sophietumbles

[sophietumbles]

The dragon

This morning it was a phone call. 

Garden bins. Invoicing me for a year’s worth of bin pick ups that I hadn’t asked for, saying the bin had been regularly emptied, and insisting I pay now if I wanted any services in future.

I was angry. Yes, there was the injustice of it. Being asked to pay for something one hasn’t asked for and hasn’t received? Justifiably annoying. 

But as the customer service person continued to speak, I realised there was a deeper, underlying anger running within me. I was expected to be sweet, be polite, to admit I was in the wrong, and comply with their demands. And a big part of me was ruminating that this compliance, this submission, wouldn’t be expected of me if I wasn’t a woman. 

The dragon stirred.

Last week, at my husband’s work awards ceremony. The dress code was black tie (well, obviously not black ties for women, but at that level). Champagne flowing, everyone very pleased with themselves. They’d worked hard, performed with outstanding work ethic, and all been given a grand prize for their efforts. Three hours worth of speeches, people walking up on stage, having photos with the CEO, hand shaking, rhetoric, joshing with the big bosses.

The women dressed in fabulous designer dresses, posing for photos, receiving applause, praise, LOTS of money for the work they had done. Don’t get me wrong, I was really happy for my husband. For all these people. They really deserved the awards they were getting. But I couldn’t help comparing. The dress I was wearing was secondhand. It had been repaired twice by my mum because it had a tear at the neckline that I was nervous about anyone noticing. My shoes were old wedding shoes, stained with mud on the heel tips from my wedding day all those years ago and yellowing a little with age. I’d done my makeup in the Uber on the way to the venue and hadn’t even had a chance to do anything with my hair. Heck, I’d only shaved my legs up to the calves after getting the feverish preschooler to bed and sorting out the baby. 

I couldn’t help thinking: I don’t compare. I can’t measure up to what these women have achieved. It doesn’t matter how hard I work, I won’t be acknowledged in this way or have the same glitz and glam in a place like this. 

The dragon awoke.

Kindergarten. Monday morning. I was in for mandatory ‘parent help’, my job to ‘beautify’ the play spaces after the children were finished throwing things around in them; clean up, do the dishes, sweep the floors. I’d previously walked the pram for 45mins to get the baby to sleep and had put him a quiet room whilst I did the parent help, only to find he’d been woken up by some curious children wandering in to his sleep space 20 mins later. So I was trying to watch my one-year old and protect him from the many hazards lying around the playroom, stop the older children from knocking him over and ensuring he had enough food, drink, attention, etc etc. Knowing that my own house was a huge mess and that I was trying to teach my preschooler responsibility by picking up his own toys and cleaning up spills and hazards. 

The dragon arose.

The customer services man on the phone received his fire. The morning after the awards dinner, he lashed out at my husband. An unsuspecting kindy teacher felt the heat from the dragon’s breath.

It’s brooding within me, this anger. It’s building. These feelings, these thoughts. I’m expected to do the menial work. I’m expected to be available for my children 24/7. If I’m not, I’m seen as a negligent or selfish or otherwise inadequate mother.  I’m supposed to love cleaning, tidying, sorting, organising, cooking, nurturing with two hands every moment of the day. I’m supposed to suck it up and submit, serve, give, pour myself out. I’m not supposed to want anything else.

It would be tidy if I didn’t, wouldn’t it? If I would happily do all these things, be fully satisfied, comply, fit in.

When I look at the mess on my kitchen bench. The beds that need changing. The dining area that needs sweeping. The lounge that needs ‘beautifying’. The lunches that need making, the baby that needs comforting. The garden that needs weeding and lawn mowing. The bills that need paying. The appointment needing to be made. I think, what happened to my life? Is it even my life anymore? I have so little power to change the way this is! 

Is this why people do not have children? The Economist magazine speaks of ‘The Motherhood Penalty’, that is, the opportunity cost of having children, which includes a sharp decline in earnings that women suffer after giving birth, and locks women into lower incomes for the rest of their careers (2019, The Economist). 

It’s not just a decline in earnings. I would argue that the opportunity cost is so much broader than that. 

The longer you are out of work (say, you have another child, or maybe two), the harder it is to save for long term goals, such as renovating the house to accommodate your growing family, pay for further higher education to expand your options to fit work around the demands of your children, maybe move overseas. Plus pay for things that you would like to outsource in order to provide the time to achieve these goals: cleaning, gardening, childcare. 

