The Merciful Obtain Mercy (and Bracelets?)

While I decided that talking about my Relief Society teaching required more context than I can give right now, a description of my Activity Days calling requires very little context.  Last night was maybe my favorite night (aside from the budgeting night, of course).  We listened to and then discussed Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s General Conference (the LDS Church’s semi-annual worldwide broadcast) talk about not judging, called “The Merciful Obtain Mercy.”  My co-leader asked, “So what kinds of things does he say can ruin our relationships?”

A (8 years old): Oh, oh, I know! [while raising arm as high as possible and flailing] Like if you yell at someone and they yell at you, and you argue about . . . argue about . . . I don’t know.  I forgot.

Co-leader: Good.  So arguing.  What else?

B (11 years old): Oooh, I know.  If you argue with someone about who gets to do something first.

Co-leader: Yeah.  Arguing definitely hurts relationships. What else besides arguing?

C (10 years old): Well, let’s say you like blue.  And you tell your friend, “My favorite color is blue.”  And your friend’s like, “My favorite color is purple.”  And then you argue about which color is better.

Co-leader: So we’ve established that arguing definitely hurts relationships . . .

Eventually we moved on to things you can do to improve relationships: “What does Elder Uchtdorf suggest we can do to help our relationships?”

A: I know! [arm flailing again]  Well if you have a necklace and someone else really likes your necklace and wants it, you could give it to them.

Co-leader: Okay, so being kind.

A: Yeah.

B: And also, let’s say you have a really nice bracelet and your friend loves it and she really wants it.  But she can’t get one because maybe they’re out of them at the store or something, you could give her your bracelet.

A: Yeah.  That’s just like what I said.

B: No, it’s not.  It’s different.

D (10 years old): Well, I know one thing you can do.

Co-leader:  Great.  What can you do to improve your relationships?

D:  So if your friend really likes your bracelet but you also really, really like it because it’s a really cool bracelet, then you could just not wear it to school.  So then your friend never sees it, and they don’t feel bad, you know.

Little known fact about Elder Uchtdorf’s talk: it was also about how to handle jewelry among friends.

I still feel like I’m just getting to know these tween girls (and their vocabularies), but it sure is fun to sit back and listen to them talk amongst themselves.

Thesis Thursday: Already?

I could’ve sworn it was like Monday, or Tuesday at the very latest.  This week has just flown by as I’ve tried to spend every possible minute working on my thesis.  As predicted, it’s not all gone according to plan since the insane sleep deprivation led to sickness.  But all things considered, I’m pleased with the progress I’ve made, though I won’t have my prospectus completed by tomorrow as I had hoped.

Since I’ve spent all week immersed in the literature (have I ever mentioned that I get just a little bit giddy when I see the words criminogenic needs, cause I do — one more sign that I’ve found my true calling, right?), I thought I would share a bit from a very interesting article.  The article, Juvenile offenders as fathers: Perceptions of fatherhood, crime, and becoming an adult (Shannon & Abrams, 2007), presents a series of in-depth interviews with juvenile offenders who have recently become fathers.  Reading it reminded me of one of the assumptions that students in our class this semester often had, at least at the beginning: people who go to jail shouldn’t get to see their kids; they’re bad guys so their kids will be better off without them.  Going into the class, most of the students assumed that if you really cared about your kids, you wouldn’t go to jail/prison in the first place.

But of course, most interviews with incarcerated fathers tell a very different story.  Here are a couple of comments from the article I mentioned above:

I’d do anything to support her (daughter).  I mean, that’s kinda how I got my charge.  Y’know, I was sellin’ drugs to kinda make more money than I was making . . . it’s like I’m justifying, too . . . it’s how I was thinking.  ’Cause I’d do anything to get her stuff.

When I first saw  my son on my weekend and I wasn’t high, I wasn’t selling drugs, I wasn’t nothin,’ I was just payin’ attention to him it woke me up right there — like, damn, this boy’s gettin’ old and ever since I come back that day I been tryin’ to get my life together.

I especially love that last comment because I feel like it represents something universal about parenthood.  I don’t usually say damn beforehand, but at least once a day I think, she’s growing up so fast and there are just so many things I want to do better before she’s old enough to internalize all her mommy’s flaws.

I mentioned before about rejection from mothers shaping the lives of many incarcerated men.  But of course, the other half of the story is just how many of them had absent or uninvolved fathers, which motivates many of them to want to do better:

I certainly don’t want him growing up like I did, y’know, I’m going to be there for him ’cause my dad wasn’t there for me that much.

