Part of being self-sufficient means going to the doctor very seldom. We have learned over the years how to treat common ailments ourselves. With doctors tied up at the moment treating very ill patients with COVID-19, it’s a good time to learn how to support your body’s immune system using plant-based remedies. (Note: this is not medical advice nor am I a medical professional. I recommend only food-grade supplements which we have found to be beneficial. If you are sick, call a doctor.)
On our boat, we carry both prescription medications (for emergencies) and natural remedies (for run-of-the-mill illnesses). Over the last 12 years, we have used far more supplements/herbs than medicines. In fact, except to prevent infection from a monkey scratch, no one has been on antibiotics at all since we bought the boat. Whether by luck or lifestyle, no one on our boat takes ANY prescription medications. Here are some of our holistic healing hacks:
For assisting fevers (not fighting them) we drink a tea made of equal parts peppermint, yarrow, elder flower, and elder berry. We want to make sure the body does its job of burning off bad bugs, so we also cover up and sweat our way to wellness.
For cold symptoms, a tea made from fresh or dried ginger root and honey seems to reduce severity and duration of symptoms. I just bought some licorice root to add for coughs.
The Beeyoutiful Company produces supplements like “Ultra Immune” which we take preventatively when something’s going around. Our other favorite products are the Supermom, Superdad, and Superkid multivitamins, the Berrywell elder berry syrup, the Tummy Tuneup probiotic, the Bone Ami mineral supplement, the Gentle-C vitamins, Cranberry Power Cleanse, Yeast Assassin, and Miracle Salve for cuts and scrapes.
Tummy troubles are treated with pro-biotics and activated charcoal, but truthfully, we don’t have many problems.
I use a wide range of essential oils to treat all sorts of ailments, from burns (lavender) to stuffy noses (eucalyptus) to skin rashes (tea tree) to oregano (infections of all kinds). Some of the oils must be diluted to be used, and some are for external use only. I dilute oregano oil in warm olive oil and add crushed garlic. After straining it, it can be used externally, rubbed around the ears and throat to fight earaches and swollen glands/sore throat. Bonus: you walk around smelling like an Italian restaurant!
“The
Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you
look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The
very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people
are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to
understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of
them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight
to protect it.” –Morpheus, The Matrix
(Lana Wachowski)
From our medicine locker: ginger, Beeyoutiful’s Ultra Immune Booster, oregano essential oil, Fever Tea (peppermint, yarrow, elder flower, elder berry)
Do you feel some days like the character Cypher in The
Matrix, wishing everything could go back to normal? “Why, oh why didn’t I
take the blue pill?” What wouldn’t you give to put everything back the way it
was in January, at the start of 2020, when you were full of optimism and plans
for the new year?
Careful…that’s a loaded question. Maybe “normal” wasn’t
working as well as we thought. The suddenly-clear skies over big cities seem to
agree. What is revealed by a few weeks of shut-downs is that our society, our
government, our financial system, our families, our very health—these things
are a lot more fragile than we like to think. They may even be built on
illusions.
But unplugging everyone simultaneously is dangerous, too. Unless you were already free-thinking, self-sufficient, and counter-cultural, simply removing the construct isn’t going to make you so. In fact, it’s more likely to put you into shock. Sending children home from school if there is an abuser in the family puts them more at risk. Removing income from an impoverished family places them in an even more precarious place. Isolating addicts and mentally ill people makes them more desperate. We may be saving thousands from immediate death by pandemic at the cost of millions from slow death by pandemic response. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t obey orders put in place to protect the vulnerable or to limit spread of the disease, but we should do so carefully, considering the collateral damage. We must lay aside our rights as a free people for the good of many, but only temporarily. The founders of the American Democratic experiment feared loss of liberty more than loss of life. Do we?
I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist (unless you consider the cosmic force of evil conspiring against good). But while we’re in the middle of this pandemic, I am asking some questions: Who is in control? Who is telling the truth, and who is not? Who decides what happens next? Where is the flow of money and power? What will happen to our democratic republic if this goes on indefinitely? Looking forward to the “after” of this pandemic, I’m not feeling very optimistic. (This was supposed to be a pep talk, but I’m a little short on pep at the moment. Bear with me.)
