Abraham and Sarah (and Hagar) - A Biblical 'Baby Mama' Drama

(Just quick note before I begin.  The reference to Baby Mama was described by a student in which I replied "Even if I did see that movie, I wouldn't tell anyone I did")

Today, as my students and I embark on a journey through learning about the Abrahamic Religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), I wanted to share with you the story of Abraham, his wife Sarah, Sarah's friend and Abraham's concubine, and their two kids.

Abraham's story starts just like many others.  God (YHWH, Adonai, Allah, etc. etc.) appears before and tell him that he must leave his father's house to start a new faith.  This new faith, would be focused on one god (ahem, monotheistic) as opposed to what Abe's fellow Canaanites believed in. (Many gods!)  In a land of polytheists, Abraham was tasked with the chore of pushing monotheism along with completing ten severe tasks to show his faith in God.

And so, as a metaphoric slap-in-the-face to his dad, Abe left for greener pastures (The Promised Land).  Over the next ten years, Abe and his wife were unable to conceive a child.  Enter Hagar, an Egyptian handmaiden of Sarah, with a name that is quite unpleasant to say but I'd imagine she had quite the body.  Sarah decides to tell Abe that he should sleep with, and conceive a child with Hagar.  (Sarah is quite the wife, am I right gentlemen?)

Abe sleeps with Hagar.  She becomes pregnant.  Sarah flips out, goes postal, goes ballistic and tells Hagar to take her fetus and get out of the house.  (As we read this, many of my female students saw this was quite ironic how Sarah wanted her husband to sleep with Hagar then gets angry and bitter.  So I suggest this shows us the two-sidedness of the female personality.  The boys laughed, the girls gave me piercing stares...)

Hagar follows the order and begins to travel into the desert.  Thankfully, shortly after God stops the young handmaiden and tells her that if she returns to the house of Abraham, her son (Ishmael) will be the head of many great tribes.  Hagar returns to the house, Ishmael is born and things get a lot weirder.

Thirteen years later, God promises Abraham that he will allow Sarah and him to conceive a child (Isaac).  But first, Abe must uphold a new portion of the covenant between him and God.  All males in the new faith must be circumcised to differentiate between themselves and the non-believers.  Abe, all of the men in his household, his 13 year old son Ishmael and Isaac (the newborn) are all circumcised.  (To translate the looks on my male students faces when they hear this:  YEEEEEEOOOOUCHHHH!!!)

To add to the weirdness some more, Sarah (now deciding that Isaac is good enough for her) chooses to kick out that trashy handmaiden Hagar and her unwanted son.  Forcing them to wander the deserts to find a new promised land.  Isaac would remain in Canaan (Modern-day Israel) and form the Twelve Tribes of Judaism while Ishmael's descendants would become the Arab tribes and eventually create Islam.

There's much more to tell, but I like to keep the posts short.  Let me know if there's other Biblical/Religious ideas you'd like to hear more about!

Back from the Mountains!

Even though it's good to get away once in awhile, there is nothing quite like being home.  Ange and I (and Felicia, my Future Sister-in-Law) headed up to the Pocono's to our friend, Rug's, house.  While there, we enjoyed the overwhelmingly welcoming hospitality of Rug's parents.  This hospitality included meals that were always at least two courses (some were three) and always included wine/cognac/beer.  As usual, the weekend was full of fun but went by way too quickly.  Thankfully, I have an extended weekend! 

With tomorrow off, I have some pressure off of the constant demands of being a teacher and will get to my lesson planning after a much-needed night's rest in my comfy bed.

Looking forward to this week in school!  Starting a unit on Medieval Europe and the Middle East on Wednesday which I'm going to begin with discussions on the three main religions of these areas:  Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  I love discussing religion with my students!  It's important that I tell them that we are all here to share our beliefs and viewpoints while keeping in mind that I'm presenting simply the beliefs to the class and not forcing anything on them.

Even when the students identify themselves as Christian, Jewish, or Muslim;  it is quickly realized that they do not know as much of their religions as they think they do.  So no matter what, there are always questions and surprises.  Hoping to share with them some stories from the Old/New Testaments/Qur'an that will help them relate to the beliefs of these religions.

