Category Archives: Marriage

Wonder Love

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

October 10, 2005

He was “Little Stevie Wonder” at just 12 years old, fresh from his first appearance on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. Since that debut, Wonder has recorded more than 30 Top 10 hits and won 19 Grammys.

After a ten-year absence from recording, Wonder is back. He is motivated by a special message, the message some say “has formed the cornerstone of his legendary career.” Gathering reporters to his studio for a special studio session and interview, he interspersed performances of the 15 tracks on his new album with reflections on his career and his purpose for writing and singing.

“Of all the needs that we have right now,” Wonder tells them, “more than anything, we need a time for love.” Each track on his new album touches on love in one of its forms, “from physical to unrequited to family affection to the way people treat strangers on the street.”

Leaning forward during his interview, he drives his point home to his audience. “We need to have more respect for each other.” Wonder is responding to the lack of respect he senses coming “from people in their relationships as well as our leaders in government.”

Born as Steveland Morris Judkins Hardaway, on May 13, 1950, Wonder was only 12 when he began to record for Motown. He had his first hit at the age of 13, “Fingertips.” While his own performance as a singer won him critical acclaim, he also worked behind the scenes, writing for such groups as The Spinners and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.

Blind from infancy, Wonder developed a love of music. He began to learn the piano at the age of seven and had also mastered drums and harmonica by the age of nine. After his family moved to Detroit in 1954, Steveland joined a church choir, planting the root of a gospel influence on his music.

The enduring quality of Wonder’s music over a span of 40 years owes much to his ability to express optimism, faith in the future, and love. Sylvia Rhone, who heads up Motown Records, says, “Nobody can illuminate our greatest hopes, soothe our deepest fears, and put us on the musical high road like Stevie Wonder.”

Even his song titles inspire the high road. How can anyone repress a smile when reading, “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” “My Cherie Amour” and “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours”? His 1984 hit, “I Just Called To Say I Love You”, is Motown’s biggest-selling single in the UK and won him an Oscar for best song.

“Ever since Songs in the Key of Life,” Wonder says, “I feel it’s been a blessing from God giving me the titles, but ultimately, all songs must stand on their own. I’ve always written about love, but the ones that spoke to me the loudest are the ones you’ll find on A Time 2 Love.”

We owe a debt of gratitude to Wonder and other entertainers who use their talents to inspire the finer and nobler sentiments in life. The unfortunate truth is that we humans have both love and hate pulsing through our blood. And it is the rhythm and sound of our culture that is needed to beat the drum, stirring our passions and filling our spirit with the life-giving message of love.

A Time 2 Love is a message worth passing on — in music and in life.

       

December 10, 2004 – The Best Part of Snuggling

 See Archives for more past editorials.

Kiss, Kiss, I Love You

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

September 12, 2005

Sitting in airport lounges for four months, I have been surrounded by human love in action.

Cars driving up to the check-in curbside, trunk lids opening, bags being piled with sweaters…hugs, kisses and more hugs.

Travelers with time on their hands stroll through airport shops filled with scarves, stuffed toys, and boxes of chocolate, a perfect place to grab an offering for family waiting at home.  I missed you.

Mothers and fathers, like families of ducks, lead a trail of small children dragging midget rolling suitcases through the airport.  Blankets are spread on the floor, tired Teddy bears, mussed hair, fussy tears, and sleepy bundles…a mother leans over, I love you.

Tonight as I sit waiting for the boarding call on my final flight home, I snatch time to call those I love.  I leave a short message telephone for my daughter.  I miss her.  Can we meet for lunch when I get home this week? Love you, Mom.

I connect with my son three thousand miles away.  It’s great to hear your voice!  He surprises me with news that he might be able to fly home to visit me in two weeks.  My heart lifts.

My husband is still at work, but I leave a message with my flight number and arrival time.  I close my eyes and see him standing as always just ahead of me, arms extended for both my suitcase and my hug.    It’s been a great trip, but I’m really looking forward to seeing you.  I’ve missed you!