Since this is a health crisis, I’m probably going out on a limb by stating that I do not believe that more “healthcare” is equivalent to more “health.” We have been confusing these terms for a long time, and unless we change the paradigm, we will continue to make decisions as a species that erode our future wellness and that of our planet. If we are looking for a quick fix—a shiny new medicine, a vaccine that will make all this bad go away, then we will get what we have been getting from the Pill Pushers: dependence on costly medications that treat symptoms instead of processes that promote wholeness in our bodies and minds. (And don’t forget the side effects…)
I have long been a proponent of slow food, fresh air and sunshine, exercise, quality rest, holistic remedies, good relationships, and spiritual well-being. These things require lifestyle change and sacrifice, but they result in improved overall health. I am not discounting the need for medical care or life-saving drugs; even healthy people get sick sometimes. I am not shunning expert advice about how to be well. I am not saying that those who care for patients every day are not heroic and life-saving (they are!). And I am not ignoring the needs of the most vulnerable people in our society: the poor whose choices are limited by their station (one could argue that I live well because they live in poverty—who grows my food? Who converts raw materials into my fuel? Who makes my clothes?)
I am only saying that at the top levels, the healthcare system as it exists now is based on power and money, and not compassion for the ill. No one benefits from dead people, and no one benefits from well people who don’t need a doctor. What the system needs to remain in place is a large population of people who are a little bit sick all the time. And to sustain itself, it preys on fear and ignorance. And don’t forget laziness, because, honestly, even if we know what’s best for us, it really is easier to take a pill than eat right and exercise, and natural remedies require a lot of time and diligence.
As we wait, and as we slowly crawl toward recovery, let us not forget the lessons we are learning. Ask hard questions, think deep thoughts, search out the Truth. You may find that the world as you knew it was “pulled over your eyes to blind you” (Morpheus again) and even though it’s harder to go forward with that knowledge, it’s better than selling out to go back to a false sense of security.
Rachel caught a Cassiopeia in a net Saturday morning and put it in a bucket. She named it “Bob” and asked if we could keep it (not forever, just for a week). I told her it wouldn’t be happy in the bucket long-term, but that she could keep it for a few hours. To identify it, we looked it up in our beautiful reference book, Caribbean Reef Life: A Field Guide for Divers by Mickey Charteris and also read a few articles on the internet. We see these Upside Down Jellyfish all the time where we are in Florida, but today, we learned some surprising facts about them:
They photosynthesize and they eat. Like their fellow invertebrates, the corals, they have symbiotic algae (Zooxanthellae) that provide a food source and color. They also have many small mouths on their “arms” and ingest zooplankton…I guess that makes them omnivores!
They reproduce sexually and asexually. The adult males release sperm into the water that fertilizes ova produced by females. The larvae float in the sea until they find a place to land, where they become polyps, which reproduce asexually by budding. The adult phase is a medusa, which can sometimes be seen swimming, bell upwards, but…
They usually live upside-down, tentacles upward in warm shallow water. They make look like plants or underwater flower bouquets (the mangrove variety looks like it has seagrass growing out of it), but don’t be deceived, they are animals. They live in shallow water so that the sunlight can reach their zooxanthellae symbiotes. They come in a surprising variety of shapes and colors.
They sleep! A 2017 study discovered that even though these simple invertebrate life forms do not have brains or neurons, they have a nocturnal sleep phase. It has the researchers at Cal Tech scratching their heads.
They produce poisonous mucous that makes you itch! We discovered this firsthand, unfortunately. A recent study finally explained why swimming near upside down jellyfish can cause an itchy rash. They release a slimy substance that contains stinging nematocysts.
Even the simplest creatures on earth are surprisingly
complex. The more I learn, the more I realize I know virtually nothing.
This is a follow-up post for those who took me at my word and are interested in the nuts-and-bolts of creative homeschooling. These are real activities that I did with my 8-year-old daughter Rachel in the last few weeks. They could be altered for younger or older students, or for different areas of study. I tried to include something for every subject. They would be perfect for a unit study—all activities centered around the same topic.
