My friend recently shared an article that complained about dog lovers foisting their animals on the non-dog-loving public. Although I am a ridiculously passionate dog lover, I have to say I agree. People who don’t want to deal with dogs shouldn’t have to be approached by them. Also people shouldn’t have to worry about their shy dogs being pawed by strangers, let alone being pounced on by other dogs. Parents shouldn’t have to worry about their children being molested by strange dogs, and dog owners shouldn’t have to worry about their dogs being molested by strange children.

But the solution is not to forbid dogs being out in public any more than we should forbid children being out in public. The solution is simple, although it would seem near impossible based on so much of what we see in the world. It’s called “civility.” Civility presumes a) that you understand that you are not the center of the universe, which means that other people have needs and desires that are different than your own and b) that you can find out people’s needs and desires by asking. Really, does that seem so very difficult?

You can assume, just in general, that everyone exists in a little zone of privacy that belongs to them alone. You don’t enter a stranger’s house without permission, and you don’t enter their personal space. Not because you want to touch their pregnant belly. Not because you want to touch an African-American child’s curly hair. Not because you think they’re sexy and you want to get it on.  That zone of privacy is an acknowledgement that a person (or animal) is real, that they are entitled to want and feel and believe as they choose. It’s what we Unitarian Universalists call “the inherent worth and dignity of every person.”

But privacy doesn’t mean that we need to live without connection, each of us entirely separate in our own little bubble. It simply means that you have to ask to be invited in. And you have to wait for the invitation to be accepted. You can ask whether someone would like to pet your dog before letting it come near them, and you can ask permission before petting a stranger’s dog. You can teach your children to ask before petting a strange dog, and you can teach your dog not to approach people without permission. But more than that you can ask a child’s permission before hugging them or picking them up, teaching them more effectively than any lecture on “stranger danger” that each of us has the right to choose who will touch us and how. You can ask a date’s permission before offering a kiss or other physical intimacy, combating the rape culture which insists that there are ways that a woman can “ask for it” other than saying what it is she wants.

You can ask, even when it feels uncomfortable, as when you ask an acquaintance what gender pronoun they prefer, or when you invite someone whose skin tone is different than yours if they would be willing to discuss a topic related to race. You can ask someone with a disability whether they would like help, and you can ask an older person if they would like your seat on the bus. You can reach out your hand past the edge of your own bubble of privacy to see if someone else wants to take it. You can, and you should. But then you need to pause to find out whether that person wants to reach out their hand in return. And if their response isn’t want you expected or hoped for, oh well. It isn’t about you. It just isn’t all about you.

We human beings are a community. We belong with one another. But we do not belong to one another, and the sooner we start acting like it, the better.

For whatever reasons having to do with time but also interest, I am the one in our family who sits down and pays the bills. I like doing it. I get a feeling of satisfaction from being able to pay the bills, a sense of security and peace of mind, however ephemeral, that we were able to cover our expenses for another month. So perhaps that explains the somewhat-embarrassing and totally obvious revelation that crossed my mind recently—a complete sentence which I almost, but thankfully did not, say out loud—“We are not making any money on this venture.”

By this venture I suppose I meant “our life right now,” in sum. Living in Washington D.C., in the District so that it’s easier for us to get around and my partner can (and does) often bike to work. Having and raising a child, and my staying-at-home for the moment as we adjust to all the new responsibilities and tasks of parenting. As happens to everyone in some way at some point, we’ve also had or will soon have a series of additional complications and expenses this year–unexpected hospitalizations for our kid, a cross-country move, legal fees for same-sex co-parent adoption, dental expenses for me, a much-needed new computer, and so on. We are so not making any money on this whole “life” venture at the moment.

Maybe that’s why the phrase “value-added” got stuck in my head earlier this week. I’ve overheard it a bunch, on the radio and I’m not sure where all else, but it’s out there, this phrase. What does it really mean? Who decides what has value? In our home, we mostly do, though it’s far too easy for other people’s opinions, values, judgments, and commentary to influence our own thinking. We’re human, after all, we are part of communities that we value and learn from, are inspired by and sometimes stressed out by (as in, we “should” think about moving into a bigger place soon, or “really we should have our kid in daycare for socialization and optimal learning” and so on and on). I’m as susceptible as anyone to this stuff—perhaps more than most. So I find myself this week stewing on this phrase “value-added,” mulling it over in my mind, trying to get a handle once again on who’s in charge around here. Am I deciding what has value in my life, or am I framing and highlighting (and judging and doubting) particular aspects of my life because others have impressed upon me that that’s what has (or doesn’t have) the most value?

