Daily Connector | Legos | David Emch
I’ve started seeing most of my clients again in person. I still have a few that are online, but it’s so nice to be back in my office – with all of my toys. Earlier this summer I took a continuing ed class on how to incorporate Legos into a play therapy session with kids. It was so exciting and right afterwards I put out a call to our network here in Chiang Mai asking if anyone had any Legos that they would want to donate. I got thousands. I literally have all of the donated Legos into two large plastic tubs. I had to ask that the donations be stopped. The last couple of weeks I’ve been cleaning and sorting Legos. And, if I’m being honest, I’ve been reliving a lot of my childhood – building castles and spaceships and creating stories in a pretend universe. I’ve also been
“These are people!”
I was asked to submit a blog entry for Mennonite Church USA’s Learn, Pray, Join initiative focused on immigrant justice. This was my submission: ——————— “These are people!” This was a favorite phrase of my friend Ruben Castilla Herrera. He had heard it from his mentor Cesar Chavez with whom he had worked organizing farm laborers. Ruben would say these words in groups small and large, with a mix of moral conviction and exasperation. It was through Ruben that our congregation met Edith Espinal and it was through this encounter that we became a sanctuary church. Edith was born in Mexico, came to the US as a teenager with her father, and is a mother of three. After her asylum case was rejected by a judge, she was a given a deportation order. Faced with the possibility of being separated from her husband and children, two of them US citizens,
Daily Connector | My Present Reality | Michele Dicke
When my neighbor Roy was placed into an emergency vehicle Thursday for transport to the ER, I went to console his partner, who assured me Roy’s condition was not life threatening but required some medical treatment. We then discussed that, in our neck of the woods, if your loved one goes to the hospital, your ability to be close to them is strictly limited to sitting in your car in the parking lot. This is a disconcerting situation. My prior ER experiences allowed me to be present with my loved one, hold their hand and hear the words of the medical team as well as be part of the decision making. Another neighbor Nancy was required to move from her long-time home, no longer having enough income to cover her there. She is in a nursing home with government-paid care but in strict isolation from the world with the exception
Daily Connector | Observations from my Fair Weather Neighbors| Jim Myers
When I wrote about the birds nesting above my front door, there was polite doubt expressed about them being some kind of swallow. The white eggs (not included in the Connector story), for one, did not fit. Based on others observations and reading and listening, I now believe they were Phoebes. The telltale sign was their “Pee Wee” calls. In early July the chicks began venturing out, perching on the edge of the transom window and the edge of the nest. I leave and enter the house perhaps 20 times a day. It befuddled me why a bird would build a nest where it would be flying away as I entered or left the house. They labored on though, and raised 5 chicks in that nest. I did not see them leave. In the morning of July 9 they were there and in the evening they were gone. If there
Marriage and ‘what is real’
Marriage rests upon the immutable givens that compose it: words, bodies, characters, histories, places. Some wishes cannot succeed; some victories cannot be won; some loneliness is incorrigible. But there is relief and freedom in knowing what is real; these givens come to us out of the perennial reality of the world, like the terrain we live on. One does not care for this ground to make it a different place, but to make it habitable and to make it better. — Wendell Berry, “Standing by Words” These are some of the words I pass along to couples with whom I do pre-marriage counseling. Now, with much of our lives moved online (including said counseling sessions) they carry extra weight. Our online lives are a selective and at times highly curated part of ourselves (nice Zoom shirt with pajama shorts, anyone?), while the marriage relationship – and all substantive relationships –
