One Mom, Two Mom, Red Mom, Blue Mom

With all of the tension of the political scene these days, it’s always nice to hear some good old fashioned, nonpartisan encouragment. Dena Dyer delivers with a fantastic, uplifting little bit of political parody. You must see this!

It’s Dr. Seuss meets Jim Lehrer.

Update:  Dena Dyer just sent me the full text of her book. Enjoy!

Red (State) Mom, Blue (State) Mom
A Dr. Seuss Parody by Dena Dyer

One mom, two mom
Red mom, blue mom
Short mom, tall mom
Big mom, small mom.

This one wants to go, go, go—
This one likes to take it slow.
Some stay home, some travel far.
Say! What a lot of moms there are.

Some have two kids, some have four.
Some have many, many more.
Some vote red and some vote blue—
Some are purple through and through.

Not one of us thinks like the other,
But each of us is still a mother.
Makes no difference who you choose—
Don’t see red or get the blues.

Have you kissed a boo-boo on a knee?
Or sewn a costume, 1-2-3?
Moms can do it, yes we can!
Even cook green eggs and ham.

Moms are more alike than not.
We work, we fret, we laugh a lot.
So when I talk about my choice,
Respect me please, don’t raise your voice.

And remember when November comes,
What we tell our little ones—
Be polite, and in a pinch
Please don’t turn into a Grinch!

You load sixteen tons and what do you get?

In keeping with the 1980s nostalgia that has captured some bloggers, I started thinking about one of my all time favorite movies: Joe vs. the Volcano.

And I wondered, how many people go to work and feel like the guy in our featured video?

Poor Joe. He works in a medical accessories factory. They manufacture devices that sound really uncomfortable. I’ll just leave it at that.

And his job looks like hell. I’m being literal. Bad lights that suck the life out of people. Bad bosses that bark inane orders into the phone. Electric hums. Muddy parking lots.

And people marching into work in time to the 1980s rock version of the Tennessee Ernie Ford miner’s song:

You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go;
I owe my soul to the company store.

Here’s the good news. Work isn’t really like this. It’s not like the Office either. It’s not like Office Space. Or any of those workplace satires. Those are all exaggerated to make the point. We want to take the fax machine out and beat it with a bat, but we don’t. Not really.

Because really. Work isn’t that bad. In fact, it’s better than bad. It’s good. It’s not part of the curse. It’s part of our original purpose–Adam was placed in the garden and given work before he ever messed up:

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
(Gen. 2:15)

Sure, we still live in a fallen world. But we are Christians. We’re not part of the fallen world any more. We’re in the world, but not of it. We’ve been given a new chance to get back to work in the garden. We’ve got work to do. We’ve got things to take care of.

It’s what God wants for us.

If you’re with me on this, let us know in the comments. What Garden has God placed you in?

Or maybe you aren’t with us. Maybe the last few weeks and months make Joe vs. the Volcano and The Office seem a little too realistic. Then take heart. This is NOT God’s plan.

This is NOT what God wants your workplace to look like:

I’ve never seen that before

The video I’ve posted on the homepage today is a funny one. A group of “performance artists” froze in place in Grand Central Station for 5 minutes. The people walking around were stunned. One reached out and touched a woman to see if she was real. They had no way of explaining what they were seeing. Nothing in their experience had prepared them for this.

Some laughed. Some looked a little scared. Some walked a little faster, hoping to escape and not have to figure out what they were seeing.

The unexpected and surprising can make us a little uncomfortable.

Years ago I kicked a little metal ring in the parking lot of a local grocery story. I must have hit it just right because it flew much farther than I intended. It rolled a long way right into the center of the parking lot, where there were no cars and only one woman walking to the store. The ring rolled right in front of her. From her perspective, it looked as though the ring dropped out of heaven. There was no one around her and no explanation for this ring that was suddenly rolling across the ground. She was so scared and befuddled that she almost ran into the store.

And I don’t blame her. It would have scared me too. Sometimes I wonder if she is still telling the story to her friends just like I’m telling it to you.

We expect the world to be just the way we, well, expect it to be. Day after day, things are always the same. And when things don’t look as they should, we are stopped dead in our tracks, stunned and immobile.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Annie Dillard wonders why we aren’t just as shocked and surprised when we read the gospels. If we really read the scriptures, she says, we’d have to wear crash helmets in church because we would constantly be falling out of the chairs in stunned amazement.

(You can view the video here after we take it down from the homepage.)