But should it really be surprising that it takes time to grow into a parental role when all you’ve seen are examples of what you don’t want to be or do.

Thesis Thursday, sort of . . .

Mostly, I’m just going to drop a few quick updates in here.  I’ve got to finish a draft of this paper pronto, and my in-depth thesis posts always end up taking longer than I intend.

Time is just flying around here.  Addison and I took a quick trip to Denver to visit my long-lost friend Elizabeth Harris (of wedding quilt fame) and her fabulous family.  They spoil me rotten with delicious grilling and sweet babysitting — they even braved three hours of church while I went to Elizabeth’s ward!  I don’t remember the last time I got to sit leisurely through three hours of church!!  Addison got at least two or three percentiles cuter while we were away, or so says Neal who was amazed to find his daughter full-on running, giving deep belly laughs, and sleeping through the night (five nights in a row, baby!) when we returned.

We stayed away long enough for Neal to (mostly) finish his final paper for his Hawthorne/Melville class, and now he is feeling free and easy.  But I’m trying to curb that feeling at every opportunity with reminders that he still has a final project and exam to work on.

Speaking of finishing the semester, yesterday was the last day of class.  Each of the undergrads shared what they were taking away from the class; it was really awesome.  Some of them feel that they want to continue working with or researching incarcerated populations, which obviously excites me.  But even those that just felt that their eyes were opened a little, that they would think differently about certain things — that felt like a big win.  One student said that she now realizes that people in prison are not “just bad guys” like she had thought before.  Her early response papers had displayed the most black-and-white thinking of any of the students, and so I was relieved to see that we’ve complicated her worldview just a little bit.  The world is complicated, after all.  Full of paradoxes, right?

I’ve been going through some of the students’ final response papers this morning and it is interesting to hear exactly what surprised them or challenged their assumptions.  In particular, virtually every student was shocked to see how much the families of incarcerated men valued marriage and family — and the sacrifices they often made to preserve it.  In response to a chapter in Doing Time on the Outside, many expressed these sentiments:

One thing again that I found interesting was how devoted some of the women were to their marital vows.  I think if I was in their situation and my husband went to jail I would be long gone.  I would hope to get rid of them and start a better life for me and my children.  Many of the women saw marriage as a serious commitment.  To me this is incredible.  Many of them are more committed to their marriage than many other women who have happy lives.

I was ashamed to think that I had ever thought that low SES [socioeconomic] families did not have any family values.

One student summed up the course this way:

As my undergraduate education is coming to a close I think that a lot of classes have been informative, but I don’t think any class has changed my opinion so drastically as this one did, and I’m grateful for that.

Definitely the sign of a good semester.

Lindsay recommends: Taylor Mali, poet and teacher

Actually Neal recommended him to me about 15 minutes ago, so I’m passing along the favor.  Apparently Taylor Mali is one of the real stars of the poetry slam movement.  We watched a few youtube videos of his poetry and they were both funny and inspiring.  I especially like how he talks on the nobility of teaching because I’ve been annoyed lately by some of the things I’ve read from high-and-mighty Steve Jobs and others who give teachers no respect.

Without further ado, a couple of my favorites:

Limits of our loyalty

I wrote about my second family member interview here and here and here.  If you had asked me during the summer which interviewee would have the greatest impact on me, I don’t think I would have said her.  But it turns out she comes to my mind quite often…this time while teaching my Marriage Enhancement class on Thursday.

Our topic was loyalty and I drew a lot of my material from two sources: my grad school mentor extraordinaire Vickie (I LOVE this girl!) and Dr. Blaine Fowers, a marriage therapist and scholar.  Since the purpose of the class is to enrich the students’ marriages and most of them are still very newlywed, we don’t talk a lot about the darker sides of marriage.  But it seemed important at this point to discuss the limits of our loyalty.  I quoted from Dr. Fowers:

“When a spouse is abusive, unfaithful, or addicted to alcohol or drugs, a wife or a husband must question the degree and form of his or her loyalty. Deciding how loyal we should be can be difficult at times, even excruciating.”

I was really struck by one part of this statement in particular: the form of loyalty.  I thought of this woman again, how she kicked her husband out of the house before he was arrested because his alcoholism was too destructive.  But even as she kicked him out, she helped him get an apartment, managed his money, drove him to and from AA and work, hired a lawyer.  The form of her loyalty had to change, but who could doubt that hers was still a deep, profound loyalty.

It is a strange thing to think that there are times when our deepest loyalty may be demonstrated by doing something that appears in the moment to be hurtful or harsh. I love this woman for all the things that she taught me that I am still discovering.