Yertle the Turtle

While visiting my grandma in Santa Cruz a few weeks ago, I found our old collection of children's books still in tact in the playroom room, furnished not only with books I read as a kid but with books my dad read as a kid. I've been slowly re-collecting my favorite children's books, in digital and paper format, and so asked her if I could take a few of my favorites. This led me to the copy of Dr. Suess's Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories, published in 1950, and enscribed with my 2nd grade father's name and phone number inside the front cover. Needless to say, this one came home with me. And today, I took Yertle the Turtle with me to City Heights, to Tewen and Awot.

Tewen is one of my students, a tenth grader who is currently marking As and Bs in all subjects except History, in which her negligible reading comprehension skills are preventing her from keeping her scores up. Did I mention she and her family are Eritrean refugees who only moved to the states a little over a year ago before which they lived in an Ethiopian refugee camp and hardly if ever had the opportunity or the need to use English? Awot is her 4th grade brother. I could tell about a hundred stories of how amazing it has been to work with Tewen and her family, but tonight Yertle the Turtle gets the stage.

I sat down with Tewen to finish work on her History vocab before bringing out Yertle the Turtle and Awot sat down with us, chatting away with me while I tried to help Tewen write coherent sentences about Militarism and the Triple Alliance. This is what Tewen and I typically do, a little work on her homework then read a new book, asking questions at the end of each page. This is often difficult for her and we have downgraded from the Island of the Blue Dolphins to my favorite picture books to help with that. Yertle the Turtle was the best choice I've made. Frequently throughout the evening I felt like I needed to be video-taping our reading as an advertisement for Dr. Suess's work crossing cultural boundaries and sharing important messages through laughter in spite of age, race, gender, or nationality. We read two of the three stories within, "Yertle the Turtle" and "Gertrude McFuzz".

Yertle the Turtle is about Yertle, King of the Turtles who live in the pond on the far-away Island of Sala-ma-Sond. He proclaims himself ruler of everything he can see. In order to see more, and thus rule more, Yertle shouts at the other turtles and builds himself a throne on their backs. In the end, he tries to build a turtle tower tall enough to reach above the moon, but Mack, the turtle at the base of the two-hundred turtle throne, burps, shaking the tower and sending Yertle hurtling into the mud. In the end "the great Yertle, that Marvelous he, is King of the Mud. That is all he can see. And the turtles, of course... all the turtles are free, as turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be."

Gertrude McFuzz, on the other hand, is about a bird with one small puny tail feather who sees Jolla-Lee-Lou, another bird, with two beautiful long tail feathers and jealously desires to have the same. Her uncle informs her of a berry bush which will grow more feathers on her and Gertrude greedily gobbles down 3 dozen berries. She proceeds to grow a beautiful tree of tail feathers, gorgeous beyond all other birds. However, the feathers weigh 90 pounds and she can no longer fly, nor run, nor even walk, and must be transported home over the course of two weeks by a dozen other birds. She takes another week to pluck out the extra grown feathers. "And finally, when all the pulling was done, Gertrude, behind her, again had just one... That one little feather she had as a starter. But now that's enough, because now she is smarter."

Reading with them, they were both excited by every page. More emphatic and enthusiastic than with any other book we've read. Commenting on Yertle or Gertrude's actions and feelings at each page. "He crazy turtle" and "But she can fly with one?" and "Why she want to be like Lolla-Lee-Lou? She's not ugly; Just only has one." At the end of each story I asked Tewen what the characters learned and what she learned (Awot volunteered his own opinions too, of course.) Yertle the Turtle evoked: He thought he was better than the other turtles but we are all supposed to be the same. He can't stand on other people just to get higher. Gertrude McFuzz called up: She looked around at her friend and thought "I need to be just like her," but we don't. We shouldn't think like that. We are just ourselves.

Finally, I asked the two of them which story they liked better. Tewen preferred Gertrude McFuzz emphatically while Awot liked Yertle.

"Why, Tewen?" "She tried to be something else, but she went back. Yertle, he was just bad. I mean, she was bad too, but she realized and corrected. She went back to who she was and was happier in the end being who she was before. He was just a bad king who kept doing bad things and never corrected. He--can I talk about it like people? Okay. He just did things for himself. He's the king. He cannot do things just to be higher; He should act like whatever is better for *gestures to the turtles in the pond* I mean, all people."

Awot liked Yertle because in the end all that stepping on his own people got him was ruling over the muck.

I love Africans.

One Dimensional

It's becoming evident that I can no longer have a conversation about anything remotely important to me or my life without it relating back to Jesus or God in at least some minor way. I'm going to be vulnerable here, so be prepared for some less than polished thoughts and processes. I don't know how to feel about this.

