Ward Family

Something magic happens every Sunday. My kids feel it. My nieces, Chloe, age 8, and Savannah, age 5, feel it. Ernie's 91-year-old mother, Lucille, feels it. We feel the magic at church.

Not everyone notices the magic at the same age. Last summer, our family reunion at Bear Lake ended on a Sunday morning with a dilemma: who would go to church? Some of the families are regular church-goers; some go once in a while; some never attend. Chloe, who goes most of the time, cried for an hour for permission to go with her cousin, Sarah, who never misses. Seth's fiance, Erika, who has yet to feel the magic, was astonished. Why would a child cry to go to church?

After four hours of church today, feeling the magic, I can answer easily. The magic is the love of a ward family. Chloe and Savannah, Lucille, Aubrey and Daniel, and I all are wrapped in that love every week. Sometimes it comes from a lesson or a talk. Sometimes it comes from a hug in the hall. Sometimes it shines from heaven in silent witness that God is listening to our private conversations. Often it comes as a prompting to hug someone else, to peer into her soul or offer comfort for his pain. Always it comes through the music of the hymns with their words and melodies of strength and peace. Always it is God's love through his family at church.

I have so many examples! Ten years ago, Aubrey was baptized. It was a messy time for our family; I had just filed for divorce, and we had a restraining order in place against her father. It was lifted just for the occasion of the baptism, but the awkwardness of the situation was extreme. Our stake held baptisms once a month on Saturday evenings, and it turned out that Aubrey was the only child from our ward that month. Still, 150 members of our ward came to attend her baptism. The baptism leaders were astonished. They had never seen such a show of support. With no idea of the circumstances, they just thought we were loved. We were. Our strong ward family circled in and held our little broken family in their loving arms. We are still in awe.

Ward love doesn't have to be expressed in dramatic ways. Not too long ago I was asked to sing at a Relief Society meeting and had volunteered to bring a dessert too. Then school commitments got crazy, and I couldn't figure out how I would fulfill my assignments. Worried, but not wanting to back out, I gratefully received two phone calls the day before the meeting: the first was Lynn Condie telling me she had made a copy of my music for the accompanist, saving me a step, and the other was Janet Peery telling me never mind about the dessert. Both women knew I was in over my head and offered relief, without my asking. I was grateful for their love.

There are wards with less magic. I have only experienced one. But even there, a rare wise man or woman carries its power. My ward in Stansbury Park was less experienced and more challenged, families were young and many were inactive. We moved there a year after my divorce and in all honesty, most ward members didn't know how to react to us. I was ten years older than most of the adults, and single. But we never lacked spiritually while we were there, and we were assigned a home teacher who knew how to strengthen us. Just before we moved away, he became the bishop. He had such a job to do! A ward with two hundred primary children, half of them inactive. I am sure his love has helped that ward grow up and become a loving, magical place.

Maybe magic is the wrong word to use here, if magic implies something that isn't possible or true. But magic is exactly right if it implies a powerful, universal force for good that heals hearts and creates hope. Because that is what I feel every Sunday when I go to church. If I couldn't go, I would feel just like Chloe and cry. I'd surprise Erika even more though--I don't think I'd ever stop, especially not just after an hour!

Tender Mercies

I went to the Bountiful temple tonight with my niece, Kara, who will be married next week to her best friend and sweetheart. Kara is a beautiful girl with long, flowing blonde hair and exotic green eyes that are always smiling and kind. She is studying to be a teacher and will graduate soon from BYU.

Kara is also a miracle girl. Her parents, though loving and intelligent, both struggled with drug addictions during Kara's childhood. She lived for a couple of years with an aunt, and there she learned to pray and go to church and do her homework. After that, there were other angels in her life. Kara stayed focused, and now her dreams are coming true. In addition to all her own hard work, Kara has received tender mercies from the Lord.

I love those words--tender mercies.

I also experienced tender mercy at the Bountiful Temple. Rachel chose to be there for her own endowment, two and a half years ago. Since she was our first child to be married, Leslie and I were new at being divorced parents together in the temple, and I was uncomfortable. As I entered the temple, I walked up to the recommend desk, aware that Leslie could be there with his wife, Rachel would have her sweetheart, and I would be painfully alone. After my recommend was examined, I was surprised to see the temple worker look at my name carefully and then say, "Sunderland...hmm. Have you ever run across an Ernie Sunderland?" First I was surprised, then he was, as I answered, "He is my husband!" He looked at me and chuckled for a while before he spoke again. Then he said, "I was his football coach at Ricks. Tell him Coach Grant says hi. I always did have to look after those running backs!"

Tender mercies to me are those times when God surprises us with blessings. For the rest of the day, even though I was still alone, I felt the comfort that God was well aware of my sadness. It turned out that Leslie didn't bring his wife either, and we had a beautiful experience with our daughter. Coach Grant's chuckle has stayed with me to this day. I'm glad to know that God is still looking after his running backs.

Wood Shipp

I knew when I wrote the post about women and the priesthood that I was leaving out something significant. It took only a few days to realize the missing chapter was about Bishop Shipp. But in order to explain his influence, I have to turn over some ugly stones and write about pornography and its effects on a marriage.

