Black Friday

After hearing the reports about Black Friday violence, after reading about the lines, the crowds, the billions of dollars spent on "great deals", after seeing the abandoned Ford factory parking lot 2 miles from my house converted into "shuttle parking" for Twelve Oaks Mall, I have been in a kind of sick depression for the last 24 hours.  I am feeling ashamed to be an American during this season.  It seems like more than ever our sole focus is on consuming, buying, getting, having more stuff, more electronics, more food, more clothes, more crap that we do not need and do not have room for.  Does anyone really need to stand in line for hours to buy an Xbox for $200?  Which is probably their third game system, played on their third (or fourth or fifth) plasma TV.  And of course, then you need to spend another $200 on games, controllers, headsets, and rocker chairs.  What value is ANY of this stuff?  And the time?  What value do we place on our time when we spend hours buying this junk, hours setting it all up, and hours playing?  And next year there's something better and we do it all again. 

It is easy to say "that's not me, I don't do that", but it is our culture.  I am sickened and embarrassed by the way the world views us as Americans for the way we "celebrate" the "holidays".  Even a modest celebration entails buying gifts that we don't need and are often meaningless and involves quantities of food that are practically obscene.  How is this celebrating?  Everyone is stressed, anxious, petty, jealous, greedy, and this is what we teach our children is a "magical Christmas". 

I know that I see the world differently that most people.  I remember picking up Solomon and Tinsaye and getting ready to leave the orphanage and telling them to get their stuff.  Every possession they owned fit in the front pockets of their shiny new Land's End backpacks we brought for them.  The clothes they were wearing had to be returned to the orphanage for the other children.  I saw people in Ethiopia stand in line for six hours or more not to get an Xbox,  but to see a doctor.  They didn't pepper spray anyone, they didn't get overflow parking.  How could the $400 you spent on more electronics have changed the lives of any one of those people? 

It's easy to say "we can't fix the world, Ethiopia has their own problems, it's not about me, I'm an American and I deserve this stuff".  In case you hadn't noticed, it's not Ethiopians coming to get food from your local food bank.  It's not Ethiopians lined up at the Salvation Army trying to find winter boots for their kids.  I have students that I see every day that take showers at school because they have no running water in their house.  I have students who live in their cars or with relatives with no electricity.  When we ask parents of needy children at our school how we can help their family for Christmas, they ask for socks, mittens, and gift cards to gas stations so they can keep gas in their cars to get to their minimum wage jobs and be able to pay the heating bill.  When Brian was handing out food baskets at our church last year he tried to give a family a turkey for their Christmas dinner, but they refused because they were living in a motel and didn't have an oven to cook it.  They took the packaged food that they could heat up in a microwave.  How could the $400 you spent on more electronics have changed the lives of any one of those people?

Does anyone else see these people?  Does anyone else think America is asking for some serious cosmic smackdown by living in such smug oblivion?  DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!  You!  Today!  Change something about the way you live so that others suffer less.  If you want to give your children a magical Christmas, make it about people and not things.  Make it about Jesus and not Santa.  Make it about lists of things you can give instead of lists of things you want..  Instead of spending three hours in line to see Santa at the mall, or three hours in line waiting to buy more stuff, spend three hours with your kid volunteering at a food bank.  And then do it again in January.  And keep doing it.  Listen to the people you meet there and then listen to what God tells you to do about it.

Sorry if this post bothers you, it bothers me too. 

Why I Love My Cleaning Lady

We have had a cleaning lady, Alla, since about 2006.  We had to lay her off when Brian got laid off in fall 2008, but she was "recalled" in the fall of 2009 when his work started picking back up.  She is a pleasant, serious Polish immigrant lady in her mid-fifties and she cleans my house far, far better than I ever would.  She comes on  Wednesdays while we are all at school/work, and it's like the good fairies came in and worked their magic all over the house.  When I walk in, it smells clean.  There are fresh vacuum tracks in the carpet.  The faucets are all shiny.  There are no piles of junk laying everywhere.  The microwave doesn't have exploded Chef Boyardee ravioli inside it anymore.  The beds are all made up, smooth and fresh and I can hardly wait to climb into my clean sheets.  Thanks to Alla, Wednesday afternoons are my favorite part of the week.

She will leave me little notes in funny European printing with ESL spelling/grammar, "Plese to buy Soft Scrub" or "You are needing paper towel".  Sometimes she comes later or I am home on break and then she will tell me things.  She can't pronounce 'Joan' however, and she calls me 'John'.  One day this past summer she said to me, "Last week I am cleaning your ceiling fan. It was too dirty, I must clean it."   I said to her, "Alla, I'm so sorry, I know it was filthy!  I didn't know how to clean it on the high ceiling, how in the world did you do it?"  She replied gravely, "It was very hard, John.  I am standing on chair and it is still too low, so I am getting small stool and put on chair and get long duster.  Is very dangerous, but fan is too dirty, I must clean."  I squeaked out, "thank you", but I was envisioning coming home to find her lifeless body on the living room floor under my filthy ceiling fan and living with the guilt that my dirt cost this poor beautiful woman her life.

Alla's grandson is about Thomas's age and she has always really liked Thomas just because he reminds her of her grandson.  Once she had just cleaned the boys' room and Thomas came running in from outside, ripped off all this clothes, chucked them all over his room, threw on his bathing suit, and was half way out the door when Alla yelled, "TOMAS!  YOU ARE PICKING UP YOU CLOTHES!  I AM JUST TO FINISH CLEANING YOU ROOM AND YOU ARE MAKING MORE CLOTHES!"  Thomas sheepishly turned around and picked up all his mess and apologized and left quietly.  I smirked from my couch, not having to say a word. 

One time my mom and dad were at my house on a Wednesday before I got home from school.  Alla said to my mom, "You are very proud of John."  Mom said yes, she was.  Alla said, "Her kids, they are good kids."  Mom said, yes, they are.  Alla said, "This house, it is full of love.  I am finding the notes."  Mom asked her what she meant and she showed her... the sticky note on my mirror from Tinsaye that said, "I love you Mom" and Solomon's drawing in his room of our family that said "I love my family".  When I started looking around, I noticed the 'love notes' were everywhere!  I never really noticed them much before.  I was too focused on the piles of laundry, papers, shoes, and dirt.

I love Alla because she cleans my house and helps me maintain my sanity.  But I really love her because she reminds me that every house she cleans is messy, but not every house she cleans is full of love.