My grandfather used to pick me up at my mom’s house when I was little girl and and say that he had $20. Then he’d ask me: “Should we buy a hamburger with it, or put it in your college savings account?” I was six or seven years old. I always knew what the right answer was, and also that we’d probably get to stop at McDonald’s too. I loved, loved, loved going to McDonald’s when I was a kid for “2 cheeseburgers, please, small fries, and what’s your special shake?” Back then, McDonald’s had a different “special shake” flavor every day–banana and peanut butter were my favorites, egg nog at Christmastime. Back then, knowing about their special shake, having that routine with my grandparents, and being able to choose for myself: that was what I valued.

These days are not all that different. Though I’m no longer a McDonald’s regular, I still value knowing my favorite things at neighborhood establishments, knowing the storekeepers, knowing my neighbors, being a part of a community. I still value having a routine and I still value being able to choose for myself. I am certainly grateful to be able to stay home with our Little Bean, even though I am truly exhausted some days and I do wonder if it’s really worth it. Does it really matter if I’m the one who reads to her, plays with her, changes her diaper or cleans up her mealtime messes? As she becomes more and more self-assured, I can see already that it does matter, that we are teaching her, in the ways we’ve best figured out that are doable for us, that she can trust us and trust the world, at least the world she’s interacted with so far.

I am fascinated, this week, by the way economic terms infiltrate our day-to-day language. Just in this post, I see the words and ideas of “value,” “venture,” “trust,” “cost,” “product” and “outcome” over and over again, words that we use for different purposes depending on the context. Has all this double entendre, um, benefitted us (pun intended) or muddied the genuineness of our language? Do we know what we mean when we speak anymore, even in our own heads? Do we know what we value without anyone else’s…assessment?

What will you be doing for Mother’s Day? I confess it’s never been a big deal in my family, either with my mom or as a mom. Somehow, we just never got on the breakfast in bed, flowers, greeting card bandwagon. I don’t know why. It’s not that I don’t think mothers deserve to be honored. Let’s face it. Mothering is the hardest job in the world. I do not mean that metaphorically, or hyperbolically. It’s the hardest job. Every other job has days off, or at least hours off. Every other job has a limited field of expertise, and doesn’t require that you be simultaneously teacher, doctor, housemaid, entertainer, counselor and a whole host of jobs like construction worker that you might never have anticipated. Every other job, if you get mad at the boss, you can complain to your friends without having to feel like you’re a horrible person and that it’s all your fault. Every other job, if the boss hits you or calls you names you can sue. Every other job, if it gets stressful or tedious or overwhelming enough, you can up and quit.

OK, fathering could conceivably be as difficult as mothering, but it usually isn’t. Dad, if you’re the one who cleans up the barf and checks the homework and calls the teacher when things aren’t going well and strategizes how to deal with mean and gossipy friends and holds the croupy baby in the shower and drives to doctor appointments and reads The Runaway Bunny over and over and over again after washing the dishes and seeing that teeth are brushed and jammies on and explaining why it is that it gets dark at night then let’s face it, you’re a mom. I’m talking about you too.

You, whoever you are, deserve all the kudos that you may or may not get. Not just the dads who are moms, but also the grandparents, aunts, uncles, foster moms, step moms, all of you. You know who you are. However you got there, whether you struggled for years to conceive or adopt, or whether kids got dumped in your lap by circumstances you chose or didn’t choose, whoever you are, if you’re doing the job for life, with no chance of parole, I honor you.

I honor the amazing, creative moms who are helping their children to flower into artists who are moment by moment creating their lives. I honor the patient, calm moms who somehow manage to keep their tempers through the onslaughts of unruly toddlers and sarcastic teens. I honor the moms who exude love from every pore, whose kids learn that some behaviors are unacceptable, but that they themselves are cherished in every moment for the unique and precious beings that they are.