For what it’s worth, I got my certificate in early childhood education from Middlebury College (class of 1997) and taught kindergarten in Dekalb County Schools (Atlanta) before I started homeschooling in 2004. While teaching in a public school helped me a lot with curriculum planning and purchasing materials, it was surprisingly poor preparation for teaching my own children at home. It’s the hardest and most rewarding job I’ve ever had. Shoot me an email if you have any questions.
Science/Writing: Acid Base Indicator/Reaction and Lab Write Up
We used red cabbage juice (which I made in my blender) as an acid base indicator to test different household substances in separate test tubes/jars: lemon juice, baking soda, dish soap, and vinegar. We observed the color change as we added each substance and determined which were acids and which bases. We then mixed the solution containing vinegar (pink) and baking soda (blue) and watched the fizzy reaction turn the liquid back to a neutral (purple). It was dramatic, and fun.
Then came the not-as-fun part: writing up the lab report. I wrote six headings (based on the scientific method) on a piece of paper and I sat with Rachel as she worked through each section. In addition to scientific inquiry, this activity offers writing skills practice in the areas of grammar, punctuation, penmanship, spelling, and vocabulary. Sometimes getting her to finish the write-up is like pulling teeth, but it’s a required part of every fun experiment we do. Here are the six headings of the lab write-up:
Question
Hypothesis
Materials
Procedure
Observations
Conclusion
Reading: Illustrated Classics (Charlotte Mason method
and coloring pages)
Rachel recently made the leap to reading chapter books
independently. She likes these condensed versions of classic literature, and
asked me if I could copy some of the illustrations for her to color. The
Charlotte Mason method has your child retell the story (either aloud or
written)…so why not have the conversations about the book over coloring?
Spelling: Flashcard Memory Game
We took Rachel’s word list—22 words from Adventures in Phonics List 22 and turned them into a matching game. We wrote the words on 22 cards, illustrated them on 22 more cards, then put the words in two grids. She had to find the correct word for each picture. Other ways to use the game: put the cards in alphabetical order, match the homonyms using pictures or words only, make sentences using as many words per sentence as you can, and spell each word aloud when shown a picture.
Math: Skip Bo Math Facts
This is a fun card game (cousin to UNO), but we’re not playing by the rules! Rachel is working on her multiplication facts to 12, and this is a fast, fun way to do it. The wild cards (Skip Bo) have a value of 0, but every other card is taken at face value. We shuffle the big deck, split it into two piles, and I flip the cards two at a time. She calls out the product of the two factors. If she doesn’t know, or takes too long, I keep the cards to review later. If she gets the answer correct, she keeps the cards. Could be used for adding if your kid isn’t ready to multiply, or even for simplifying fractions if they’ve moved beyond multiplication.
History/Geography: Map Labeling
We’ve been reading about the Age of Discovery in A Child’s History of the World, so in addition to adding a card to our illustrated deck of world history, we marked the voyages of Columbus on a map, color-coded by year. If your kid loves maps, it’s a great way to learn history. This year, we also learned about the Iditarod sled race and labeled a map of Alaska, showing the race route.
Art: Beer Box
Butterflies and Beer Box Monsters
This is an activity invented by Rachel herself! She turned the inserts in Jay’s Heineken beer cases into butterflies for today’s art project, but in the past, she’s used the inserts to make monsters. They had names and she made food so we could feed them. Pretty much any cardboard in our home is fair game for repurposing. All kids need to be creative are some art supplies and a little boredom.
Let me start off by saying that doing school at home
is not the same thing as homeschooling.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I want you to know how much I respect and support the families which have been plunged headlong into the new “adventure” (a.k.a. what happens when something goes wrong) of educating their children. Even if your child is sitting in front of a computer screen going to a virtual classroom, you are still at home with him, her, or them, ensuring that they get what they need to succeed in life. Whether you homeschool, help your children with homework, pay for tutoring, or provide a computer so they can receive instruction, the bottom line is that we all care about the same thing.
