Democracy and Cookies

I have done my fair share of offending people this election season, so I don’t imagine that my discussing democracy with my class would inspire confidence from my critics. Since I didn’t want to ignore the democratic process, but I just couldn’t muster up the courage to speak objectively, I chose a third option. We would practice.

I told the class that I had 12 cookies, but 22 people. “What should we do?” I asked. “You decide.” Then I sat down.

They started talking to each other and it got pretty loud. Some of them talked about the cookies and some of them didn’t. I let the stew cook for a while, then I stood up. “Now I want you to get into groups. You can choose whichever group you want. Groups can be as big as you want. Choose one leader for every group.”

We ended up with six parties. Seven-year-olds come up with much better names than “The Baked Good Distribution Party” or the “The Confectionary Allotment Party.” Two of the party names included the word monkey.

Each party leader got a thirty second speech to convince the class that his or her party was the best. I was impressed with the solutions they came up with. 1) Divide the cookies into fourths and hand them out until there aren’t any left. 2) Give each person half of a cookie, the give the rest to hungry people. 3) Divide the cookies into fourths, give every student a fourth, and then give the rest to poor people. And so on.

Then I gave my speech. “If you vote for the Bushman party, the twelve tallest students will get a cookie.” I lined up the class from tallest to shortest and pointed out who would get a cookie for voting for me. Then we voted.

I got 13 votes—one more than I was expecting.

I handed out one whole cookie to the twelve tallest students and watched as their faces reflected their thoughts. They weren’t allowed to eat the cookies just yet. They could only look at the cookies and each other.

“Mr. Bushman, that’s not fair,” said one of the non-cookie-getters.

“It seems fair to me,” I said. “We voted on it, and that is what the class decided.” I looked around the class, and not even the cookie-getters were satisfied. “Should we try again?”

This time, the class rallied against me. “Russell” led the amalgamation party—called the Wild Cats—and I led the Bushman Party. I allowed open discussion to continue, the Bushman Party went to one side of the room, and the Wild Cats went to the other.

I changed my stump speech. “I will give a whole cookie to everyone that votes for me,” I said. The class ran to my side.

“That’s impossible,” said Russell, “he doesn’t have enough cookies.” The class returned to Russell’s side.

“All I need is twelve of you. The first twelve to vote for me will get cookies. I can promise you that.”

The very last minute of the exercise was the most interesting. I let the students battle it out for themselves. Some students weighed the options carefully, some just went wherever their friends went, some followed the majority, some sought class-equality (no pun intended), and some sought self-interest.

When the time was up, we took a vote. The Bushman Party won. There was some cheering, some murmuring, and some heads on desks.

At this point, a good teacher would have broken up the cookies and given everyone an equal share, regardless of the vote. A good teacher would have talked about how we need to be mindful of others as well as for ourselves. A good teacher would warn against selfishness. A good teacher would discuss the pledge of allegiance, asking what is meant by the phrase “justice for all.”

I’ve never been the kind of teacher that uses the usual lesson on holidays. On Columbus Day, we read a story from the perspective of a displaced Native American family. On September 11, we discuss prejudice—especially again non-Christians. During Red Ribbon Week, we talk about capitalism.

The way I see it, there will be days set aside for the three ships and the first Thanksgiving. There will be plenty of time to talk about how evil terrorists are and how great America is. There will be ample discussion about how yucky smokers look. I’ll leave the easy stuff for third grade.

I like to think I am a good teacher.

Halloween Part 1

It was nice to find a costume that utilized my natural strengths. It was hard to pretend that I liked honey, but everything else came quite naturally. Oh, and using the restroom was tricky because the zipper was in the back. I got really good at holding it.

After having our school Halloween Parade, I decided it was time to scare the Winne out of my class.

Before school, I set up a single light bulb onto a radio controlled module that would allow me to control the intensity of the bulb from anywhere in the room. I hid the controller in my Winnie Nuck Pooh hands so the students never saw it coming. I also had a radio controlled module that was broken, but still makes a fantastic clicking/tapping sound.