But more than that, I honor the moms who are just getting by. Who entered motherhood not as a divine calling, but as something that have taken responsibility for and will never give up on, no matter how brutal it may feel. The moms who mean well, but get sucked into screaming matches even when they know there’s no point. The moms who sit their toddlers in front of the television for a precious break from the clinging and the running and the mind-numbing repetitiveness of toddler games. The moms who drop their kids off for a play date with a sigh of relief, and who pick them up with utterly untrue assurances that they were missed.

I get it. It’s really that hard. OK, maybe being president is harder, but there’s an eight year limit on that gig. At year eight moms are just getting started. And while presidents may feel the weight of the free world on their shoulders, moms don’t ever get to set down the burden of wondering if their children will be all right, whether they will be happy, whether they will ever learn to put new toilet paper on the roll or wash their own dishes, whether they will turn out to be drug dealers, whether they will have children they are not prepared to raise that could, unthinkably, turn up just at the point when you thought the mothering job was done.

So for all of you moms, of whatever gender and biological relation to your children, here’s a bouquet of virtual roses. I hope that sometime between now and Mother’s Day you get a quiet moment to remember the real gifts that you’ve gotten throughout the year: not only the hugs and the smiles and the sweet snuggling at bedtime, but also the moments when your child has trusted you enough to cry on your shoulder, the times when you genuinely laughed at your child’s joke or they laughed at yours, the flash of insight when you were able to see the world through their eyes. Truly, motherhood is the toughest job you’ll ever love. On a good day.

While nursing lately, I’ve been watching the sun move across the dusty piano. “I’ve got to dust that, the moment I get up,” I think, and then promptly forget, again. But I’ve also been wondering if that’s exactly why spring motivates us to some version of cleaning-tending-sorting-purging-reclaiming of space in our lives—is it simply because the sun comes out and shows us where the dust has gathered? Why is it that my whole neighborhood seems to engaging in some mostly-silent, totally-uncoordinated-yet-simultaneous ritual of cleaning up the corners and closets of our home spaces?

I have moved, have relocated “home” a lot in my life, far more times than I can even count right now. I’ve lived in six states and it feels like close to six places in each of those states. And, at the same time, I come from a family of readers and accumulators (not hoarders, no, not hoarders, not not not hoarders!), and so every time I move I feel like I’m moving, shlepping, hauling, lifting, lifting, lifting…well, more than is logical. Something irrational causes me to keep all this stuff. In some ways I think a lifetime of moving has contributed to my attachment to things–I don’t have the walls of a house to hold memories in, I have this photograph, that journal, that well-worn cookbook, that piece of art from my no-longer-living grandmother, and so on. I keep things that I know I couldn’t find again in a store or a library or on Ebay, because they’re meaningful to me. But too much stuff leads to a blur of things that clutter. Too much stuff leads to tripping in the night. Too much stuff leads to our soon-to-be-toddler not having enough room to jump in her jumparoo. And I know that the feeling of clutter makes me feel bogged down, less spacious in my mind and heart, less open to welcoming new things, new interests, new projects, new people into my life.

So we are gearing up for a May 11 Neighborhood-wide Yard Sale, and we keep adding things to the pile that we’ll be putting in The Sale. There are things that will be hard to part with that day, but I know it’s time for them to go. It will be interesting to see what-all people put out for sale; hopefully we won’t be inspired to come home with more than we put out. Last fall, my partner and I downsized from a 2-bedroom house with a bonus room, a garage, attic, and a basement, to a 1-bedroom apartment with a bonus room. With the addition of a baby to our lives, the theme of the stuff that gets strewn about our home has also shifted markedly. It takes me almost an hour some nights to do the sink full of dishes that has accumulated over the course of just one day. I know that if we had fewer dishes, fewer cutting boards, fewer knives, one less blender–there would be less dish-doing, too. But for each thing we’ve kept this long I’ve formed a reason—in some cases, a campaign!—for keeping it.

For years now I’ve been inspired by the Tiny House movement. There are whole families raising their kids in 400 square feet. I remember being particularly inspired by a woman who knew exactly how many things she had: two hundred; and how she made sure that for every new thing she acquired, she let go of something else. Her tiny house was far less cluttered than our apartment is now, and it looked light and bright. Freed up from days of housecleaning and home improvement projects, she spent more time with friends and out in her community. Motivated by such stories, the objective of having less of an impact on the environment, as well as the challenge of simply doing voluntarily with less, I spent at least 6 months in the high desert of Central Oregon living without a fridge—just a cooler on the back porch with a block of ice in it, which I could buy at the nearby market. It wasn’t much of a sacrifice, really, and it saved me the awful noise of that particular refrigerator rumbling all night long.

