Dear Sweet Ones,

I want to tell you something about creativity.

To create is to reflect the image of God, the Creator.

To create anything is to participate in the divine purpose for which we were made.

I hope you will let those words sink deep into your soul.

Whenever we spend time in creation, I am in awe of all God’s great gifts in nature.

I wonder at all that God has made.

The trees, the hills, the flowers, the mountains, the rivers and streams. The great expanse of the sea. I love spending time seeing what God has created, and I have tried to teach you to love it too.

I want you to love it a little bit more every day by making time for walking outside.

But maybe I have missed teaching you to participate in creation by also being a maker.

I think it’s hard to be a maker in our family because we like everything to be already perfectly made. And we tend towards criticism. When things are still in process, we interrupt creators with discouragement.

I grieve that I have perhaps taught you to point out imperfection rather than to participate in creating.

So I am trying to make more imperfect things.

I am exercising the muscle of creativity in places that are unfamiliar and awkward and maybe even pointless.

One of the ways I am making time for creativity lately is by drawing and painting.

I have a little tiny set of watercolors I have been carrying around with me for a couple of years now, and I am filling up some of the pages of my journal with perfectly imperfect creations.

I am trying to look more closely at the places we walk by the act of drawing them.

I find it hard. And very slow. (Not unlike learning German)

But when I make time for this act of pointless creativity, for wasting time doing something at which I am not very good, I am surprised by the calm I experience and the small joys it brings.

I’m surprised by what I notice.

Here’s what Brené Brown says about creativity in her brilliant book, The Gifts of Imperfection:

1. “I’m not very creative” doesn’t work. There’s no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and people who don’t. Unused creativity doesn’t just disappear. It lives within us until it’s expressed, neglected to death, or suffocated by resentment and fear.

2. The only unique contribution that we will ever make in this world will be born of our creativity.

3. If we want to make meaning, we need to make art. Cook, write, draw, doodle, paint, scrapbook, take pictures, collage, knit, rebuild an engine, sculpt, dance, decorate, act, sing—it doesn’t matter. As long as we’re creating, we’re cultivating meaning.

So I hope you will take some time to make things for the sake of making. I hope you will not hear my critical voice in your head telling you that you should be busy with more practical endeavors.

Find ways to express the creativity that is within you.

Join in with the wonder that is creation.

I love each of you and all the ways you make life more beautiful,

Mama

The post A Letter to My Kids About Making Time For Creativity appeared first on Alison Chino.

A Letter to My Ten Year Old Son Upon The Election of Donald Trump To The Office of President

I wrote this letter back in November and held onto it because I felt like it sounded a bit alarmist. I opened it again just a couple of weeks ago and I was surprised to discover that I’m not sure it’s alarmist enough. I’m sharing it now because I want all my children to understand my heart about the rhetoric of our current president. I want them to join me in grieving the state of our nation. We are having a lot of conversations at our house about racism and hateful words as people around us ask what on earth is happening in America, so this letter reflects this dialogue that has been happening in our house for a while now. 

November 2016

Dear Simon,

This week you said to me:

Donald Trump won? What does that mean?

Does it mean we can’t go back to America?

And as I was pondering how to answer, I was also wondering what was going on inside your ten-year old brain.

And before I could form my reply, you said something about a wall.

People keep talking about walls being built.

Oh, yes. There has been a lot of talk about walls.

About divides. There are a lot of divides in our country.

There is a big deep chasm right down the middle that seems impossible to cross.

So I said to you.

Do you think a wall will go up that will keep us out of America? That will not happen. We are citizens and holders of American passports, so yes, we can go back to America whenever we want.

But I guess the question is,

When there are walls going up, when so many people are divided by hostility, do we want to go back?

Of course you said,

Oh yes, I want to go back.

I knew your answer before you said it. There is no president that can come between you and your love for America.

I understand how you feel. I, too, love America. In fact, being an expat makes me love our country more. In big ways like I miss a hecka lotta people who are crazy important to me and in small ways like how I think American central heat and air is the eighth wonder of the world.

But this election means I have to ask.

Do I want to use my privilege to return to a country that is projecting the message that we, as Americans, do not value all of God’s people?