On the one hand, if I am truly living out the Gospel, this absolutely should be true. If I have given up my life to Christ like I claim, everything I do should be motivated by the gospel. If I am daily taking up my cross, I should have to relate everything I do each day to Jesus. Biblically, what I am experiencing in my conversations should be happening.

The problem is that I live in America. Actually, it's bigger than that. The problem is that I am a human being. We are easily distracted. In order that we might not be constantly feeling guilty for living in this perpetual state of distraction from the love and sovereignty of the almighty, we embrace the distraction. Living out the state of distraction and turning to God in specific moments is much more acceptable than truly turning to Him in every moment of every day and every word of every conversation.

I used to feel very awkward about evangelizing or telling Christ's part in my story. Everything that I did that was motivated by Christ also had a humanly motivated answer. Why do I feel compassion for the homeless? "Just because that's how I am." Why would you ever want to work at a crappy school in a mid-city ghetto where you might get shot and you won't even get properly paid? "Well, we need better education. Nothing's going to get better if some people won't do it." Why are you so nice to everybody, all the freaking time? "I don't know, I just think that people need someone to be smiling at them." On and on it goes. It occurs to me that this list of things could appear arrogant and boastful about "all the good works" I do. It's not supposed to be like that. I just can't make the demonstration of how I create human justifications for the things I do without verbalizing which of those things are called into question. (Which is it's own point, actually. How better is our over arching decision to live outside of Christ's calling demonstrated than the fact that me trying to just be as caring and loving as I can is questioned as something weird?) Furthermore, all of these "good works" are simply the way I live, now that I've decided I really do want to be like Christ.

So, it used to be awkward. I used to make up stories about how I made decisions because I didn't want people to think I only did Jesus stuff. I wanted to be accessible. I wanted to be down to earth. I wanted to be real. I wanted to be just a normal kid.

But by acting to achieve those things, I became inauthentic and a liar. Yeah, all those human motivations for things were true. But at the heart of it, I only even know that I should care about and care for other people because God does and asks us to.

And so now, after going to Uganda the first time, and particularly after these last few months, I've completely surrendered who I am into the hands of the Holy Spirit. We say words like that in church all the time. We talk about our surrender and our desire to be emptied out before the cross and recommit to following Christ every time we sing a worship song. But I for one know that as much as I've meant the words on Sunday, frequently by the time that Monday rolls around I care more about the newest episode of Castle than trying to be fully tuned into the spirit in each of my conversations. And I still struggle with not falling back into that. I'm sure I always will. But that's the most interesting part of my battle tonight; I feel like it would be more acceptable for me to do that than to continue pursuing Christ's pre-eminence in my life.

I feel like even many of my Christian friends would rather talk about something else, would rather my art be more than scripture based, would rather my blog keep rambling on about the Giants, would rather talk about each others defects and the things that attract us or deter us from the opposite sex, than be constantly in communion with what Christ asks of us. And do you know the most compelling reason I think that?

Because that's what I used to want.

My friends who seriously ran after Christ used to talk about Jesus in every aspect of their lives. Only read C. S. Lewis and Henri Nouwen. Only watched TV strictly devoid of violence, sex, or swearing. Only listened to Christian artists. And I used to say: "Sure, all of that has it's place, I love Jesus too, but couldn't they be a little more well-balanced? They don't have to be thinking and reading about God ALL the time. It's like they're just letting these Christian authorities dictate what they can and cannot intake and are shutting out all the other really great things in the world just because they aren't strictly Christian."

It sucks to evolve into something you used to scorn. Because you know intimately why the thing that you are becoming is alienating to others--even others who legitimately truly and deeply have the same faith as you. Especially when you know in your heart of hearts that the evolution is into something better and towards something better. Because then you not only know exactly what about you is alienating but you also intimately know that the past you was judgmental and wrong and you cringe thinking about what you thought about people like who you are now. And further, you desperately want to explain the goodness of what you have now and the truth and the why of it to those who are just like the old you, but you know that having that spoken by another human being does no good, because it did you no good.

All I wanted to do tonight was share my conflicted heart in regards to the apparently one-dimensional story my life is turning into but instead ran off on many tangents. I'm still confused and I still feeling guilty about feeling confused. I know in my deepest heart that the relationship I have with Christ is supposed to be my end-all. It should be the only important topic of conversation. But I am still plagued by the desire for the world to like me, so I shudder at the idea of becoming that "one-dimensional Christian girl". It's a false fear, because I know that I am becoming more truly and authentically multi-faceted the deeper I allow the holy spirit to take me... but we live in a broken world and we are a broken people. I am a broken person; my mind will always rebel against the truths my heart knows and my body will always run into the arms of people even as my spirit yearns to simply rest in the arms of my father.