And finally, the call over the speaker comes.  I follow in line down the tunnel to the open plane door, stow my bags and click my seatbelt shut.  Faintly, I hear my husband’s return call on my cell phone.  There’s just enough time before the pilot tells us to turn off all electronic devices.  Yes, I’m finally on my way home.  Can’t wait to see you.  Love you, too!

I close my eyes as the last few people shuffle bags overhead.  Behind me, one seat over, a woman, like me, makes use of the last few minutes before they close the door to call home.  It’s a familiar call.  Hearing her pass along the brief details of flight arrival, the softness in her voice lets you know someone is waiting to welcome her home.   Yes, the plane is on time.  I’ll see you soon.  Kiss, kiss.  Love you.

What does this all have to do with sex and teaching abstinence until marriage?  Nothing.  And everything.

Nothing  —  Kiss, kiss…I love you.  So much love flows through an airport. Strands of love stretching around the globe renewed with simple hugs, short cell phone messages, and postcards carefully written over cups of coffee.  No sex.  But, oh, the magnitude of love offered and accepted.

And everything. —  Abstinence until marriage is a message about the purity of love, a gift we can treasure and share anywhere at anytime with anyone.  Love without sex affirmed as supremely worthy is no small accomplishment in a society that has led young people to believe that, for love to matter, sex must be involved.

Returning home…my eyes hold back tears as I think of once again being able to talk and spend quiet moments with my husband.  It’s been a long summer of trips leaving home.  Hotel rooms.  Rental cars.  Business meetings.  Conferences.

Yet…returning home…month after month, year after year, to be greeted by my husband of thirty years, is a renewal of love unending.  It is a reason to love traveling, if only for the coming home again.

Airports are places where goodbyes build opportunities for reflecting on what makes life worthwhile.  One goodbye, a hug and a kiss, and love held pure over thousands of miles and hundreds of days because it lives in the heart.  A truth about love worth remembering…and teaching.

 

April 11, 2005 – Why I Teach Abstinence

 See Archives for more past editorials.

Recipe for Families

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

June 13, 2005

Growing up as a city kid, I lived on dreams of life on a farm.  Those farm kids were the luckiest.  They had everything!

Not until my thirties did I have a chance to learn about farm life from an expert.  Pauline, my co-teacher, had grown up on the picture-perfect Iowa farm.  Her strawberry blond hair was set in tight curls that bounced when she laughed.  And she was always laughing.

I loved to hear about cows covered in snow and five brothers always up to mischief.  But the best talk of all was food talk.  Her mother was the proverbial “best cook.”  We always looked forward to Mom’s treats arriving with Pauline on Monday mornings.

Pauline had had it all, living on a farm.  But, I soon learned that the trick of having it all was figuring out how to do without…when you didn’t have it all.  Living miles away from town, if you ran out of buttermilk, it was no quick trip to the store.

Smart cooks knew how to grab a lemon and squirt it into milk.  Or if no lemon was on hand…then vinegar.  If no vinegar…then cream of tartar.  And if no vinegar…well, maybe there would be a box of yogurt tucked in the back of the refrigerator.

It turned out that the best farm cooks knew how to make everything out of anything.  If you didn’t have it…then find something else…and substitute.  There was no end to what Pauline’s mom could create.  “Yeah,” Pauline laughed.  “She can even make apple pie without the apples!”

Apple pie without apples?  Pauline shared the secret with me over twenty years ago.  And I still can’t believe it possible.

Sure, I love Ritz Crackers.  The commercials are right, “Everything tastes good on a Ritz.”  But I would never grab a Ritz when I had a craving for an apple.

But, yes, there it is.  Online at AllRecipes, there they are…recipes of crackers, brown sugar, and cinnamon.  Apple pie?

Now I can truly understand how a lot of sugar and cinnamon held together by wet crackers and baked hot on a cold winter night could taste good in the middle of Iowa.  And I can truly understand how a mother could dream up a quick answer for six children, when Dad asks, “What is this?”

Mom could tell them the truth, “These are cracker crumbs buried in sugar…Cracker Pie.”  And the kids would still probably eat Cracker Pie.  But oh, the creativity of that brilliant farm mother who looked at the row of eyes staring up at her and elevated the simple cracker.  Maybe her strawberry blond curls bounced and most likely her eyes twinkled as she answered Dad.  “This is Mock Apple Pie.”