Your self esteem may decline, because there is no one to validate what you are doing day in, day out, to compensate you. You become invisible in the public eye outside of your four walls or playgroup space. You may resort to posting things on social media to say, ‘see, I achieved this today, despite all odds! ‘And perhaps receive any type of feedback on it.

Your friendships and contacts diminish. You cannot keep coffee dates with friends who do not have children, you cannot travel as far to meet them at their workplace for lunch, you are often not able to make it out at night for social occasions due to caregiving requirements or extremely early starts in the morning, or sheer exhaustion. You lose opportunities to hear new ideas and viewpoints about things that matter in the world, to converse, debate, be challenged, be inspired, because the only people you seem to be connecting with are people who are talking about caring for their children (which is fair enough, as that’s their consuming job).

You lose the ability to see outside of your box, to imagine new possibilities for life, the drive to achieve new goals. And yet, all this is all expected of a mother.

Yet I call it a dragon for a reason. It’s unpredictable, moody. Thinking about it preoccupies me, captures my mind, and threatens to destroy my relationships with my husband, my children, myself. I hold it against them. I get frustrated.

But I can’t get rid of it. What do I do with this shameful dragon?

I could shut it away, hide it in a dungeon.

I could channel it into creative expression.

I could rebel against the constraints I feel binding me - pivot into a high paying industry, get a nanny, sell products from home, do a side hustle. Stash money away from the common fund, save for an expensive course I’ve been dreaming of taking.

These all sound like highly rebellious ideas, and I wonder if I even want to pursue them.

What does it mean to empower myself?

Do I need emancipation?

Do I need to accept the status quo?

Or is it something in between?

In the meantime, I’d better hang out the washing, wash the floor, prepare dinner, get the baby up from his nap, make sure the books settle, collect the preschooler from kindy, meet the afternoon needs...

I’ll bury this shameful dragon again. So nobody knows.

Put on my face.

Big smile!

All is fine.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/05/31/the-struggle-to-reduce-the-motherhood-penalty

[sophietumbles]

I wish I was twelve years old.

I’ve been teaching at a local intermediate school, where it seems that the kids there have lives that are a heck of a lot more interesting than mine!

Under the care of highly-skilled, lovely teachers, who know how to organise the schedule to maximise enjoyment and engagement, they (amongst other things):

read and study great novels, 

solve engaging, challenging maths problems, 

write fantastic stories and opinions, 

take turns to host/star in the school’s daily tv show (where they also teach and learn intermediate-level Te Reo)

do food tech

do enviro tech

learn music

do fun science experiments 

act in school productions

participate in interclass sports competitions

learn and play a multitude of sports

get on-site musical instrument and second-language instruction

use individual devices to access learning tasks, research, email questions to the teacher, and submit work

join writing competitions, and debating clubs. 

They don’t have to choose what clothes to wear, they pay minimal for the experience, and theres no exams and few tests.

You may get why I, as a relieving teacher, began to wish I was once again 12 years old. Why I joined in the Aussie Rules lessons taught by visiting coaches. Why I eagerly attempt their independent maths activities alongside them. Why I join in their school runs. Heck, I even started joining in their conversations. 

I look at a lot of these kids and I think, why are you not treasuring this? Why are you not jumping at the opportunities presented here? Why are you not basking in the glory of these years and sucking every last drop of joy from their moments?

This stuff started going round and round in my head. Not only did I feel embarrassed for wishing I was 12 years old like the oft-portrayed Peter Pan, I felt ashamed that I have the freedom to engage in most of these activities as a free adult, YET I AM PARTICIPATING IN ALMOST NONE OF THEM.

How incredibly sad is THAT. 

The Talking Heads lyrics come to mind, “And you may ask yourself, how did I get here?”

And I’ve come round to two reflections:

1. Very few of us appreciate the richness and the potential of our current opportunities. I delight in teaching in this school environment because it is very similar to my own experience as a tween. Those years disappeared. I dropped out of the orchestra. Girls’ cricket. music lessons. I got pissed off at the form 2 teacher for a bad grade on an essay but never sought feedback from her personally, and diagnosed myself as ‘poor at writing’ from that moment on.I talked back continually in class, showed up late, forgot my class novel, and talked back to the teacher incessantly. Heck, I even got accused of flipping the bird at her, an accusation to which I vehemently denied and held against the particular teacher for the rest of the year. I was a complete ass - yet I was, for the most part, clueless to the fact.

