Julie’s News from Maryland

I have an ordination date!!!  January 24, 2009 at 10:00am at St. Martin’s-in-the-Field in Severna Park.  I hope you all can come!

You just never know what will happen next.  You make plans, you think you know how your day or week is going to be, and then life just happens.

Over the weekend I had mapped out my week in my head - Monday would be sermon writing, Tuesday would be prep for bible study and film editing, Wed would be chapel with my day school kids, and Thursday would be sermon finalizing and putting the last touches on the film.  It was a good plan and would make it so that I wouldn’t be working on my day off. 

Then, on Sunday I learned that on Monday I was going to need to join the principal of the middle school in meetings with 5 students and their parents as well as facilitate some reconciliation conversations with the kids.  It was nothing major, but as their chaplain it was important that I participate, so I did- all day.  I decided that since I hadn’t gotten any sermon writing done that I would at least do some film editing after the kids went to bed late in the evening.

Our family had dinner  at a friend’s house (fresh homemade pasta, chocolate souffle - it was really yummy!) and we got home a bit later than we had anticipated (9:30pm), but I still figured that I could get a couple of hours of work done before going to bed.  As we approached our house, we saw that our entire row of townhouses was  blocked off by police cars, the crime lab van, and surrounded by “police do not cross” yellow tape.  We parked in front of the other building and Rick went to investigate.  The police wouldn’t tell him what happened, but did tell him that they were finished with their investigation and we could go into our house.

I got the kids ready for bed and Rick learned from the neighbor that something had happened to one of the women that lives below us.  I knew that her roommate might need some help, so I went out to see what I could do.

Turns out that she returned home from work to find her roommate lying just inside the door with a bullet wound in her head.  She was still breathing, but was barely alive.  She was taken by helicopter to shock trauma, but we didn’t know anything else.  My neighbor was gathering her things and needed a ride to her parent’s house a few miles away, so another neighbor and I drove her there.

We are all pretty convinced that this wasn’t a random shooting.  This young woman has been in conflict with her ex-boyfriend about her pregnancy and things have been very tense.  We are all speculating that this was intentional and targeted, but it is still rather scary.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, as the case may be, Rick and the kids were not home at the time of the shooting.  In fact, it happened at the exact time that everyone in the neighborhood is off picking up their kids at school.

You just never know what will happen next.

A couple of photos of the boy and his friends last week at his party:

My little boy is 9 years old today.  9.  Man.  How did that happen?  He celebrated yesterday with a party (16 kids!).  They had a spongebob pinata and cake and played and screamed and giggled and had a grand time.  He seemed very pleased and the kids all had a great time.  I was a little tired after preaching 3 services and leading an adult forum in the morning, but I was glad that I had the party after those things rather than before.

Today was a tough day for him.  The school made a special exception for him and allowed him to bring cupcakes to school to celebrate, but before he had a chance to do that he freaked out during math and was so hysterical that he had to be removed from the classroom.  The principal tried hard to help him calm down so that he could go back, but he was too far gone.  We all felt very sad for him that he couldn’t recover.  Poor little guy.  He is just having such a tough time every day.  In fact, the principal suspended him again for the rest of the week.  We are looking into Crisis Homeschooling, where a teacher comes to our house for 6 hours a week to teach him, rather than have him in the classroom.  The School Board believes that 6 hours of one-on-one instruction is equivalent to 24 hours of time in the classroom.  This would be an interim solution until we have a more permanent plan for him, which should be coming in the next 2 weeks.  It’s not ideal, but I don’t know what else to do. He is having such a hard time every day at school.

He is doing so well in so many other places -home, church, sunday school, friend’s houses - but he is just a mess at school.  I think some of it has to do with his teacher and with the number of students in the classroom.  She doesn’t have the luxury of the time she needs to help him, plus her personality is a bit more aggressive and I think it is really a bad match for him.  I am trying to have confidence that the school will be able to find the right solution for him, but who knows what will happen.

We have an appt at Johns Hopkins in a month and I’m also hoping that they will help us to find the right ways to help him. 

Today the Connecticut Supreme  Court ruled that the state must issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples based on the equal rights protection offered by the state constitution.  This is the third state in the union to authorize gay marriage (MA, CT, and CA) while several others recognize civil unions (VT, NH, NJ).  So, 3 states that allow marriage and 3 that allow civil unions.  6 down, 44 to go.

What I find particularly interesting about this is that I didn’t learn of the Connecticut ruling from any news outlet.  I read CNN.com regularly during the day and I also check the news on Salon.com.  I had the radio on in the car on my way to and from work today.  But the court’s ruling did not show up anywhere.   I turned on Oprah when I got home today and her “live” panel never mentioned it, nor did the news anchor mention it when ABC broke into the show for a special  report.   I actually learned about it from my friends’ statuses on Facebook.  I searched around a bit and finally found an article about it on the U.S. News page of CNN.com. Not the front page, but at least one click into the site.  Isn’t it fascinating that this is not front page news?  A state has legalized gay marriage and the news media doesn’t even really cover it.  It’s not front page news any more. 

I suppose that the collapse of the economy is pretty important and most folks are focusing on that these days.  But still, virtually no coverage for legalized gay marriage?  Could it be that most people are just over it now?  Could it be that people are done arguing about the sex lives of random strangers and we’ve moved on to other disagreements?

I do hope that is the case.  I hope that the states keep falling like dominos - one after another offering equal marriage rights to gay couples.  I suspect that is how most things have happened (history majors, help me out here?).  One maverick (hehe) state goes out on a limb and gives equal rights to some marginalized group (women, african americans, gays) and then another eventually does, and then a couple more come along and then pretty soon everyone is doing it.  I’m sure there are always a couple of hold outs, states that just don’t. like. change.  But even they will get on board eventually.

It’s sort of cool to see happening actually.  I wonder how long it will take the federal government to begin to recognize gay marriages as well. 

My mother sent this to me recently and cited it as being from Reader’s Digest:

Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes.  That way, you’re a mile away - and you have the shoes.

May I suggest, that you also be sure to choose someone with very cute shoes, red ones if you can!