Effects of Poverty on Social Development and a Possible Solution.

Anyone can fake independence, as long as the infrastructure holds up and the checks keep coming.  –Janie B. Cheaney

It’s easy to be independent when you’ve got money. But to be independent when you haven’t got a thing- that’s the Lord’s test.  -Mahalia Jackson

Anyone can tell you about the detrimental effect of poverty on families. Some may even be able to articulate the downward spiral generational poverty creates for the children being raised in environments lacking in nutrition and proper nurturing, and living under the threat of constant danger. It is easy for those of us on the outside to make quick, dismissal judgments on the parents and their lack of motivation and seemingly lack of care for their children. Despite our sympathy for these poor kids, we often fail to genuinely realize that without significant intervention, they will likely grow up to become just like the parents who are judged today. Studies indicate that children of low social economic status are more likely to underperform in school and become involved in delinquent behaviors such as drug use and sexual promiscuity. It is also well known that children raised in safe, caring, and stable environments have the greatest chance of success. So how do you bridge the gap and break the negative cycle of poverty? It is a daunting task that requires man power that just doesn’t realistically exist, even with volunteers of the biggest hearts and the best intentions. However, one program has found a way to gather workers right from the communities and neighborhoods that need the most help. The program is based on the simple but, in this case, profound idea of mentoring.

Julie O’Donnell, Elizabeth Michalak, and Ellen Ames present a study on inner-city mentoring in an article entitled: “Inner-City Youths Helping Children: After-School Programs to Promote Bonding and Reduce Risk.” The study identifies all the typical risk factors involved with inner-city neighborhoods in poverty, but they focus on the problems of peer bonding among friends who are involved in anti-social behaviors and therefore become negative influences. Rather than simply educating children about the risk of negative behaviors, the program involves collaboration between the youth, their families, schools and agencies within the community. It is based on the Social Development Model which “emphasizes bonding as a key protective factor in children’s resistance to problem behaviors.” This model theorizes that “Bonding is a sense of belonging…once children feel bonded to a social unit; they want to live according to its standards and norms.” Recognizing the strong influence of peer bonding, proponents of the Social Development Model screened older youth, who exhibited pro-social behavior, from the community and trained them to be mentors in after-school programs to younger children from the same community. Because mentors shared the same risk factors of the children they were helping, they received extensive training and support networks. They were also paid and they received consistent rewards and praise for their involvement in the program, which is called The Collaborative After-school Prevention Program. Mentors were assigned a group of no more than seven children, and while they focused primarily on social skills development, they also provided practical help with homework. Even though it was not required of them, most mentors became involved in other community activities like assisting in coaching sports teams, street clean up, and rebuilding community homes. In addition, more than 50 percent of mentors went on to college after graduating high school. And what about the younger children who were the focus of the program? They improved their study habits, stayed more focused on their homework, and improved their social skills. Equally important, it provided a safe place to be and kept them off the streets. As one mentor put it, “It gives them another place to be children. Out in the streets they can’t be children; they have to be part of the hood. They know how to load a gun before they know how to tie their shoes.” Perhaps the most successful result of the program was that the children also became bonded to the mentors and ultimately to the “pro-social units and began to internalize their standards for pro-social behavior. These protective factors should reduce problem behaviors,” which was the main goal of the Social Development Model.

In addition to the successful results of the program, research supports their findings. Studies show that children from low social economic status are at greater risk for many developmental problems. Often parents simply can’t be there for their children because they are forced to work extra hours to make ends meet, or they simply don’t have the emotional or mental abilities to care for their children. Kids who could otherwise be spending hours in front of the television or, worse, be out on the streets getting exposed to dangerous situations of drug use and possible violence, are in a safe environment learning both social and study skills. Another factor to consider, according to Kelvin Seifert and Robert Hoffnung in their book Child and Adolescent Development, families of low social economic status run a greater risk of child abuse (329). The emphasis on the bonding between mentors and the children in their groups would provide a safe place for a child to express his/her concerns to a trusted role-model; who could identify the problem and report it to the program directors. They also state that children from neighborhoods prone to violence tend to adopt highly aggressive behavior modeled by their peers (422); this program shows children, through their mentors, that they can make choices that result in positive consequences. Aside from family influences, children learn most of their social behavior from peers of their own age as well as a few years older (415).  This program offers children the ability to learn positive behaviors from older kids in their communities. The mentors have a higher chance of relating to their group members because they have shared common experiences and are working to overcome the same issues. Thus, the Social Development Model not only has proven results from its program, but the research also supports its effectiveness.

For those who take the time to implement it, a program like this could produce positive results for all members of the community. While students of both peer groups obviously benefit the most from this program with their new social and academic skills, and with the new friendships which will undoubtedly last for many years, teachers have a significant reason to invest their time in the program in any ways available. Students who go through the mentoring program will become more compliant and not only cause fewer disruptions, but with the training they receive, they will likely become positive peer role-models within their classes. These students, who may otherwise neglect homework, would receive regular help with it which would increase their ability and confidence in the classroom, and also result in better test scores for the teacher and school in general. Students and teachers are not the only ones who benefit; parents would have the confidence of knowing their children are in a safe place for at least a few hours a week. As their children increase in social skills, they will bring their new understandings of relationship to the home, and perhaps bring positive changes to the whole environment. The program could also identify areas of specific needs in the families, and point them in a direction to receive resources and help they otherwise might have been ignorant of. This program, if it is given the proper resources and funding, benefits the entire community.

Unfortunately, the biggest problem facing a program like this is getting the whole community involved: “The Collaborative After-school Program was a partnership among the YMCA, three elementary schools and one middle school, the department of social work at an urban university, a church, a child guidance center, an art museum, and the county probation department” (O’Donnell). That is a lot of support and a lot of collaboration. The task of gaining the support needed among local community centers is daunting in of itself, let alone coordinating and working together to make the program affective. I think it is possible to make it work; however, and very much worth the effort. This program brings together a vision I’ve been developing within myself for a few years now. I find myself disappointed and disillusioned by public school’s lack of ability to truly help out these neglected and abused children. We simply allow them to disrupt the educational process until they either shape up, or we ship them out, but there is no real help and evident care for them. On the other hand, I volunteer for an inner-city youth ministry at my church where we mostly just go and play with kids. While there is significant bonding going on, and I’ve seen very positive changes in many kids, we tend lose them in adolescence, especially the boys. A program like this would offer purpose for the older kids and give them a reason stay involved. I don’t know the best steps to take from here, but this article offers the direction I’ve been looking for in my desire to help out poor families in practical and lasting ways. I definitely plan to research this topic further.

Peter L Richardson
11/25/2006

O’Donnell, Julie, Michalak, Elizabeth A., and Ellen B. Ames. “Inner-City Youths  Helping Children After-School Programs to Promote Bonding and Reduce Risk.” Social Work in Education 19.4 (1997): 231-241. Academic Search Premier. 21 November 2006. http://search.ebscohost.com.

Seifert, Kevin L., and Robert J. Hoffnung. Child and Adolescent Development 5^th Ed. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston, 2000.

One for the “Moms”…

Children’s needs should come before our rights.

from the 1983 movie, Mr. Mom:
Jack Butler: My brain is like oatmeal. I yelled at Kenny today for coloring outside the lines! Megan and I are starting to watch the same TV shows, and I’m liking them! I’m losing it.
Caroline: Honey, I know what you’re talking about. I’ve been there myself, alright?
Jack Butler: Well, if you’re so unhappy, why don’t you say something about it?
Caroline: Because I wasn’t unhappy! Look, maybe I was a little confused, maybe I was a little frustrated, but I knew what I was doing was important, because it means something to raise human beings. What saw me through was pride.

Before the Feminist Movement was in full swing there were many unrealistic expectations for women, some that forced them to try to achieve impossible standards and some that denied their abilities, particularly in the areas of work, fashion, homemaking and marriage. In Nancy A. Walker’s book Women’s Magazines 1940-1960 she has reprinted many articles from and about women of the time. One from Ladies Home Journal in 1944 is entitled “You Can’t Have a Career and Be a Good Wife.”  The author laments that it is no wonder that couples get divorced when the wife goes off to work. Women were expected to stay home, and if they wanted a career, they were selfish. Of course, ideally, it is best for children to have a parent in the house; especially during their youngest years, but we don’t live in an ideal world. Women were always expected to look and smell their best no matter what the circumstances, perhaps the best expression of this is Elinor Goulding Smith’s mocking article “How to Look Halfway Decent,” in which she uses humor to counter the ridiculous expectation that a woman’s best asset is her looks. Our modern perspective of these articles makes many of them seem humorous (or maybe horrifying if you’re a woman); however, there is some real wisdom we can glean from a time when strong families were still the norm in America. Apart from some radical opinions, many articles on marriage had good advice for women. Most spoke about how to reach the ideal for trying to please your husband while acknowledging that women simply can’t always achieve that ideal, but they should at least hold it in mind and make the effort. The problem, like a California resident complained to Redbook in the 1945 column, “What’s on Your Mind?,” is that no one focuses on the woman’s needs and what the man can do to please her. Even in the article, “What Makes Wives Dissatisfied?,” women are given validation for their frustrations, but then the burden of change is still on them to fix their man; only submissively of course (in other words manipulatively). In my opinion, a husband and wife should look at their marriage as a partnership, each valuing the strengths of the other, while forgiving the weaknesses of the other, and mutually submitting to each other’s needs. When technology advanced with the mass production of new appliances, women began to have it easier, as Robert J. Knowlton testified in “Your Wife Has an Easy Racket!” This gave women the ability to move out in the world and experience new things, but it is ironic that the more toys we get to make life easier, the busier Americans become and the less time we have for our families. It still takes parents who are present to raise children. Two career families put more strain on the family, but they are possible if both spouses are willing to share the burden of the household and both are consistently putting their family’s needs before their own. My favorite article on homemaking was Dorothy Thompson’s, “Occupation–Housewife.” It is a real job, she argues, and a real testament to the women who do it well. There are many women who find complete satisfaction in simply raising a family, and they should not be mocked. Families who produce kids and then ignore them are not families.

Make no mistake. I am fully supportive of equal rights and opportunity for all women. As a man, I have, and will continue to if placed under their authority, submitted to women in higher positions with absolutely no reservations. So I feel women’s liberation has been good for America in many ways. But many feminists take their gripe too far. Some make staying home and raising kids sound like a jail sentence. I have kids, and I am divorced, so when my kids are over, I have had to be mom and dad at the same time. When my sons were younger and woke up in the middle of the night with nightmares, I had to comfort them; I had to cook and clean for them and clean up their puke; I had to teach them how to be men while at the same time learn how to be sensitive to their needs and understanding of their boo-boos. Taking care of the house and the family can be monotonous and boring work, but my boys are also the most wonderful aspect of my life. They still have years to grow, but I am proud of the men they are becoming. I can testify that being involved and raising them despite my divorce held me back in my career goals and dreams; I did not achieve my BA until I was in my thirties, and I simply still do not have the time to prove myself as a writer to anyone who might pay me. But these are just some of the many sacrifices I gladly make to put my sons’ needs before my own. Hopefully they won’t make the same mistakes I’ve made in life, but I know I have done all I am able to help them succeed. And that is a great satisfaction in my life. 1950s society was too restrictive for women, of that there is no doubt, and the effort to make the job of a housewife seem glamorous seems pretty ridiculous to me; no job is without weaknesses, and no job can bring complete satisfaction. However, some feminists make the job of raising children out to be a meaningless and pointless existence. What a blasphemy to the value of human life! The issue here is not the role of a woman, but the role of a parent. I am friends with a couple who have chosen for dad to stay home with the kids, and he is a man in all respects, and he has a great relationship with both his wife and his kids. And as I said earlier, if a man and woman can cooperate with each other and raise a family with two careers, more power to them. In our economy, many families are forced to do so, but if you’re going to neglect your kids’ emotional needs simply to climb up the ladder of status and smug self satisfaction (whether you are a man or a woman): don’t have them, and don’t mock parents who seek to raise well adjusted children into successful, well adjusted adults. It seems to me, there is nothing more important for the future of our society than that.