2. I have incredible opportunity, in fact possibly more, in this present moment in time. If I set aside the excuses, the lazy screen-watching, the distractions and the self-inflicted numbing of my senses, how many of the above delights could I engage, and potentially excel in, at nearly 3 times the age those students are currently at.

If another 20 years went past, and I hung out with a mother of young kids with part-time work, a husband in a decent job, a decent house in the West Auckland and pretty decent health, what would I wish I had done? What would I want that woman to wake up to? What would I want her to enjoy?

I haven’t answered this questions for myself yet. But I think it’s time.

[sophietumbles]

I have a history of people telling me I’m failing. 

I’m sure I’m not the only one.

‘I don’t think you’re okay.’

‘You should not have passed the course.‘

‘You are not coping with things.’

‘You are alone.‘

‘You are unstable.’

‘Your performance is unacceptable.’

Etcetera.

No, I haven’t imagined it, people have actually said these things to me, directly. Not in passing, not off-hand. In a serious way. 

I have listened carefully, I have said, ‘you’re right’, I have treasured, and stored up these things in my heart. I have repeated them to myself over and over. 

What positive outcome have these statements achieved? 

None whatsoever. 

Ruminating, meditating on these statements about who I am, has not only messed with my self-efficacy and self esteem, it has messed with my identity. I start thinking, ‘I am a failure’. ‘I am alone.’ ‘I am nuts’. 

WHY DO WE DO THIS AS A SOCIETY? 

Having grown up in a country with the highest suicide statistics in the world, whilst being considered one of the most desirable places to live, I am subjected to, and complicit in, this culture in which we bring each other, and ourselves, down, constantly. Our bunch of short poppies (as we like to imagine ourselves) is shrinking, as New Zealanders, of their own free will, increasingly decide they cannot live with themselves any longer, and take their own lives.

By bashing each other down, do we plan to build society up? By knocking each others and our own self esteem, do we really plan to be confident, successful, happy as a society? 

Two weeks ago, another person in the public eye, who appeared to have it all going for him, appeared successful and thriving, took his own life. What the expletive is wrong with our culture? I can only guess at the inner turmoil which must have existed for this person, for them to follow through with the deed. Maybe, like me, he’d internalised and had been telling himself, absolute rubbish, for years. Despite the outward appearance, maybe he was filled with a heaviness and a view of himself which said, ‘you are not worthy’. ‘you are not enough’. ‘you will never be enough’. I cannot know, but I do wonder if he struggled with any of the same destructive thoughts.

You are what you think, so they say. So let’s stop telling ourselves, and expressing to others, how we are failing. Teaching our children ‘growth mindsets’, yet writing ourselves off, selling ourselves short, cutting ourselves down if we get too ‘tall’. Because it is NOT HELPING; it is DESTROYING our society. The mass of wasted potential, of unloved people, people who withhold love from themselves and therefore have none to share, is growing. 

It doesn’t have to be this way.

[sophietumbles]

What have you to gain?

For several years now I have lived with a gut condition that I’ve been trying to find a fix for. At one point someone suggested cutting out gluten. I was pretty reluctant to, because my gosh do I love a fresh loaf of bread. I love the act of kneading. I love the smell of a crusty loaf, the smell you can get only from wheat. Pizza dough. Pasta. bagels. The list goes on.

Anyway, in the end I cut it, because my symptoms were getting unbearable. It did help. Didn’t fix things, but made a significant difference to the problem.

The trouble is, I still long for bread. Good old, wheat bread. A baguette! A french pastry. A cheap pizza. Anything from the local bakeries. People come round for lunch bringing a nice ciabatta. Easy! But how embittered I got!

Gluten isn’t the only thing I’ve had to cut. The pain of giving up stuff you love, things that seem right, like eating lunch, just keeps biting in the bum.

Occassionally, like today, I look at the other side of the coin. What have I gained from this journey? There is an incredibly long list, which I won’t put down here (c’mon, I need SOME privacy, guys!) but one benefit is, I don’t buy food thoughtlessly anymore, to satisfy some craving.

If I want a doughnut, I have to make it. As I mix the flour, eggs, butter, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, milk, I gain the satisfaction and the joy of seeing it all come together, go in the oven, and pop out perfect. The smell is delicious. They’re fresh, hot.

There’s something Julie says in the movie Julie and Julia (where a modern day woman sets out to make every recipe in Julia Child’s The Art of French Cooking), which rings so true here.

