Building Community, One Pony Clubber At a Time

This past weekend was the Old Dominion Pony Club Region's eventing rally. I'm proud to say that the pony club I run, Holston, sent two full teams. I'm even prouder to say that all ten competitors did very well.

I don't just mean in the riding part, though we had some fine success there. I don't even mean in Horse Management, an important component of all pony club competitions, even though the two Holston teams finished first and second, with only one point separating them.

I mean in the teamwork. I mean in community.

Ten years from now it will not matter what color ribbon any of these children won. It will not matter what their dressage score was. It will not matter whether or not they forgot their required body sponge or didn't label their hay, or remembered to wear their pony club pin at all times.

It will matter if they've grown into competent, responsible adults. It will matter if they've learned courage, resilience, empathy, compassion. It will matter if they've learned to treat their horses as partners, not machines; it will matter if they stand up for themselves and for each other.

And so my proudest moments were the quietest ones. Seeing oldest competitor on our team walking the youngest, on her pony, up to the dressage arena. Watching the youngest carefully sweep the aisle. The last minute flurry over each member headed to formal inspections. The attention every horse received.

When one of our members got bucked off her horse and had to take a trip to the emergency room (thankfully, she's fine): a club member grabbed her horse and got it out of the ring while paramedics attended the rider. Another member took the horse back to its stall, untacked and cared for it. Another took charge of the rider's helmet, safety vest, and boots. Different team members cleaned her tack and boots, not because those items had to be cleaned--they didn't--but just so she would know their concern.

Horses are a passion. Pony Club is a community I'm very grateful for.

Worshiping Jim Bob Duggar

For weeks now I've been keeping an eye on the Josh Duggar story. I wanted to know what would happen next. This sort of thing is important to me--he molested children, and got away with it; his parents and authorities who should have taken the allegations seriously didn't. So five girls--a minimum--are wounded, and, what's worse, are told their scars are unimportant and possibly their own fault. Five girls were hurt and yet left vulnerable, so it could happen again. Which it did. Josh molested them over a series of years.

If you've ever faced this sort of thing, you want there to be a reckoning. An acknowledgement of the seriousness of the crime. Some payback.

I wasn't expecting Josh to face criminal charges, since he and his family had cleverly evaded the statute of limitations. And, honestly, I thought of him as a victim too. A lot of people wanted to downplay his offenses as "experimentation." No. Experimentation is two four-year-olds comparing body parts. Experimentation is two non-related teenagers making out. Josh's behavior indicated real trouble, for which he needed real help. That he didn't get it is a tragedy I'm just beginning to understand.

Some people still love the Duggar family's "Christian values." Others have noted the cult-like deference to male authority, the multitude of sex offenders in the family's inner circle, the weird isolation of all those children from any semblance of the real world. The more I read about them the sadder I became. Because while everyone in the Duggar family is bending their knees to the same god, they aren't worshiping the creator of the universe, or Jesus Christ.

At age 17, after repeatedly being caught molesting children, Josh was sent away to do construction work and be lectured on Biblical principles (by a man who was recently accused of sexually harassing and molesting dozens of female employees). At age 20 Josh married a woman his father chose for him. Now he's been outed by Ashley Madison, OKCupid, and, eventually, himself, as a porn addict who cheated on his wife with strippers. Awful, but hardly surprising. He's a troubled man who never got help.

Nor is he getting it now. Josh has been sent to rehab at Reformers Unanimous, a "Christian" recovery center that purports to treat all sorts of problems--alcohol and drug addiction, porn and sexual addiction, but also eating disorders and, horrifyingly, something called "post-rape depression," by, once again, manual labor and prayer. According to the application for RU, clients will spend 8 hours a day doing volunteer work and several hours a day reading their Bibles and attending prayer groups and Bible study. No one is allowed to speak of their pasts, including why they are at the center. (So much for therapy!) No one receives actual counseling or medical therapy. Clients are not allowed any reading material or music. If they toe the line they can eventually make a limited number of monitored phone calls to pre-approved family members. Oh, and "negative remarks about the food will not be tolerated."

In other words, Josh has been put in a cult jail. If he'd been sent to an actual prison, he'd be able to read newspapers and magazines. He'd be allowed to complain about the food. He'd be permitted to think for himself. 

That's the rub. God gives us free will, but Jim Bob Duggar does not. His children have to act, speak, think and feel precisely as he permits--and, until recently, present perfect faces on national tv. When Josh Duggar disobeyed his parents before, his parents buried the evidence, and here's why:

Getting him real help would have exposed him to other points-of-view. He might have started to question the family's beliefs. He might have come into contact with non-fundamentalists and realized they weren't necessarily evil.