Simon, do you remember a few weeks ago when we made you watch that movie about how white people in America have treated (and continue to treat) black people? It was called 13th, because it was about the 13th amendment.

Remember how you covered your eyes and cried and begged us to turn it off because seeing that much hate for our black brothers and sisters was just too much.

It was too painful.

But the most painful thing is that the hate that we saw in that documentary, that horrible hate still lives in the hearts of many white people in the United States.

In fact, because our country was founded by white men who believed that they were fundamentally better than black people, they have handed all of us a legacy of hate. Even if we think we are not haters, we cannot help but have inherited some of the ideas that have spread this hateful idea that white people somehow deserve to have more than black and brown people.

You know what I mean by black and brown people, right? I’m talking about the folks that were in that documentary we watched. I’m talking about people who are from Mexico or from other Latin American countries. I’m talking about Muslim people like the ones in your international class who came here to escape wars in their own countries.

Well, I don’t know if you know this, but Donald Trump said a lot of horrible things about black and brown people while he was running for president.

There are a lot of people who don’t want black and brown people to feel welcome in America who supported Donald Trump for president. Elections are complicated and there are people who voted for Donald Trump for other reasons, but still, the reality is that too many Americans agree with the meanest of his statements.

So imagine that this morning when you woke up and found out that Donald Trump was president, if you were a black person or a brown person, how would it make you feel to discover that your country elected a president who encourages that kind of hate towards someone who looks like you?

Terrified.

Really scared.

Super sad.

Mad.

You would be wondering which people hate you.

If you were an immigrant from another country you might be afraid that you will have to leave the United States.

And even if you don’t have to leave, you might not feel welcome. You might feel like people don’t want you around.

I know you know how that feels. Because we are expats, we have been living in other countries where we don’t belong. We are outsiders. We do not feel at home.

Do you remember when we lived in Scotland what it took for us to finally feel at home? It was not until we made friends who were Scottish, people who welcomed us into their homes and let us know that they were glad we lived in their country.

Can you imagine how we would have felt if people never did welcome us? If we had lived in Scotland for three years without making any Scottish friends?

What if when we went to the store in Scotland, people said things to us like, “Go home!” or “Get out of our country!” or “We don’t want people like you here!”

Do you think we would have felt at home in Scotland if that had happened?

I know what you are thinking. You would tell me that if we were not welcome, we could just go back home. We could go back to Arkansas, where we are always welcome.

And yes. That is true. We will always be welcome in Arkansas.

(That’s called privilege by the way.)

But what if there was a war in Arkansas? What if our home had been bombed and we could not go back without risking our lives?

Or what if there was a famine back home and there was nothing to eat? What if going home meant we were in danger of starving?

Or what if a group of people back home decided that they wanted to kill us because of the church we belong to, or because we are mixed race family or because we love Jesus?

What if we could not just “go home?”

What if, like many of the people in your class at school, we were wandering the earth, broken-hearted because we could not go home, but also trying to make a life for our family in a new country…only to wake up and discover that the new country does not want us?

That the new country actually hates us?

What would that feel like?

We would cry and moan and ask God WHY?

We would wonder why the world feels this way towards us?

Why is the divide so great between us and others?

Simon, your father has been telling you something about politics since before you were old enough to understand words – he has been saying that it does not matter who is president. It doesn’t matter because both parties are controlled by big business.

Again, if you remember watching 13th, you will recall that they explained how this is true. Every president helped to pass laws that were written by a company that was being paid by corporations who would benefit financially from those laws.

All the presidents for all of time have bowed down to the idols of capitalism.

So, yes, in one sense your father is right. It doesn’t matter who is president.

But in another sense he is wrong, because the face of the president of the United States is representative of our county – not just to the world – though that is important too – but also to the people who live in America.

This is the reason I broke with our family habit of voting third party candidates to cast my ballot for Barack Obama (twice). It was not because I thought Obama could “save America.” Lord, help me the day I am fooled into thinking that the representative of a large machine (Democrat or Republican) will turn on that machine and suddenly become the champion of the poor, the oppressed and the prisoner. No, I voted for Obama because I wanted the black kids at your school to turn on the television and see that the highest office in our country could be held by someone who looked like them. I wanted Americans (you included!) to look into the face of our president and be encouraged and proud of the fact that we elected an African-American president. I wanted us all to see the black man on the news who was president. I still believe that the greatest gift Barack and Michelle have given our country is their gracious presence as a black family in the White House. There is no policy that can outweigh the uplifting effect of Obama’s being the face of our country over the last eight years for all of us, but especially for minority children.