Many people have said to me, about our homeschooling five kids on a boat, “Better you than me. If I were at home all day with my kids, I would kill them!” When they closed the schools in March, this was my first thought. So…how’s it going? Maybe you are discovering what we did 15 years ago when our own homeschool journey started: homeschooling is not so much about education as it is about navigating human relationships, loving each other when you don’t feel like it, and conflict resolution.
Plenty of conflict arises…we just don’t take pictures of it!
When your kid goes to school, you have the luxury of forgetfulness: your kid wakes up on the wrong side of the bed, you drop him/her off at school, the teacher deals with the grumpy student, and 10 hours later the bad morning is a distant memory. Not so at home. First you have to deal with the bad attitude (theirs and yours) and then you can think about instruction and learning. By the time you’ve solved all the personal problems, it’s time for lunch! (I speak only partly in jest…)
Of course, with the help of technology, not all parents are required to add curriculum planning to the perfect storm of working from home, managing a household, cooking, cleaning, and maybe recovering from an illness. So, on the one hand, you have support from your child’s school, but on the other, you have very little freedom about how/when schoolwork gets done. By now, you have probably googled “homeschool ideas” enough to know that this is a diverse subject; each homeschool is as unique as the family who chose to do it. In our local homeschool community, we have everything from unschoolers to those who buy curriculum-in-a-box.
Sam learning palm-weaving
Our family is somewhere in the middle, focusing on real-world learning experiences—hands-on and on-location learning as much as possible. Right now, our oldest three kids are in high school, and they are doing dual enrollment at the local community college, hoping to graduate at 18 or 19 with an Associates Degree which they will have gotten for FREE. The younger two are using a combination of good-old-fashioned book-learning, internet resources, and home-grown projects and games. For now, all our classroom, field trip/travel, and community-based options have disappeared, so we’re feeling the pinch, too.
But here’s the part you need to hear right now, in the middle of our quarantine mass-home-school experiment: No one cares more about your children than you do. No one—no teacher, no policy-maker, no school counselor. This qualifies you to make decisions about their education. Is the school-at-home model giving your children continuity or creating stress and misery? Is their creativity being crushed or inspired? Are they being taught to think for themselves or to become part of a system? Maybe it’s working for you, or maybe it’s just about keeping your kids busy until school starts up again. But if it’s not, if this whole quarantine thing has you re-thinking what’s important in your life, if you are re-prioritizing, if you have the time and energy, then it’s at least worth considering homeschooling (for the short term at least).
Aaron working on an electronics project, 2013
And by homeschooling, I mean kitchen chemistry, reading aloud, geography puzzles, unit studies, chess, baking, book-making, painting, ukulele lessons, ant farms, car repair, gardening, astronomy…the universe is the limit! The internet that just made school-at-home possible has also made homeschooling accessible to all. I don’t know how many hours each day your child is required to “do school,” but even if you continue their current program, you can supplement what they’re learning online with some fun projects at home. Don’t waste this precious time with your kids: do something awesome they’ll remember for the rest of their lives!
Marshmallow Salt Crystal Model
I’ve written about homeschooling a lot on our blog, and if you’re interested, here are some links to previous posts:
How was last night different from all other nights? It was the
first time in a long time that Jewish families all over the world could not
gather with relatives and friends for the annual celebration of Passover. To all
my Jewish friends, despite the disruption to normal life, I say “shalom, and chag Pesach sameach!”
On our boat, we are often just the seven of us at the table for Passover—we are a bit of an oddity as a Christian family celebrating the Jewish holiday instead of observing Easter. Our problem with “Christian” holidays like Easter, Christmas, and Halloween is that they are a conglomeration of pagan practices—basically, a small Jewish sect from the first century rolled like a snowball down the hill of history, collecting gods and traditions from every culture it passed through. But at its heart, Christianity is the offshoot of one of the world’s oldest religions.