Peter L Richardson
original essay: 8/12/04

Elizabeth Bishop: Nature Poet?

To think about Elizabeth Bishop, one is forced to think about geography. Her friend and fellow poet, Richard Wilbur, speaks of her, “When she looked in her poetry for ultimate answers, she generally expressed the search in the key of geography, of travel.” But Bishop did not content herself to looking for answers only in geography. She was free to look in other places as well. In her poems, “The Moose” and “The Fish,” Bishop has an encounter with the natural world. It is in these creatures that Elizabeth comes closest to discovering an “ultimate answer” for the struggles she bears in each particular poem. Though each poem is very different in structure and style, each has similar themes. In both, there is an interaction of some kind between man and the natural world. Bishop describes each creature with a sense of respect and honor. Each creature comes to represent something deeper than itself to her. Through each experience Bishop learns that there are things in life that are bigger than she, yet that doesn’t serve to diminish her worth, rather each experience helps her to grow.

“The Moose” was published a good twenty years after “The Fish.” However, there are manuscripts that indicate she began the poem much earlier. Also, knowing a bit about Bishop’s biography indicates that “The Moose” is probably about an experience Bishop had as a child, while “The Fish” can be assumed to be about an experience she had as an adult. For this reason, I’ll begin with exploring what was going on with young Elizabeth, as Bishop reflects on her encounter with “The Moose” and then move on to explore her encounter with “The Fish.”

“The Moose” is dedicated to Grace Bulmer Bowers, Bishop’s maternal aunt. When Bishop was a child her father passed away and her mother had to be institutionalized. She was sent to live with her maternal grandparents in Nova Scotia until her paternal grandparents intervened and took her to live back in Massachusetts, her father’s origins. On the surface, “The Moose“ is a narrative poem about a bus ride in which the passengers encounter one of nature’s creatures in the middle of the road; however, a closer reading reveals that the moose standing in the road blocking the vehicle‘s path becomes the representation of all that young Elizabeth holds dear. “The Moose” is a poem about leaving home. It is Bishop’s journey away from safety and away from security; away from the sacred.

The length of the poem resembles the length of the journey. We know by Bishop’s vivid description that in the beginning of the poem we are in her hometown in Nova Scotia along the Bay of Fundy. As the poem progresses, Bishop casually names the places in Canada where the bus stops to receive and let go of passengers. As night darkens, an older woman enters and we find that she, and presumably Bishop, will take the bus “all the way to Boston.” Finally after four pages of this five page poem the bus encounters a moose. The poem is broken up in to six-line stanzas, each line roughly about six meters. There is no set rhyme scheme; some stanzas have very regular end rhyme, while others have no rhyme at all, and still others have only one or two rhymes which may occur in various places. Yet the feel of the poem is not at all choppy, rather the poem itself has a physical feel of a bus ride, sometimes speeding up with regular rhyming, sometimes slowing down, while the steady meter keeps us moving along with Bishop.

From the start Bishop sets the tone of leaving home with her description of the bay. She imagines the bus riding through her hometown towards her house and past the bay that was so familiar to her. In the first stanza we see how “the bay leaves the sea…and takes the herring on long rides,” and later in the second stanza the bay is “not at home.” By the third stanza the bay becomes “a red sea” and Bishop begins to mix the imagery of home with the imagery of the sacred. She imagines the bus traveling towards her “past clapboard farmhouses / and neat, clapboard churches.” By the sixth stanza Bishop enters the bus and says goodbye to her family, her dog, her farm, her woods. In short: her home. She continues the mixing of the sacred and secular as “the fog…comes closing in…on the…lupins like apostles.”

Over the next few stanzas the imagery becomes very lonely. The landscape the bus passes by becomes “A pale flickering. Gone…” and later, “An iron bridge trembles…A dog gives one bark.” Until they enter the New Brunswick woods. Bishop hears “Grandparents’ voices…talking in Eternity.” They talk about misfortune and conclude that “’Life’s like that. We know it (also death).’” These grandparents remind Bishop of her own; they talk “the way they [Bishop’s maternal grandparents] talked.” They talked in “Eternity” where Bishop feels safe. Children exist in Eternity, they don’t think about anything but their current situation, their home is eternal, and their home is sacred. Bishop had already lost so much in her young life. She was probably very familiar with the “half groan, half acceptance / that means ‘Life’s like that…’” as loved ones took pity on her. And with thoughts of home she began to feel safe; “Now, it’s all right now / even to fall asleep.” But the bus “–Suddenly…stops with a jolt” and we finally meet the moose.

The image of the moose embodies everything Bishop feels that she is losing by leaving home. It comes out of “the impenetrable wood.” It comes from a place of mystery, a place that is eternal. It comes out of the natural world and confronts man as it “looms…in the middle of the road.” It is something that happens to the passive onlookers in the bus. Bishop describes the moose as “high as a church, / homely as a house / (or, safe as houses).” This moose becomes for Bishop her last connection to her childhood place of safety, the place that is “’Perfectly harmless…’” The place where the sacred and the secular are one, the place where home is an eternity. The moose is revealed to be “a she;” she becomes maternal, and yet she is still “otherworldly.” Bishop asks herself “why do we feel,” and she adds, “(we all feel) this sweet / sensation of joy?” The world of nature has a spiritual quality to it, “otherworldly,” and man’s encounter with a rarity of nature causes him to reflect on, perhaps even connect to, his sense of eternity. But the bus must move on, and Bishop is left with only a moment to look back upon her fading connection to home. The poem ends with Elizabeth being left with “a dim / smell of moose, an acrid / smell of gasoline.” The word “acrid” leaves a sense of overwhelming discomfort. As the moose represents Bishop’s home that she is leaving, the bus is the only image she has for the place she is going to. As the smell of home fades in the background, the “acrid smell” of her future overwhelms her. The poem ends with Bishop feeling overwhelming pain from leaving her home with her maternal grandparents.

In Bishop’s poem “The Fish” we once again have an incident of man’s interaction with a natural creature, only this time under very different circumstances, resulting in a different type of poem with different conclusions. This poem is a story of Bishop out fishing one day when she “caught a tremendous fish.” In “The Moose” the creature for whom the poem is titled doesn’t show up till the end, yet almost the whole of this poem is focused on her description of the fish she caught. This poem begins very much like a “fish story” in which the facts are exaggerated or simply not true. This is something common among fisherman and it suggests that Bishop may never have had an encounter with this fish, perhaps she simply dreamed him up one day while she was waiting for a bite. But whether or not he is real or imagined, what he represents for Bishop and what she comes to realize through him is a genuine experience of revelation and growth.

“The Fish” is a free verse poem with bits of alliteration scattered about. Bishop emphasizes important points in the poem by incorporating the use of repetition. The first of which is; “He didn’t fight. / He hadn’t fought at all.” Bishop is intruding into the fish’s world with her bait and hook. As the fish is caught, this time, he remains passive, he gives in to her. It is interesting to note that it was Bishop’s moose who walked out of his habitat and interrupted man’s world while the passengers on the bus remained passive onlookers. Here there is no “sweet sensation of joy” among a group of people, no feeling of the spiritual world mingling with the natural. This time it is only Bishop and the fish alone together. Yet as she looks upon this fish, she begins to describe him with a developing sense of respect and awe. In this poem Bishop is not being forced to leave the image of her home behind, rather she is in control. She holds the passive creature in her hands and begins to understand and relate to him in new ways.

At first Bishop begins to see the fish through her own terms and describes him in a familiar sense of home. She says “He hung a grunting weight, / battered and venerable / and homely.” She continues to use images that are like a home; “his brown skin hung in strips / like ancient wallpaper, / and its pattern of darker brown / was like wallpaper: / shapes like full-blown roses…the course white flesh / packed in like feathers.” Bishop continues to describe areas of the fish that would not be very pleasant to look at with the pleasant images of a home. Right in the middle of this type of analysis, she describes his gills; “–the frightening gills, / fresh and crisp with blood, / that can cut so badly–” She is trying to relate to the fish in terms she understands, in terms of a home, yet it is also as if she is saying that the home is not such an ideal place anymore. It is not as safe, perhaps, as a child may perceive it to be. The “frightening gills” are what a fish uses to breath, this fish is now drowning in air, and yet they “can cut so badly.” The need for a home is almost as great as the need to breathe, yet there are times a home can hurt you and make you bleed.

As Bishop looks “into his eyes” she begins to see the fish in a new way. The fish’s eyes “shifted a little, but not / to return [her] stare.” The fish is unresponsive to her. He is not intimidated by her; he is not concerned with her presence at all. He no longer seems as a passive victim; rather, he becomes patient, awaiting the next move. Bishop describes the fish’s eyes shifting as “more like the tipping / of an object toward the light.” The word “light” here could also carry the meaning of understanding. Bishop now begins to understand this fish on his own terms as she begins to describe him with masculine terms; she “admires his sullen face, / the mechanism of his jaw.” She begins to see him as a warrior; his lip, “if you could call it a lip,” becomes “grim, wet, and weaponlike.” The fish still has five hooks lodged into his mouth. All five hooks are still bearing the strings attached which the fish broke and snapped in previous struggles. We see that the fish is not so passive. That he has war wounds which he bears from past struggles to survive. To Bishop these hooks become “medals with their ribbons / frayed and wavering;” the fish is not only a warrior, he is a hero. He has survived the fight and shown himself worthy. She describes the strings as “a five-haired beard of wisdom / trailing from his aching jaw,” and the fish becomes an elder, an old wise man who commands respect and honor, who still feels an ache from his wounds. This fish, who has battled through life and survived, becomes the image of life itself to Bishop. We are not to be passive onlookers, waiting for our homes and spiritual peace to come to us; rather, we should be active partakers in life, gaining wisdom and understanding through our struggles as we bear the medals of each wound we survive. We cannot force life into a pattern that is safe for us, we must let life be what it may be, and learn to let go of what we cannot control.