We don't know if Josh molested anyone else, or harmed any other woman besides his wife. Clearly, though, his sexual problems have not been resolved. So his father sent him off again, to another place where he won't be helped, but might be broken. To another place where his actions and thoughts will be precisely controlled.

The Duggars don't worship God. They worship Jim Bob Duggar.

Updated: Apparently, the church behind Reformers Unanimous has ties to convicted sex offenders. 

Of Course You Can't Have It All

I had a good reality check this morning. I woke up happy, made my daughter and I breakfast (husband left early to go perform surgery), wandered over to my office and got overwhelmed. It's time to start Draft Three of my novel. I had a book review due. I'm taking a crew of pony clubbers to event rally this weekend, and our club needs a second set of kits, much of the contents of which I need to purchase at Wal-Mart this afternoon. My office is a screaming mess. My laundry is clean but not folded.

Then I read the latest Rage Against The Minivan blogpost, in which the author wondered, at the tail end of her summer in which she's working full-time from home while taking care of four elementary-school children, whether it was really possibly to have it all. And I thought, of course not. You can have lots and lots--but never everything, and never all at the same time.

I've always been grateful that my husband earns enough to take the pressure off me. I've been able to be happily fulfilled as a writer, and pleased about the books I create, without needing to wonder how the bills will be paid or make artistic choices based on money. I've been able to set my own hours, and skip writing for a week if that's what needed to happen. (It makes me cranky. The family's usually glad when I go back to work.) I know how lucky I am: it's one of the reasons I take the time to work at Faith in Action every week.

But certainly "having it all" is a middle-class female problem. The woman working two fast-food jobs and trying to juggle day care without reliable transportation is not concerned with having it all. She doesn't have time to be. Also, I've yet to meet the man who's concerned about "having it all." Men make choices and live with them, as far as I can tell.

So I think we need to cut some of the angst. It's okay if everything isn't okay. To that end, this morning I wrote my book review (deadline), went to yoga, and reminded myself that I could buy milk at Walmart, thus cutting out a trip to the grocery store. Which might, if I'm lucky, give me time to fold my laundry before I head to the barn to get ready for event rally. Or not. Either way is really okay.

A Summer of Zipping my Lip

I've always thought it was important that I let my children live their own lives and make their own mistakes even though sometimes I am just dying to help them. Really help them. I can't help my son much right now as he's off to college, where, he tells me pointedly, he wears shorts and flip-flops to Mass. (I hear, "I still go to Mass.") I still want to give him All The Advice, but since he's 500 miles away I can't make him follow it, and, therefore, might as well spend my time on the phone with him talking about something more interesting, like whether or not Notre Dame has a chance at a title this year.

For my daughter this has been a summer of sitting on my hands. Zipping my lip. Trying not to make her the beneficiary of my wisdom, learning, and awesome scheduling skills. Late last spring, just as her tennis season let up, my daughter decided to attempt her pony club HB and C3 certifications.

I'm not going to throw all the jargon at you. All I'll say is that pony club has seven levels of horsemanship achievement and eight levels of riding achievement. The HB and the C3 are the sixth levels of both areas, and are the first nationally-tested levels. The national tests last two days each.

Let me explain a bit. At the HB, the candidate will be assigned a horse by blind draw. He or she will be asked to assess the horse's conformation in detail, describe any blemishes or unsoundnesses it has or might be predisposed to, discuss anatomy, blemishes and unsoundnesses in general, describe the horse's age based on its teeth, discuss equine teeth in general, make an educated guess as to the breeding of the horse, and, based on its overall age and conformation, suggest various riding disciplines it might be suited for. That would cover two or three sections of the test--there are more than 30.

Now, when club members that I'm not related to are preparing for these exams, I've found it pretty easy to stay out of their business. Sure, I try to help by scheduling prep classes, hauling kids and ponies to clinics, and getting them the resources they ask me for. But I don't ask them if their horse management handbook is up to date--at least, not every day. With my daughter it was more difficult. I could see that she should be studying intestinal parasites instead of playing computer games. I thought she should be working ahead on her conditioning plan. I wanted to tell her to do all the things, my way, on my time, and mostly I kept my mouth shut, but when I didn't she would say, "Mom. My test. Mine."

And I would back off, because she was right.

Our club has a really good reputation right now. Five of our members have attempted national exams; all five have passed. But pony club is really good at letting children fail, which, as I've said before, is something I love about it. Pony club doesn't hand any child anything; the child earns it all. My daughter took her HB exam in late July down in South Carolina, alongside 9 other candidates. There were about 30 sections to the exam, and if she failed five or fewer she could retest just those sections--fail six and she'd have to redo the entire thing. Of the ten candidates at my daughter's test, we know that at least four failed entirely. At least two passed, and at least two had sections to retest.

