Of Life and Times

I am working on a lesson for church today on service. I keep reading the famous quote about how serving others is being in the service of our God. In the course of my lesson ponderings this thought struck me, "Who is service really for?" It is true that those who receive the service are blessed by it. It is also true that it is through the service given by each of us that God blesses the lives of His children. But what about the service providers?

Can I really say that when I am in the service of my fellow beings I am ONLY in the service of my God? Aren't I also benefiting from that service? Don't I become a little more like my Lord each time I behave like Him? Don't I come to think and feel a little more like Him each time I serve someone as He would have served them? Mind you I am not looking to put a selfish spin on service, but I can't see how anyone can serve in a selfless way and not be the primary beneficiary.

I was reading Chapter 3 in the new Gospel Essentials book today. This chapter talks about the war in heaven. During my reading a thought occurred to me. It went something like this:
How many examples do we have on record and have seen from personal experience of the eldest son going into the family business and inheriting everything when daddy dies. In Europe and elsewhere the second son was sent into the clergy, generally a rather poor profession, unless the parents had enough money to buy a Bishop position for their boy. How many second sons felt so cast off and neglected that they rose up in rebellion against their father, some even killing their elder brother to get his privileges. This jealousy was certainly the case with Cain and his elder brother Able.

As I read about the war in heaven I thought, "this sounds like big brother envy!" Both men were great among the sons of God, but Christ, being the eldest (and most worthy) was second only to our Father himself. Lucifer seems to be acting like the self-perceived slighted second son who feels like he has something to prove. Unlike earthly parents, our heavenly parents love us all alike, but when did that ever stop a child from feeling cheated?

Perhaps Lucifer's whole plan was to prove himself not only the equal to Jehovah, but his superior as well. We were all aware that following the Father's plan would result in the loss of some of His children. So Lucifer came up with a plan that would save all of them, and for that stroke of genius, why shouldn't he get all the credit. After all, even our Father had not been willing to do what was required to save everyone. The fact that his Father was right in his choice evidently didn't seem to bother Lucifer. He was too intent on getting all the credit and all the power for himself.

This is, of course, all speculation, but it seems to make sense as a possibility. Knowing Lucifer's serial position in God's family is not essential to our salvation, making it unimportant in the big picture, but it would explain a lot about his behavior if it were true. Then again, maybe he was just simply a bad apple.

My life is feeling rather stark and useless right now, so please take my comments with a grain of salt.

In high school I wanted to go to college and become a history teacher. I love history. My father brow beat that out of me by flatly insisting that it would be foolish on my part because I would always be poor, and you couldn't find jobs as a history teacher. So I didn't graduate from college for several reasons, just one of them being that my father didn't want me to be a teacher, which is all I have ever wanted to be. So I spent my entire adult life working menial jobs, never able to pay the bills on my own because I wasn't trained in a skill that would make it possible to do so.

When my children were almost all grown and gone I left my job of five years at the university and went back to school. My students told me that I helped them learn a lot about English as their boss, and they felt I would be great in the TESOL program - Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. So TESOL it was. Not planning on leaving my wife and moving to China to teach English, I decided that I would just go back to the university and get rehired, presumably with a raise because I had a degree, and get on with the rest of my life.

Perhaps that might have worked, except that the economy had a severe downturn and there was a freeze on all hiring. Three years later I am still unemployed. I can't get anyone to hire me, not even for something simple like a receptionist, part time. They all decide that I would not be happy or they tell me that they found someone more qualified. Like someone else is more qualified than me who has been executive assistant to presidents and CEOs of businesses? Give me a break!

Finally I decide that my pride and self esteem has had enough abuse so I return to school for a fifth year program in education so I can become a certified teacher. At least that way I will be employable. I would really like to teach adults. The chair of the Education department says, "Let's get you certified first, then we will talk about your options." It wasn't until much later that I learned that to be certified is to be way over qualified to teach adult education. Evidently he was only looking for numbers for his program. What did he care about wasting a year of my time. He got his graduate. Snort.

So now I have finished my education program and am in the process of being certified with the state to be a teacher. What a surprise, the state has had another economic downturn and the people in my field are being let go so it is next to impossible to get a job. But we have 49 other states in this country. Perhaps if I look in the five states that would put me closer to my family on the mainland I could kill two birds with one stone. Guess what? My degree in TESOL is worthless on the mainland. Teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) is a "skill", not a subject. English is a subject. Teaching English to those who cannot already speak it is not. Such is the belief of at least Arizona and Utah. I'm still looking at the other states, but it looks like I will find the same thing. Even the state of Hawaii can't tell me yet what they will or will not be willing to let me teach with just a TESOL degree. Everyone expects me to go back to school to get some classes in English so I have something to teach in the classroom. I guess teaching English isn't enough, it has to be just plain English, no foreigners allowed.

This sums it up. I worked for a university and felt like a fake because I was encouraging everyone who worked for me to finish their degrees and move on to even higher education. After all, a degree will get you a much higher standard of living, right? The university promises that those staff members who have degrees will get paid a little more because of their degrees, but the university won't hire me for anything I apply for. So my years finishing my bachelor's degree were pretty much a financial waste of time, because it has led to unemployment that has lasted for six years now. Going back to get certified in education was a bust because now that I am certified I still can't teach because I apparently don't have a core subject to teach. Foreigners who want to learn English don't count, remember?

