December 20th On our way home...

You don't really appreciate the torture of coach until you've flown in first class. Doug and I are taking turns flying coach. I would much rather just stay together. So I wrote him a poem about it:

Upgrade

I'd rather not sit in a first class seat
if it means to sit alone
Surrounded by persons who may very well
be made of solid stone
Give me a seat that is by your side
wherever that may be
In coach or in a crowded car
or a sailboat on a sea
Or maybe the buckboard of a simple
solid covered wagon
or on the back of a motor bike with
a rack to tie my bag on
Give me a place beside you while
we push our own handcart
I'll lean into it, do my best to
help and do my part
But do not put me in first class
while you are back in coach
It makes me feel as selfish and as
lonely as a roach
and don't sit me in coach while you
are flying in first class
sit beside me. Be my lad and I will
be your lass
I will follow you wherever
you think we should go
through the winds and rain and ice and
blowing flakes of snow
All I ask is that we both arrive there
safe, together
Stepping close and standing strong
no matter what the weather
When we travel, be my presh
remember this one thing
when you treat me like a queen
you'll always be my king

December 15th...Still in Puerto Rico

Only ten days left 'til Christmas. No stress here. I'm sitting in my bathing suit and a sun dress in a rain forest being eaten by bugs. Doug is hiking up waterfalls and swimming in leech-filled pools beneath them. He gets out of the pools and pulls of the leeches. Ya. Loads of fun. I would rather read.

So far on this trip, I've read nine books. More like gobbled them up. It is SOOOOOOOOOOOOO much more fun to read regular books after months of textbooks. I read:

The Last Lecture
The Yellow Star
Certain Girls
Sunshine
Cross Creek
The Burn Journals
The Book Thief
What Would Barbara Do
Fried Green Tomaotes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

I love getting lost in the pages. They fold in on me like sheets and cozy quilts.
There is a lecturer on board from Texas A&M. He has a monotone voice but the actual message is fairly interesting.
Did you know that Charles Darwin was the firt to come up with the theory that coral reefs evolve? He wrote a paper on the evolution of islands. Speaking of which...
Okay. I have a question. Does the girth of the earth increase with all of the life, (plant and animal), that is born and grows and dies and returns to the earth?

Just wondering.

December 13th in Puerto Rico

Did you know Puerto Rico literally means, "Rich Port"? Me niether. It is so lovely here, but hot. Doug and I missed church. We had celestial plans that didn't work out in a telestial world. We are sitting on the deck of an amazing cruise ship. He is reading the Ensign while I'm listening to a book on CD. "Three Cups of Tea" by Greg Mortensen. I have time to think on a cruise ship. Time to think and write. I'm not so sure thinking is always a good thing. Last night I sat in our room just looking in the mirror and wondering about my life. Who I am. Where I am. Sometimes I'm not really sure of it all. I've reached goals I've set for myself but honestly, I haven't set them very high.
Greg Mortensen talks about the reservations he has of building a bridge and bringing the negative aspects of a modern culture to a people who are isolated from the evils of the world. He observes that the sense of community these people share is what the rest of us look for in our cell phoned, media driven, gasoline powered lives.

Christmas time
deck the halls
kids drive me
up the walls
out of school
for two weeks
eggnog cup
springing leaks
reindeer's nose
lost its glow
six below
still no snow
angel broke
her left wing
has sore throat
cannot sing
Santa's beard
is a fake
what's the point
goodness sake
I'd rather
just escape
leave home su-
per mom cape
sit on deck
of cruise ship
glass in hand
take a sip
soak up sun
read a book
scenery
take a look
eat a meal
not prepared
by myself
none is shared
then again
neither is
all the fun
so pop quiz
who do I
whish was here
having fun
without beer
if you think
like I did
I miss all
seven kids!

Mormons, Appetites and Messiah Music

Tonight at the Messiah, I shed tears when I heard the music and the lyrics to He Shall be Revealed. Those words spoke very powerfully to me. The message is powerful. He shall be revealed. Every knee will bend and every tongue will confess that He is the Christ. It won’t be a hidden idea. Everyone will know.

The lies will be brought into the light.

It got me thinking about my Gospel Doctrine lesson today. I’m the teacher. It is the calling I’ve had more than any other. I was first called my freshman year at college at age 17. I know. That was one desperate bishop. I taught a class full of returned missionaries. I used humor. I studied my scriptures more that year than all my classes put together.

I dressed up like Bo Peep to teach a lesson on finding lost sheep.

But that was then, this is now...