I turned out the overhead light, played some ambient horror music, and paraphrased the story of “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe. For those of you unfamiliar with this morbid tale, Montressor takes his friend-turned-enemy (Fortunato) deep into a catacomb, walls him up behind masonry, and leaves him for dead. Too morbid for seven-year-olds? Maybe. Effective at making kids shake in terrror. Yes. Oh baby yes. As the duo went deeper and deeper into the catacomb, the single light bulb got dimmer and dimmer. Eventually, the light was out and they were ready for the climax. When Fortunato is completely walled up he begins to tap again the wall. Cue the clicking module. The kids were totally spooked. I screamed, they jumped, then we all had a good laugh.

Even the most frightened of children begged for more.

To make the day all the more zany, I went to the temple as a Ward assignment. I couldn’t stop thinking of R.L. Stein references and movie taglines. Here’s a sample:

• Grant Bushman: Helping the Dead on Their Day.
• It really is the day of the dead.
• Helping the dead never looked so good.
• Once a year, the dead do some work for themselves.
• You scratch my back…
• A Halloween deal the devil didn’t count on.
• Death is only the beginning.

If you have any other additions, feel free to leave a comment.

The Autobiographer

“Inspired by true events on movie screens, I am a one-man wrecking machine.”

These are lyrics from a song by one of my favorite bands: Guster. To me, the song speaks of regrets. The voice of the song wishes for another chance to do commonplace things with the hopes of having more extraordinary results. I completely relate.

God told me something interesting earlier this month. He told me to give up on the personal narrative of my life, and just start doing what is right. This is hard for me. I have spent years learning how to turn commonplace events into extraordinary moments. I think my blog is evidence.

I find myself thinking of my current experience from the future, but looking back. All the experiences about which people say, “Someday we will look back on this and laugh”, I have the ability to laugh immediately. This usually comes as a shock to others when my initial response to personal injury is giggling.

Living life from a third-person perspective is great for the writer, but lousy for the day-to-day me. I find that I am make choices based more upon what would make a better story at my eulogy instead of what would best help others—or myself. I think I have alienated plenty of my peer by trying to “spice up” the common. While some find my quirkiness to be refreshing, it seems to eventually end up ruining wonderful things that could have been.

For a while, I thought that I would show everybody. I told myself that greatness has always been misunderstood. Geniuses are often the target of ridicule. I had to be patient with “the others” until that final climax came. I waited for the high school to chant my name. They never did. I waited for a college professor to write “come to my office. We have to talk about this.” On one of my papers. It never happened. (Okay, it actually happened twice, but not for reasons of accolade.) I have waited for the one person to pull me from a jeering crowd and tell me that they are wrong and I am right. All I have heard is jeering.

In desperation, I have tried to contrive situations in which the climax would come. All of the suspense and rising action would come to a head—the audience of reality would look to me and I would provide the ultimate resolution to their conflict. Sometimes, these situations turn out—nice. Other times, abysmal failures.

“Inspired by true events of movie screens, I am a one-man wrecking machine.”

Then, on the first Sunday in October. God told me to give up. I should not try to concoct meaning in the swirling stream of events that surround me. Instead, I should simply live for the next right choice. I should be boring. I should let life happen to me, just like it does to everyone else.

This was a discouraging thought to me. Why would the God has elected me to such high tasks, ask me to live such a common life? Then I started looking around at the people who had most shaped my impulses for good. Ghandi, Malcolm X, and Arthur Reich influenced me, but only by giving me bigger words and phrases to understand the principles that I had been taught by a veterinary science undergrad, a public school teacher, and a computer programmer with tendonitis. The real meat of my life has been given to me by common people—boring people—people that will never have a book written about them. They will never be on a movie screen. Just like me.

So I made the choice to be boring. I stopped making decisions based on what would “inevitably” follow from my new perspective. I made boring choices. I blend in with the crowd. I look at my life from inside my head again. I try to make the next right choice and hope that it helps somebody.

Then my sister gave me a call. Her most recent surgery had left her very sick. She couldn’t get out of bed and she was alone. She couldn’t even feed herself. I did what I always did: I went to the grocery store and purchased what she needed, then went to a restaurant and got what she wanted. I took everything it to her place and set it on the coffee table so that she could have it when she was ready. We talked for a little while.

Then, much to my surprise, she asked me a for a priesthood blessing.