At this revelation the poem dramatically moves from a concentrated focus on the fish to the larger picture. Bishop “stared and stared / and victory filled up / the little rented boat.” The victory is her new understanding of life she has received, or caught if you will, which is the dignity that the fish possesses. In “The Moose” the “acrid smell of gasoline” overwhelms the young Bishop; however, this time some spilled oil mixed in the bilge becomes a symbol of beauty as it makes a rainbow. The elderly “know it,” that “Life’s like that…(also death).” It is through our trials that we gain wisdom. The wounds we bear and survive, the pain that we face, ironically can add beauty to our life and dignity to our character. We need to find the wisdom to choose the right battles to fight and the wisdom to know when to let go with dignity. As Bishop expands her focus away from the fish, she continues to describe “the little rented boat,” and  Bishop’s revelation comes together as this free verse poem pulls together with the last four lines ending in rhyme:

     from the pool of bilge
     where oil had spread a rainbow
     around the rusted engine
     to the bailer rusted orange,
     the sun-cracked thwarts,
     the oarlocks on their strings,
     the gunnels–until everything
     was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
     And I let the fish go.

Bishop realizes that she can’t go back to making home a completely safe place anymore, that there are some parts of life that she must learn to accept on their own terms; she must learn their language. As she lets go of the fish, she lets go of her need for control and deep safety, and she is able to see the beauty of life despite its pain and struggle.

In each of these poems we see how an encounter with nature gave revelation to Elizabeth Bishop, and she was able to find answers to her heart‘s search. In “The Moose,” Bishop was a child taken by members of her father’s family from the home she knew and felt safe at. It is a testament to how sacred the home is to a child. Elizabeth shows through the imagery of this poem, through her image of the moose, how important it is to provide a place of safety and security to our children. Yet in “The Fish,” the adult Elizabeth comes to realize that life really isn’t a safe place, but neither is it an entirely bad place. As we grow up and learn from our mistakes, we find that we can embrace life for what it’s worth. We are able to gain wisdom and dignity through the trials we bear. When we accept life on its own terms, we learn when to take control and when to let go, and our eyes are free to open up and see the rainbows.

Peter L Richardson
20th Century Poets
October, 2003

The Moose
For Grace Bulmer Bowers

From narrow provinces
of fish and bread and tea,
home of the long tides
where the bay leaves the sea
twice a day and takes
the herrings long rides,

where if the river
enters or retreats
in a wall of brown foam
depends on if it meets
the bay coming in,
the bay not at home;

where, silted red,
sometimes the sun sets
facing a red sea,
and others, veins the flats’
lavender, rich mud
in burning rivulets;

on red, gravelly roads,
down rows of sugar maples,
past clapboard farmhouses
and neat, clapboard churches,
bleached, ridged as clamshells,
past twin silver birches,

through late afternoon
a bus journeys west,
the windshield flashing pink,
pink glancing off of metal,
brushing the dented flank
of blue, beat-up enamel;

down hollows, up rises,
and waits, patient, while
a lone traveller gives
kisses and embraces
to seven relatives
and a collie supervises.

Goodbye to the elms,
to the farm, to the dog.
The bus starts. The light
grows richer; the fog,
shifting, salty, thin,
comes closing in.

Its cold, round crystals
form and slide and settle
in the white hens’ feathers,
in gray glazed cabbages,
on the cabbage roses
and lupins like apostles;

the sweet peas cling
to their wet white string
on the whitewashed fences;
bumblebees creep
inside the foxgloves,
and evening commences.

One stop at Bass River.
Then the Economies
Lower, Middle, Upper;
Five Islands, Five Houses,
where a woman shakes a tablecloth
out after supper.

A pale flickering. Gone.
The Tantramar marshes
and the smell of salt hay.
An iron bridge trembles
and a loose plank rattles
but doesn’t give way.

On the left, a red light
swims through the dark:
a ship’s port lantern.
Two rubber boots show,
illuminated, solemn.
A dog gives one bark.

A woman climbs in
with two market bags,
brisk, freckled, elderly.
“A grand night. Yes, sir,
all the way to Boston.”
She regards us amicably.

Moonlight as we enter
the New Brunswick woods,
hairy, scratchy, splintery;
moonlight and mist
caught in them like lamb’s wool
on bushes in a pasture.

The passengers lie back.
Snores. Some long sighs.
A dreamy divagation
begins in the night,
a gentle, auditory,
slow hallucination. . . .

In the creakings and noises,
an old conversation
–not concerning us,
but recognizable, somewhere,
back in the bus:
Grandparents’ voices

uninterruptedly
talking, in Eternity:
names being mentioned,
things cleared up finally;
what he said, what she said,
who got pensioned;

deaths, deaths and sicknesses;
the year he remarried;
the year (something) happened.
She died in childbirth.
That was the son lost
when the schooner foundered.

He took to drink. Yes.
She went to the bad.
When Amos began to pray
even in the store and
finally the family had
to put him away.

“Yes . . .” that peculiar
affirmative. “Yes . . .”
A sharp, indrawn breath,
half groan, half acceptance,
that means “Life’s like that.
We know it (also death).”

Talking the way they talked
in the old featherbed,
peacefully, on and on,
dim lamplight in the hall,
down in the kitchen, the dog
tucked in her shawl.

Now, it’s all right now
even to fall asleep
just as on all those nights.
–Suddenly the bus driver
stops with a jolt,
turns off his lights.

A moose has come out of
the impenetrable wood
and stands there, looms, rather,
in the middle of the road.
It approaches; it sniffs at
the bus’s hot hood.

Towering, antlerless,
high as a church,
homely as a house
(or, safe as houses).
A man’s voice assures us
“Perfectly harmless. . . .”

Some of the passengers
exclaim in whispers,
childishly, softly,
“Sure are big creatures.”
“It’s awful plain.”
“Look! It’s a she!”

Taking her time,
she looks the bus over,
grand, otherworldly.
Why, why do we feel
(we all feel) this sweet
sensation of joy?

“Curious creatures,”
says our quiet driver,
rolling his r’s.
“Look at that, would you.”
Then he shifts gears.
For a moment longer,

by craning backward,
the moose can be seen
on the moonlit macadam;
then there’s a dim
smell of moose, an acrid
smell of gasoline.

Elizabeth Bishop

The Fish

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn’t fight.
He hadn’t fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled and barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
–the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly–
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
–It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
–if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels–until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

Elizabeth Bishop

Has Huck Got Religion?

The Spiritual Journey of Huckleberry Finn  

Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes, and wishes he was certain.
– Mark Twain, Notebook, 1879

It is pretty clear that Mark Twain was not a big supporter of religion; it is also pretty clear that he was not very fond of humanity as a whole. Twain once said, “Such is the human race. Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.” Yet in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn there can be found a spiritual theme deep within the character of Huckleberry Finn; this boy is not just a troubled kid making his way down the Mississippi River who happens to fall into chance adventure; I believe Huck represents a subconscious glimmer of hope that Mark Twain had for humanity. Huck’s journey down the river can even be viewed as an analogy of a spiritual baptism that Huck undergoes. In baptism, a person is submerged under water, symbolizing his death, and he rises up as new person possessing a life of hope and purpose. Huckleberry Finn is an abused child of an alcoholic father who is forced to fake his own death and escape his father by traveling down the Mississippi River. The river could symbolize Huck’s baptism and by the end of the book, after a series of circumstances that cause Huck to grow and mature, he emerges as a new man.

Twain states right off in his introduction that “persons attempting to find a moral in [this narrative] will be banished” (2). Perhaps the author wanted to downplay the spiritual analogy, or perhaps the author wasn’t even aware of it himself; his pen being guided by the hand of Providence just as Huck and Jim were being guided down the river. There is a certain amount of coincidence that is necessary in any work of fiction, yet in Huckleberry Finn there are greater forces at work that guide Huck and Jim to each adventure. Every time Huck finds himself on land he is exposed to negative circumstances, yet just as often an unusual coincidence helps Huck make his escape back to the river all the more wise and mature. Before Huck even thinks about his upcoming adventures, he is already able to distinguish between traditional religion and the principles of truth. Huck tells us: 

“Sometimes the widow would take me one side and talk about Providence in a way to make a body’s mouth water; but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold and knock it all down again. I judged I could see that there were two Providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow’s Providence, but if Miss Watson’s got him there waren’t no help for him any more. I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong to the widow’s if he wanted me…” (12).

It is this Providence that Huck commits to which guides him through the Mississippi and through each adventure he has. It is also this Providence that brings Huck to Jim; they were already tied together as it was Huck’s supposed death that caused Jim to run in the first place. It is when he teams up with Jim that Huck begins his spiritual growth into a new man. Jim becomes a father figure to Huck and teaches him about family and relationship. Huck reveals he is in the very beginning of his growth when, after offending Jim, he is able to “humble [himself] to a nigger” and apologize (84).

Huck and Jim miss their turn at the Ohio River and so miss the opportunity to free Jim and part ways. This again can be seen as the hand of Providence, if they were to part ways it surely would have ended the growth of character Huck was experiencing. Instead they are thrust down the Mississippi, deeper into the South and deeper into harm‘s way, where they end up in one adventure after another in which Huck observes the dark side of humanity and is tempted and challenged through many trials. After their raft is struck by a steamboat, Huck survives by submerging deep into the river and when he surfaces he cannot find Jim and believes him to be dead. He is taken in by the Grangerford’s, a good family who happen to be feuding with another family by the name of the Shepherdson’s. The feud was apparently started from offended pride, and the families can’t even remember who made the first offense but neither is willing to make peace. Eventually, Huck watches his new friend, Buck Grangerford, sacrifice himself for a completely pointless feud. The word, Grangerford, represents “farmer” and Shepherdson represents “sheep herder”, making the families analogous to Cain and Able. Their feud represents to Huck the foolishness of the feuding amongst all of mankind. Huck observes the fruit of unforgiveness and learns how ancient traditions keep men from living in peace.

After Huck flees the feuding, he and Jim reunite, but they end up with a couple of “rapscallions,” a “King” and a “Duke.” The King and the Duke are a couple of con-men who take over the raft that Jim and Huck have been traveling on. Huck learns all kinds of schemes from them, and other than the nuisance they are on the raft, Huck doesn’t seem too put off by their scandalous ways. That is until they take a scam too far and try to steal the inheritance from a group of orphaned sisters. Huck is quite taken by one of them, and seeing that they are good people, he decides to steal the money back for the girls. He does this at great risk to himself; if he’s caught, it will be assumed he is just trying to steal the money, and he also risks abuse from the King and the Duke. Huck learns to make sacrifices to protect those he cares for; he also learns that doing the right thing doesn’t always have a good result. Despite trying to help, Huck ends up being accused along with the King and the Duke when their scam is discovered. Though he escapes, so do they, and he and Jim are once again stuck with them on the raft. Huck knows by now that these two deserve justice for their crimes, yet he is still able to see the dignity that every human being deserves. When the King and Duke are finally captured they are tarred and feathered and led off to die. Even after they sell Jim away from Huck, he is able to have compassion for them, lamenting that “human beings can be awful cruel to one another” (222).