“Do you know what I love about cooking? I love that after a day when nothing is sure, and when I say nothing, I mean nothing. You can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick. It’s such a comfort.”

It’s the certainty of the outcome that is my comfort, too.

So what have I to gain? Fresh doughnuts, that’s what.

[sophietumbles]

Why Not?

And

The Unseen Audience

Be the one who says, ‘WHY NOT?’

Maybe you’ve been wondering if society could be different than it is. Maybe, like me, you’ve been wondering why mums can’t have a more enjoyable experience as mothers. Why we can’t connect as a community and support each other, the way my heart feels that we’re meant to.

Why not?

Why can’t schools function in ways that support individual students? Why do teachers have to be stretched so far? Why do they have to be paid so little for what they do? Why can’t they have more assistants?

Why not?

Say why not, and you open the world of possibilities, the world where anything is possible. When you have a desire and a hunger for good things, for connection, for community, for a slower pace, think: this is possible, we can do this, we are capable of doing this. Ask yourself, what’s stopping us from doing this?

One day recently, I had big dreams and desires to create a space where mums could come to exercise, hang out together, not be lonely and have a space for their children to nap. For it not to be a hassle and something that was just too- hard-basket, too difficult. For it to be easy, for us to connect, for it to be good. I thought, why not?

And so to create that, to keep the momentum and excitement alive, I had to delay housework. I didn’t do housework at all that day. ‘So what?’, you might think.

The thing is, I’ve always been a messy person, and I’m pretty OK with that. But that day, my house was a particularly big pigsty. I’d had a busy bad day the day before, I’d been dealing with some conflict, and it had messed with me emotionally so that I couldn’t just get everything done that I wanted to. In addition, I was pretty knackered as I’d been up with the baby four times the night beforehand, so I really needed to rest my head, rest my body, and start afresh.

But in my head, I imagined an audience of people. Specific faces popped to mind; from my past and present life, people who I knew would care. Who would judge. ‘They’ll know!’ I told myself. ‘They’ll know I’m a complete slob who can’t take care of her house and tidy up after herself. They’ll give me that face that just says, “eww.”’

So I had to look at my house and think about who it was that I imagined was watching me, was watching my household, and ask, ‘why does it matter to me what they think? Why do I have to impress them?’

And most of all, ‘are they even going to see it?’ The answer was, and most often is: No, they’re not.

I hadn’t invited them to my house that day. If they’d turned up (and I don’t think they would have, for the people I imagine watching me are rarely people I know that well), I’d have said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m not ready to see visitors.’ ‘It’s a bad time’. I’d make up some excuse. It’s not like they’d been invited round.

So I have this idea in my head of these people whom I need to impress. Yet in reality they don’t care about my house, and even if they did, why would they have a right to judge? Why do their expectations matter, and what purpose do they serve? They’re not serving that person, and they’re not serving me, so who cares? Sooner or later I have to tell myself: Just let it go.

I said, ‘I’m going enjoy this moment! Yes my house will get tidied at some stage! Yes it will look beautiful again! Maybe I’ll do it at 9 o’clock at night, once I’ve finally got the baby to sleep. Maybe that’s when I’ll have time. Its okay, I don’t have to do it now. In fact, I don’t have to do it at all. I can just leave it today. I can go out and enjoy the sunshine. Walk the baby to sleep. Flesh out my ideas, make concrete plans and achiegeable steps towards my goal. Make stuff happen.’

Side note: This is something that I learned from a mentor teacher in my first year of teaching. Every day in my classroom I was learning so much, I stayed late every day, marking books, making resources, planning. Endlessly seeking to improve. I was there til 7pm quite often, and half the weekend. My husband wondered what had happened to me (we’d only been married a couple of years). My mentor teacher had recently made it a mission of her own to get out by 5.30pm, no matter if she’d finished or not, and have a break on Saturday (turns out she was an Adventist, but that’s beside the point).

She’d often pop in shortly before leaving and say ‘ok, finish up Sophie, I’m going in 5 minutes and I’m locking the door, so you’d better be ready’, and of course I’d say, ‘I’ve just gotta finish this up’ (whatever it was) and she’d give me that look.