While the word Easter originates with Eostre, a pagan goddess connected with the spring solstice and the season of fertility, Passover is a Biblical holiday fraught with meaning, symbolism, and fulfilled prophecy. Why shouldn’t those who claim as their Messiah (mashiach) a Jewish carpenter embrace a holiday he celebrated? As a student of the Bible, my curiosity has always drawn me toward the Jewish roots of Christianity; after all, the first students of the Rabbi Yeshua (Jesus) continued to hold sacred Jewish law and practice, while adding “grace” to their understanding of “redemption” and claiming that the promises of the prophets had been fulfilled. I argue that you can’t understand the gospel of a Jewish tax-collector (Mattityahu/Matthew) or the letters of a Pharisee convert (Sha’ul/Paul) in the New Testament without attempting to grasp the history and culture of the Old Testament (the Tanach: the Law/Torah, the prophets, and the writings).
My personal connection to Passover started when I was a kid.
I have always had Jewish friends and been exposed to their traditions and holy
days (and did I mention the food? Who doesn’t love latkes?). I even felt solidarity
with Jewish classmates required to go to religious services every Saturday—I was
raised Seventh-Day Adventist. Though I no longer identify with that
denomination, keeping the Sabbath (Shabbat) sunset Friday to sunset Saturday has
become pivotal to my weekly routine (God said, “take a 24-hour vacation once a
week” and I said, “OK, sounds great!”). I even have Jewish ancestors on my
mother’s side (the Stearman family), though I’m not sure it counts for much.
I had celebrated Passover with Jewish friends, but it wasn’t until I attended a Messianic Seder at Congregation Beth Adonai in Atlanta (with Rabbi Scott Sekulow presiding) that I began to understand the significance of the holiday in relation to Holy Week. While I was working as a water aerobics instructor at the Jewish Community Center in Atlanta, I came across a children’s Seder in the library and decided to teach my young children the significance of the holiday. I combined a simplified service for families with the messianic service, and voilà—the goyim began to celebrate Passover!
The Seder Plate
These are the main elements of Passover, and how they relate
to Christianity:
Slavery: The twelve tribes of Israel were once slaves in Egypt, but God promised to free them and bring the people back to the land he had promised them (Exodus 6:6-8). Humans have a natural tendency towards sin (an archery term that means “to miss the mark”) or the breaking of God’s laws, a moral code for human behavior. He gave the Ten Commandments to Moshe (Moses) as basic guidelines for loving God and loving one’s neighbor—but without divine help, we humans are hopelessly inept at keeping them. God’s promise in prophetic writings to send a savior—Yeshua—extends the hope of freedom to everyone, not just the descendants of Israelite slaves. “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin…if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (Gospel of John 8:34-36).
Miracles: This part requires some willing suspension of disbelief (a.k.a. faith). The story of the Exodus is recounted during the meal, the way God commissioned Moses from a burning bush, the way He sent ten plagues to convince Pharaoh to give up his cheap labor force, the way He brought the Israelites out of Egypt and to the shore of the Red Sea, and the way He saved them from Pharaoh’s army (after he regretted freeing his cheap labor force and went after them). The ministry of Yeshua is reliant on miracles as well: on his healings, his control over the elements, his ability to reverse death: “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor” (Gospel of Matthew 11:5).
Sacrifice: The Passover lamb forms the centerpiece of
the meal (or, in our case this year, the Passover chicken…). At the time of the
exodus each household slaughtered a lamb and marked their doorway with its
blood, as a sign of faith so that the Angel of Death (the tenth plague) would “pass
over” their home. In every house without this mark, the first-born died (chiefly
among the Egyptians, thus prompting them to let the people go). In Christian
observance, Yeshua himself is the Passover lamb, “the Lamb of God who takes
away the sin of the world” (Gospel of John 1:29). His sacrifice is the once-and-for-all
payment for the collective mistakes of humanity, his blood spilled so that God’s
wrath at our wrong-doing would “pass over” us. This is how the most degenerate among
us can find redemption and relationship with God (though not necessarily release
from legal and relational consequences). This “blood of the covenant, which is
poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Gospel of Matthew 26:28) is
symbolized during the meal as wine.