One man in my class is very opinionated. We were talking about the proclamation to the world on the Family. I told the story of a Methodist friend telling me our prophet is really a prophet to put out the proclamation when he did. I was tap dancing around the gay issue. I really didn’t want to go there. I know there are likely people in the room who have a loved one who is gay. But this man wanted to go there. He did vehemently. I did what I could to get him back on track…to talk about loving the individual. Here’s what I wish I would have said,

“What if we thought about people with same sex attraction the same way we think of people who are obese? I don’t mean to minimize the serious nature of sexual sin but aren’t they both about appetite? We don’t look at an obese person and think they are going to hell. But aren’t they messing with life? They know it is bad for them, even dangerous, to continue to live a lifestyle that is about giving in to base desires. But isn’t it as bad to judge them?”

I don’t know. I’m still working on it.

I hate that I belong to a church that appeals to a certain type of individual more than it does to others. Masculine men and feminine women do best as Mormons. But that is the culture of Mormonism, not the doctrine. The doctrine is about love.
There was a woman in the back row who had tears in her eyes throughout the entire lesson.

I wonder who she loves that is caught up in giving in to appetites.

If you think about the culture surrounding homosexuality, it is similar to the culture surrounding fast food. Or at least, that is what the media and higher education is going for. Happy clowns selling fattening food. Happy Gay men only showing the light humor of a dark lifestyle. An obese lifestyle often ends with lonliness. A life that doesn't seem to value living. I think of an older homosexual man in a bar alone late at night...when he is no longer wanted.

Christ still loves him. Even when others don't.

He shall be revealed.

Delta Utah - Hub of the Universe

My dad always said Delta, Utah is the hub of the universe. I agree.

I find it perfectly reasonable to love Delta, love people there, love that I grew up there but also realize I shouldn't be there. Hubs are great places, but exploring the rest of the wheel, wagon, road, planet, universe is good too. Staying in the hub may mean only spinning in circles and watching the world go by instead of actually taking part.

Dismal Dreary December

help. holiday depression is setting in. could I please just find a hole to crawl into? I miss the escape television was. voices. information at the touch of a button without effort on my part. people without responsibility. no dental appointments for kids. no housework. everything magically clean, cooked and in order.

Can I please live with the Brady Bunch?

Taking the Cult out of Cultural

Mormons are the new Jews. I feel like I'm wearing a scarlett "M" on my chest in my Cultural Competency Class. Perhaps it should be made into an armband. Key part of the word "cultural" is "cult". If I speak up for my values I'm told I shouldn't force them on others. Yet their values are being forced on me. At every turn I'm told good is evil and evil is good.

I'm told all values are valuable. Yet I'm reminded that if you think it is right to believe there is no right or wrong you are pushing your sense that it is right to think a certain way. If you believe there is no such thing as right or wrong you believe you are right about how you believe. The logic is flawed in this vogue thought process.

It is all so confusing. I can't help but wonder if those holding up the I'm discriminated against signs will eventually do a Sherem and admit they were on Satan's side.

I'll keep standing up for what I believe in. It doesn't make sense not to. If I'm wrong, I haven't lost anything. At death I will be dust and it wont matter. If I'm right, it will effect eternity and I will have won everything.

In educational psychology, Homosexuality is the new black and Mormon is the new Jew. I can't help but wonder how much longer I will be allowed to voice my opinion in print and not be slammed into a concentration camp.

Cultural Competency Continuum

Cultural Destructiveness
At the cultural destructive level, the attitudes, policies and practices which are evidence of cultural destruction are seen throughout history.
In Hawaii’s history, the Polynesians were worked literally to death on the pineapple plantations because they were not capable of the long hours required to work the fields having evolved as a people who didn’t have the need to work long hours as food was readily provided by the sea and lush climate of the islands (Michener, 1967). Chinese and Japanese were imported at a time when many wanted to migrate to other countries because of famine, over population and political problems in the Orient (Boose, 1995).
The evolution of the people in Hawaii includes the cultural destruction of several minority cultures. There are very few pure Hawaiians left. Thousands died of an epidemic of chicken pox that Hawaiians had not built up immunity to. White plantation owners encouraged Chinese, Japanese and Hawaiians to interbreed. The product of this combination of genes is a strong, beautiful people who have the physical capabilities of the Chinese and Japanese combined with the height of the Polynesian and the beautiful complexion of the combination. Government policies included the assumption that peoples not of caucasion descent were incapable of owning property and the distribution of land was to whites only.