Sure enough she’d come in 5 minutes later and say ready or not, we’re going. I’d protest, ‘but my class is still a mess, I haven’t tidied this up, look at my desk, the pencils need sharpening, this needs sorting’, but she’d take me by the arm and pull me, and that’d be that. I’d go with her, taking my laptop, planning book, books for marking and some resource I’d half finished creating, with me. I’m not saying going out loaded like a donkey was the best situation, but at least it got me out and going home.

No, it isn’t all done. And yes, it’d be great if it was, it’d be set up for the next day. You have to value your time outside of work, you have to value your mental health. So, leave it a mess, walk out, go home to your husband, go out for dinner, have a good time. Leave this behind, it is not all there is to your life. Repeat: It is not all there is to your life. It’s one part of it, and it doesn’t need to affect everything else.

So I can go out, and I can leave my messy house. I can dream, and make things happen. I can minimize what’s holding me back.

Screw that unseen audience. They only exist in my head anyway.

[sophietumbles]

The Blame Game

I believe that there is a dangerous trend in parenting, (propagated by the internet, with its easily accessible ideas, opinions and advice), to play the blame game. Now obviously people attribute blame both outwardly or inwardly, but with early parenthood, I feel that a lot of it goes inward. Maybe I feel like this because generally in life, I’m a self-blamer. If something doesn’t go right, I attribute it to my own weaknesses. It must be my fault. This happened to me, so I must’ve messed up. Fail fail fail. Bad Sophie. I’m a failure.

Side note: When one says and believes something like that, things in life tend to confirm those beliefs. Life can confirm positive, helpful beliefs too, but negative, unhelpful beliefs, I find, are much more easily reinforced. As if it’s spiritual.

Back to topic.

With parenting, blame arises because we want to know why.

Q: Why is your baby not sleeping?

A: We trace it back to the mother/primary caregiver. ‘Oh, it’s cos of something you did/didn’t do. You haven’t swaddled/rocked/verbally reassured/fed them/you’re feeding too much/you’re winding them up. You are the problem.’

Q: Why is your child acting up?

A: You weren’t kind enough/ gave them too little attention/gave them too much attention/ role modeled bad behaviour.

Q: Why is your child not toilet trained yet?

A: You’re not trying hard enough. Naughty you.

Q: Why is your child sensitive, shy, not pooping, angry, basically, why IS your child?

A: IT’S YOUR FAULT. YOU ARE TO BLAME. You bad, bad mother. You bad, bad father, you.

But tell me, how does blaming help? Blaming, and the condemnation that comes with it, leads to:

> Shame

> Embarrassment

> Guilt.

> A parent who feels awful about themselves. Who maybe feels angry with themselves for getting it wrong. This anger has nowhere to go. Blame and condemnation spills over. Anger at others arises (such as their partner, another child, a child’s grandparents, daycare teacher, etc) for ‘stuffing up’.

This needs to stop. We will not rise higher by beating ourselves, or others, down.

A few things may be helpful:

We can admit: no one knows it all. Everyone is learning and screwing up. We cannot (and perhaps should not) control all the variables that lead to a child sleeping, eating, behaving and developing ‘well’.

Accept: Take a breath. Say: so this is the way it is. Without judgement.

Ask: so what could we do about it? Do we want the situation to change? Do we care? Do we have the energy and personal resources to make any change we feel we should make?

Affirm: We are all doing the absolute best we can with the resources, the knowledge and the love we have.

Respect autonomy: say, who am I to judge? They can choose how they do things, I choose how I do things. Different is alright! Fine, even!

So before you go to judge, blame, or condemn yourself or anyone else on their parenting, maybe consider those five points. And see what difference it makes. I know I'll be trying.

[sophietumbles]

Teaching

I am in my first year of teaching. I have done 12 weeks altogether so far. People kept saying to me, 'your first year is really hard'. The funny thing is, my colleagues who have been teaching for years seem to have just as much pressure on them to perform, as I do. But they just seem to grit their teeth and do it. Not complaining, cos there's not any point. You've still got to do the work. There's no one to moan to, because, likely, they've got it just as bad, and they don't even sympathise. Or they do for a glimmering moment, then have the attitude of, "oh well, better get on with it". I'm not sure if this is just the experience at my school, or it is universal for teachers. 

Don't worry, my blog isn't going to become a moan session, but I will keep things in perspective. A perspective bigger than the organisation I work for. Bigger than the world of a staff meeting or reports or lunch duty.

I try to remember why I got into teaching in the first place. I love engaging and mostly, connecting, with kids. Actually, with any students I'm teaching. To connect beyond the curriculum I'm teaching, to them as individual amazing people. That is one key ingredient to my teaching.