And now a wizard to complete this post!

What Would They Say About Us?

An interesting idea came up in one of my classes.  One of the students made the comment that Medieval Japan seems "violent" and I asked the question what people in the future would think of our culture?

Another student raised his hand and said "People that study us in the future will see us as violent."  After discussing the violent tendencies of our society, I began to tell the students that it's hard for us to see ourselves as more or less violent because we are living at the time and seeing our society as we want to see it.

When we study cultures of the past, sometimes we highlight negative, violent characteristics but when we study our own culture, it's hard not to immediately think of the positives.  But, 500 years in the future, when new cultures are studying the United States of America (of the past), they will note the negative characteristics like violent video games, sports, movies, television, etc.  This statement, of course, got the students concerned overwhelming with the thought of the United States not existing that far into the future.  I could've frightened them ever more and named all of the cultures/societies/empires that collapse extremely horrifically in LESS than 223 years (our current age) but I decided to hold that off for another day.  :)

Just a quick post.  Now I'm going to see what Ibn Tufayl says about tabula rasa...

PS... Heading to the Poconos this weekend.  Going to give the Android Blogger a whirl and maybe I'll post over the weekend!

Snow Day!

Namaste!

There is quite nothing like having a snow day in the middle of the week (especially a week where Friday is already a day reserved for Professional Development).  With one day of teaching left in the week, I can relax tonight.

A decent size snow storm hit us during the night, plows came in, snow shovelers came by and not much is left in the way of being "snowed in".   Needless to say, Angela and I spent the day inside with Dharma.   While Ange was clearing off our cars (she volunteered!)  I decided to whip up some home fries so we could have a nice relaxing breakfast.  Add a couple eggs, a couple slices of toast and it was a delicious meal!

We finally got a chance to watch Inception (which came in the mail about a month ago!) which turned out to be an awesome movie!  (Ange is unsure if she liked it or not...)  After seeing South Park's hilarious spoof on the concept of 'Dreams within Dreams', I knew that I had to see it and I was not disappointed.  What could have just been a strange trippy Sci-Fi movie (ahem, Matrix) turned out to contain a strong storyline, a great background and heart-racing action to the end.

In addition to a movie, I was also able to finish two books!  The first was Heroes of the Valley which was lent to me by a fellow teacher (who also shares a love for Young Adult Fiction).  The plot of this book involved Twelve Viking/Norse families who were the descendants of great heroes and the events that occur when two of these families get into a conflict that fractured the laws that these ancient heroes set down many years before.  I definitely recommend this book as it was quite a page-turner even though I was hoping to see references to Norse gods, but there were none (which made me sorta sad but I still enjoyed the book).

The second, a shorter book, called Siddhartha (How strange is it that at the time of posting the cost is $6.66...wow!) by Herman Hesse (who I happen to have read a lot of his book).  Just as this title suggest, it follows the path of a brahmin's (Hindu High Priest) son as he leaves his family to follow a path to Enlightenment.  Along the way, he meets the first Buddha, finds himself to be a cheating merchant, becomes a heavy gambler, fathers a son but eventually he able to achieve the goal that he set out for himself.  I also heavily recommend this book.  It is heavily laden in the abstract ideas of existence and the pursuit of enlightenment, but it's not a hard read.

Buddhism is a topic that gets brought up many times throughout the year as I teach and I find that the students are always so interested in the ideas of the religion.  For those of you who don't know, Buddha's teachings are based first and foremost on the idea that Suffering is EVERYWHERE.  (Seems like a pretty awful way to start a religion but I encourage you to look up more about Buddhism and find out what Buddha was saying about a human's existence!)

Going to finish drinking some tea, play with Dharma a little bit and then maybe start on my next read: Hayy Ibn Yaqzan.

It Happened Around 5:30 AM

5:30 AM:  That's when said to myself "Okay, I'll take a snow day tomorrow."  And here we are, waiting for the snowfall.  (But I did get grading done, so in the case of school tomorrow I'll be ready!)