My daughter passed. She was even the only candidate who wasn't asked to quickly revise some of her paperwork--all hers was correct and complete on the first go. Even that danged horse management handbook.

She's a week out, now, from her riding exam. We'll be hauling her horse six hours to get there. I plan to spend the entire trip with my mouth zipped shut, sitting on my hands--well, metaphorically, since I'll have to drive.

A Short Trip to the Big City

We had to make one of our periodic trips to Nashville last Friday. My daughter was out of school anyway, for Bristol's fall NASCAR race. (This is not as stupid as it sounds. When 120,000 people descend on a town of 40,000 people, traffic gets a little crazy, and some of the schools are near the track.) Also my son was leaving to go back to college--at the latest, on Saturday, but if the rest of us were going to Nashville on Friday anyhow, he'd leave Friday and spend a night in Knoxville visiting friends.

We miss him when he's not with us.

Nashville is about a five-hour drive from Bristol. It's possible for us to drive there, conduct our business, and drive back in one day, but it's dreadful. So my husband and I originally thought we'd fly to Nashville, then fly to Philadelphia where my daughter wants to look at some colleges, then fly home Sunday. That would have been a neat and useful plan except that none of the colleges' admissions offices were open Saturday, and none of the students would be back on campus. Wandering around empty locked buildings was not going to be very useful.

"Well," my husband said, "let's go to New York."

This seemed absolutely nuts. For starters, my daughter has been completely enmeshed in preparations for her first national pony club riding exam. She's been concentrating on her horse non-stop since mid-June. Ok, early June. But now we're very close to crunch time--shouldn't she put the entire weekend to use in the barn?

I've also lost control of several of the less meaningful aspects of my life, such as housework, the garden, pretty much the house and farm in general. I need to clean out my closet and the pantry and weed everything, and I have a list of people I need to call and some pony club stuff I need to do--and, oh yes, my editor just set a due date for draft #3 of the current novel. My husband is in a similar state: Sunday night he waved his hand at our bedroom, where we plan to get some furniture for a sort of empty nook, and also get curtains, and some new bedding now that the incontinent dog is dead--dead for a year now--and my husband said, "We are going to get our shit together, right?"

"Absolutely," I said.

But first we went to New York, and it was awesome. We got in late, late, and set an alarm pretty early so we could get up and shop at our favorite NYC store, Filene's Basement. Turns out Filene's closed in January 2012 (you can tell we don't shop in NY often). So instead we went to a place called Century 21, which was similiar--lots of medium to high-end clothes on discount. My daughter found a good dress and some jeans. I bought a pair of very classy yoga pants (trust me) and some shirts. I also had a field day with the real designer clothes. I love textiles. Most of the very-high-end stuff doesn't fit me, as apparently if you're a fancy designer you only want skinny people dropping big bucks on your clothing, but what the hey. I found a white silk taffeta skirt stiff with embroidery and beading on sale for only $1000 (no, of course not. Also it didn't fit. Also where would I ever wear something like that?). I tried on a really cool windbreaker--hard to describe, but honestly a windbreaker--that was discounted to $500. My husband agreed it was super cool. Then we laughed hysterically at the idea of my wearing a $500 windbreaker out to the barn, and put it back on the rack.

Lunch, more shopping. The fabulous farmer's market in Union Square. I love NYC farmer's markets. If I'd had more time I would have pumped for visiting Dean & DeLuca's or Books of Wonder, but instead we cleaned ourselves up, had a lovely dinner--an Italian restaurant just off Broadway, caprese salad, gnocchi and tiramisu--and went to see The Book of Mormon.

It wasn't my favorite musical ever--as my daughter said, they got to funny and kept going into not-as-funny--but it was so well done. I love tap dancing. I love listening to talented people sing.

Afterwards we had a drink at the revolving lounge on top of our hotel, and fell into bed, where we slept so late there wasn't much time on Sunday to do anything but eat a lovely brunch, take a small walk, and head for home. The funny part was how much good it did us all--particularly my daughter. Giving her something to think about besides her horse and her rating seems to have dropped her stress level a lot. It didn't do a thing to improve the mess about the house, the bedroom, the weeds--but hey, it also  didn't make those worse.

Win-win, I call it. Win-win

Josh Duggar, Ashley Madison, and Christian Persecution

Sometimes I fall down internet rabbit holes. I did last night, when I saw on a Facebook sidebar that Josh Duggar apparently had an account at Ashley Madison.

