In Matthew 10, Jesus warns his disciples of the hostility that lies ahead of their commissioned work. In verse 16, Jesus says,

“I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; therefore be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.”

Wolves are ferocious, violent creatures that prey on sheep. Jesus knew his disciples needed galvanizing and specific instruction to be on guard — sharp and clever like snakes. But He also knew to instruct His twelve to remain steadfast in their purity of heart. What seems like a contradiction, snakes vs doves, is Jesus guiding His followers to be savvy of the traps laid before them but exhorting them to never forget their true purpose.

Like many of Arkansas Strong’s followers, I’m an educator. That fierce love for Arkansas kids is our purpose, and we must be awake and attentive to the traps laid before us as public school advocates. Vouchers are wolves in sheep’s clothing; proponents of voucher programs masquerade their snake oil as the savior of education. But we know it’s a scheme, a trap set for hundreds of thousands of rural students to be harmed by a policy that’s not made for them. Instead, these voucher programs undeniably funnel public tax money to families that can already afford a choice for their kids. We do not need this rip-off here in Arkansas.

It’s time for patriotic Arkansans, we who believe in the American Dream, to stand together and stand strong for Arkansas children. We will be shrewd like serpents and innocent like doves. We will stand up and fight for our public schools, and we will do this because we are rooted in faith, hope, and love for all Arkansas kids.

Arkansas Strong in Education is a resource for public school advocates to become shrewd like serpents in public education policy. Please use these materials to educate and equip yourself and others who believe in standing up for public schools.

Arkansas Strong also has several pieces on first-person experiences from public educators. We recommend taking time to read through these poignant stories and hope you will find empathy and shared community with these authors. May we suggest beginning with “My turn to speak: a rural teacher lends her voice to the voucher debate.“

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When I was 13 years old, our neighbors the Johnsons moved out. The Johnson’s old house sat vacant for almost two years. The Johnson’s had made their home a place of happiness, barbecues, and laughter. Now that they were gone, the house appeared to be a sad, empty box. I looked at the tall grass and weeds surrounding the house and wondered if anyone would move in. 

My sister and I were the only kids on the block, so summer vacations were never much fun. Two days after school let out for summer vacation, I was sitting in my room thinking about the long, boring summer to come. I was moping when my mom excitedly called me to the front window, 

”Someone is moving into the old Johnson’s house!”

“That’s good,” I replied unenthusiastically. 

I was sure it was just more older people, and I didn’t want them to see me being nosy with my mom. All day my mom keep peeking out the window. I knew my mom missed Mrs. Johnson’s friendship and was hopeful about gaining another friend in the new neighbors. My mom baked some cookies and made lemonade then gathered me, my sister, and my dad to go visit the new neighbors. 

A tall lady with almond colored skin and pretty gold glasses answered the door. “Hello, we are the Thomas’s from next door.” My mom introduced us: “This is Dawn, Jenny, I’m Ephrianetta, and this is my husband Don,” my mom proudly pointed as she labeled our small family. “I’m Rose Owens. My husband, Carl, is in the garage, and my son Jeffrey is upstairs.” Ms. Rose told us. My father, who didn’t want to come, quickly scurried off to meet Mr. Owen, which must have gone well because they became friends quickly. Mrs. Owens went to the stairs and yelled “JEFFFREEE!” I heard movement and look at the stairs to see the most gorgeous boy walking down the steps. 

Jeffery slightly resembled his mom and was about a foot taller. He had on a black shirt, red and black basketball shorts, with white K-Swiss shoes. I knew right away that I was in love. My mom introduced us, we found out we were the same age and like most of the same things.

Jeffery and I became fast friends. We hung out the entire summer, made a bucket list for the summer. I taught Jeffery how to swim and he taught me how to play the Sega video game.

On the last day of summer, Jeffery and I were going over our bucket list. I had only one item left unchecked: kiss Jeff. “Did you complete your list?” Jeffery asked. “Most of it, what about you?” I completed everything except for one thing, then Jeffery leaned over and kissed me. My head was spinning, and I was happy Jeffery felt the same way I did. 