I keep being told that I just need to have faith, and that it will all work out. But is it really a matter of faith? Why do I feel like a poor dupe who is told that if I hit my head against this stone wall long enough something really good will happen to me? Well I'm still beating my head against the wall, and six years later all I have is blood in my eyes, and nothing to show for it. Don't I feel intelligent now?

So I ask you, dear reader, what can I do? I can't give up; I have already lost everything. I can't go on and go back to school, I've been doing that off and on for 37 years now. How long does this have to continue? I'm not qualified to do a trade, and I can't become an editor, of course, because I don't have a degree in English. I am now too old to even go teach in China. They have laws about people my age having passports for that sort of thing. So even the Chinese don't want me. Is it really a matter of faith? I would love to hear your opinion.

I was struck with something today, so bear with me as I ramble through my thoughts to try to make sense of them. The standard line is that we can't change the past, only the future. I think that is only partly true.

Referring to the passage of time, I am a nexus and a filter between the me in the past and the me in the future. I stand at the crossroads between the two called "the present." The present has no time value since any one point in time is either in the future or in the past. By the time you can identify any point in "present" time it is already in the past. So how do I prepare for the future if it hasn't come yet, and when it does, it becomes the past so quickly I can't identify when it arrived?

I have been talking to a man about the passing of his father. It hasn't happened yet, but it could happen at any moment. When I old and get to that stage of life, where will I be? Will I be focused on the future? Is that how I will be judged by God when all is said and done? No, I will be judged on my past. When I feel satisfaction about something, is it about something that is going to happen or something that has already happened? When I think about where my life is going, do I focus first on what may happen (over which I really have no direct control) or do I look at where I have been?

As I see it, preparing for the future can only happen by making sure that what ends up in my past is good, worthy, and prudent. Only then will I be prepared for what might come my way in the future. That means I have to turn every moment, as it passes by me in an endless stream, into worthwhile pursuits, worthy thoughts, and worthy actions. By doing so I can get 20 years down the road and look back with satisfaction that I did what I should have, been where I should have been, and have been worthy of what I should have been worthy of. Only by looking with satisfaction at my past can I expect my future to hold better things for me. I cannot expect my future to be any different than it is today unless I prepare for my future by making sure my past is up to code (so to speak). My past is the best predictor of my future.

As a side note, I wonder (go with me on this because I'm thinking out loud), I wonder if what makes us different from brute beasts is that they live in time, but we, as children of God, live outside of time. Time passes through us. Because we are eternal in our nature time only serves to reflect back to us our actions and our states of being at various points along the time continuum. Time is like a recording medium for our actions. Yes, in mortality we age, but remember that mortality is only a temporary condition, it is not eternity, but a small moment in eternity. This time in mortality is a short proving time to see if we can spend a very small amount of time in eternity away from our parents and still be faithful to what they have taught us. How we do in this brief span of time will determine what we will be doing for the rest of eternity. Again, it comes back to preparing for the future by making sure our past is worthy of all acceptation. Concerning our nature, time is like water, continually flowing. We are the course through which it flows. What we do with that time as it passes through us will determine our past and build our future. Our behavior is a time dance, with each movement producing actions that flow in all directions of time, effecting both our past and our potential future.

I am student teaching at the local intermediate and high school. There aren't very many big people bathrooms, so occasionally I am forced to use the boys bathroom nearest my classroom. Wow, how does one describe such a modern marvel? To begin with, this restroom is used primarily by the 7th and 8th graders. That should get your mental train headed in the right direction.

When you enter the bathroom you can't help but notice that the clumsily-placed-and-cracked tiles pasted to the cement walls are a pale dirty yellow color. This helps to camouflage the puddles and streams of bodily fluids standing and creeping across the floor in the most inconvenient places, like right where you need to stand. As you walk to the back of the room where the standing contraptions are (it is, after all, a men's room) you have to pass three open-doored stalls. The fourth is always closed, and I have never braved the opening of that door. The three toilets in these open stalls are usually filled with what is all over the floor. It seems that boys don't learn to flush (or hit) toilets until a much later age. Upon reaching the destination at the back of the room the puddles and streams become particularly unsavory, and somehow darker and full of indefinable matter. But that doesn't really matter, since you have to stand in it anyway. Unfortunately the urinals are also filled with matter. Sometimes it is just nuts from the trees outside, but usually it is wads of chewing gum or fistfuls of paper towels.  Personally I would like to know where they get the paper towels, as I can never find any in either of the two dispensers in the bathroom.

The "Mirror" is of the Egyptian variety, a cheap sheet of metal that has been polished  so that you can vaguely make out your own form. There is a sink, stark and bare, with no soap or disinfectant available, as well as a trough made of stainless steel with three spigots for washing hands. This must have been made by the same manufacturer of the mirror as it is of the same material.

This lack of sanitation is all highly amazing to me as I know for a fact that the custodians come in and clean that restroom every afternoon after school. The state I find it in has come to be between 8:00 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. - every day. I do not envy those brave custodians.

As I leave the bathroom I am feeling more than one kind of relief. As I walk back to my classroom I try to focus on what lies ahead, and not on the fact that I am trying not be too obvious that I am scraping my feet on the grass as I walk away from the restroom.

If the "C" in indict is silent, then how would you pronounce "Invictus?"
(Well I thought it was funny.)