Wayside Pulpit

Unjust Rules

Today was just one of those mornings. The keys were lost, the dog vomited on the floor and every single pair of socks was dirty. I didn’t get it all together in time and my daughter was late for school. They had already started their morning assembly when we rolled into the parking lot. The rule at the school is to get a tardy slip before joining the assembly. So, hand in hand with my eight year old we went to the school office. I asked for an excused tardy slip. The school secretary handed me a small piece of blue paper and asked, “Why is she late?”

“She’s late because mom couldn’t get it all together this morning.” I answered.

“That’s not an excused tardy!” She snapped back, giving me a look that screamed, “Slacker mom!”

I felt my face heat up and I was angry. My thoughts were clear, “How in the world can you penalize a child for a parent’s mismanagement of time? She doesn’t drive. She can’t fly. How could she have gotten to school without me. She was ready to head out the door on time. However, I wasn’t.”

I looked at the secretary and asked, “Well then, what qualifies an excused tardy?”

Again sporting the same look of disdain, “A doctors appointment, something legitimate like that.”

I took a pen off the counter and filled out the excused tardy slip. When it asked why, I wrote, “Doctor’s appointment.” She was shocked. So was my daughter who has been told time and time again never to lie. I handed the slip to my daughter and in a genuinely nice voice told the secretary to have a nice day.

This afternoon when I picked the kid up at school we talked about the slip. I told her that some rules are unjust and this was one of them. I told her I felt badly about lying on the form, but I was not going to allow the system to penalize her (no recess for the day) for something beyond her control. She said to me, “Rules like the tardy rule make me think that the school doesn’t like kids.”

I replied, “I can see why you feel that way, the rule does not respect you and your rights as a child.”

We began talking about unjust rules and laws and that many of them need to be broken. We talked about Rosa Parks. We talked about San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and his response to the ban on same sex unions. We talked about the United States’ faulty immigration policy and illegal border crossings.

She’s questioning how the system works, just like Jesus did.

Know News

I haven't had television in years, so TV has not be a news source for me. However, I have always been quite the radio junkie; listening to everything from conservative talk radio to the far left liberal stations in the San Francisco Bay Area. While I was in Europe this summer I had no radios or newspapers, no way to really know what was happening in the world and, interestingly, after a few days I no longer cared. As a result, I made the decision to not listen or read the news for at least month, maybe more. I want to see what it is like not to "know" about the "world" as it given in the "news."

I thought that my life might get smaller if I didn't know what was going on in the media. However, just the opposite has happened. There is no news to fight against, to worry about, to talk to friends about, to obsess about. Instead that space is now empty and free to be used for creativity, ideas, projects and conversing with people on a completely new level. I think if the gunk goes away there is so much more bandwidth for the spiritual, for the divine to move within us, and for us to have access to that power.

I've also noticed a decrease in my fear and an increase in my hopefulness. No longer is the world as scary as it was. I no longer know how many drive by shootings happened in my neighborhood or the possibility of interest rates increasing again at months end. It just doesn't matter anymore. I look at the sky and I don't worry that it will fall. It might, but then it might not. So, I'll plant some flowers anyways and worry about it only if the pieces start landing in the driveway.

A sort of disquieting peace has settled over me. Disquieting because the space left by all that news has forced me to be alone with myself. Here in the United States most of us don't spend time alone, working, living, driving and breathing without the hum of talking heads over our shoulders. When the talking heads are gone it is only myself that I must turn to, which is a strange and disconcerting experience.