The culmination of Huck’s growth and maturity is summed up in his statement, “You can’t pray a lie.” After discovering Jim has been sold, Huck wonders whether or not he has done the right thing in helping him in the first place. Huck’s conscious is being challenged by the traditions and conventions of his time. Many Southern “Christians” at the time Twain was writing had perverted the gospel to justify the sin of American slavery. Huck had seen the hypocrisy of man, but he was taught that its falsehood was truth. While considering whether to write Miss Watson and turn Jim in, Huck feels the guilt of her False Providence condemning him: “…here was the plain hand of Providence slapping me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched all the time…” (204). Huck tries to pray and ask to be “good” enough to betray Jim, but he can’t do it. He knows that in his heart he does not regret helping him. Not only can Huck not lie to himself, but he cannot lie to God either, yet it is not that Huck can’t hide his “sin” of helping Jim from God; it is, in fact, the Truth which has grown in Huck’s heart refusing to be hidden and emerging through Huck’s conscious. Huck tries to write a letter to Miss Watson, and then pray. At first he feels better, but his bond with Jim keeps him recalling moments of the love that had grown between them. Huck cannot hide from his heart, which tells him that helping Jim was truly the right thing to do, though he honestly believes that his actions are damnable. Huck’s conscious wins; Huck rejects all Southern tradition and convention. He is led by his compassion for Jim and sacrifices his eternal soul for his friend. Huck tears up the letter and declares, “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” (206). Jesus, referring to his sacrifice for mankind, declared that “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (The Gospel of John 15:13). Though still a boy in years, Huck now emerges from the river a new man, fully mature in his spirit. Huck made the ultimate sacrifice for Jim; despite believing that he would be condemned to hell, Huck still refused to turn Jim in.

True Providence, the widow’s Providence, guided Huck and Jim down the river and caused Huck to grow and mature. Huck “died” from the dysfunctional heritage of his father; he learned a lifetime of truth on his raft, and he emerged from the water a changed person. It is evident in his relationship with Aunt Sally; what else but Providence could land Jim and Huck at the home of relatives of Huck’s good friend, Tom Sawyer? And, with Tom on his way to visit! Huck is able to receive her maternal care and even comes to respect and honor her out of love and not out of fear. Huck is concerned about her feelings, and deters himself from sneaking out one night so she would not worry. The Huck Finn at the beginning of the book would not have been so considerate. Huck’s comment to Aunt Sally about no one dieing on the steamboat accident, just a couple “niggers,” can easily be explained. Huck was in character. He was still pretending to be Tom Sawyer, and often on his journey with Jim, he spoke of him in such derogatory terms with strangers so as not to be found out. The only thing lacking in Huck at this point is self-confidence. Freeing Jim is just a game for Tom Sawyer, but for Huck it a matter of his conscious calling him to do the right thing, and his love for Jim. Even though Huck still trusts Tom’s ideas over his own, he only wants to see his friend get free and live with dignity.

The book ends with Huck almost independently wealthy since he is able to claim his reward money. His rejection of Aunt Sally’s adoption is not a rejection of all of humanity, rather he is simply rejecting man’s traditions and conventions that civilization has come to represent to him. Huck doesn’t try to escape civilization by returning to the safety and solitude of the river. Instead he is confident enough in himself to head out west, ahead of the settlers. He becomes a frontiersman, a leader to his fellow man, forging a new path for humanity to walk in. Huckleberry Finn represents the rejection of the traditions and conventions of “civilization” that cause us to be in separate factions and create fighting and general chaos. The ability to look at the heart of the matter and simply do the right thing; this is the legacy that Huckleberry Finn leaves behind; this is the faint glimmer of hope for humanity that flashed in the heart of Mark Twain.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Mark Twain. C.1981, Bantam Books.

Peter L Richardson
July, 2003

Identity Crisis,

…a short autobiographical reflection on Adolescence.

Pete & Grandpop

During the transition from childhood to adulthood adolescents are faced with many new challenges in life. Not only are they changing rapidly physically but they are developing mentally as well. For the first time they find themselves pondering deeper questions such as “Who am I?” or “What is my place in life?” No longer comfortable in the role of a child and not yet an adult, adolescents are searching for places to fit in, searching for answers to questions of meaning and purpose, seeking to define who they are. In short; they are searching for identity. People who come from a strong and stable family and live in a healthy environment will experience the least anxiety about who they are. However, families that are broken or dysfunctional or even just unable to define a strong set of beliefs will most likely leave a child distraught and searching for structure and meaning in life. While there are definite skills and strategies parents can learn to help bridge their children into adulthood, the reality is that no family is perfect. Every person must face the challenge life offers to discover what he is made of and what he believes in.

Although they have managed to get past their problems, my parents were in conflict with each other when I was an adolescent, so I was unable to find any sense of identity from my family. After my sixth grade year I left a private school were everyone pretty much looked the same and moved to a public school in the seventh grade. This was a culture shock for me and it was really the first time that identity became an issue for me. Not because it was something I thought about, much less tried to define, but rather because “identity” was something that happened to me.

In the seventh grade I was still a boy. I didn’t fit in with most of the kids in school, but I found a group in which to find shelter with. We discovered that if you didn’t bother the popular kids or the bad kids, they pretty much left you alone. All we were interested in was getting through the day, so we could get home to our afterschool cartoons. When we got together, we played GI Joe, our bikes were still used for pleasure, and the topic of conversation was often about who would win if Batman or Spiderman would get in a fight. And I think we were genuinely happy. 

Eighth grade was when I discovered that girls weren’t really icky. But this new awareness also brought me to my discovery of who I was. Plain and simple, I was a geek. I couldn’t help but notice who was getting the girls attention, as well as notice the huge gulfs between us that marked our differences. I accepted my fate and took my place among the geeks and the nerds, but I wasn’t happy any longer.

Before ninth grade came around, I decided that I needed to be cool. I was tired of being teased and abused. I had already tried my hand with the upper class popular kids and was laughed out of that crowd, so I turned to the rebels of my generation; I had become a Headbanger. We were the kids with long hair, in black heavy metal t-shirts, jeans, jean jackets and boots, no matter how hot or how cold it got. We were the rebels of our time, but even then I knew the truth about us, we were all rejects of some form and we found this tough guy persona in order to hide our pain. Most of us were good kids, but once you adopt an identity like that in a culture that is full of stereotypes, you fall into what the expectations are for your group. By the end of ninth grade I was cutting most of my classes and getting stoned on a pretty frequent basis. I practically failed my freshman year, but that was okay; the important thing was that I had friends who were cool and nobody abused us. Besides, why would I want to identify myself with a bunch of snobs who were too good for me? I wanted nothing to do with their world and this society that centered on their selfish material interests and popularity games, so college and high school were of no importance to me.

Ironically, my drug use helped me find my way back to something like a purpose in life. Somewhere in tenth grade, I realized that I didn’t really like heavy metal all that much, but I had discovered some really good music from the late sixties and early seventies. I unconsciously molded into a hippie, but I was still stuck in the late eighties. I liked the concept of peace and love, and I admired the previous generation’s attempts to “change the world,” but I saw their attempts as failures. I discovered Jim Morrison of the Doors, and I began reading his poetry and tried to decipher his words. Jim Morrison was aware of the hypocrisy of his generation. He saw that mankind on his own was unable to create any true society of “peace and love.” He didn’t offer any solutions, but he made clear the problems in his time. He was also interested in spirituality and, to put it mildly, was a bit obsessed with the afterlife. Soon I started reading works by authors and poets who influenced Morrison, and in turn I began my own search for meaning and truth in this life. I also began writing my own poetry and expressed the ideas of my search through my works. I had slipped into an identity of a poet-philosopher, and I was completely at home there. I used to joke with my friends that it was too bad you couldn’t get paid to sit around and think, like those old guys from ancient Greece, but I really didn’t have any direction or confidence in myself.  Eventually, my poetry gained the attention of one of my teachers who made a large impact on my life. She took an interest in my work and challenged me to do something with my ideas.

“If there’s so much wrong with the world,” she would say, “why don’t you do something to change it.”  I would always answer her that there was no use; no one can really make any difference. In time she became a mentor for me and her praise instilled confidence in my abilities and added self-esteem to my identity. One day she boldly asked me if she had made any difference in my life. I answered in an absolute affirmative, and she asked why I thought I couldn’t do the same for someone else. She made me realize that since she impacted my life for the better, that human beings, including myself, really could make a difference in the world, even if it was just a few people at a time. She was the first person to plant the idea of teaching in my head. Though it has grown and been refined, this is the main identity that has stuck with me throughout the years. Because she saw something of worth in who I was, she made me realize the value in who I could become. I learned that my potential is much greater than the weaknesses that hold me back as long I keep the vision before me and continue to walk it out. I was lucky enough to receive these foundational principles in my identity as a teenager; they have stuck with me, and they have helped me define my beliefs and have helped to build my confidence in the man I am today.

Peter L Richardson
Fall, 2002

MEN UNITE!!! The Age of the Amazon is Upon Us!

“These boots are made for walking, and that’s just what they’ll do; One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you…”
                         -Nancy Sinatra

In 50 years women will rule the world. I first noticed this disturbing trend while teaching one of my honors classes. As I looked around during a debate all I could really see was soft skin, big bright eyes, and hair flowing from all angles of the room. Each side took their stance and began their arguments with poise and grace; the pitch of their voices rose higher and higher as the debate raged on. Pastels and perfume crowded my senses. The sugar and spice estrogen in the room was so thick, my head started to spin. 

“Where are all the boys?” I wondered. I had completely lost track of the debate. I didn’t know which side was winning; I didn’t care. All I could think about was why wasn’t I hearing nary an adam’s apple among all this talking? Of course there were a few males bedecked about the room; but none of them seemed to have an interest, much less an opinion, about whatever human issue was the focus on this unit’s debate. Were they silent because there was so few of them? And why were there so few males in an honors class anyway? Upon closer inspection, I found that not only were there less males in my honors classes, but the majority of the females outperformed every one of them. In each class the top student was a female every time, and she was usually ahead of the males by a significant number of points. I raised my concerns in the faculty lunch room and found the trend was happening in all subject areas!

We have generations of history that proves men are intellectually superior to women, so this can’t be an issue of man lacking the ability to rise to the occasion. I had to discover what the cause of this mental impotence could be. I interviewed several of my male students and the conclusive evidence is as simple as it is disturbing. They were just lazy: “But Mr. Richardson, I don’t feel like doing that much work!”  “But why should I worry about it? My mommy does everything for me anyway!” “But I don’t have time to do any work! I have to play Madden and World of Warcraft!” These young men were adamant that their time was somehow used wisely and they shrugged me off as some old curmudgeon who was outdated and antiquated. Women who are dissatisfied with their male bosses taking credit for their ideas, and their male coworkers making more money for less work need not be frustrated much longer. They need only wait for this generation of VPs and CEOs to retire or die.  There will be few males, if any, competent enough to take their places.