Deliverance: On Passover, we eat unleavened bread to commemorate the Israelites coming out of Egypt in such haste that they didn’t have time to let their dough rise. It is eaten with bitter herbs and a sweet mixture of apples and honey to symbolize the bitterness of slavery sweetened by the hope of redemption. In Messianic traditions it is said that the matzo, the traditional flatbread eaten during the meal, is bruised, striped, and pierced, like Yeshua at his death: “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). This is the bread that was broken at the last Passover which Yeshua shared with his disciples, a symbol of his sacrifice now celebrated as the rite of communion: “this is my body broken for you” (Gospel of Luke 22:19, Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians 11:24). There are three matzos on the plate; a Christian interpretation is that they symbolize the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, with the middle matzo broken—part of it hidden away, and brought back at the end of the meal. It is the “afikomen,” Greek for “that which is to come,” reminiscent of the way that Yeshua was broken, resurrected, and returned to the Father, where he awaits the “end of the age”(Gospel of Matthew 24) to come back and usher in a kingdom of peace without end.
The first night of Passover is an evening of story-telling, laughter (the Seder requires the drinking of four glasses of wine…), delicious food, and good news (something we could really use at the moment). Paul sums up a gospel truth hidden in the Passover in a letter to the Romans, “For it makes no difference whether one is a Jew or a Gentile, since all have sinned and come short of earning God’s praise. By God’s grace, without earning it, all are granted the status of being considered righteous before him, through the act redeeming us from our enslavement to sin that was accomplished by the Messiah Yeshua.” (The Complete Jewish Bible, Romans 3:22-24).
Resources:
For the kids, Dreamworks’ Prince of Egypt is a succinct
retelling of the Exodus story.
Have you ever tried doing yoga on a moving platform? Living
on a boat requires constant, minute movements to stay balanced. I don’t even
know I’m doing it, but my body is always making small adjustments to say
upright. Ironically, balance poses are the biggest challenge in my yoga
practice, whether on the dive platform at sunset or on solid ground. If there’s
the smallest ripple in the water or shift of the wind, I have to grab onto
something or risk a fall. Indoors, unless I can find a good vertical line to
focus on, I tip over almost as often. It’s very humbling.
I wish I could say that my emotional balance is better than
my physical, but the truth is that I tend toward mood swings, a trapeze flight
of high highs and low lows. I never stay at one extreme for very long, and I’m
usually at the cheerful end of the pendulum swing, but after 45 years, I still
don’t have complete mastery of my emotions. Being married to a steady, quiet,
unexcitable person has helped a lot. The spiritual practices of prayer and
meditation have helped a lot. Reading good books has helped, as has the free
counseling of good friends. Being a parent—trying to model maturity for my
children—has helped. But every day, on my yoga mat or off, I have to work to
keep my balance.
When times are uncertain, when everything’s up in the air, when daily changes unsettle us, how do we ground ourselves? We must seek balance or fall over. Here are four areas on which we can be working over the next few weeks and months as we prepare for whatever comes next:
Physical balance. We need to get some exercise or we’ll all gain the “quarantine fifteen.” Breathing, moving—these things center you in the present. They remind you that you are still alive, that as long as you have breath, you have hope. If you can, go for a walk, take a bike ride, go kayaking. If you can’t go outside, do yoga, push-ups, T-Tapp, weights, or some other indoor workout.
Emotional balance. Who do you love? Who loves you? Reach out to that person. Get a pep talk when you feel bad, give a pep talk when you feel good. If no one has any pep left, share the load and suffer together—that is the literal translation of “compassion” (from the latin prefix “com,” with, and the root “pati,” to suffer). Do something loving for the people in your immediate surroundings, even when they don’t deserve it. That’s the whole point of love. It’s a gift, not something you earn. Sometimes it’s an act of the will, and not of the heart. We can choose a loving action even without warm fuzzy feelings. Steer clear of negativity, criticism, and pessimism.
Spiritual balance: Who are you? What is the significance of your life? What do you believe? What can you add to the world? If life is a meaningless accident, why do you still act as if it has meaning? Do you have a soul? What happens to you if you die? These are the hard questions, questions no one can answer for you. Now is a good time to ask them and to look for answers. Without some kind of underlying philosophy, without spiritual fortitude, a crisis can be overwhelming.