My very cleaned-up dining room in Oregon
as I prepared my house to be rented out

I was energized by the idea that this was a step towards living more “off the grid,” that if I could unplug this one fundamental contemporary appliance, I was on my way. But then I moved out of that rental and into a house of my own, and set aside for a time the idea of continually paring down. And just setting aside the idea for a time meant that inertia and entropy exuded their forces and stuff gradually came to fill every spare cabinet of my more spacious new home.

I fully recognize that the whole movement of “voluntary simplicity” is precisely and only that: voluntary. For people who don’t have enough of what they need, this is an entirely irrelevant and even painful conversation. But for a good many of the rest of us, stuff just seems to accumulate. Why do you keep the things you keep? How do you decide to let go of things, even things that you have moved multiple times, from one home to the next, or taken great care of?

I am getting better and better at letting go of things, I think. That Sale is coming up, it’s a week from now. That morning when I wake up, what will I feel that I actually need or genuinely want, and what will I be ready to let go of? We’ll see, we’ll just have to see. In the meantime, I’m going to at least clear off the dusty piano.

There are many biblical passages calling people to offer hospitality to the stranger. Here is one from the 19th chapter of the book of Leviticus:

When strangers sojourn with you in your land, you shall do them no wrong, the strangers who sojourn with you shall be to you as natives among you, and you love them as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
—Leviticus 19:33-34
We are called to remember that each one of us comes from people who were captured and stolen away and from people who migrated. We are a species who moves. All of our ancestors – though some very distant in the past – came out of Africa.
Each of us has cause to thank our ancestors for their survival skills, for their perseverance in living. Recently my congregation showed the 2011 film, A Better Life, which shows the courage and love of a Mexican undocumented father and his teenaged son. It is both heartbreaking and inspiring, and it is a contemporary version of a very old story. Immigrants come seeking a better life, especially for their children. And they become strangers in a strange land, often yearning for home as they struggle to make this new place their home. They work hard providing services to their new homes. They work hard to survive.
Each of us in our own lives has had times when we felt marginalized, unheard, invisible. Each of us has experienced times of yearning for something lost or left behind. We are reminded to remember, “for you were strangers n Egypt.” We were strangers and we can provide hospitality and sanctuary. Eboo Patel is a contemporary American religious leader, the founder and Executive Director of Interfaith Youth Core. He wrote:

“I am an American Muslim. I believe in pluralism. In the Holy Quran, God tells us, ”I created you into diverse nations and tribes that you may come to know one another.” I believe America is humanity’s best opportunity to make God’s wish that we come to know one another a reality.”
A couple of weeks ago, bombs exploded at the finish line of the Boston Marathon; perhaps Mr. Patel, like me and many others, prayed that the bombers would be white. Let the bomber not be one the larger culture labels “other.” I guess my prayer wasn’t specific enough! The young brothers were white, but also Muslim and immigrants.

There are some folks that go right to hatred and not even hatred for the persons, but widely generalized hatred – for all immigrants, all Muslims. It was two brothers, not all immigrants, not all Muslims. We don’t need to go to hatred. We need to remember that we were strangers in Egypt. We can provide hospitality and sanctuary. We can grow in compassion and our ability to listen to and understand each other. One way to know each other more deeply is to hear our stories, including the stories of our ancestors. Today, I invite you to reflect on the courage and perseverance of your ancestors and to share those moving stories with others. If you don’t know names of ancestors, then reflect on the qualities of their characters that allowed them to survive.
Jim McGovern wrote on philly.com about this last Sunday’s Philadelphia Interfaith Peace Walk:
“The 10th annual Interfaith Walk for Peace and Reconciliation is scheduled for this Sunday. When I heard the news I wondered if we would still walk. Of course, we will. . . . Walking together will be Muslims and Jews, Christians and Sikhs, Buddhists and seculars . . . We will honor and celebrate our fellowship and the messages of peace and connectedness found in all these great religions, but even more so in the crevices of our hearts.”
For you were strangers in Egypt . As we remember that we were strangers in Egypt, may we also help others to remember. In the words of the great American poet Gwendolyn Brooks: “We are each other’s business; we are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.”