Who is to blame in this disturbing trend of male incompetence? Obviously not men! The feminists have taken the feminine out of female, and as a result men are left emasculated. What started as liberation has become full blown revolution! It started subtle, but women have slowly been taking over for decades now. It began with an infiltration of the universities. While most men were out doing physical labor and fighting in wars, women slowly began to over-populate the institutions that shape the next generation of world leaders. I remember an incident in the 90s on the campus of University of Delaware when I ignorantly committed a heinous crime against women. I was exiting a dormitory and I held the door open for the person behind me. She grabbed it out of my hands and snapped, “What? You think I’m too weak to push open a door?!” She muttered expletives as she walked away. I was dumbfounded. I was frozen in speech and in step. Women have crossed the line of gaining equality with men to becoming exactly the same as men in everyway. Think of Angelina Jolie. The truth is, girls that kick ass are sexy. Guys line up in droves to see this female action hero of the new millennium, but gentlemen, what are you going to do when your woman is able to kick your fat couch-potato-ass? Are you ready to be the mansel in distress? Are you ready to be dominated and tied to all four corners of the bed? Perhaps I’m overreacting: Only men watch those movies anyway, you’re probably thinking, chick still just dig chick flicks! Not so anymore. Take a break from the Xbox 360, and flip through the cable listings. Look at the Lifetime Channel: “Television for women, by women.” The sappy chick flicks are steadily being replaced by Resident Evil and similar movies with a heroine that is as hard and bad ass as any man ever was. Take a look at the content of the popular series, Sex in the City. If you could stop paying attention to Kim Katrell’s boobs for a minute you will see that these chicks are just men without penises. They live out every male’s fantasy as they move from lover to lover without consequence. No more girls crying at the bedside, they are the one’s sneaking out in the middle of the night these days. No more worries about inconvenient babies in the age of easy access abortion! But what if she wants a baby? Consider Jennifer Aniston’s new movie, The Switch.  What’s the point of getting a man involved in the first place? Kids don’t really need a dad anyway. They just sit around, drink beer, watch sports, play video games, and search online porn (What? It’s not cheating, if there’s no physical contact, right?). Gentlemen, how did we get to this point? It is not an easy pill to swallow, but I may have the answer.

Consider this: Single Moms and Sugar-Ma-Mas. Gentlemen, while you thought you have been riding the gravy train, the fact of the matter is that women have gotten used to living without your help. Single Moms have had to learn to cope and survive without any help from “dad.” They have found out they can have successful careers, and even though daycare is raising their children, it’s better than dealing with some inconsistent bum who doesn’t show any of them any affection anyway, or worse, spends his time abusing the ones he supposedly loves. But some guys still know how to “treat” their women. They got game where it counts and they make their women feel like natural women for at least 10 minutes at time. They take pride in all the Sugar-Ma-Mas they acquire. More and more these men are becoming dependant on their Sugar-Ma-Mas. These young boys spend all day smoking weed and playing Call of Duty instead of discovering their own call and stepping up to their own duties. They think they live the thug life, but they wouldn’t survive without the naïve and generous resources of their multiple female partners. The truth is, men, you simply aren’t needed anymore. What is the result of this disturbing trend? If nothing is done to turn the tide, I predict that within one to two generations the male species will be reduced to slaves and pets whose only real value will be for grunt labor, physical pleasure, and sperm donation to keep the earth populated.  

But gentlemen, before you punch a hole in the wall, or lose yourself in a stupor of alcohol, or begin to passively aggressively ignore your partner, fear not! I have a solution! I have spent much time observing the situation and there is only one course of action that can be taken. Women have spent the last half century learning to how to fill the manly roles you abandoned, but they still have one fatal weakness. They still are not immune to emotion. Men, the secret is simple. Talk to them. Ask them how they feel, and really listen to the answer. Women will let you into their deepest darkest secrets if they sense they can trust you. But to listen, you must be present. Tell your homies you gotta go. Get off the streets, stop dealing drugs and get a real job. Show your woman you can be relied on. Turn off you Xbox and do your homework. Begin to work your way back into the universities. Learn the pride and self-respect of accomplishment. Learn the art of Chivalry again; regain your strength and manhood. Use it to protect her and not to abuse her; open up the door for her and pull out her chair. She secretly loves it, but fears giving you that kind of power. Show her you can be trusted with power by being man enough to share that power in equality: Be vulnerable with her. Show her you will love, honor and respect her for who she is and not just use her for what she can give. Take back the children you spawned and be a father to them. Teach them to be responsible adults. Teach your sons how to respect themselves and how to respect women. Teach them how to love a woman and not just use her for a cheap orgasm. Teach your daughters how to love and respect their future men. It is a simple task: just be a man that your daughter can love and respect. Show her how she should expect to be treated by her man through the way you treat her mother.

Gentlemen, with these simple steps we can turn back the tide and restore balance to the universe. Only you can accomplish this deed! Only you can make the difference! Only you can make the change! The only way is to be there for your children so you can influence them the right way. The only thing that should stand between you and your child is death. Think about it. A day where every child has a father and a mother who loves him and teaches him how to give instead of take. Every child living in security knowing that both parents who conceived her have her back and will encourage her to reach her fullest potential. It is possible, but only if today’s men step up.  

“It seems to me that it is men more than women who today have to become knights and honorable. If enough honorable men stand up, that’ll be a quiet revolution. That’ll produce stable families and stable children who will take over the world.”  -Peter Kreeft, http://www.worldmag.com/articles/16886

Peter L Richardson
8/16/10

Serving God : Serving Others

Freedom Outreach: A ministry of caring relationships among friends in the city. Passion for Christ. Compassion for People. Period.

Playing in Riverside.

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James 1:27

It all started with Rachel Coates: “You should volunteer for our Easter  Party.”

“But I don’t do little kids,” I said, “I’m called to teens and young adults.”

“Still, you should come and help. These kids are awesome.”

I felt the usual immediate satisfaction of serving God; after all, “it is better to give than to receive.” However, it was a slow progress for these kids to work their way into my heart. Because of a faithful few volunteers, a few of the kids who were at the party were actually regulars at our church service. It only took one time for us to meet before they would run up to me at church with joy and ask to sit with me during worship and to make me play with them after the service. Eventually, one of them asked, “How come you don’t play with us during the week?”

Freedom Outreach is an organization based at Vineyard Christian Fellowship. Volunteers from the church and community have the opportunity go into the projects of Wilmington, Delaware, including Riverside and Southbridge, once a week and play with the children in the neighborhood. The goal is to simply build relationship with the children on their turf, the places where they call home. Freedom Outreach also organizes bigger events like holiday parties held at the church, and Vacation Bible Schools and annual barbeques held in the neighborhoods. Once leaders in the organization build relationship with the children and their families, they are invited to a session at Camp Josiah in Port Jarvis, New York. The church partnerships with the camp and some members of the church sponsor individual children to help pay their way to camp, and the kids also help raise money for themselves through fundraiser like carwashes. One major goal of Freedom Outreach is to mentor the children until they are teens and then train them to become mentors themselves.

Building castles at Camp Josiah.

Becoming a regular volunteer for Freedom Outreach was pretty tough for me at first. The kids were tugging on my heart, but I had my own children to worry about, and I thought for sure with my busy schedule, the Lord would let me off the hook. But between the Lord and the kids working on me, I moved from just helping out with special events, to going up to play with the kids in their neighborhood on a weekly basis. God quickly began to bless me through it, but not in a way I expected. Between my job as a high school teacher, and working on my masters in an attempt to earn more income for the future, and helping to raise two boys as a single dad, life was full of stress. However, here was two hours a week I could just play with kids and not think about anything else. Instead of having one more thing on my schedule, playing with the kids in Riverside became a break that I looked forward to each week.

The kids have also kept me humble. It was hard to complain about American lower-middle-class frustrations when I got a weekly dose of the realities of poverty these kids face. Some have moms and dads in jail or on drugs or even both. Some have parents or guardians who are struggling to do their best for the kids they love, but they just can’t get ahead of their past mistakes. Either way, most of these kids have been exposed to, and even been victims of, the darkness of mankind’s soul way too early in life.

Because of the environment they live in, they can often be very challenging, but it is amazing to discover the childlike beauty that is still in action in even the most hardhearted of the children. When I see the wonder of imagination and the magic of their hearts at work in them, it enables me to have greater compassion for my at-risk students, only a few years older, when they act out in my classroom in anger and fear. I know these students once did not feel the need to smother the magic that is still hiding within them. When I see the courage these kids need to face life every day, it teaches me not to judge their adult counterparts who came to age living in the same fear and neglect. Despite the many disappointments these children experience, I can still see hope glimmering in their eyes, and after a time I have felt the genuine love that some of them have come to trust me with, and I came to realize what loving your neighbor truly means.

When I spend time in the city, John Wesley often echoes in my brain: “But for the grace of God, there go I.” For what is God’s grace to us were it not for the people he has sent into our lives to be his hands and feet and even his mouth? If more kids and even adults can learn there is a better way of life, a road to freedom that our God teaches us, the cycle of poverty can be broken in their families. Many Freedom Outreach kids are growing into mature children of God, and it is a blessed thing to be a witness of; however, many more still seem to slip through the cracks. It is hard for seed to take root in concrete and asphalt; however, when the seed is watered by love and truth from a caring person; the stone can erode and crumble into ground soft and tilled, and God can create miracles that cause roses to bloom.

If you would like more information regarding Freedom Outreach, or would like to support the ministry in anyway please go to:  http://www.vcfbarn.com/service/freedom-outreach/ 

Peter L Richardson
7/9/2010

What I Learned from Childhood Heroes

“A boy doesn’t have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn’t like pie when he sees there isn’t enough to go around.”   -Edgar Watson Howe

I’m so glad I was kid in the 70s and early 80s. We got at best a couple of hours of cartoons a day, and after that we were stuck doing our homework or even *gasp* playing outside with our friends until dark. When I look at what is popular on kid networks today, I cringe with sorrow. In the age of 24 hour entertainment, there is little depth in anything children’s networks produce, at least for boys anyway. Superheroes have turned into teenage whiny brats who spend more time trying to develop their “chi” or learning how to cast spells than getting down and dirty with the next bad guy who is threatening the world. Although very young, my kids were lucky enough to experience the tail end of the age of the comic book superhero before Pokémon came on the scene and ruined it all. With the exception of The Avatar, I have not seen one action/adventure cartoon that has any decent story development at all, nor any “heroes” with any noble qualities that I would want my kids to develop. In fact, some of these so-called heroes often act in ways that I would feel the need to punish if they were my kids. If the attempt is to make the hero more human, writers today take it too far. Why do we need make-believe heroes in the first place? Is it not because we all know that in real life we simply don’t measure up? Kids need heroes to look up to, to emulate and learn from. The day to day grind of reality is enough to drag down the spirit of any man, but when properly inspired, that same man can be a hero when push comes to shove. Yet, how can we learn to become heroes as men, if we don’t have good models to teach us as boys, and if we don’t have the opportunity to spend hours of outdoor playtime pretending we are the hero saving the damsel in distress, or even the world from utter destruction? When I consider the man I am today, I can trace back many of my positive traits directly to the influence of my childhood heroes.

“With great power comes great responsibility” –Peter Parker, aka: Spiderman.