A Balanced Schedule: Somehow, without the constructs of school, work, sports, social activities, religious services, and appointments, we must find the self-discipline to make something of this time. If we treat this as an extended vacation (or an endless happy hour), we will miss the good life lessons. Even if you are working your butt off to stay afloat, you must find some balance between work and rest or you will compromise your own health.
A Balanced Diet: It would be so easy to eat constantly right now. But we have to resist the urge to fill our emptiness with junk food and find things that are really satisfying to the body and soul. On our boat, we’re trying to keep up our healthy eating habits despite the temptation to bake…
However you find your balance—even if you fall over—get up
on those wobbly legs, lift your hearts, breathe deeply, and don’t give up!
You may have noticed that I love English idioms, clichés, and expressions. I’ve also been known to scramble them, as in, “I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday,” or “I killed two birds in one bush!” Well, here’s an idiom we’ve all butchered anytime we claim to have succeeded without outside assistance. It was originally used with irony; literally speaking, it is impossible to pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps. When you’re down, you’re down, and without some kind of help, you’re not getting up.
This is a humbling time. People are sick. They are lonely.
They are dying without the comfort of other human beings, and their loved ones
are grieving in isolation. Those caring for the sick and dying are putting
their own lives on the line. Many people have lost their jobs. People who were
struggling with addiction or trying to deal with an abusive relationship have
lost their support systems. Children have lost the structure of school and are facing
new challenges. We, the lucky ones who are merely stuck at home, are worried
and care-worn. We are collectively, as a species, grieving a loss of normalcy. And
it’s too early to talk about recovery.
I keep hearing another expression: “look for the silver
lining.” For every ominous cloud, there is some light that escapes, but it
doesn’t negate the darkness. I hope I have not trivialized what is obviously a
serious crisis. My encouraging words are meant to cheer, yes, but not to make light
of a heavy situation. I am merely hoping for thoughtful introspection, peace
amid chaos, suffering with a purpose, and that we learn to care for each other
as best we can. Mostly, I hope we don’t lose hope.
We will all have to “walk in the valley of the shadow of death,”
(Psalm 23) whether now or later, whether mourning a loved one or saying good-bye
ourselves. But a shadow assumes a light source, and the psalm quoted above
assumes that we don’t have to walk alone through the darkness. Somewhere, in
all of this, there is light, and hope, and a future. But it may not look at all
like we imagined it.
We have all heard (at least during my lifetime) that how we are
living is not sustainable. Our environment cannot sustain our consumption and
waste, our economy cannot sustain the debts we accrue, our health cannot
sustain our careless lifestyle, our systems of education and healthcare cannot
continue in their current courses…and need I mention the war machine? Well,
maybe we’ve finally reached a pivotal moment. Can humanity take a collective
breath and think about what comes next? If we’re too eager to “return to normal”
we may miss a cathartic opportunity.
Humans are resourceful. We are intelligent. We have dreams
and visions that guide us toward the future. We are capable of hard work. We
are sometimes motivated by something besides fear and greed. We are capable of
love and rational decision-making. We are also capable of spiritual connection:
if we want it, we can have a relationship with their Creator that offers
forgiveness for past mistakes, peace now, and wisdom for the future. But we are
also selfish, proud, and independent. And we are arrogant—thinking we can
somehow lift ourselves out of the mire.
But if we can’t pull ourselves up who can?
We will have to pull each other out of the muck—lift each
other up, dig each other out. Even if you believe in the power of prayer and
are seeking help from a Higher Power, prayer is useful not so much as a way to
get God to do what you want Him to do, as to get your heart in agreement with
what He wants. And He wants us (according to pretty much any world religion I can
name, but certainly the Christian faith I claim) to love each other. We are the
hands and feet of God, and we have a responsibility to each other to think of
someone besides ourselves. This is not the time for apathy, argument, dogma, or
hypocrisy.
We must do what we can right now—stop socializing so we don’t
put others at risk, refocus our care for those in our homes, reach out to hurting
loved ones by phone or video, pray for those on the front lines fighting a war
against an invisible enemy, give when we can to those who have lost livelihoods
and may not be able to feed and care for themselves.
