Like many people dependent upon care from others, M can be a tyrant. For instance, sensing my anxiousness during her feedings, when it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s crucial to get enough into her to sustain her plus stimulate her slow growth curve, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s begun extorting favors. Sometimes she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll demand to watch her favorite video over and over or else she won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t eat. She wrings the last drop of pleasure out of these viewings then collapses back into boredom. Then she grows irritable and stops eating again. Do something to entertain me, she pouts, or I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll starve myself. <\/p>\n
This behavior wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t possible during her early years, when, being in perfect need, she had full right to everyone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s best resources. Not only our best \u00e2\u20ac\u201c she had license to pull from us more than we had. She didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exert this right because she didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand she had it. The responsibility not just to answer the call but also to perceive it in the first place was ours. Routinely, she took us to the edges of who we were. Finding the nerve to jump was our problem. <\/p>\n
Now she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s learned enough to play tricks of control. Dire need is innocent and entitled; manipulation is accountable and arguable. <\/p>\n
By the church\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s standards, M is forever innocent. She needn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make baptismal covenants to keep God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s commandments or take on God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s name in any of the usual rituals of devotion. In fact, for her, baptism is a physical impossibility. Immersion in a baptismal font would terrify her and put her in danger. Her salvation, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been told, is not dependent upon the usual duties of belief or keys of authority. At a meeting where our bishop interviewed us on our expectations regarding baptism for M, he put it this way: A \u00e2\u20ac\u0153veggie\u00e2\u20ac\u009d like M is not accountable. Yep. He said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153veggie.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
All the same, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve relied heavily on M\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spark of human agency to help her get as far as she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s come. In those early years, I tried putting choices to her in as many ways as I could think of, choices of life against death, awareness against unawareness. Somehow, in spite of my inadequacies, she made something of the relationship that rose between us. <\/p>\n
Now, as her primary disciplinarian, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m introducing very basic principles of personal responsibility. My dear, A is not working, not for you, not for us. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re treating A as if it were your only choice. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to begin teaching you it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not. From now on, if you do A, B will happen. If you stop eating in an act of brattiness, you go into the bedroom where you can have your tantrum till you can think of something better than that to do. <\/p>\n
In the meantime, as she outgrows old toys, videos, activities, and her Calvin and Hobbes library, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll try to find new activities, music, and reading material to relieve the boredom that accompanies the development of her mind . Eventually, she should learn to create her own arrays of choices and develop some skill to choose more wisely than she does now. Why do we do this? To help her magnify her intelligence. We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe that because she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not accountable it follows that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s incapable of progression. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll let you know how it goes.<\/p>\n
In the past, I liked to think that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have learned what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned from all this without M having to have suffered so deeply for my foolishness. My husband says he thinks I would have, because he says I go looking for \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 whatever\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s out there. <\/p>\n
But I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not so sure. Given all the creature comforts my unknowingness afforded, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say for certain I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have budged off its Corinthian leather sofa for anything less than my child\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s desperate need. Furthermore, if the devil, in an Especially for Mormons <\/em> moment, gave me a choice between having greater insight into the condition of mankind or a daughter able to win privileges of physical and mental maturity, I might just opt to keep the ignorance. I say \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the devil,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d because the devil is the father of false dilemmas. God is more generous than that.<\/p>\n One thing I almost certainly wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have learned had not M suffered an attack from cytomegalovirus: how intimately, inextricably involved we all are. The \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my body, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll do with it what I please, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not hurting anyone\u00e2\u20ac\u009d spiel doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fly for us anymore. We now subscribe to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No man is an island,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d set on fire. <\/p>\n Not only are we humans intimately bound one to another, but also we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re deeply entangled with the natural \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that is, the non-human \u00e2\u20ac\u201c world, including microorganisms, many of which are as focused as raccoons or coyotes are in their clever opportunism. Thus they thrive wherever there is human concourse. We suffered our attack from the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153natural\u00e2\u20ac\u009d world via a human vector, further evidence we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not as far above or separate from nature as we imagine. But beside that, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been surprised to find I could rely upon other intelligence than human and divine intelligence to address some of the finer aspects of M\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s care. Plants and animals showed me \u00e2\u20ac\u201c still show me \u00e2\u20ac\u201c aspects of consciousness and relation that help me make the connections with M that we both need. <\/p>\n Still, I wander amazed through the treasure room of my not knowingness. After having been smacked up aside the head with its consequences during that pregnancy over 16 years ago, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been shoveling the clumsy, gaudy stuff out the door as fast as I can. But I swear it multiplies even as I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m reducing it: three shovels full out, two more in. Or is it two out, three in? Hard to tell. Could be both!