Context
I go to Quaker meeting in Texarkana, even though I live in Shreveport. Today someone brought a copy of the Texarkana Gazette to meeting, and it had an article about people protesting a home for recovering drug addicts being planned in their neighborhood. This is a quote from the article: “'I don’t know of anybody who really gets off drugs and they come with all that baggage and we don’t want that around our children,' said Sheila Oates, who lives on Stipp Lane not too far from the location."
Commentary
NIMBY-type protests strike me as the worst possible kind of hypocrisy, because the people involved almost always agree that the activity in question is necessary or even desirable, but they don’t want to have to live near it. They’re not anti-nuclear power; they’re pro-making someone else live with the consequences. I suppose I should be happy that some of the protesters in this case are at least being consistent enough to say they don't see any point in attempting to rehabilitate drug users anywhere.
I'm not happy, though. In fact, I find this case particularly irksome, because of something the members of my meeting keep hammering into my head: “everyone around here is a Christian.” The members of my meeting who are not Christian sometimes feel ostracized and persecuted because they don’t believe “correctly.” Or they just don’t bother to tell people and save themselves the grief. So we have a whole city full of Christians which includes at least one neighborhood where they don’t want to have to be around drug addicts. Interesting.
Now, don’t get me wrong. My Lutheran upbringing makes me a strong believer in “saved by grace through faith alone.” There is no action one can take (or not take) to ensure one’s salvation except believing in the Gospel. But I always hope for myself and my brothers and sisters in Christ that after we’ve been saved we will be of some benefit to the rest of the world. Rejecting people at the very moment when they’re trying to turn their lives around doesn’t seem beneficial to anyone, including the Christian children you’re trying to raise.
I think this is a hazard to being a Christian in the South. When being a Christian is the norm, then “normal” behavior, like shielding your children from people with problems, becomes equated with Christian behavior, so it doesn’t need to be examined or questioned. That’s one of the reasons I’m strongly in favor of the separation of church and state. Once we have a “Christian” government, then everything it does will be, by definition, Christian. Yeah, right.
What did you see today?
6/15/2006
I saw my coworker encourage someone to fill out a form
Context
A patron at the Shreve Memorial Library saw us giving a computer class today. When she asked about registration, I handed her this form. She then asked about scheduling, and I told her that we have a months-long waiting list. She said she couldn’t wait that long, so my coworker showed her a self-help program on the computer. Then she encouraged the patron to fill out the form anyway.
Commentary
I am the youngest of four children by quite a bit and, as any of my siblings will gleefully tell you, that means I’m spoiled rotten. I guess they say that because I only do what I want to do. In some ways, this makes me a wretched person. I have almost no sense of obligation, and I get royally hacked off at people who try to make me obliged to them. I’m even suspect of gifts, in case they come with strings attached. Also, when I don’t like the situation I’m in, I tend to bail. Hence my checkered employment history.
However, I think there’s something good about being spoiled rotten. For one thing, I’m not subject to peer pressure at all. Also, in my case at least, it tends to be a global mindset. I want everyone to do what they want. It’s one of the reasons I’m good at customer service, but would be terrible at sales. I don’t try to convince people to do something, I try to make sure they’re able to do what they want. In fact, I sometimes frustrate the people who sign up for computer classes, because they’ll ask, “what should I take?” Ick! “Should” sounds like an obligation! So I ask them right back, “what do you want to learn?”
My coworker’s actions today puzzled me, because her mind went in a direction mine never would have. My way of working is the patron asks us for something she wants, and we let her know if we can provide that. Yes, we have computer classes. No, you can’t take them right away. End of transaction.
My coworker took extra steps, showing the patron the self-help program and talking her into filling out the registration form anyway. I think the former was a case of trying to make our available services fit the patron’s wants, which was absolutely appropriate. The latter, however, shaded into trying to make the patron settle for what we have. It felt like my coworker was saying, “go ahead and sign up to wait for a few months. You said you didn’t want to, but maybe you didn’t really mean it.” I think that’s wrong. I know what I want. I try to spoil everyone else by assuming they do too.
What did you see today?
A patron at the Shreve Memorial Library saw us giving a computer class today. When she asked about registration, I handed her this form. She then asked about scheduling, and I told her that we have a months-long waiting list. She said she couldn’t wait that long, so my coworker showed her a self-help program on the computer. Then she encouraged the patron to fill out the form anyway.
Commentary
I am the youngest of four children by quite a bit and, as any of my siblings will gleefully tell you, that means I’m spoiled rotten. I guess they say that because I only do what I want to do. In some ways, this makes me a wretched person. I have almost no sense of obligation, and I get royally hacked off at people who try to make me obliged to them. I’m even suspect of gifts, in case they come with strings attached. Also, when I don’t like the situation I’m in, I tend to bail. Hence my checkered employment history.
However, I think there’s something good about being spoiled rotten. For one thing, I’m not subject to peer pressure at all. Also, in my case at least, it tends to be a global mindset. I want everyone to do what they want. It’s one of the reasons I’m good at customer service, but would be terrible at sales. I don’t try to convince people to do something, I try to make sure they’re able to do what they want. In fact, I sometimes frustrate the people who sign up for computer classes, because they’ll ask, “what should I take?” Ick! “Should” sounds like an obligation! So I ask them right back, “what do you want to learn?”
My coworker’s actions today puzzled me, because her mind went in a direction mine never would have. My way of working is the patron asks us for something she wants, and we let her know if we can provide that. Yes, we have computer classes. No, you can’t take them right away. End of transaction.
My coworker took extra steps, showing the patron the self-help program and talking her into filling out the registration form anyway. I think the former was a case of trying to make our available services fit the patron’s wants, which was absolutely appropriate. The latter, however, shaded into trying to make the patron settle for what we have. It felt like my coworker was saying, “go ahead and sign up to wait for a few months. You said you didn’t want to, but maybe you didn’t really mean it.” I think that’s wrong. I know what I want. I try to spoil everyone else by assuming they do too.
What did you see today?
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