My heart is heavy. I’m seeing suffering I’ve never seen before, and positive self-talk assumes that my inner dialogue has something nice to say. Hope from outside is the only thing buoying my spirits. Lord knows, I don’t have the power to dig myself out by my bootstraps.
Jay and I recently read Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing
Magic of Tidying Up. It has not yet changed our lives, but it has motivated
us to lighten our load, clean out lockers, throw/give things away that we have
been storing for no apparent reason, and enjoy a less-cluttered living space. Now
that we’re suddenly all at home all the time, we’re continuing to tidy and
clean, to see dirt and clutter that we had learned to ignore.
Since we came back to the United States last July, we have
been so busy that we could barely keep up with household chores. The three
oldest kids were taking in-seat college classes and working at new jobs, the
youngest two were playing basketball, everyone was enjoying social activities, and
in between pick-ups and drop-offs, I was trying to write a book in one-hour
increments in various coffee shops around town. All that came to a screeching
halt a few weeks ago, and we realized that, as my friend Amy so eloquently put
it, “we have been wallowing in our own dirt.” Perhaps you too have been
wallowing, and suddenly find yourself with time and motivation to clean house.
Cleaning is important right now especially—for disease
prevention. Between disinfecting surfaces, wiping down things brought into
homes, and vigilant hand-washing, people are more focused on cleanliness than
ever before. Beyond the physical, cleaning also makes humans feel better
mentally and emotionally. As we clear our space, we clear our minds. I need a
clean kitchen before I can cook. I need a clean workspace before I can paint. I
need a clean desk before I can write. Maybe that makes me neurotic, but there
is something freeing about a tidy area. It allows me to fill the physical and
creative space with something new.
And since I’m talking about deep-cleaning, I’m going to peel
back another layer, look under the rug in my soul where I’m apt to sweep the
dirt. No amount of obsessive cleaning can scrub away the imperfections in my
own human nature. I am daily faced with the consequences of my mistakes past
and present, and sometimes I suffer the negative effects of the mistakes of
others. The more time I have on my hands and the fewer the distractions, the
more I am aware of my own failures. The more time I spend with my family, the
more I realize how imperfectly I show my love for the people closest to me.
So now is as good a time as any, while I’m cleaning all the nooks and crannies, to get my heart right with God, too. These are the words that come to mind when I need a fresh start (which, I’m sorry to report, is pretty much every day): “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit” (New King James Version of the Bible, Psalm 51, verses 10-12).
Even though I “come clean” about my faults, sometimes self-condemnation remains, like a stubborn stain. Positive self-talk leaves me feeling like I only took a swipe at the surface. I need the firm reminder that because Jesus accepted the eternal consequences for humanity’s imperfection, I’m offered a guarantee: “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (New King James version of the Bible, 1 John chapter 1, verse 9). Being forgiven frees me up to forgive others.
I don’t know where you stand—whether you were raised with religion that left a bad taste in your mouth, or with authentic faith-hope-and-love, or with no faith at all. I only know that without my belief in a caring God, without hope that pain can serve a purpose, my fears and my faults would overwhelm me right now and all the cleaning in the world wouldn’t be enough to bring me peace of mind. I pray that you too will find peace amid the chaos.
We bought Take Two in Fort Lauderdale twelve years ago this week. We had gone to look at her in December of 2007. These are photos from the time of purchase compared to now…we made our floating house a home! I’m feeling incredibly grateful for twelve years of memories, for the way living on a boat has changed us, and for our family of adventurous kids.
Cockpit Then and Now
Galley Then and Now
Salon Then and Now
Eli (6) the first day we saw the boat, December 2007 and Eli (almost 18) the day we returned from the Caribbean 2019
The crew of Take Two 2008 and 2020 Bottom L-R: Rachel (8), Sarah (15), Aaron (17), Sam (13), and Eli (18)
One thing that hasn’t changed: the original ship’s bell TAKE TWO OFF T’WAAR BOUWJAAR 1991
