Watch the Walk

"My sister, I hear that you've changed. Is it true? You're not one of us any more?"   A friend of mine got this call from her brother recently, the call that many people here worry about. Belonging is an important concern here. Each person belongs to a family, to a neighborhood, to a town, and then to different associations or schools or jobs, or whatever. But family comes first. And rejecting family, or being rejected by family, can carry significant consequences for all areas of a person's life. Now, it's been a few years since this friend changed. Her family's known for awhile about it, but in typical island conflict style, they've not raised the issue and she's not addressed it either. This has given her time to learn and grow, to show her new life in the community, and to bond with others who have made the same change in their lives. But now her family is making moves to have a confrontation.  When her brother called, she invited him to come...

The "stop and go" class "Getting started is the hard bit. Once you get going, it gets easier." That's what they say, right? So we put a lot of effort into starting things, anticipating that, once truly begun, they'll carry on easily. But sometimes things that have been going consistently still die easily. The English class that has two holidays in a row-- two days of missed class might mean that it takes two weeks for all the students to show up for class again. Or the work schedule that is consistently going well, and then someone is sick. And then another person is sick. And next thing you know it's been three weeks since everyone was at work on the same day. Or maybe a goal that you set forth: good habits you want to adopt or bad habits you want to drop. A couple of failures can stop the momentum and then... you're fighting inertia instead of just riding the wave of your success. As Simon Mignolet said, "Momentum is an amazing thing when it i...