In other news...  Ange got me an amazing photo mosaic for Christmas (pictured below) of my favorite LOST character, Mr. Desmond Hume.  There is nothing quite like a time-traveling Scotsman who would do anything for his love.  (I'm sure a later post will deal more with Hume...)

So I put it on display in my classroom and one of the laws that govern a classroom is that it take at least a full day before the students realize there is something new in the room.  This applies not just to inanimate objects but also people/animals.  Today, a couple of my students pointed out the picture.

The first student said "Why do you have a picture of Chuck Norris by the window?!"  So I had to tell them it wasn't Chuck Norris, but I didn't tell them who it really was.

The second student said "Do you really have a puzzle on yourself on display?!"  (I quickly smiled to myself) And then replied,  "Thanks, but it's not me."   So being mistaken for Desmond/him being mistaken for me, I'll take that and put it in my pocket.

Time to do some snow dancing, drink more Kahlua coffee (4th cup SEE YA BED!) and get some more reading done!

Dear Mother Nature, I've Got Work to Do

It's not the grumpy old man in me shining through, but the man who wants to achieve great things with his time!  It seems that snow is on its way once again to the East Coast sometime around tomorrow evening into Wednesday morning.  This, of course, means school will most likely be canceled.

That sucks for all most (Maybe, just me.) teachers!  With one day of school already gone this week, the last thing my budding young scholars need is yet another day off.  :sigh:

On the brighter side, today absolutely flew by!  The Learning Objective?  Students created short skits based on Feudalism in Japan.  That meant, as facilitator, I was running around the classroom ensuring each of the groups were focused, understood the directions, were following the directions and would be ready to present after just 20 minutes of preparation.  That's a lot to handle in 45 minutes!

Some highlights?
1.  One student decided to add a cartwheel to the skit.
2.  At least four students had quite impressive death scenes.
3.  To top it off, one student had created a crown for himself that said "Emperor of China"  (Look at the objective if you're not sure why that's a highlight...)

Time to heat up a Lean Cuisine, do some grocery shopping (To prepare for Snowmageddon 2011) and more lesson plans!!

From the Beginning...

So I spent Thursday night after work watching LOST, which is one of my favorite past times.  I decided to throw in Season One, which is probably my favorite season.  Even with this being my 6th, or 7th time seeing these episodes, I'm still moved by the events that occur.

SPOILER ALERT:  Don't read if you plan on watching LOST and not being spoiled...



The Pilot episode (aptly named, The Pilot), begins in what is a beautiful bamboo forest, continues into a pristine beach then erupts into a chaotic, fire-engulfed plane crash where life and death are battling for the lives of the survivors.  Jack, one of my heroes, responds to the situation and takes this opportunity to show courage. (While personally, even with a medical doctorate, I'd be heading into the forest!)

As the Pilot continues, we see a multi-ethnic community coming together after a horrifying and traumatic event.  Even with all of the tension, uncertainty, and the enormous differences in their culture, these people are able to survive together.

Something that I always reflect on while teaching is this fictional situation.  As a Social Studies teacher, part of my curriculum deals with Multi-Cultural Education.  In my mind, I'm preparing my students for a LOST-esque  situation.  What if Sawyer, Sayid, Jin, Michael, etc are not slinging around ethnic slurs and arguing on the basis of their differences and began their journey on the Island in cooperation.  (A lot less drama, yes.)  But think of what they could have achieved from the beginning had they understood their differences.

More about LOST, and Teaching later...

Appetizers Supersized!

The last thing I need is to eat Pigs-in-a-Blanket, so I decided to make some JUMBO SIZED PiaB!   (Learned some things along the way, cook them for longer, use less cheese and maybe I'll crispify the dogs before I wrap them up!)

Second Post!

Saint Nick was very kind to me this year, including all of the things I bought myself!   This includes my shiny new Olympus E-PL1.  Below is a photo I shot while waiting for Ange while she tried on some dresses.

Cookies!

Spending the entire day (except for bringing Dharma out) inside caused quite a bit of cabin fever.  I 'hiked' a Gingerbread Man dog toy into the hallway and knocked a (huge) picture frame down... so we took a trip to Stop and Shop.

 (Note:  This is what is left after I ate six cookies and a glass of milk...)