When it was all over we were both crying. We had become closer. I sat by her and held her hand while we both got control of ourselves. As I left, we followed our routine of her thanking me and me offering to help again when she needed.

It wasn’t until the next day that I realized that I had experienced my climax without even knowing it. My life, my real life, my unplanned, unscripted life had moved me to tears. Choice by unknowing choice, I had gotten myself onto a movie screen. I hadn’t gotten there by planning. I hadn’t obtained my spirituality in a contrived way, but by preparing prayer by prayer, verse by verse, choice by choice.

I’ve had my climax. I’ll be in my dressing room.

Yo Ho Ho

September 19^th is National Talk Like a Pirate Day, so my class celebrated. Mr. Bushman took the day off, but sent Cap’n Purple to substitute. Cap’n Purple was simply me in a caricatured pirate costume. We read Mem Fox’s “Tough Boris”, we looked for treasure, we learned the correct way to say ahoy, and we learned Pirate jokes. By the end of the day, my throat was raw and I had a throbbing headache from the eye patch, but it was worth it.

Recess was an interesting mix of frustration and excitement. When the other classes saw that Cap’n Purple was outside, they didn’t want to miss whatever was going on. I was mobbed by about fifty kids, and I tried to convince them that they should just continue playing. Of course, I had to do this in a pirate voice, so nobody left. I used all of my PG level curse words to get them disperse, but this just encouraged them all the more. I realized that I wasn’t going to lose them until I did something fun. “Arrgh, very well. Let’s go looting and sacking.” They cheered as we walked out into the schoolyard.

I walked to the playground and stood behind the steering wheel anchored to the playground equipment. “All aboard!” The fifty children soon became over a hundred. The fields and swing-sets were empty.

“Where are we going?” asked one of them.

“We need to surround that tree and take it hostage. When I say ‘attack’, ye all should surround that tree until it give up. Are ye ready?”

“Yeah!” they shouted.

“Ye don’t say, ‘yeah’, ye say ‘Aye, aye, Cap’n. Got it?”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n.”

I smiled. “Attack!”

The helpless was indeed surrounded a horde children. They surrounded the tree and began to cheer. It was no longer just a tree, it was their tree. I started toward the other teachers when the horde surrounded me again.

“What should we do next Cap’n?”

We laid siege upon the soccer goals and then plundered and looted the northern playground. The Cap’n was getting winded and started to realize that no beckoning teacher could tear a matey from his crew. It was time to quit so that classes could go in. I stood by a tree and told them to disperse. They wouldn’t.

I commanded them. “Argh, ye have done well, now go enjoy your spoils.”

“No,’ one of them shouted.

“Go play, go play. No more games with the Cap’n.”

They didn’t believe me. Not wanting to encourage them further, I leaned against the tree, looked over their heads as if they weren’t there and I didn’t move a muscle. Eventually, the adventure would wear off and they would return to soccer games, swings, and kissing tag.

So I thought.

Minute after minute, they coaxed, they begged, and prodded. In time it became a silent plea, but a plea nonetheless. They stood at attention, just waiting for orders. Then my watch beeped, alerting me to the end of recess. I walked to my trumpet case, pulled out the trumpet, and my class somehow formed a line through the center of the mob. We went inside to the sound of mass disappointment.

There’s just something about a pirate.

My Job Can Beat Up Your Job

Here are ten things that I take for granted. It is only when I step back a while that I realize just how incredibly cool my job is:

10. Ever Friday—without fail—I get an unsolicited a love note.

9. I get to shout “Boo Yah, Grandma” whenever I want.

8. I can call an ad hoc recess just because I feel like it.

7. Wearing a pencil mustache actually serves a valuable purpose.

6. I cannot be tackled in a game of football. Period.

5. I get extra French fries whenever I ask for them.

4. I can turn life into a musical by singing what I am thinking.

3. It is okay to be excited or sad about small things.

2. I still get birthday presents on my birthday.

1. I get paid to be an idol without worrying about paparazzi.

To me, that’s tons better than money.

While My Mind Gently Weeps

My heart hurts tonight. To borrow a phrase from scripture, my bowels are filled with compassion. In a season of politics, I have heard a lot of people blustering about the way the world should be and I have blustered right back. But tonight, I am experiencing a very profound and bitter sadness for those that suffer.