<\/p>\n It is one of those strangely mixed blessings that M\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s suffering jump-started me after a period of indolence. This is not to say I think suffering is the only or best catalyst for progress. Not sure who said this \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Joseph Addison or Anne Lindbergh \u00e2\u20ac\u201c both get credit for it \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but whichever said it, I agree: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everybody suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n Of all the holy traits capable of competing against the boundless wealth of ignorance, I think the extravagance of love might be most equal to the task. There is something about love that leads us past those places ignorance does not wish to look at. Ignorance abhors a mystery; love is drawn to it, be it the mystery of a child\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s illness or of God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s passion for us. For all its luxury, unknowingness mounts debt. Love creates surplus. A few fish become enough to feed a crowd with some left over, five talents become ten. <\/p>\n Paul\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 3, contains an interesting phrase about the love of Christ: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God (3:19).\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Typically, we interpret the phrase \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the love of Christ\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to contain triplets of meaning. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The love of Christ\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can mean Christ\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s love for us. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The love of Christ\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can mean our love for Christ. It can also mean \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Christ-like love\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that people may bear each other. <\/p>\n But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the phrase \u00e2\u20ac\u0153which passeth knowledge\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that snags my attention. The chapter heading rephrases the clause into the familiar, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The love of Christ passeth all understanding.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Many people, I think, interpret this to mean something like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The nature and power of the love of Christ lie beyond our comprehension.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n However, in this verse, I wonder if \u00e2\u20ac\u0153passeth\u00e2\u20ac\u009d might signify transference rather than exceptionality. That is, the love of Christ passes knowledge to us or transports us beyond our knowledge. This passing of knowledge or transporting us beyond our knowledge happens so we \u00e2\u20ac\u0153might be filled with all the fulness of God.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Also, in the verses preceeding vs. 19, Paul tells us that the cause he bows his knee to God for is that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n Any or all of the triplets will work in the phrase under consideration. But playing with just the King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s English here, I especially like the idea that the Christ-like love we may bear each other transfers knowledge to us and\/or takes us over the ledge of what we know (haha, know-ledge). Or that such love edges us on to or past the knowl (OE spelling of knoll, a small hill that rises above the landscape, or the summit of said small hill). <\/p>\n Christ\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s love for us and the Christ-like love we strive to show each other, the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fellowship of the mystery,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d takes us over the ledge of what we know to the breadth, and length, and depth, and height. Of what? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The unsearchable riches of Christ,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of which Paul preaches. The mystery of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153principalities and powers in heavenly places.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n M\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s world is a teeming interface with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the mystery.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Driven by love (and mourning, and openness, and vulnerability, but if I have these but not love, I have nothing), I went to the ledge of what I know, which was something but not enough. Love — the bottomless desire of a mother for her daughter — compelled me onward. There seemed no other way: I took the plunge. But instead of hitting bottom, I found myself in a heavenly place, up to my neck in the firstlings of those unsearchable riches of Christ. Pawing through these, I rendered enough of my ignorance to clear some of the debt I incurred against M\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mortal potential during my luxurious life of unknowingness. That I ever believed my ignorance to be so valuable, so worth holding on to \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the mystery, now. That, and what God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s willing to give me for such worthless junk. Still, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m kind of glad that I have so much of it. At the current exchange rate, I can keep going on it forever.<\/p>\n Me to M: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hey, Baby! You want to come with me?<\/p>\n M to me: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ah!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (M\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s word of affirmative.)<\/p>\n Me to M: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Great! Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s start by going out to the feeders and watching the hummingbirds. They have tiny brains but they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re really smart!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n M to me: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ah!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n Me to M: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Okay, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s go. Sing it with me.”<\/p>\n M and Me together: <\/p>\n Superman or Green Lantern ain’t got a-nothin on me. When you’ve made your mind up forever to be mine Like many people dependent upon care from others, M can be a tyrant. For instance, sensing my anxiousness during her feedings, when it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s crucial to get enough into her to sustain her plus stimulate her slow growth curve, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s begun extorting favors. Sometimes she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll demand to watch her favorite video over and over or else she won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t eat. She wrings the last drop of pleasure out of these viewings then collapses back into boredom. Then she grows irritable and stops eating again. Do something to entertain me, she pouts, or I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll starve myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI can make like a turtle and dive for your pearls in the sea, yeah!
\nA you-you-you can just sit there thinkin’ on your velvet throne
\n“Bout all the rainbows you can have for your own.
\nWhen you’ve made your mind up forever to be mine
\nI’ll pick up your hand and slowly blow your little mind.<\/p>\n
\nI’ll pick up your hand,
\nI’ll pick up your hand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"