Will your own humanness really ruin your children for life?
Children
Joy and I woke up yesterday morning at 5:00 a.m. to the sounds of our screaming four-year-old, Jack, who was suffering from extreme abdominal pain. We tried to console and cuddle him, but to no avail. "Don't touch me, it really hurts!" he cried, when we tried to examine or gently rub his sore tummy. This was not like him at all; he is not an overreactive kid. We had to go get him at school that day because he was vomiting and had diarrhea. He had a quiet afternoon at home and went to sleep [...]
Two months ago, for the first time in my eight years living in Washington, D.C., I was mugged. Two young men rolled up in a pickup truck while I was unloading groceries from my car in the alley next to my condo building. They made me lie on the ground, held a gun to my neck as they took my money, and then locked me in the trunk of my car as they made their getaway. Fortunately I still had my cell [...]
Mamta, a winsome, wide-eyed girl of 12 moves through her daily chores in a poor household in India. Although still a child, her life has little play, and she will too soon be bearing the full responsibilities and burdens of an adult woman: Mamta was married at the age of 7. At puberty she will quit school and move to the house of her husband, who she's had no contact with since her wedding night [...]
Yesterday Jim stood with a group of religious leaders to challenge President Bush's promised veto of a bill to expand health coverage for children. He told some of the story of Bush's early days in office that he told here last week, asking what happened to his "compassionate" conservatism, and asking why Bush would veto a bill with broad bipartisan support, abandoning America's children to a [...]
In his Saturday radio address, The Washington Post reports that
President Bush again called Democrats "irresponsible" for pushing an expansion he opposes to a children's health insurance program. [...]
Rite Lite Ltd., purveyor of “quality Judaica since 1949,” is helping children get comfortable with the mystery of a creator God who destroys. How? Rite Lite offers sets of Passover Ten Plagues Finger Puppets, made with cute cartoon eyes and colorful high-quality felt, so people of faith can share with children the suffering, death, and judgment poured out on Egyptians before the Exodus. All 10 plagues are represented, including lice, locusts, and (our favorite!) boils. (Personally, we’re hoping for a Sodom and Gomorrah line next.)
Child rearing, never an easy endeavour, has become in many ways a countercultural activity.
In Nairobi, 700 children walked out of school and through the streets this April, calling for an end to their country's debt burden.
G.I. Joe has shown boys how to exercise military might for decades, but America's recent "war on terror" has made way for a new cash crop of action figures. Since Sept.
The summer God was nine years old
Heaven's swamp cooler broke for good.
His Mama was stout yet managed to scale
the side of their trailer, parked off a path
near the woods over by Gabriel's.
She jerry-rigged its fan to flutter
with the backing off her green and purple earring.
God was building insects that day
under the shade of the grapevines by the tree.
He pinched that colorful tool,
ran off for the quiet of his overhanging vines.
Easing the earring out of his overalls
he mimicked his Mama an historic way that day.
When humanitarian intervention sends in the troops, its not usually a laughing matter.