I remember a day that I was discussing divorce with a friend of mine. He told me that he was becoming frustrated with others, because whenever he would bring up the idea of divorce, he would hear a dreaded line: “Think about your children?” He told me that thinking of his children was his greatest source of pain. “If it were just about me, it would be an easy choice. It’s the fact that I can’t stop thinking about my children that makes the choice so hard to make.” That gave me a whole new perspective on what it must feel like to consider divorce.

Every now and again, I hear religious fundamentalist, naïve optimists, or people that are just dumb, talk about how divorce is fundamentally wrong. These people have never been divorced, but they just know. They find elaborate ways of chanting the same refrain: God hates divorce; divorce makes children cry; only selfish people get divorced and good people don’t. So they say. Sometimes these people will make exceptions for abuse. Sometimes they won’t.

Now I’m not trying to defend divorce. Tonight I just feel really, really sad for the people who have to live with it in whatever form.

Then there is abortion. Pro-life, pro-choice. Baby killers and Christian terrorists. God’s law and Satan’s plan. Religious zealots and secular atheists. Responsibility and liberty. In all of the arguments, in all of the legislation, in all of the controversy, there are women that cry. What agony a woman must go through. I dare say that an abortion is never a casual undertaking. Cause and effect, right and wrong, good and bad, truth and error. These eternal balances pound in the mind of a woman, and how bitter her tears must be. Tonight, I feel so very sad for her. I want to take her in my arms and cry with her. “There, there, precious one. I’m sorry you are hurting.”

Homosexuality. Same-Gender attraction. Gay. Lesbian. “They” are an entire sub-culture all to themselves. “They” have their own walk and talk. “They” are trying to change the country, the world, the government, and everything else. But, how many of us choose our sexuality? The feelings just come and we cope with them however we can. How many “straight” people don’t have a humiliating story of abuse, naivety, or indiscretion? What would it be like to have everyone hate you because of how you feel? Never mind Sodom and Gomorrah.  Never mind God’s eternal punishments.  In all of your religious references, have you forgotten the law of love?  What a horribly confusing and misunderstood life these others must lead. How lonely, how desperate, how sad it must be to always be one of “them” instead of one of “us.” Tonight, I feel for these children of God who Christians cannot seem to accept or understand.  I will not take a stand on what is okay and not okay, what is legal or illegal.  Not tonight.  Tonight I want to legitimize their right to be people.  They are people that suffer, and I cry for them.

Tonight I cry for those who hurt. But tomorrow, I hope to do something to help them feel better, not just to make me feel better about them.

There’s No Home-like Place

A few months ago, I found myself in a very strange place emotionally. I felt like a foreigner no matter where I went. In the tumult of my pilgrimage, I sought to find home. It was a new dimension of homeless. I wanted to find that feeling of being home.

They say you can’t go home again. I was determined to show that I could. For the summer months, I left the fair town of Logan to attend school at Salt Lake Community College. I moved in with my parents. They didn’t have a room for me—nor did I want them to. I specifically asked that they not. While living there, I juggled the dynamic of being both adult and dependant. Not fun. During those months, I realized that my parent’s house was not home. Home was somewhere in Logan, and I had to find out where.

I went back to Logan as soon as I could. I packed my bags, put them in the car, went to my last class, and immediately made the trip to the great cold North. I didn’t have any place to live, but just to be back was a shot in the arm.

Since I drive a convertible now, I have to be a bit more judicious about my living quarters. Logan gets pretty snowy, so I decided that I should park in a garage—or at least a car port. I found a place right away that was a dream home. Unfortunately, they I couldn’t move in for two weeks. I would have to find accommodations.

Accustomed to being an urban camper, my first impulse was to sleep in the canyon. On the way up the canyon, I friend of my mind pulled up behind me on his new hog. He didn’t recognize me because of the new car, but I got him to pull over. He invited me to his place, and I spent a couple of nights at his place. It was a home in which I had lived for years, but it was his place now. It wasn’t my home, it was his. We talked about the old days and he admitted that the neighborhood had changed. Most of the people that knew me were gone. Careers, spouses, and opportunities had called them away. Not even the neighborhood was home.