Cultural Incapacity
Cultural Incapacity is illustrated in the popular novel The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. In this story a young doctor and father places his downs syndrome daughter in the care of a nurse with the direction to institutionalize the infant for life. He then tells his wife the child died.
A modern example of cultural incapacity is demonstrated in a present day experience of a substitute teacher. It was a classroom of first graders. Most of them were six-year-old and white. There were a few African-American children in the mix. The story is told from the perspective of the teacher:
“We did a few opening activities and the children were getting a little keyed up. One little boy raised his hand and asked if he could go to the bathroom. I said he could and became involved with some other children. A few moments later I noticed this little boy writing on the chalkboard. I angrily asked him what he was doing and did not wait to hear the answer but put him on “time out”. Several minutes later, another child informed me that the regular teacher had a rule that the children must put their name on the board before they left the room to go to the bathroom. I realized my mistake and asked the boy on time out if he was merely writing his name on the board. He angrily replied, “Yes”. I apologized to the little boy and expressed not only my remorse but also reflected his frustration at the substitute teacher’s ineptness.”
It wasn’t until much later the teacher realized she had responded in a racial way. If it had been a white girl who was writing on the board she may not have responded with the knee-jerk reaction of anger and expectation of disobedience. It helped her recognize the most prominent difference among the races is the cultural experience. Part of that experience, from this child’s perspective, was an expectation of misbehavior. Children of minority cultures may feel powerless within their culture and communities (Gordon, 2005).

Cultural Blindness
Cultural blindness is represented by the belief that there is no difference in race and skin color and culture does not matter. It entails the idea that all people are the same. Individuals of minority cultures are presumed to hold different behaviors and values because of lack of desire to achieve or a deficiency within them as people. Members of the most assimilated culture may not recognize the privilege that comes from being a member of the dominant group. Rather than assuming that all mankind behaves in similar ways, those among the majority must learn to respect the differences in members of minority races (Williams, Evans-Winters, 2005).
Examples of cultural blindness are found in everyday life. A mother expected her white daughter to play the role of Abraham Lincoln and recite the Gettysburg Address in a Black History Month celebration. When her daughter was denied a part in the assembly, her mother attempted to advocate for her. The African American committee in charge of the celebration denied the Caucasian girl a role in the event stating that the celebration was about honoring African Americans. It took several years for the mother to understand the cultural blindness she was exhibiting by desiring her daughter to play the role of a white leader at an event where children of a completely different and minority culture were attempting to honor their culture’s heroes.

Cultural Pre-Competence
In the desire to provide a more fair and equitable treatment of people of African descent, a high school drama director decides to produce the play Finian’s Rainbow in which the story of a small southern town’s prejudice behavior is portrayed. Because the high school has few if any individuals of the African American race, white students playing roles of black characters are painted with dark stage make-up. In the climactic scene of the play the white leader of the prejudice ideas is ‘turned’ into an African American and his skin is darkened.
The director feels he has made a difference within the community, however small, in spite of individuals playing African American roles depicting stereotypical behavior and making fun of the individuals they represent.

Cultural Competence
Cultural competence is represented by acceptance and respect for differences and continued self assessment of other cultures including your own. A high school teacher asks an exotic looking teenage girl what her nationality is. The girl bows her head and in an ashamed manner, explains that she is Mexican. The teacher takes the time to tell her that anciently her ancestors were a group of strong, beautiful people known as Aztecs. The history of these people are explained and the evolution of their culture is noted. Contributions of Latino culture was expounded on at a later teaching situation where the teacher chose to highlight many of the contributions of the ancient Aztec civilization as well as modern Latino culture.
This teacher demonstrated cultural competence by accepting and respecting the culture of the girl. Providing cultural knowledge and resources with an attitude of respect may begin to open a stronger self image and desire to better understand diverse cultural backgrounds in the girl and her friends and family. Providing information to further accommodate understanding of Hispanic society fosters greater understanding and may lead to adaptation of policy and practice.

Cultural Proficiency
This level of cultural understanding invites both dominant and subordinate group perspectives. To an individual who has achieved cultural proficiency, differences are not only respected, they are viewed as positives and valued as sources of strength. Removing barriors and ascuiring resourses including money, power, time, knowledge, access and influence are activities indicative of the culturally proficient individual. All forms of oppression are recognized as unhealthy and battled against with resistance by individuals who are proficient in multi-cultural living.
In the popular novel The Secret Life of Bees the author creates a complex character in a young caucasion girl runs away from her abusive father and lives with a family of African American women who without question take her in and treat her with love, kindness and acceptance. Her minority status as a female
The young girl becomes a member of the African American community around her. The strong women include a group of African American sisters among them, a sister who is mentally handicapped. This woman was respected for what she could contribute and was not expected to give beyond her personal ability.
The people I have known personally who have achieved cultural proficiency are often mentally handicapped in some way. My downs syndrome sister, my son with Asperger’s Syndrome and Forrest Gump. I love the scene from the movie where Forrest is singing in an all black choir and doesn’t seem to realize he doesn’t quite fit in. Because of his acceptance, he does fit. I know he is a character, but I find it ironic that an individual depicted as culturally proficient is also depicted as less than intelligent.
As a social worker with the goal of being culturally proficient, I have to fight against the objectification of any group of people. I I were to place myself on the scale I would probably be culturally pre-competent. I know I need to move past the feelings of being overwhelmed by the responsibility and the efforts needed to achieve cultural competence and someday, hopefully, cultural proficiency.