell a productive that would be valued the highest around. I am still sticking to that unforced bloom for us all~
Happy Summer everyone, may your growing season bring you into perfect peace with your calling and your waiting time. The harvest is just beyond the shell.
Just wait...
And by all means "Don't force the bloom!"
Miss Dawn
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