Even in my earliest memories, Spiderman is a part of my imagination. I can’t remember my first comic or cartoon; he was simply always there helping this shy, rejected kid feel like maybe someday I could be a hero too. Peter Parker was actually the first teen superhero who wasn’t just a sidekick, and his creator, Stan Lee, revolutionized the comic book industry when he gave him real life teenage problems. But there is a difference between Peter Parker and the teenage heroes we see today. Instead of always being a self-absorbed and snotty, he learned from his mistakes, he strove to be a good person. Though he was interested in and awkward around the opposite sex, he didn’t obsess over his loves interests (at least not inappropriately). He didn’t use his powers for the self-satisfaction of kicking ass and gaining glory; he was a genuine hero who saw his gift of superpowers as a gift to the world. Any Spiderman fan knows the great lesson that Peter Parker learned from the tragic death of his Uncle Ben: “With great power, comes great responsibility.” What was most amazing about the Amazing Spiderman was that his powers didn’t really bring him glory, but they actually became a burden to him as he desired to just have a normal life, yet he still made the choice to sacrifice his time and limited resources to go out and fight evil and save the lives of complete strangers. Peter Parker was a geek at school; he was an outcast, but as Spiderman, he sought to protect the very people who rejected him when his mask was off. He could have had a chip on his shoulder, but he made the choice to be a hero. He had real life problems, but he still gave his time and energy to help others he considered to be in greater need. When Stan Lee condensed decades of story writing into three movies, the hero’s journey that Peter Parker takes, not only as crime-fighter in tights, but as a boy becoming a true man, is even more evident. In addition to protecting the weak and innocent, the call to love your neighbor, to do good to those who persecute you, to find the freedom that forgiveness brings our souls, yet all the while standing up for justice and what is right and facing the hard choices we must make in the process, is written all over those scripts. I never had a radioactive spider mutate my DNA, but the hours of comic book reading, and the time I spent imagining I was the web-slinger himself surely mutated my spiritual DNA, and now I’m a man who knows you don’t have to be perfect to be a hero, you just have to be willing to give what you’ve got, and when the situation calls for it, you need to make sacrifices in your own life in order to do the right thing and even help save people who will likely never offer any thanks in return.

“It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.”  -Bruce Wayne, aka: Batman. 

My first taste of Batman was the old Adam West TV show, and the original Super Friends cartoon. In the first he was nothing more than a silly clown, and the latter a pretentious jerk who depended on his silly gadgets to survive. In my opinion, Marvel Comics definitely had better heroes and more interesting stories than DC Comics, so I never bothered with any Batman comic books. That is, until I discovered Captain Blues Hens, the local comic-bookshop. The first time my mom dropped me off there, I held my breath as I saw the rows upon rows of classic comics, and the walls lined up with every new issue released, even from comic publishers I had never heard of before! I found that the owners celebrated Batman as much as Spidey. I soon discovered why. The original comic book Batman had all the mystery and swagger that makes a villain appealing, but he was still a good guy. He was The Dark Knight, a protector of the innocent. In addition to just being one cool dude, Batman was special because he didn’t actually have any superpowers at all. All his skill was based on personal training. True, he would not have been able to accomplish the status of “superhero” if he was not rich, but in some ways, that makes him even better; he chose to use his riches to develop all his killer crime fighting equipment: the Batmobile, the Utility Belt, the Batcave all used up resources that could have been spent on women and drugs and multiple vacation mansions, but he used his fortune to help prevent others from becoming victims of crime. Of course he had his front of being a playboy, but that was just to ensure he kept his secret identity safe. His nights were not spent with loose women, they were spent bringing justice to Gotham City. Bruce Wayne was inspired to become a superhero when he was just a boy and his parents were murdered in front of him during a mugging. His father was in charge of a large successful corporation that was left to his young son too early. Luckily, Bruce had Alfred, the butler who was almost a member of the family, to raise him and take care of him. The young boy decided to honor his parents’ death by becoming someone who would prevent others from suffering the same fate. The idea of Batman was born. Batman is more than just the fancy gadgets paid for by his successful corporation. Think about it, he was still sharp enough to ensure that his father’s corporation continued to make money and provide for his crime fighting habit. He had to have the mind of an inventor and scientist to create all his crime fighting equipment; he also needed to develop his intuition and detective skills, and he needed a deep mental and spiritual strength to train himself how to fight and to know when not to. Batman was smart enough not let his grief from his loss affect his emotions when fighting crime. He knew to keep his head clear, and he followed a strict rule to never kill his enemy, no matter what. He understood the difference between justice and revenge. Batman teaches us that to be successful in anything, whether it’s fighting crime or running a multimillion-dollar-corporation you need self-discipline and self-control. He teaches us that while physical strength and skills are important, brains are almost always better than brawn. Batman usually defeated his enemies through outwitting them. Like Spiderman, he made great sacrifices for the protection of others, but he made doing good and being smart look bad-ass.

“It’s not the years; it’s the mileage.” –Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones, Jr.

What boy who grew up in the 80s didn’t don the fedora, the brown leather jacket and the whip? Indiana Jones allowed me to play dress up (minus the whip of course) well into my teens without looking too silly. I still own my first leather jacket I picked out as a cool guy teenager; it is curiously familiar to Indy’s. What makes Indiana Jones such a hero is his lack of heroic qualities that he learns to overcome as a flawed man who steps up to do the right thing when faced with danger. There is no mask needed here. Dr. Jones shows us once again that intelligence trumps brute force as he and a small band of faithful friends defy evil armies and prevent them from gaining more power to further their reign of terror in the world. Indiana Jones is just as excited, even giddy, to gain more knowledge and understanding about his craft of archaeology as he is to overcome the bad guys in his adventures. One of my favorite lines from the last movie happens in the midst of Indy wiping up some bad guys, when his son (unbeknownst to either of them at time) proclaims: “You’re a teacher?!?” Considering that Temple of Doom actually takes place a few years before Raiders of the Lost Ark, it is easy to see a progression of maturity and heroism in each of the four movies. In Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones is seeking adventure for the sake of “fortune and glory,” but he chooses to save a village in poverty instead. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, he goes after the greatest archeological find ever, the Ark of the Covenant, and learns to sacrifice his find to save the ones he loves and for the greater good of fighting the evil Nazi regime.  Indy restores his relationship with his estranged father in The Last Crusade, in fact, he only goes on this adventure to save his father’s life.  His maturity culminates in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull when he is finally able to step up as a true man and claim the woman he truly loves as his wife and begin a relationship with the son he unknowingly fathered with her. A typical movie begins with Indiana Jones on a personal quest either for himself or for his museum. However, eventually he has to make the choice to sacrifice his own goals and desires and possibly his life for the greater good. By the last movie, serving others is old habit. One other thing that is significant about Dr. Jones is that as a man of science, he still has a respect for the supernatural, and in his search for understanding through the study of ancient artifacts, he learns that there are forces in this world that can’t be explained by science or history alone. The original Indiana Jones Trilogy wet my appetite to search for truth in this chaotic world of ours. I wondered about different cultures both ancient and in the present, and I understood that the more I knew about the differences I have with others, the better chance I have of survival and peace with them. I also wondered about God’s role in our world, and whether or not he really cared about our tiny human affairs of evil régimes like the Nazis trying to take over the world. Indiana Jones played a legitimate part as one of the tools God used to invite me to seek him and discover who he really is.

“You don’t raise heroes; you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they’ll turn out to be heroes…” – Walter Schirra Sr.

Parents who believe that the media they allow their kids to be exposed to doesn’t hold much sway over their hearts are fools. I see two extremes with parents these days. Some want to lock their kids down so tight they shun anything that involves any hint of the imagination. Others allow their kids to be exposed to almost anything they want. I was shocked to one day overhear a conversation between my son and his friends when they were about ten years old. They were spending the night and were complaining that I was being too overprotective because I didn’t let him watch South Park and Family Guy. Apparently all their parents felt that since the shows were cartoons they were for kids! Considering the kids’ knowledge of the content of the shows, I am sure at least a few were getting a steady dose. What a wonderful logic of parenting! The painful truth is that ever since our fall in the Garden, childhood largely consists of a loss of innocence into the harsh reality of the fallen world. We have the difficult task of encouraging our sons to hold onto their imagination and faith so they can enter the Kingdom of God like a child ready to submit to their heavenly Father, and at the same time raise them to be mature men of God, spiritual-warriors even, so they are ready for the assault the enemy of our souls will surely wage on them. All this while working out our own salvation—no small task. Parents who shelter their boys too long and stifle their imagination will raise adults unable to cope with sin’s tempations and unable to act against evil when confronted by it. Parents who allow their boy’s flower of innocence to be cut too early will raise adults who are stuck in perpetual adolescence, believing that promiscuity is the only way for excitement and vulgarity is the only way to make a joke. As parents, we bear the image of God to our children. That is why a young boy’s greatest hero is his dad. It is a high calling that we will most certainly fail at because we are human. That is why we must encourage our sons to have heroes who arouse their curiosity about life and truth and the right way to live. We need to set before them men and women, super or otherwise, who make good choices and feel the painful consequences when they don’t. We need to give them room to breath and explore and imagine, but we also need to make sure the world they are exploring has safe boundaries. As they grow older and learn responsibility and morality, we increase their boundaries little by little so when the day comes for them to leave through the gate, they have the inner strength they need to fight evil and protect good at all costs, to fight for a woman’s honor, not to take it from her and abuse it, and even, if called to do so, to lay down their lives for the greater good of all. Boys need to see what true heroism looks like; they need to be able to spend time imagining and playing the hero, so they can one day become men who will be the hero.

Peter L Richardson*
7/21/10

*Pete’s Disclaimer: I stopped collecting comics in 1991 when I sold my comic collection for money for food shortly after I dropped out of college (my first attempt). Comics were already well on their way towards a dark trend that was geared to an adult audience. Although, to my knowledge, Spiderman comics remained mostly unaffected, there are a number of Batman works that are definitely inappropriate for children, and in some cases even teens. As with everything, parents need to monitor what their kids are reading, viewing, playing, etc. and use wisdom to know what each child can handle and offer guidance with any material they choose to allow. There is a reason the Indiana Jones films are rated PG13.

Survival Skills for the Divorced Single Dad.

-this essay is based on my notes from a teaching I gave on 8/10/06 for a weekend parenting conference some friends were running for my church. I was asked to give the “single dad perspective.” I felt inadequate then, and I still do today.

Me and my son, drawn by him many years ago...

“Fathers will teach the next generation,
     or they will lose the next generation.
Fathers will speak to the next generation
     about the many providences of God
     in protecting and preserving them,
     or the next generation will be without hope.
Fathers will cultivate gratitude,
     or they will produce a generation of ingrates.
Fathers will walk beside their sons,
     teaching them to honor their fathers,
     or there will be no America left to defend.”
          -Douglas W. Phillips

There are those times when our Heavenly Father breaks through with such clarity that we cannot deny he has spoken to us. Such was one of those times for me shortly before my ex-wife and I were divorced. I will not go into my list of grievances I had against her, but I was bringing them before the Lord in an effort to make sense of the mess my marriage had become. Because he is a gracious God and because I was feeling anything but gracious at the time, I felt like he was directing me in a path I did not want to follow. In anger and frustration and with my finger pointed at the sky, I blurted out loud: “But God, she has made herself my enemy!!!” For a split second I felt a smug justification to walk whatever path I wanted, until the Lord retorted with: “And what are you supposed to do with your enemies?” This moment was the greatest revelation God could have given me for the walk I was soon to begin. I cannot for a minute pretend I followed this principle with her at all times, I am a man of flesh and bone as well as the spirit, and in this spirit-flesh war, I am not proud of the ground I’ve given up to the flesh. However, having this moment to lean on gave me the strength to respond in love at times when it really counted. There are moments in my over ten-year-history of divorce that I wanted to go in with guns and lawyers blazing, but the Lord bit my tongue and the Spirit turned my cheek in the right direction.

