you should see the names in my inbox these days.

Jerold Reily
Zane Lange
Jeff Short
Paul L Garizio Jr
Amalia Vick

all these people who give me false hope.  my message indicator reads "2 new messages" and when i happily click on my inbox, i realize that my spam filter has let these smooth-talkers in on the basis of the benevolent nature of their names.  but how could my spam filter not catch things like "the best way to live longer on this planet" or "enlarge your mail [sic] organ"?  yes, sometimes i wish my spam filter worked like shel silverstein's homework machine.  imperfect as it may be, even a little kid would be able to catch the insincerity of these unctuous e-mails that keep slipping through.  even if that means that 9 + 4 = 3.

© emilio morenatti

good afternoon, boys and girls.  today's talk is about the big E - entitlement, and how it seems to be at the root of all the nastiness we see swirling around our heads all day.  keep in mind, i've just come off a whole day of people yelling for respect, demanding it in their responses, and driving ever so aggressively to make sure i'm aware that everyone wants respect.  oh, yes, i'm painfully aware that we all want it, and that we all feel entitled to it, but today, i must have been at my wit's end because it just made me want to yell, "now hold up a minute!  who do you think you are?!" 

let's see.  it's that time of year when the kids start to go crazy.  i've had several showdowns this week where kids demanded i show them respect when i took away their cell phones, and yelled at them for loitering in the hallway.  i shot right back and said, "excuse me, but when a teacher asks you to do something, you do it."  i'm not sure that's the christian response, but i felt my blood starting to bubble when the kids starting stepping on those sacred lines of respect. 

during my prep, we had this unsavory discussion about age that i tried not to get roped into, but the harder i dug my head into grading my papers, the more my colleague was up in my face asking me how old i was.  i gave her the coy answer that maturity wise, i was the oldest one in the room, but she pressed it and pressed it, and when it came out that i was 28, she said, "see, you're a baby.  i'm 42, so you should respect me."  uh, excuse me, but when you put it that way, that's the last thing i feel compelled to do.

it seemed like everyone and their mother had a complaint today.  when i gave a kid a zero for not having his homework, he got huffy with me because i was supposed to have given him a HW pass, but i didn't because he spoke too much english in class the day before, so really it was my fault that he got a zero.  um...yeah.

driving home from the insanity wasn't any better.  when i tried to merge onto the highway, i nearly got plowed off the road by an 18-wheeler who decided to accelerate when he saw me coming, and then only slowed down when he realized that i wasn't going anywhere, but off the road.  when i stopped at a store later to pick up some things, a driver zoomed past me as i tried to cross the street by the stop sign.  and then later when i drove past the same sign, a pedestrian insisted on walking in front of my car.

long story short, everyone seemed to be walking around with these big Es on their foreheads.  entitlement.  i deserve this.  i need this.  i demand that.  i'm not quite sure what made me want to blast my erasure on the way home today, but as i wailed along with the song, "give a little respect...to...MEeeeeeeeee!" it all came clicking into place.  that's just the problem.  we all want it.  we all feel entitled to it, and just so long as it's that way, none of us are going anywhere.  it made me think of this passage in philippians 2:

anyone who says that christianity is namby pamby should try doing this for a day.  i came home hot and bothered that people were trying to steal my "God-given" rights away, when i really see that a God-given right is the ability to give your rights away.  there's no way you can give something up unless you realize that you're holding onto it.  so all the times i furled my brow today were the times when i was just not interested in giving up my rights.  but i am starting to see that genius of the gospel.  it's the only place where i hear so resolutely and firmly rooted this idea that "something's gotta give."  if everyone demanded their rights, how would the world ever move forward?  christianity is the only religion i hear someone say, "give up your rights because they were never yours to begin with," and as i'm thinking through that, it's becoming ever so powerful.  it's not hard to look for examples of entitlement gone haywire.  but it's ever so hard to see cases of entitlement gone right.  give it up.  because it was never yours to begin with.  let the fun begin.

i don't know if you've ever seen the old lamorisse classic where a red balloon follows a little lonely boy throughout paris, but consider this hou hsiao-hsien's stylized, and thankfully verbal take on the film. i saw the preview last night (it just opened at the paris in manhattan), and i'm hooked. juliette binoche. simon iteanu - cute, young french kid. any little kid who speaks french can totally win me over. and just the artfulness of hsiao-hsien's directing. anyway, i can't wait to float across paris in my most favorite theatre at the foot of central park.

ny times review

got a chance to watch this last night at the new directors/new films festival of lincoln center. mournfully beautiful. some of the shots are like moving stills, slow, laborious, and with heart-wrenching purpose. the best was being around so many lebanese people. "bravo!" they cooed while the director gracefully accepted his accolades. check it out.

i've been trying to get through to a student all year.  now i realize that he wasn't waiting for me, but the right girl.  observe the following exchange.

so t hasn't been doing work ALL year, and has suddenly taken a vested interest in working hard and catching up.  on his last assignment, i wrote him a sticky note:

at the end of class, the normally quiet and taciturn boy dropped the note back on my desk saying, "here you go," under his breath.  when i opened it, i sat at my desk for a good minute afterwards, just musing.  he wrote:

maybe teenage love isn't so bad.

this song has been on repeat. does anyone read enough chinese to answer me this? are the subtitles for the lyrics?

©

© rion.nu

i find it a little bit strange that we should call this day good.  a day that commemorates one of the most violent days in recorded history, where not only was a man put to death...but he was spurned by God himself.  and yet, in the bitterest of melancholies, we are told to wait.  as curtains tear, and earthquakes shake, even the hardened man utters, "surely this man was the Son of God."  as even those who were most intimate with him stand and watch from a distance while another bosom buddy denies him three times, we are told to wait.

a cosmic breath inhales, and in that moment of limbo, there is utter quiet.  the absence of quiet, even.  and we hear the hushed voice say, "wait."

wait.

wait.

why?  because good things come to those who wait.  and truth be told, the best is yet to come...

matthew 27
mark 15
luke 23
john 19