I was vaguely aware of Ashley Madison. I've heard of it before, but if, out of the blue, you'd asked me, "Who is Ashley Madison?" I would have thought perhaps one of my daughter's classmates, or my son's.

Ashley Madison is actually an internet sleazeball site whose slogan is, "Life is short. Have an affair."

Awesome. Life is short. Damage all the relationships you have. Or only have fake relationships. Whatev.

Anyhow, I keep holding out faint, ridiculous hope that Josh Duggar will suddenly understand why molesting his sisters was an actual crime. I keep hoping he'll go to jail, or at least get the hell off tv. But there's been a big 'ol data hack at Ashley Madison and Josh was the first leak. While fathering four children in five years, he's also been advertising, and paying for, a chance at some sex on the side.

So this is completely scurrilous, and I'm reading all about it, and I get to the comments on the webpage and here come the claims of Christian Persecution. The new American Christian Persecution Complex. It was extraordinary. According to the new ACPC, the only reason anyone would ever say nasty things about a good Christian boy like Josh Duggar is that they are persecuting Christians.

Wow.

Christian persecution is completely real. It's happening in much of the world, primarily Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. According to Open Door, a website with a pretty good handle on what persecution actually means, the most difficult countries for Christians right now are North Korea, Somalia, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. These are places where Christians are being killed because of their religion. These are places where churches are being burnt down.

Open Door has a world map colored to show the degree of persecution Christians are experiencing in each country. The United States of America is white. As in, none.

Because when people dislike your favorite reality tv show, that's not persecution. When people disagree with your opinions or even your particular Christian sect's beliefs on anything--gays, lesbians, transgender people, global warming, evolution, the age of the earth, transubstantiation, women priests, eating pork, getting tattoos--that is not persecution.

Unless you are suffering actual physical harm, unless your church is being physically destroyed, unless you are being prevented from worshiping as you chose, you are not being persecuted.

If Josh Duggar is your particular Christian poster child, I hope you'll change your mind. I disagree with you. Strongly. But, in doing so, I am not persecuting you. If you still doubt me, I suggest you spend some time in North Korea, Somalia, or Iran. 

Three Spoons of Sugar

Once, when I was in college, I went over to a friend's family's place for dinner (they lived near the school). After dinner, my friend brought me a mug of tea, which I back then I liked to drink after every meal. I took a sip, and it was sweet: she'd added sugar. I always sugar my tea. I remember, at that moment, feeling so loved, that I was in the company of people who fixed my tea the way I liked it without even asking.

I recount the story not because it's particularly interesting or relevatory, but because I'm aware that I've got back to it in my own fiction, twice: both times the addition of sugar to tea is a small symbol of the relationships between my characters.

In The War That Saves My Life, Susan, an adult who's taken in my two evacuees, Ada and her brother Jamie, stays in bed for an entire day quite soon after the children come to her. Susan's grieving and this is a bad anniversary for her. The children don't mind being left to their own devices--Ada prefers it, in fact--but midafternoon Ada makes Susan a cup of tea and they take it into Susan's bedroom:

"[Susan] took a sip, and fresh tears sprang to her eyes. 'You've sugared it,' she said.

That was how she took it. One sugar, no milk. I'd watched. 'Yes, miss,' I said, ducking a little in case she tried to smack me. 'Not much, though. There's plenty of sugar left. I didn't take any.'"

You can see several things in this small exchange. One, that Ada is very, very watchful. Two, that she still expects to be smacked for everything she does. Three, that she wouldn't dare take sugar for herself. You can see she expects to do the caretaking for the adults around her, and that she's fully capable of making tea, even on a coal-fired range she doesn't fully understand. You can also see that Susan is moved by Ada's care. Susan realizes that she should be taking care of the children, not the other way around, but this is the first hint that their relationship might be mutually healing.

I've just now realized, because I read the manuscript over yesterday, that sugaring tea shows up in my sequel, too. It's now 1941: in England, rationing has hit hard, especially on sugar and tea. Ada and Jamie are still in Susan's care. It's Christmas day, the first Christmas after the death of someone they loved, and they're all trying to make the best of a very hard situation.

'At one point I took Susan a second cup of tea, and watched carefully when she sipped it. "Oh, Ada!" she said, breaking into a smile. "You sugared it!"
I had. I'd saved some back from my own ration. Susan loved sugar in her tea. I'd grown up drinking it without.'

Now there's no feeling of appeasement, no fear. Ada has her own ration of sugar which she uses as a gift. It's clear now that they love each other.

You've got to be careful around us writers. We're going to use everything you say and everything you do. You probably won't recognize it, though. We're alchemists: we turn sugar into gold.