In the meantime, I went to a three-day training conference for teachers. It was different than last year, because this year, I was experienced. I could weight the content against what I knew, not just what I anticipated. Regardless, the significant part of the conference was when I was giving a presentation and looked out into the hallway.

Watching me like a proud mother was Ann. Ann had been my mentor teacher that I had hand picked to be my mentor. She is a fantastic teacher. For the first time, I realized that she wasn’t going to be my mentor anymore. I was no longer in her nest. She was no longer my home.

After two weeks and one day, I called on the bedroom that I was anticipating. “Sorry. That room was filled.” Jerks. I went looking for a new, new place. I considered moving in with the gentlemen that I had lived with last year. Turns out all three of them were either engaged or married. Even my most recent home had dematerialized.

By this time, I starting to wonder if I would ever have a home again. The new school year was quickly approaching, and “my” class would be in third grade. I don’t know if every teacher goes through this, but I felt like getting a new class would somehow be cheating on the other. These little eight-year-olds were like my own children, and I wasn’t allowed to keep in touch with them. Third grade is like a bitter ex-wife that says that I was a lousy father and that I shouldn’t see the kids ever again. I could start again, but “my” kids would never see me again.

In this time of existential crisis, I turn to old reliable: Chinese food. It isn’t a very solvent coping strategy, but it is…well…reliable. Or so I thought. Even the China King Buffet, the mother of all Chinese Food, was gone. I guess their last Department of Health closure was their last. It is now “The House of Chen” and serves a different menu. No more General Tso Chicken, and their Sweet and Sour Sauce tastes like every one else’s.

The feeling of being foreign was back, but this time, it was accompanied by a new feeling of despair. I didn’t have any place to go. I had no refuge to which to return. I had no safe place where I could lick my wounds before returning to battle.

So I threw myself into my work. I went to my classroom and made preparations for the coming year. Even when the essentials were covered, I continued working with foresight (a commodity that I didn’t have last year). I copied reams and reams of paper. I measured and re-measured lines on posters. Having something to distract myself from my sadness was valuable. Before I knew it, the new class came and Grant was Mr. Bushman again.

I got home—which, for tonight was my sister’s home. Took off my shirt and stood in front of a fan. I was hot and tired. I started preparing for sleep. I emptied my pockets. Handkerchief, wallet, keys, and phone. And marbles. Marbles are points. Group leaders get points at the beginning of the day, and I take them away when group members require correction. The group leader gives them to me, and I put them in my pocket since I don’t have time to walk across the room and put them in the green coil pot.

I don’t have a church, a neighborhood, a place to live, a mentor, children, a favorite restaurant, or anyone with whom to discuss it. I am homeless. But somehow, seeing three oblong marbles on a make-shift bookcase made it okay. Home isn’t a place or a person. Home is a feeling. I don’t know how to produce that feeling, but I was encouraged that three little pieces of glass could. These days, home is having a pile of green Bushman Bucks poking out of my pocket. Home is having little voices yell whatever crazy statement I coached them to yell. Home is getting more French Fries than any of the other teachers. Home is helping baby boomers not be scared web-based applications. Home is work. Work is home.

If that last paragraph was touching to you, then you were probably under the same delusion I live in. Work is home? That isn’t touching, it is a sickness. The bell rings at 3:10, then home starts to fade away. Like a dream from which I am forced to awaken, home gets softer and softer, replaced by the tumultuous silence of homelessness. I go back to the place I live. I eat food. I watch youtube. I go to church. I go to parties. I flirt with girls. I get high fives. I drive my cool car. I call my family. I pray. I read. But, these places, these people, these things, they aren’t home. Most people can’t look forward to their weekends. I hate weekends. I count down the minutes until Monday Morning. I’ve got a five day weekend coming up, and I can barely breathe when I think about it. To enjoy one’s work is good. To enjoy nothing but work is dysfunctional.

Why am I writing this? Why am I publishing these thoughts on the internet? Why am I shouting into the vacuum? I guess I’m just waiting for an echo. When I hear it, I will walk toward it. Right now, the only thing that echoes is an Elementary School.