If you were older, maybe you would ask me if I believe that Hillary’s face would have been a great encouragement in that same way for young women? To that I would have to say, no. The hope of her presence in the White House did not compel me to break from voting a third party candidate this year.

But even so, I would not have chosen over Hillary the face of someone who is willing to say out loud that he does not value all people. 

But that someone is now the president-elect. Donald Trump will be the face that we see on the news for the next four years representing our country.

And so, Simon, what are we supposed to do when so many people that we know and love are having to wonder if they are welcome in America?

When someone who looks like you and me is telling our brothers and sisters that they are not welcome, we cannot stay quiet.

We have to figure out ways to say again and again that we need our African American friends in the United States. We need people from all over the world. We need immigrants and refugees.

Simon, I want you to grow up in a country where everyone is welcome.

I want you to grow up in a country where policemen protect people of color.

I want you to be a part of a country where the refugees find refuge. Where the prisoner is set free.

I want you to grow up in a country where the walls are coming down, not going up.

In this world of great divides, I want you to be a builder of bridges.

Right now you are living a life as an outsider. We talk funny and we don’t understand the systems and we puzzle our way through most days. It is exhausting and discouraging and sometimes it feels pointless.

But Simon, I’m asking you to pay very close attention.

You are learning how to stand in the shoes of the alien.

One day you may find yourself on the inside in America again, but if you have been watching, you will have learned how walls get taken down between the insiders and the outsiders.

And, oh my son, you are going to need those skills.

America will need you use them.

Because there will be many walls to tear down.

Here’s a verse to remember when you need encouragement in this good work of tearing down walls:

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility     

– Ephesians 2:14

Love you so much,

Mama

The post A Letter to My 10 Year Old Son Upon The Election of Donald Trump To The Office of President appeared first on Alison Chino.

A Letter to My Son After He Left Home at 18

March 2016

Oh Cole,

It’s been exactly a month since you got on a plane and flew back to America,

with all my worries and fears

as well as my hopes and dreams.

Today I got to talk to you for the first time. Like really talk. On the phone without awkward pauses and not just to get a little bit of information you need.

You told me about your job. Your apartment. Your friends. Your life.

And it was good.

It was good to hear your voice and to be able to sense the happy.

You are doing your thing and you are on your own. Just like you’ve wanted to be for a long time. And things seem to be going well. You are working at a job you seem to like. You are going to church and to Bible study in the middle of the week. You are loving on your friends and you cousins and your extended family.

You are driving without a license which makes me nervous, but I kept quiet about that. You are working on getting your license. If you get caught without one and you have to go to jail, well, then I guess you will learn.

But even then, I begin to feel certain, that you will figure it out.

You will probably need a little help, but you will figure it out.

And that’s what you’ve been trying to tell me for a long time.

That you are ready to live on your own. No school. No parents telling you what to do. No Mama fixing your dinner and asking if you’re still hungry. No Dad telling you that you need to save your money. Work hard. Plan ahead.

You have wanted this for longer than I can remember. And I was pretty sure that you would be sorry once you had it.

Once you were on your own and you could see that it was just you.

To pay the bills. To buy the food. To cook the food. To clean up. To wash clothes. To get yourself up. To be the adult.

But you are a month in at being just you.

You and your friend. One bedroom. No internet. No car.

And you are managing. And you seem happy to be just you.

And I am sorry that I took so long to let you go.

I still miss you. And I can’t quite believe our time of being mama and son in one house, under the same roof, is over. I was not quite ready. I’m not sure I ever will be.

But I am proud.

And I am thankful for your pushing until you got what you wanted. Even if it drove me crazy.

And I know that it’s not just you. But it’s you and Jesus. And you will make it just fine without me.

But still. I’m glad that every once in a while we get to talk.

And if you ever happened to drop by, I would gladly still make you dinner.

I love you with all my heart,

Mama

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