Divorce is ugly (it is one of the few things that God says he hates), and it usually never results in a happy ending. However, when at least one of the parties submits him or herself to God as much he or she is able in the midst of the wreckage, God can and will turn what is meant for evil into good. I can confidently say that despite all the dumb-ass mistakes that I and my ex have made over the course of our volatile relationship; God has brought us to the place that could be the best possible situation for our kids who are stuck living in the middle of a severed family.  I would like to share a few lessons the Lord has taught me over the years. I, by no means, can be considered an expert; so far, I have only a 50% success rate with my boys (I have a great relationship with one, while the other wants nothing to do with me), but if experience has anything to do with wisdom, these words might be worth your time if you find yourself in a similar situation or know someone who is. Please take them with a grain of salt.

You and your spouse split up for a reason, right? So it should be no surprise when the two of you end up having vastly different parenting styles. When this happens you need to again (and again, and again) respond in love while you learn to respect your children’s “extended” family.  The hard truth is that dads almost always get the short end of the stick when it comes to divorce, but you need to man up and make the best of the situation for your kids. One reason why it is so hard for divorced dads who want to be good parents is because there are so many “boys” laying their seed everywhere and not taking responsibility, partly because they never had a proper father figure of their own. If you are not the custodial parent you need to make your place of dwelling a home as much as possible. Even if you are stuck in a one bedroom apartment, you need to make a space that “belongs” to your children. They need something that they can claim as their own to feel confident that your place is home for them as well. When they are there, you need to spend time with them and do it on their level. It is very difficult to bond with your kids when you’re only around part-time, but it is not impossible. Plato famously said, “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play, than in a year of conversation.” If you want to create opportunities for you children to trust you and talk to you, you need to play with them.  I once knew a father who put his kids up in the guest room at his house, they always had to unpack their clothes and toys from their mom’s place, and then he wondered why they would never respect him or want to come over.

When the kids are young, I think it is best to set down a specific schedule of the times you and your ex will be responsible for them. It avoids confusion and can prevent those moments when your kid is the only one who didn’t get a ride home from practice. I think my ex and I avoided a lot of conflict with the understanding that if it was my weekend, then I would be the one to make sure the kid got to his game, recital, friend’s birthday party or whatever. As the kids get older, I think it’s important to give them more freedom in choosing how much time they want to spend at each of their parents houses. This is an emotionally tough call, but it goes with the hard decision that every good parent has to make to offer their kids more and more freedom in order to let them grow up into responsible adults. If your child prefers your ex’s place to yours, you should respect that, but you should also ask them what you could do to make your place more accommodating. If you can’t (because of limited money), or you won’t (because of values), explain to them why. While they might not respect it in the moment, this is an opportunity to teach them to be financially responsible, or more importantly to make good moral choices.

Since you and your ex will likely have different sets of values, you are going to have to learn to be flexible with morality, but at the same time, you need to know what areas you are not willing to compromise in and draw a clear line of expectation for your children. In a healthy marriage, a couple will discuss the hard decisions and reason together in order to discover if one is being too strict or the other too easy. They can then come back to the child with a united decision. In a divorce you only get hearsay about what the other parent is doing, and it’s not always easy to hear. If you feel your child is in serious danger, you should confront the other parent; however, you need to accept that even in the white-picket-fence scenario, your kids will eventually walk out that gate and get all that temptation for corruption in one form or another. The best thing for any parent to do is to prepare their children for making the right choice when faced with sin rather than just try to keep them hidden from it. If you have rules that are stricter than your ex’s, you should be prepared to openly discuss why and explain your reasons for your “not in my house” policy. “Because I said so,” just doesn’t cut it. What is the point if you only tell them “no”? Your children need to be armed with the knowledge of why something is harmful to them, or why you feel they are not yet ready for something.

No matter what your ex (or her new spouse) does, or how she behaves, or what she says about you, you cannot disrespect her in front of your kids. This includes complaining about her with other people. You will need to find strong shoulders to lean on and strong ears to bitch at; you need to vent, but never do it in front of your kids. The Bible commands everyone to “honor your father and your mother.” If you dishonor your ex in front of your kids and in essence ask them to take sides, you are planting seeds in their minds that could eventually grow into sin. If you have any anger or jealousy towards your ex, do your best not to show it to your kids; take your grief to the Lord.

One major mistake that I see single dads and moms make, especially as their kids grow older (perhaps out of guilt, perhaps out of a desire to be hip so they can get a younger, newer model for the role of spouse), is to try and be more of a friend to their kids than a parent. You can and should have a friendly relationship with your kids, but you are the parent, and you need to fill that role first. Frankly, even though it’s hard to find time, you need to go out and find your own friends. If you try to fill your emotional needs with your kids, you will lose perspective and not be able to make good judgments while you are trying to guide and discipline them. Of course, you always want your kids to like you, but if you are more concerned with them liking you than teaching them to make good decisions, you are only causing them harm, and you ultimately will lose their respect. The fact of the matter is you can’t make your child like you, or even love you, but you can demand that they show you respect, and if you do that, they will likely show other adults respect and become more successful in life in general.

On the other hand, you always must discipline in love and not in anger. This is something I had trouble with when my kids were younger, especially with my oldest son, and I’m sure this is one reason why he is resistant to have a relationship with me now. It has been a process, but first I learned to admit it when I overreacted, and at this point I have really learned to control my anger when I feel it coming. Disciplining in love is not as hard as it seems, but it can become complicated. It is simply stepping back and considering why you are upset and controlling your emotions before you respond. If your child has clearly violated your trust or done something that deserves a consequence, you need to consider what punishment will result in the strongest benefit for your child (not necessarily what punishment fits the crime).  What will teach him to make the right choice next time? The hard truth is this will be different for every kid and often different for each situation. With practice and time, responding in a calm and loving manner becomes not so hard; the complicated part is coming up with the best way to handle the crime! You will make mistakes and you will make them often. The important thing is to try to learn from your mistakes, and the most important thing is to admit you made one.

Whether or not you realize yourself that you blew it, or if God or a friend calls you out, or even if your kids call you out, when you are wrong: admit it! Some fathers have a hard time admitting when they are wrong out of a fear of losing authority, but the result is just the opposite. If you can’t admit when you make a mistake, everyone under your authority will eventually loose respect for you and stop paying attention to anything you say. When you admit your mistakes to your kids, you are validating their feelings of betrayal and respecting them as individual persons. This gives them the opportunity to forgive you and develop a stronger character. Your actions will also model humility, and when they make their mistakes, whether it’s out of just acting foolish or out of blatant rebellion, they will be more likely to admit they were wrong when confronted by you, and likewise, when they are confronted in their future relationships.

The last and most important thing is to model your relationship with God right in front of them. Pray, worship, and evangelize in front of them and with them. Especially, prayer. The Bible commands us to pray continually. My ex and I were just nineteen when we eloped. I remember having a conversation with a single friend while we were in our early twenties, and he was marveling at the impossibility of that command. I laughed and told him to just wait until he had kids; he would find that he could fulfill the command more out of need and desperation than obedience! The fact is we can’t control what happens to our kids; we can’t make them believe what we believe, and we can only protect them so much and hope to teach and influence them to make good choices and walk in the best path that God has laid out for them. All the earth belongs to the Lord, even your kids. The most powerful thing we can do for them is to cover them in prayer. Learning to practice spiritual warfare is required of good parenting. When they are young we need to pray with them, and point out to them when God answers their prayers. You need to pray with them for blessing over your ex, even when she just did something really wrong to you right in front of them. They will learn to bless those who persecute them.

Learn to model your parenting after God. He is our Heavenly Father, first as our Creator, second as we become born again in the Spirit and that mysterious relationship is restored. How often do we screw up before God and then cry out for mercy just one more time? Think about how He responds to you the next time you want to smack your kid upside the head for doing the same dumb thing over and over again. This is hard for some guys. We often see God through the flawed relationship we’ve had with our earthly fathers. We think God will respond to us with judgment and criticism because that is what our dads did. Ironically, this revelation is what often prompted me to get myself right with God and kept me on my knees. I know if my kids need anything at all from me, it is the legacy of Jesus. I don’t want them to blame God for my mistakes.

If you are still working on your relationship with your Heavenly Father, look into scripture that references God as a parent (for instance, the prodigal son parable). If you are having trouble having faith that the scripture is for you, watch fathers in your congregation that have had success with respect and love from their children. The Apostle Paul tells his readers to follow his example as he follows Christ’s example. Pick men in the church that you respect and ask them to mentor you, or at least to be a sounding board when you need wisdom in a situation. There are three particular men in my church who I was lucky enough to watch and learn from. I saw God and grace all over their relationship with their kids, and I wanted it with mine. First, I just kind of observed and watched how they did things. Eventually, I had questions for them about why they did what they did. Now I call two of them my best friends, and I still go to the other one, who is old enough to be my father, for advice when I need it.

If you are freshly divorced, you are probably angry at the world and don’t want to spend quality time with anyone, but you can’t do it alone. There are some single parents who, out of guilt and/or a desire to hide from adult relationships, sacrifice every ounce of their personal time for their kids. You need a healthy support system. You need spiritual guidance, and you need practical advice and practical help. You need someone who will go out and have a couple of beers with you and let you whine all night, but also stop you from having any more than just a couple of beers. You need positive and wise friends and you need God. Without both, you can’t be a healthy parent.

Peter L Richardson
6/19/2010

“After the war…”

Now that chaos has died down,
     we’ve called truce,
     drawn up our peace-treaties,
     and learned to negotiate like neighbors.
I think about the casualties of war,
     the survivors and innocent victims
     caught in the destruction.
It is they who are most deeply affected
     as the borders and boundaries
     change in their lives like the seasons.
How can they hold identity?
What heritage do they have to cling to?
To whom will they pledge their allegiance?
     But they do have choice.

I have fought long and hard and deep
     for this land.
To provide a place for them,
     a safe haven,
     a home.
The land won—a wilderness:
     A scorched scar on the earth.
But I have bled my fingers to the bone,
     broken my body like bread,
Filling the land and removing the stone,
Planting seed and building new home.

After the smoke is cleared,
After the infrastructure is finally
     coming together,
I receive the first fruits of prosperity
     for this new nation…
Fruit to provide for my people
     for the offspring…

Now that that is all done,
     what have I won?
The work so long and so hard,
     I wonder,
          do they trust me?
And what have I won,
     without their trust?

Peter L Richardson
5/29/2004

Roads Go Ever Ever On…

Spiritual Applications of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings

Her son was having trouble going to bed again. I waited downstairs while she attempted to reason with a defiant three year old. Scanning her bookshelf, my eyes fell upon a hardback set of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. I picked it up and thumbed through it until there was peace upstairs. Finally, she reappeared.