Drawing Strength

I have a rule: never expect anyone to share a feeling that I am not willing to share first. In this spirit, I have an exercise that I go through on the first day of school each year: I draw on the board.

My father is a brilliant artist. My older brother sucked all of the visual art genes out of my father, so while I was gestating, I didn’t pick up any of the nuances of color, line, shape, value, hue, blah blah blah that my older brother knows intuitively.

Before I draw my first picture, I think out loud for all of my student to hear. It sounds something like this: “I’m about to draw a picture and that makes me really nervous. You see, I don’t draw very well. Usually, my drawing doesn’t look much like what I am trying to draw. I hate that. I want to draw well, but I just can’t seem to do it. So right now, I am really nervous. I really want to draw a picture, but I don’t want anyone to laugh at me. If someone laughed at my picture that would really hurt my feelings. I would feel dumb and I wouldn’t ever want to draw anything in front of you ever again. But even though I am nervous I am going to do it. I am not going to let my fear control me. I am going to just do my best and remember that even if someone laughs, I am still a cool guy, and I can still make friends, and I can still try again. Here goes…”

Then I proceed to draw something. Usually, it is an animal because I am really bad at drawing animals. I breathe deeply with my emotions, trying to drink up every feeling of embarrassment, regret, risk, vulnerability, and panic. This is how my students must feel when they approach the board to solve a math problem, read a poem out loud, or explain their diagram.

Half way through this exercise, the miracle comes out. Initially, the miracle seems to be that my students don’t laugh. They could really hurt my feelings. That isn’t an act. I really would be rejected if they laughed. But they don’t. They are silent. But that isn’t the miracle.

The real miracle is what happens when I face them again. Feeling like a seven-year-old myself, I turn to them, hoping for their approval. Instead of puckered lips that say “Eh, it’s not all that bad,” I get rousing applause. My seven-year-old heart takes courage. “We can be friends,” I say within myself. “We can trust each other.”

Even months later, when I am explaining seed distribution or drawing an ad hoc bar graph, I still get applause. I recognize the applause now as the same kind of applause that they my little Asperger’s Syndrome student when he gets an answer right. It isn’t a patronizing applause. It genuinely feels like one person helping another person to stop feeling so afraid of his deficiencies.

As time has gone on, the applause has developed an epiphenomenal murmur. While I am adding details to my basic form, the students will whisper to each other “Wow,” “That’s great,” “What a great drawing,” or my favorite, “That’s the best [noun] I’ve ever seen.” It makes me want to keep drawing. I like doing the very thing that I hate about myself.

I try to remember my little support group when interacting with non-children. I try to murmur when they are drawing and clap when they face me. I think it makes us all feel a little better about the demons we carry.

Night Terror

One evening, I was parked in the canyon, making preparations for another night of sleep. Massaged by the sounds of the river, I decided to have Mother Nature tell me a bedtime story. I stood by the river and slowly, my eyes adjusted to the moon—nature’s night light. The river tussled and flowed, sprayed and eddied. It was beautiful. I went back home to the front seat and pulled out a flashlight. It was time for a nocturnal nature hike.

As I walked, the flashlight made the shadows move in a way that was unsettling. The forest was moving with conspiratorial stealth. Every bush, every tree was watching me. Leaves chuckled in brief rustles. The snaps of twigs soon conjured feelings akin to the Haunted Castle. Fright was only the consequence of frequent startling. The more I moved, the more the illusory vertigo glazed my perception.

In time, I was legitimately frightened. I confabulated sounds of other-worldly creatures. They lusted after my fatty flesh. I would be their pleasant morsel. I knew, I knew, I knew that such creatures didn’t exist, but reality was something reserved for times of calm. My frenzy had no interest in rationality—only survival.

I mustered my courage and walked forcefully for my four-wheeled domicile. Somewhere in my panic I remembered that the look of confidence would confuse some predators. That’s when the flashlight started to flicker. It was right out of a bad slasher movie; my flashlight flickered and died. My eyes were not accustomed to the dark, so I waited in perfect stillness for my photon-saturated rods to return to use. In the stillness, I played the ostrich. Perhaps, my lack of vision would render me invisible.