Recipes give us what we want.  But no matter how close to apples one gets with 30 round crackers, if I want an apple pie, I will make it with apples.

Substitutes are good when we need them.  But they are still substitutes.  A serving of five-star Mock Apple Pie has 503 calories, 24 grams of fat, and 448 mg of salt.  That is a poor substitute for 255 calories, 9 grams of fat, and 132 mg of salt contained in a hot steaming slice of five-star real apple pie.

Substitutes may be just what we need to make it through the tough times.  But if we want a recipe for success, the best way to get apple pie is to buy apples.

Another Father’s Day is here.  I think of how important my own father was in shaping our home.  I am grateful for my husband’s part in guiding our children through the hard times and laughing with them in the crazy times.

Most of all, I pray for my son and daughter, that they will value the role of a father enough to build their own families with Dad in the recipe.  There is no substitute like the real thing.

Happy Father’s Day!

 

Mock Apple Pie:   http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Mock-Apple-Pie-III/Detail.aspx

Apple Pie:  http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Apple-Pie-by-Grandma-Ople/Detail.aspx

June 18, 2004:   Me Jane…You Tarzan

Offended by Creation

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

March 7, 2005

Every once in a while, a rare moment of complete honesty is so refreshing that, even when it jars our sensibilities, we are glad of it.

An event at Harvard last week has much to teach us about where we are headed in a culture increasingly offended by creation.  The Harvard Crimson reports that the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance is up in arms.  Harvard, they protest, lacks “sensitivity towards issues of sexuality.”

So what happened?  Some brutal attack against a gay person?  Some poisoned insult?  Perhaps an instance of employment discrimination, a professor fired because of his sexual orientation?  Nope.  It’s worse than all of this…much worse.

Jada Pinkett Smith, wife of Will Smith, spoke at Harvard, and what she had to say has offended the BGLTSA community.  Darling of popular culture, married to Will, and black and beautiful on movie posters, Jada was selected as Artist of the Year.  If she had only been the quiet submissive type to accept her award and bat a few lashes at the camera, all would have been well.

But she couldn’t leave it at that.  Nope.  She had to offend the sensibilities of the Harvard intellectual elite by doing the unthinkable…embracing her creation as woman.  She told the audience, “Women, you can have it all – a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career.”

Whoa, Jada.  It’s all right for Hollywood to exploit woman, baring all and filming the union of man and woman from every possible camera angle.  It will even earn stars coveted awards and invitations to speak at Harvard.  But let’s not affirm Creation’s sexual design between man and woman as something to be desired.  Let’s not be “heteronormative!”

Can we appreciate the irony of Jada’s insults?  Our intellect has perfected the use of Creation’s gift of heterosexual love to offend families and children with unending pornography…at the same time that our intellect is offended by speaking of heterosexual love as a natural gift of Creation.

This particular irony is more than humorous.  It is an irony that brings clarity.

The current wars about what we should teach our children about sex are enflamed by the same debate burning around Jada’s comments at Harvard.  It’s just that few have been willing to speak boldly and honestly about the great offense of abstinence.

Several years ago, I asked a critic of abstinence education, “What is wrong with teaching children the value of abstaining from sex?”

She sputtered and shook her head from side to side.  “Have you seen what they are teaching?”  I had.  “It’s so homophobic!”

If one didn’t know better, you would think she meant it teaches children to hate gays.  But to those who lead the re-engineering of human sexuality, it’s all the same thing.  In their minds, affirming heterosexuality is equivalent to hating homosexuality.

Abstinence educators are actually charged with teaching that, “a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity.”  As we ponder the offense of affirming heterosexuality and marriage, we have to wonder what the Harvard intelligentsia would recommend as the antidote to unwed teen pregnancy?  Abortion?  Contraception?  GLTB sex?

Abstinence education offends because it has the audacity to teach, “You can have it all – a loving man, a devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career.”  It offends when it teaches students that babies are a natural design of creation coming from sex between a man and a woman.  It is “heteronormative” when it suggests that our children can have it all…sex, pleasure, babies, and marriage…if they can succeed in abstaining from sex until marriage.