That night as I laid out my new book bag, and clothes for school the next day. I was pleasantly surprised at how different my summer had turned out. 

The post Summer Lovin appeared first on Arkansas Strong.

Joan Didion

But this too is true: stories can save us.

Tim O’Brien

I spend a lot of my life thinking about stories. It’s my job as an English professor, newspaper columnist, and writer/curator of Arkansas Strong. There’s a side to it that is clinical. In literature classes, for example, we examine the nuts and bolts of stories, put them under a microscope and look at all of the parts and how they come together to form a working whole. I try to teach people skills of good story-telling: voice, order, pacing, description, and dialogue.

For a teacher, however, there’s an entirely different side than the clinical, as I imagine there is with many jobs. Teaching is special, though, in that it lends itself to the listening. If a teacher is willing, she becomes privy to all kinds of stories that bubble up in her students. I’ve come to believe that everyone has a story and a need to tell it—if only there is someone who will listen, in a place that is safe. My office often becomes that place. Sometimes the walls hum with the sense of the sacredness of things they share. And I feel like a story keeper. It’s an enormous privilege.

At Arkansas Strong I am challenged to write my own stories, and offer a wider space for others to tell theirs, as we put together this patchwork of what it means to be Arkansan. Strong. Present with each other in this moment. Hopefully progressive in making our state better for everyone.

So on Christmas Eve, the day after Joan Didion died, I am thinking of stories and how they shape us, reflect as well as determine our world views, and what we can learn from the choices we make about what stories we believe. I wrote earlier about An Arkansas Christmas—the different things that can look like for different folks. Today I am thinking about Christmas. The holiday. The point of the whole thing, which of course will be different for different people, and I respect that. I can only tell my story. And the point of the whole thing for me is Jesus.

I have read Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris. Seen Zeitgeist. I’ve been to Bethlehem. I know the mythology and pagan traditions surrounding the holiday and its history—I teach all of that in ancient World Lit. And although I believe the story in the bible about the birth of Jesus, it is not so important to me to debate anyone about its literal or figurative truths. What is important to me, personally, today, is to contemplate the story. To sit with it. To embrace as much of the mystery of it as I can and be instructed by it in ways that make me better, kinder, more graceful, humble, and possibly able to participate in the project of bringing more peace on earth.

On our screens in favorite holiday movies, in Christmas carols present and past, in pulpits and Sunday School classes across America, the Christmas story will be told a thousand different ways. Some of those will be silly and superficial. Others homespun. Still others will even be harmful, appealing to our worst impulses as humans rather than our best. Is there possibly anything new that can be said, any insights for this particular moment in our state, country, world?

It is not so important to me to debate anyone about its literal or figurative truths. What is important to me, personally, today, is to contemplate the story. To sit with it. To embrace as much of the mystery of it as I can and be…
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I want to have a moment like U2’s Bono had sitting in a Christmas Eve service behind a pillar in St. Patrick’s in Dublin, trying not to fall asleep. Here’s how he recounts it:

For the first time…it really sank in, the Christmas story. The idea that God, if there is a force of Love and Logic in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself is amazing enough. That it would seek to explain itself by becoming a child born in straw poverty, in shit and straw…a child…I just thought ‘Wow!’  Just the poetry…Unknowable love, unknowable power describes itself as the most vulnerable.

Bono goes on to observe that Love has to become action. It has to become flesh. It’s not just something that is; Love must do. And the way Love chose to introduce itself to the world—the being and the doing—is the most counter intuitive story in the world. The opposite of strength as we tend to think of it: conquest, powerful, rich, imposing, invulnerable. It’s strength as innocence. Humility. A willingness to step into the mess and offer itself regardless of the difficulties and dangers. I want this story to shape me, to be my story too. I want to recognize this Love in the world. I want to be it and do it.

Carlos Rodriguez wrote this on Twitter this morning, and gave me a Bono moment I now pass along to you:

It’s an unwed woman who carries God.

It’s the pagans from the East who recognize God.

It’s the workers in the field who hear from God.

It’s the marginalized neighborhood who welcomes God.

It’s God who chooses the lowly and the broken to rise.

Christmas is here.

Let hope in.

