I saw these pictures today that my 15 year old took of my 13 year old and a friend last night and they just cracked me up. First off because Emily, the one on the right, the friend, is just hilarious. Talk about some energy.....WOW. I love it when she is around. She is so open and free in our home and you just never know what she is going to say or do next. All my daughters love being around her because she makes them laugh so much. It's just fun.
I often wonder what it would take to see that this is never lost in the process of children growing up? I had a friend say something in light of this awhile back that I think of often. "The world system does have a 'grace period' for children, but even that seems to be getting shorter and shorter. The world comes and crushes the child into it's pre-set molds of performance and piles complexity upon complexity."
I have awakened to the oppressive nature of the system we live in and how it crushes people and robs us of the things that are most important. I pay attention and listen carefully everyday around my daughters and their friends for the opportunity to plant a bug in their ear...a bug that hopefully creates an itch that gets their attention as to the importance of hanging onto to that which matters the most...Child-likeness.
I have also come to realize the importance of being that fun free spirited example as an adult...a counter-cultural example of someone who wants to recapture the important things this world had taken from me through it's covert curriculum.....the lie that tells us that we have to take our place in the machine, conform, and accept it as it is given to us.
The Christian community (all of us that have been shaped by civil religion) can talk all we want about being governed by something "other" than the rest of the surrounding culture but it doesn't make it so. We have become as beholden to the status quo as is everyone else. I don't want to live that way any longer.....my daughters and their friends need a different example. Freedom as it really is...and it's not even close to the same thing the culture refers to it as being.
7 comments:
awesome post mister burgess!!!
This reminds me of something Anne Lamott wrote in The Aunties Chapter of Traveling Mercies as she was observing some young teenage girls.
"At nine or ten, girls still get to be fine. They've still got a couple of years before they totally forget what they do have and start obsessing about what they don't...They were still of an age when they could play without wearing glasses of puberty that would make them see all their flaws. Not yet measuring, not yet comparing, lost in what is right in front of them."
Thanks Dan, I like that. I started rereading Traveling Mercies a few months ago and and then got distracted. I've been wanting to read it again. Thanks for the reminder.
Rob, thanks for contacting me tonight. It had been too long.
Kent,
I love these pictures!!!! How fun!! They remind me of my Junior High days, when I had my friends over and we goofed off doing the most silly, but oh, so fun things.
You're girls are precious! Thanks for posting these...as well as the words to approach life with a youthful vigor.
Blessings,
~Amy :)
Oh Dear God,
Kent,
thank you for posting this.....
i'm glad i'm not the only one thinking about stuff like this....i'm not crazy....i may be a bit off the wall, but i'm not crazy....and being a father of young ones, i'm seeing how easily i do this to my kids (conformation/molding crap that isn't always necessary)
talk soon,
todd
Maybe Todd you are crazy....just because your thoughts line up with mine on this might just mean we both are. hehe
in all seriousness, I'm glad it resonated with you and is an encouragement.
Great words, here, Kent - and pics too!
My, my, my, don't we need more of this. I'm really feelin' it lately - this need to lighten up and enjoy this one life we've been given. I had really lost that... somewhere between endless diapers and lack of sleep.
I feel like I'm only just emerging from underneath the rock where I've lived for the past 7 years. I am ready to get back into life, now, and have a ball!
You've captured it well, here, and boy do I agree!
Post a Comment