Somewhere between visual acuity and insanity, I ran. I arrived at my parking spot, opened and closed the door in one fluid motion, and landed myself between plush and a windshield. Whew.

But I wasn’t out of the woods yet. Pun intended.

Much like the woobie of childhood, the car would protect me from evil, but there were still haunting calls. The sounds of the forest could penetrate glass and steel. While safe, I was still surrounded.

About this time, I remembered that I have a degree in psychology. I knew all about sub-cortical responses and pre-frontal negotiation. I went through the mental exercises that I would use on a child to calm him down. It worked, but only enough to get the engine started and get myself out of the canyon.

I spent the rest of the night in a parking lot—a cement safe-zone, free of goblins, elves, gnomes, and other woodland characters. While I was calm enough to get into a sleep-like state, I realized that a home can be a protection in ways that I had never considered.

A home is a grown-up’s woobie.

Quitting

I just had a really rough day.

I think that people should stop making posters that read, Don’t Quit. It seems to me that the only person who should actually practice such a mantra is the person without a vice. I know, I know, the posters that say “Don’t Quit” are only talking about not quitting worthy stuff, but isn’t that the real question? What is worthy of perseverance? What are the things worth not quitting?

Some of the best advice I have ever been given was to quit. Quit holding onto a toxic relationship, quit trying to make everything okay, quit enduring unnecessary suffering, quit that job, quit that class, quit, quit, quit. Frankly, surprised that Don’t Quit has lasted as long as it has.

Over a year ago, I began a religious journey. I wanted very much to do God’s will, so I made myself very open to His influence. I couldn’t get enough. Before I knew it, I had a ritual that consisted of Catholic Mass on Saturday nights, the Lutheran Church on Sunday from 8 to 9, and then LDS Services from 9 to 12. The Baptists were on Wednesday nights, and I went to Mosque sporadically throughout the week. All of that worshiping was really good for me. Since I was trying very hard to do what God wanted, and had no qualms about opening every door of opportunity.

On December 31, 2007, I left the LDS congregation that I had attended for over five years and started attending elsewhere. Today, exactly eight months later, I went back to the old LDS congregation. It took about three minutes before the revelation came. God wanted me back there, and He didn’t want me any place else. I resisted it for the next few hours, but I had to give in. God can be pretty persuasive.

I got together my collection of literature from my other religions and put them in my car. It was time to return them. Not wanting to, but feeling compelled, I went through a heart-wrenching ritual of abandonment. I prostrated myself before the cross in the Lutheran sanctuary and recalled what it means to receive the grace of Christ. I wanted to hear Pastor Scott’s upcoming treatises on finding peace. Instead, I quit. I gazed upon the humble Baptist chapel and remember what it means to be honest with God. I wanted to feel the magic of another revival. Instead, I quit. I genuflected, touched my head, heart, and shoulders, bowing before the tabernacle in the Catholic Cathedral, reflecting on what it means to be truly reverent. I wanted to feel Father Sandoval place his righteous hand to my forehead again. Instead, I quit. I made ablution, faced Mecca, recited fatiha, and prayed for Muslims everywhere. I had been counting down the days to the next Ramadan. Instead, I quit.

I know that what I did was right. Both going to these solaces from the world, and then leaving them again. But right isn’t the same as easy. I’m not sure how long it will take me to stop practicing my person mixture of Catholic/Lutheran/Baptist/Muslim rituals. Right now, I feel like heart-broken freshman who just lost her first love. I want to put on Islam’s letterman’s jacket and just smell its smells. I want to pull out all of the love notes that the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church wrote to me, and sigh as I read them. I want to park my car next to The Grace Baptist Church’s house for hours just to catch it as it is walking out to its car. I want to play the Mix Tape that the Lutheran Church gave me on our fourth date. I had seen us growing old together. I had seen us raising a family. We were going to be together forever. Not any more.

I hope I never allow myself to become the sophomore that becomes convinced that my first love was “no good for me anyway.” I loved these other faiths. They were so kind and inspiring to me. I hope that I can look back on them with the same fondness as my first love note, my first date, my first hand-holding, and my first kiss. I don’t know why God wanted me to quit, but only today do I know why He asked me to start in the first place.

It is good to love.