The post Tell Me a Story appeared first on Arkansas Strong.

I want this established before I tell you the next thing: I am scared of Covid. Irrationally, perhaps, I am not so afraid for myself. I am not prone to get sick, never have been; the worst thing I’ve ever experienced besides childbirth is having my appendix out and the occasional migraine. Haughty as it sounds, if I got Covid I doubt it would kill me. Not that I want it to try. What scares me, however, is the danger of Covid for people who are not me.

Last year it was my parents. I guarded them like a bulldog; we didn’t go into their house for months, didn’t touch them, stayed six feet away. We’d congregate in chairs in their yard to visit while they held court from above on the porch. This arrangement worked okay until it got cold. Then we had to wrap up in coats and blankets and still cut our visits short. I watched the luster disappear from my mother’s eyes as the months dragged on and on. She wanted to hold her grandkids, needed to feel their warmth. And they needed her; we all did. It was the worst fall—they missed my son’s games as senior quarterback—and the saddest Christmas ever.

When they were finally able to get the vaccine it was like the sun came out. None of us had to be wary anymore, horrified by the thought we might kill them by bringing the virus into their home. My dad has trouble breathing anyway. My worst nightmare was giving him Covid and him dying alone in the hospital on a ventilator, the way more than one of his friends did. But the miracle happened. We were able to go back to normal; go to church together, share Sunday dinners; they even made some of the girls’ volleyball games. Harper got to have a real graduation and they got to be there. Hunter too (from kindergarten). By summer all of us were vaccinated except the little ones. Life was good. We even went on vacation.

I started teaching a summer class in July, my first in-person encounter with a class full of students in over a year. I remembered why I love teaching. I love people. I love the exchange of ideas across a room, the flesh-and-blood reality and honesty and vulnerability you can’t get from a screen. It seemed so good for people to share their stories, their experiences and how they had coped with the pandemic. I was especially touched by the home health nurse in my class who kept working through it all. Her stories were like a soldier’s, returned from war.

We were about half way through the term when the Delta variant hit our collective radar. Suddenly everyone was talking about vaccine rates, rising cases, and how this mutation is killing children. Arkansas became the epicenter of the whole US. The clouds came out and hid the sun. I began to be more and more concerned about my nine-year-old Stella. And here I still stand as July gives way to August: what to do about school? Is it even safe for her to live in our house, with five other people going in and out—vaccinated but undoubtedly exposed—every day? I ordered some N95 masks on Amazon today and she informed me, “Mom, I cannot wear those. They look like beaks. I will be the only one at school and everyone will laugh at me.” The whole situation makes me angry.

A friend on Facebook last night shared her desire to make all of the posts about vaccinations go away. She argued that it is wrong to try to “shame/guilt people into deciding what is best for their body.” And she is right. Like so many other things, we seem unable to talk about this issue without devolving into that. My Twitter feed is full of one side calling the other names. No wonder Stella thinks she’ll be made fun of for wearing a mask. Depending on where you are and who you are with, you’re darned if you do and darned if you don’t. Someone else asked the other day, “What is the way out of this mess we are in?”

I don’t know. People smarter than I am don’t either. Since I tend to think it’s the answer to most things I think the answer to how we fight Covid is education. Continue to share basic truths with humility, reserving judgment. Require evidence for your own claims and the claims of others. Trust experts. Let facts stand. Consequences come. 

The bigger mess we must get out of is how divided we are. For that I know of no other remedy but love. Love brings us together. We must keep loving our neighbors, even if they disagree with us, even if we make each other angry. Especially then. Love does not celebrate when an unvaccinated Arkansan succumbs to Covid. Love does not say they deserve it or “I told you so.” Love takes the higher road. Love shows up in a mask on the porch with soup. Love is harder than being loud, being right, having the last word. Love doesn’t always get attention; it’s not always glamorous or popular or cool. Sometimes love requires us to give up some of our rights for others. Love doesn’t manipulate, or shame or guilt people in order to get our own way.  Love is relentlessly kind. Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Love in the Time of Cholera writes, “[T]hink of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end in itself.” That’s also how to love in the time of Covid. And it’s not easy. The right thing rarely is.

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