            “That’s a great series, have you read it?”

            “No,” I said, “I own it though; I was hoping to read them before the movie comes out.”

            “Well, you better get started,” she laughed, “that’s only a few months away!”

And I’m glad I did. This series of books kept me inspired during my return to college and journey to finally get my bachelors degree. Long story short: I got married my freshman year of college right out of high school, had a kid, and dropped out. After the second child came along, I began taking classes part-time, but after a divorce, I was forced to get a second job just to make ends meet. The deferment of my dream to finish college and become a teacher seemed certain. Was this my fate; to stay in a series of dead end jobs that gave me no fulfillment, no sense of purpose? What kind of legacy would I leave my children? “Dad never finished college; he just gave up on his goals.” When things seemed darkest and most impossible, an opportunity to return to school full time appeared, but just like the Ring Bearer and his companions in Tolkien’s epic, this journey would come with many sacrifices and have an uncertain ending. In The Lord of the Rings, the evil forces of a once defeated Lord Sauron are rising up again. This Sauron once gained power through a Ring he wrought in secret. Through a series of seemingly meaningless events, this Ring came into the possession of Frodo Baggins, a hobbit of Middle Earth. When the power of the Ring is discovered, nine companions representing five different races of Middle Earth are chosen to carry the Ring to the only place it can be destroyed; the furnace of Mount Doom in the heart of the land of the enemy. The fellowship is eventually broken up, and Frodo and his servant and friend, Samwise Gamgee, must complete the quest on their own while the rest are forced to defend what’s left of Middle Earth in battle.

As I read The Lord of the Rings I was constantly inspired by the innocent determination of the four hobbits, Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin, the quiet confidence of Legolis, the elf, the gruff stubbornness of Gimli, the dwarf, the strength and valor of the men, Aragorn and Boromir, and the wisdom of Gandalf, the wizard. Right from the beginning, Tolkein began to teach me through Gandalf. I doubted my ability to handle going back to school full time as an adult with two kids to take care of and help to provide for, but in the second chapter of the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring, I read Gandalf’s advice to Frodo as he doubted his own ability to complete his task. Frodo was wondering how he ended up in such a situation and Gandalf encouraged him with, “Such questions cannot be answered…you may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess: not for power or wisdom, at any rate. But you have been chosen, and you must therefore use such strength and wits as you have” (95). I have determined to do likewise in my own adventures. I don’t know if I “have been chosen” to teach, but I am certain that God desires us to use the talents he’s given us for the good of others, and ultimately for the good of his kingdom. For me, teaching English made sense. In his forward to The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien states, “As for any inner meaning or ‘message,’ it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical” (10). However, Tolkien is a Christian, and I think that God took advantage of his imagination. There are many life lessons and principles in his epic that come straight out of the Bible. The more I read these great books, and the more I watch the movies, the more treasures I find. I will only mention a few here.

The Ring of Power, wrought with evil intention, corrupts and ultimately destroys any good in anyone who possesses it and wields its power no matter how good their intentions are. Not even Gandalf, with his wisdom and strength of many years, was willing to risk the temptation of the Ring. Yet, for a time anyway, the innocent and pure heart of Frodo, the hobbit, was able to bear the burden of the Ring. Hobbits are childlike creatures, smaller in stature than men, and they possess a joy, peace and innocence in living that only children seem to possess in our world. It is no wonder that Jesus said if anyone wishes to possess the Kingdom of Heaven he must become like a little child, and likewise, the greatest among us will be like a little child (Matthew 18:2-4). If we work to put down our pride and seek to live a simple life of trust in God and his provision and his wisdom, if we become like little children, we also will be able to resist temptation when evil comes our way; however, if we trust in our own wisdom, and desire glory for ourselves, we will not be able to withstand the burden of our enemy, Satan. Only through childlike faith in Jesus can we be saved. We need to learn to trust in our Heavenly Father, and through that trust we can regain the childlike imagination to dream the impossible. 

Children are not as concerned with the lust for power and domination that has caused so much grief in the world, but as we all know, they do succumb to greed. Every parent cringes when they hear their bright-eyed, lovely child screech “Mine! Mine!” when friends are over. Likewise, Frodo finally succumbs to the power of the Ring at the end of his journey. Gollum is a creature who once possessed the Ring for many years. It is rumored that he was once very much like a hobbit himself; however, overtime the Ring eventually possessed him and slowly turned him into a wretched creature whose only thought was consumed in lust and greed for his “precious,” the Ring. Gollum tracks down Frodo and tries to kill him in order to take back his “precious.” Frodo gets the upper hand and has many opportunities to put Gollum to an end, but he heeds the advice of Gandalf to take pity on him. When he is finally standing at the furnace of Mount Doom, Frodo is unable to complete the purpose of his journey and destroy the Ring for his own greed to possess it. However, Gollum once again appears and fights for the Ring. He gains possession of it, but only to fall into the fire in the fight, thus destroying himself and the Ring. Gandalf’s advice for pity, and Frodo’s faithfulness to follow through is the principle that Jesus teaches us to show mercy to our enemies, and to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:43-48). We are to trust in God’s judgment and his justice, and just as Jesus died for us while we lived as enemies of God through our rebellious and sinful actions, we are to show the same love for others in hopes of their repentance. Additionally, we see the principle that God works all things out for the good of his purposes (Romans 8:28). We learn that even the purposes of evil can be manipulated to result in good. If Frodo had justifiably killed Gollum early in his journey, Gollum would not have been there to take the Ring from Frodo. Frodo would have eventually died at the hands of Sauron who would have taken possession of the Ring for his evil purposes, and if Frodo somehow did survive, he would have become like Gollum. However, Gollum’s life was taken only by his greed, and through no intentions of his own, he ended up saving Frodo from the pitiful fate he succumbed to.

Another Biblical principle found in The Lord of the Rings is that the trials and persecution of evil in our lives are often used to build character and train us for a greater purpose (Romans 5:4-6). We learn this in the journey of the hobbits and of King Aragorn. Aragorn first appears in the epic as Strider the Ranger, a mistrusted nomad who could use a bath, but we quickly learn the Rangers roam the land for the protection of travelers and they help anyone who is in need. Aragorn happens to be the sole heir in the broken line of the kings of men. There are many ancient prophecies that point to his purpose in Middle Earth, but he is at first unsure of himself and his ability to accomplish what he is called to do. As he walks out his journey and gives his life in service to others simply trying to help, he passes through many difficult trials that only increase in intensity. However, with each trial he survives he gains more confidence in himself and more honor from others. At the end of his journey he is a man with the strength and stature of a warrior, yet he is a warrior who possesses humility and wisdom from his experiences. He is a man worthy to take the crown of a king. Additionally, the hobbits, perhaps losing some of their innocence, gained much wisdom and strength in their journeys. When they were placed in the midst of violent battles, Merry and Pippin learned how to be valiant warriors. Upon returning to the Shire, their homeland, the group of hobbits found it overrun by a number of ruffian men. Merry and Pippin rallied together the hobbits and developed key battle strategies that enabled them to take back their home. This was their initiation into spiritual maturity, into adulthood in a sense. Before their return, Gandalf warned them of the dangers at home, but assured them they could handle it, “I am not coming to the Shire. You must settle its affairs yourselves; that is what you have been trained for…you will need no help. You are grown up now. Grown indeed very high…” (Tolkien, The Return of the King, 341).

In the same way, Sam, who faithfully remained with his master and friend, Frodo, developed leadership skills and eventually became the mayor of the Shire. In my opinion, Sam is the most important character in the series. If Sam had not been so devoted to Frodo, Frodo would likely not have made it. We are called to carry each other’s burdens (Galatians 6:2), Sam would often give up sleep, food and water to keep Frodo going, and at the end of their journey when Frodo could no longer walk at Mount Doom, Sam literally picked him up and carried him up the mountain. What a beautiful picture of servanthood! Jesus teaches us that whoever wants to be the greatest must become the least and the servant to all (Matthew 20:25-28). Sam, the man in the background, is the true hero of the epic. He always put others before himself, and he never sought any recognition for his sacrifices. Since Frodo had such long contact with the power of the Ring, he was plagued with unrest and was unable to stay at peace in the Shire. This testifies to the reality, that there are consequences from prolonged exposure to evil, whether we have spent much of our lives in sin, or if we suffered greatly at the hands of evil men. In Frodo’s case, he made a great sacrifice for the sake of others, and he also gained wisdom in his journey. He was given the honor of living among the elves and with Gandalf in the Grey Havens, a type of heaven, where he would be at peace, but he had to leave the home he loved and fought to protect. Sam is the most upset, but with the elf-like wisdom he had gained, Frodo explained to his faithful friend, “It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them” (Tolkien, King, 382). Both Sam and Frodo teach us that we are to be willing to sacrifice our time and money, our very lives, for those in need. Most of us will not find ourselves on epic journeys to save the Earth; however, we are all wrapped up in the epic battle between good and evil everyday of our lives whether we choose to accept it or not. The choices we make often have epic proportions. Who knows how far and deep into the soul of a man the seed of a good deed may go, and how much fruit that seed may bear in others. Likewise, we don’t really know the consequences of our selfish actions either. We must be willing to follow the example of Jesus, and take up our cross daily for the common good of our fellow man.

And so this reality has hit home to me. I have already made many sacrifices for the protection of my children through my divorce; I have been forced to sacrifice many adult-relationships in order to spend quality time with my children during my time in school. Higher education was not cheap, and choosing to become a humble high-school-English-teacher has forced me to make many financial sacrifices for both myself and my children. Yet despite these trials, despite the daily battles I face for and with my students, and my battles with a world full of temptations that would lead me to destruction and distortion of the truth, I know I am doing what my God has called me to do. I have made many mistakes along the way: I have gone down wrong paths; I have given up true treasure for the sake of fool’s gold; I have fallen many, many times. Yet each time, my God has sent my fellowship of friends, brothers and sisters, to help me and encourage me in the journey, and this help assures me that he too is walking with me; and that, despite my foolish detours, he is constantly guiding me back on the right path and taking me further along to become the man he has called me to be. I have learned through the Word of God, and I have been vividly reminded through Tolkien’s imagination, that humility brings honor, trials produce strength and character, and often doing what is right and needed comes with great risk and sacrifice; yet we must persevere and always do what is right. The Lord of the Rings is a masterpiece. Tolkien’s ability to communicate truth through fantasy is as incredible as it is inspiring. Had it not been for the movie coming out when it did, I might have put off reading this classic series, but typical of his actions for his children, God lovingly brought it to me when I really needed the inspiration, at the beginning of my own new adventure.   

• Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. Parts 1, 2, & 3. Ballentine Books, New York: 1983.

Peter L Richardson
Fall 2001, revised December 2009.

“Roads Go Ever On”
 -John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on,
Under cloud and under star.
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen,
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green,
And trees and hills they long have known.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone.
Let others follow, if they can!
Let them a journety new begin.
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

Still ’round the corner there may wait
A new road or secret gate;
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.