Grace, thanks.
The being-left-alone thing was kind of an unfortunate fluke (which WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN and I made that clear).
I read the kids the riot act - I mean, I kind of knew who did it but I didn't want to name names, so I just kind of presented it as a general, "this was disrespectful, it caused extra work for the custodian and it causes other people not to think well of the youth group."
One kid (one of the ones I suspected) later came up quietly and apologized (The other one is grounded for doing something troublemaking at home so he wasn't there. Although I question grounding from church activities - when I was a kid and was grounded, it was from everything BUT school and church, but that's neither here nor there).
Things went better tonight. After the lesson, half the kids elected to play indoor games (ping pong and such) and the other half, who are kind of musically inclined, actually gathered around the piano (and the one guy who brought his guitar) and we sang a little bit. It was nice. And I taught them "Children of the Heavenly Father," which is one of my favorite hymns (it a very simple Swedish song - almost a lullaby - and we sang it a lot in my church when I was growing up, I think because a lot of the people there were of Swedish extraction).
And, you know, it occurs to me once again that the musical analogy is a good one - no one feels "uncreative" when they're singing or playing a song or piece of music that someone else wrote, and there are people who make an entire career out of interpreting the writings of others. And it's even sometimes described as an act of "co-creation" - that the singer or musician is helping to bring the music to life by performing it.
So maybe that's how I need to look at the socks and shawls and whatnot that I knit, and the quilts I make from old established patterns - that I'm honoring the original creator by interpreting their pattern. And that it doesn't really matter that other people are being lionized for the stuff they've made, or if other people are seen as "hipper" than what I do.
I have a problem with comparing myself unfavorably to others - I always have.
1 comment:
I first heard Children of the Heavenly Father at a Prairie Home Companion show last winter. Garrison Keiler did it as a duet with a local singer, Erin Bodie, and it was just beautiful. I wanted so bad to get a tape or CD of it but that wasn't possible due to some kind of copyright or something with the show.
Re using other people's patterns, I have developed the attitude that everyone doesn't have to be a "designer." If no one knit someone else's patterns, there would be no reason for the "designers" to do what they do. Several of our Knitters' Guild members have had patterns published in some of the knitting magazines so the pressure is there ... everyone should be able to design stuff. You do that ... you design socks. I don't. At best, I can adapt stuff. But someone needs to knit those published patterns and I figure that's my role. Frankly, some of the patterns I've seen on the Internet (and in magazines) are not well written. I can sometimes spot problems in the finished garment because it was poorly designed.
I have no words about leaving you on your own with the youth group. I think your absent helper needs to be spoken to rather firmly about that. I don't know about you but I wouldn't think to follow teen-age boys into the restroom to see what they were doing in there unless it was so noisy I could tell it was trouble.
Charlotte - in Fenton, MO
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