Sensitive Harvard Politico Correctos don’t want Jada, the darling of Hollywood to say it.  And they don’t want our teachers to say it.

Men and women were created for each other, but don’t dare say it out loud.

April 23, 2004:   m…m…m…Married?

September 24, 2004:   End of Life as a Fairly Normal Person

 See Archives for past editorials.

Sex Without Value

Jane Jimenez

Jane Jimenez

February 21, 2005

The large card still stands on my dresser, a sweet remembrance from the man who has shared over thirty years of life with me.  As February winds down, my mind is filled with the many pictures of love

renewed on this past Valentine’s Day.

At one luncheon, going around the table for introductions, we shared special thoughts about the husbands and wives who completed our lives.  From newlyweds to those married over forty years, it was refreshing to see the tenderness used to describe the object of each person’s affection.

Last Sunday, Andrew thanked those who organized this month’s Sweetheart Dinner.  As he talked, sounds of babies surrounded us, until one coo and babble turned more insistent.  Mom bundled up her hungry babe, and headed to the private room in the back.

Sex is at the center of so much loveliness.  It is the intensity of passion, the bond of reconciliation, the playful encounter and…the creator of life…building and sustaining relationships of love, promise and honor.

And then…we turn on the television and see sex purchased with a hundred dollar bill on prime time television during what used to be family hour.  Wives are traded, singles prowl the city in search of sex, and nearly naked ladies sell everything from potato chips to beer.

Computer filters must fight the ever-mutating attacks on family life by XXX fare.  Even public librarians defend the right to provide porn, resisting filters to protect the minds and hearts of children.

Cheap sex is not new.  Modern culture simply puts a new shine on the “world’s oldest profession” and magnifies the ways to profit from sex.  Yet, one sad result of our ability to reproduce sex on stage, television, music and film is the complete disconnect of sex from its greatest purpose and its best expression.

Promiscuity is a concept undone by American marketers and impotent judges.  Still defined by a dusty dictionary… aimless, designless, desultory, haphazard, hit-or-miss, indiscriminate, irregular, purposeless, unplanned…the word promiscuity carries no meaning today because all sex is permissible.

The director of a major metropolitan agency worked to explain the finer points of their sex education program to me.  They taught it all, she said.  They empowered kids to embrace their sexuality.  They reinforced that sex was just a normal part of life, complete with deprovera, cherry-flavored condoms, and “confidentiality,” the promise they will help kids evade the loving supervision of parents who know that sex is not meant for teens.

What about abstinence? I asked.

Sure, she said.

Sure, what?  I asked.

For some kids, abstinence is a choice…until they are ready for sex.  Responsible sex.

Responsible sex?  What would you tell a thirteen-year-old girl in your sex ed class who came to you for your advice about having “responsible sex” with her sixteen-year-old boyfriend?  Could you tell her, since she asked, that you advised her not to have sex of any kind with him…that sex at her age was unhealthy and out-of-order…and even just a teensy weensy irresponsible?

Without a pause big enough to blink, she fired back at me.  No.

No?

No.  We are values-neutral.  We don’t teach values.

Sex without values?

What kind of educator is reluctant to teach our children the immovable healthy boundaries of sex?  This means more than mentioning boundaries…saying that abstinence is a choice…something that some kids will choose…until they don’t choose abstinence.

Sex education is a matter of connecting sex with a nobler, finer purpose than recreating in the backseat of a car with a kid you just met.  And it is a matter of believing in that purpose with enough conviction to commit to it and promote it and counsel for it.

Everyone teaches the value of sex.  It’s just a matter of focus.  Either you link sex to the values that sustain healthy relationships and support the care of our next generation with mothers and fathers who love each other…or you don’t.

Our children learn what we teach.  If they are having sex that is aimless, designless, desultory, haphazard, hit-or-miss, indiscriminate, irregular, purposeless, unplanned…need we wonder why?  Aren’t they doing exactly what we are teaching them?

Sex without value IS a value.

May 14, 2004  Order in the Courtroom!

 See Archives for past editorials.