Also: to help them connect with the content. To understand maths concepts. To understand social science concepts. To understand the purposes of school, of reading and of writing. The problem is, I am still trying to get there myself. I am still trying to find the best way to communicate this to them. 

And thirdly - to hold their attention long enough for any of this to happen. All 22 of them (yes it is a small class but I'm told it will get larger). So they understand that even though I want to connect with each of them as people, I am still responsible for all of them. Kids love love. I mean praise and encouragement and rewards and certificates and stickers and notes and smiles and sometimes, hugs (they initiate). But I can't give it to all of them, all the time. This is (one of) the tricky parts. 

[sophietumbles]

Good morning!

Seen on the Upper East Side.

[sophietumbles]

the things you learn from kids

I realised over the past couple of weeks (and this year in general) just how much one can learn from kids. the biggest thing I've been learning from them is that

learning can be uncomfortable

through the discomfort, one can learn to change one's mind, and behaviour accordingly, which can have immensely positive effects on one's success as a human being.

that may sound simple, but if you've learned over years that certain things are true, and many events have confirmed to you that those things are indeed true, changing your mind about them can be really hard. 

Perhaps that is one of the things about being a kid. If, through your experiences at school (and hopefully a wise teacher) you learn some things about being an awesome human being, so you are able to more readily accept good ideas about life and how to be an awesome human being, and change yourself accordingly. You haven't had the years of your teenhood and adulthood to jade you, challenge your beliefs about how to be awesome. As a teacher, going into a classroom at 26 (which isn't that old, in the lifespan of your average person), I find it quite hard to change my behaviour - my stubborn habits - that limit the way I approach the classroom, my relations with my colleagues, my time management, and my view of the children. Ingrained ways die hard, and I find myself resisting by way of actively forgetting what I have learned  and the ningling ideas that pop into my head that maybe, I need a reconstruction of the way I do teach and relate to the kids...

These are some un-edited thoughts so far, a work in progress....let me know your thoughts if you'd like

[sophietumbles]

get work lessons

I guess I am finding as I grow up, and through teaching, that just because someone is older or in a superior position, it doesn't mean they have the right way of doing things, they are considerate, or they think before they speak. Those who are old can be even more messed up than those who are young. They've gone through more - which can give them more chances to get messed up.

I've also realised the benefit of processing and recording these realisations. Cos I go through so many at work everyday, and if I want to beat that sense of defeat I need to work through this stuff

[sophietumbles]

nickholmes:

Toast is better than bread.

also, mammals in your country are way more awesome than animals in mine :)

[sophietumbles]

I’m not out to please everybody - I’ve actually been out to try not to displease anybody, and that’s even harder work. It’s like Prozac for creativity - cutting off the highs and lows and the risks and the rewards so that nobody walks away from a show or listens to an album with a passionate...

[sophietumbles]

There’s a question commonly asked within the gambling community from one player to another: “what’s your unit?” Your unit is defined by the amount of money you think in multiples of; if you perceive a thousand dollars as ten sets of 100 dollars, that makes your unit 100 dollars. In college, a...

[sophietumbles]

providence

yup, the age old questions- is there a point in praying? does God shut out the cries of people whose everyday needs aren't being met? what about this daily bread? why do some people have to work so much harder than others for it? 

people left jobless as a result of the recession might cry out to God - where is the justice and equity? why can't my family have their basic needs met? why are our families crumbling, relationships burning, debt stampeding, why can't we even have enough food for the table?

especially in countries, (eg Spain) who do, as a group, talk to God quite a bit.

they might find (or not find out, ever) that the systems put in place for that providence to occur are quite dysfunct. certain people are responsible for putting things in place to ensure that people have jobs, houses, food, quality of life. those people might even have said thats what they were planning to achieve when the were promoted or elected to the role. Power and responsibility - did they ever separate? 

To aspire to be a leader - indeed a governor - is to be responsible for providence. theres no getting away from it. The laws that those people put in place will, in due time, affect the very basic needs of their people, the needs which those people are praying to God for, to be met day by day. People who often have no idea that the government, which their God has said he's put in place to take care of the people, are not listening to common sense, wisdom and sound judgement (amazing gifts, freely given!) when making decisions that affect the wellbeing of their nation.

God's speaking directly to those leaders. Why the hell are they so deaf?

[sophietumbles]

[sophietumbles]