Before I was twenty, my experience with pornography amounted to this: one day when I was in about sixth grade, some girl friends and I walked to the local drug store to buy treats. On a circular rack was a magazine featuring a picture of Burt Reynolds, advertising a nude centerfold. My friends rushed over to look and I didn't. End of story. (Now I am a little skeptical of the whole thing. Even in my liberal Virginia community I doubt a magazine available to twelve year old's included full nudity. I guess I'll never know.)

At twenty, everything changed. I got married. My husband was a returned missionary, a student at BYU, and we married in the temple. It never occurred to me to ask personal questions like "Is looking at porn your favorite pastime?" My first clue was on our second day married when we walked into a hotel in San Diego that had brown-paper wrapped magazines in the gift shop. I watched my new husband's eyes as he glanced across the titles. My heart sank.

The real heartache began when we returned home. I actually went with him when he signed up for cable TV and premium channels, never having watched them before, completely naive about content. When later that night the first hard R film came on, and I protested, his answer was, "That's why I got the channel." He could tell I was disappointed, so soon he learned to tape his favorite movies at night, while we were asleep, so he could watch them when I wasn't home. Hearing the VCR click on in the middle of the night brought me something like panic attacks. My heart would race and I was filled with sadness. This went on for years.

I can't see any reason to detail other marital experiences, but over time it became evident that my husband was very addicted to pornography. Looking back, it seems obvious that I could have ended my marriage, or made stronger demands, but the culture and the time didn't prepare me for those options. Instead, we built a family and continued a marriage. We moved to Portland, Oregon, and began associations with friends who will forever be dear to our family. One of our dearest friends was our kind bishop, Wood Shipp. Bishop Shipp had a daughter my age, and grandchildren, and a gentle, beautiful wife.

With his fatherly ways, Bishop Shipp knew how to make every girl feel lovely. I don't think at first he even knew I had problems at home. Still, during my first few months in the ward, he staged a melodrama for the ward's entertainment, and cast me as the heroine. I wore a vintage lace dress and ringlets in my hair, playing against a dashing young hero and an equally dashing, experienced villian. I was 28 years old. Now I know that therapy comes in many disguises, and one of them is the theater: Bishop Shipp was affecting my self esteem. I just thought we were having fun.

His kind demeanor and this experience alone were enough to cast Bishop Shipp as a hero in my eyes, but we had an even more poignant experience. Several years later a friend offered me a book about sex addiction. I stashed it away for several weeks before I actually dared read it. Then one afternoon when I was alone I pulled it out and read it cover to cover. Never before had written words impacted me so deeply. I felt like it had been written just for me. The next Sunday I mentioned the book to my bishop only to have him answer that he had just picked up the same book and had read it on a plane flight the day before. Then he gave me a priesthood blessing, promising that my self esteem would no longer be impacted by my husband's actions.

I am sure there are women who don't care about a husband's fascination with airbrushed, cosmetically enhanced, professional fantasy sex partners. I now know that his addictions had nothing to do with his love for me. But it took a long time--and a divorce--for me to separate them. It wasn't until just a couple of years ago when I was sorting through old memorabilia that I came to a pile of all the special occasion cards he had ever given me. In one he had written "To the most wonderful person in the whole world." I believe now that he really thought that about me. I know now that his addiction grew from his own self esteem issues and a sensitive, idealistic temperament, and years of unmet needs as a child. I wish I could have been better prepared for his weakness and more helpful to his rehabilitation. But instead I was devastated.

Bishop Shipp's blessing planted the seeds of detachment that later gave me the strength to divorce. And yet he gave still another gift. This one happened quite a while after he was released as bishop, but it still counts! A few months before I moved away from Portland he planned another melodrama. He'd done a couple more since I'd been the star, and he'd always had young, perfectly cast heroines. But this time he wanted a reprise. He asked me to be the heroine. He staged me with a young, handsome hero--ten years younger than me. Every time I had to smile and bat my eyes I felt like my face would crack. I was a 39-year-old divorcee whose dreams had been shattered. But over the weeks of rehearsals I actually learned to sparkle just a little. And when we performed, the audience (my ward) joined in the spell and loved it.

There are so many ways to rescue a human being! For wives, love comes by feeling beautiful, capable, sexy. My ninety-one year old grandmother just told me how happy she was because two people that day had called her pretty. Pornography destroys that confidence in women. Bishop Shipp had just the knack to restore it.

Infinite and Intimate

I acquired an addiction a few months ago at school. While most teachers are covering up their consumption of diet Coke (not me) or chocolate (okay, me), I could not stay away from a new vice--a microscope. After school, instead of grading papers or planning for the next day, I admit to hours spent watching little protists skate across a microscope slide. I am fascinated that things so tiny could actually be alive!

There is a lesson in the contrast between reading about protists and actually seeing them. I'd been drawing paramecium and amoeba creatures since elementary school. I'd memorized their structures--could tell you about cilia and vacuoles, endoplasm and ectoplasm--but until this year I'd never actually seen one move. Similarly, I'd read about outer space and visited lots of planetarium shows, but until a few years ago when Ernie and I met some friends in the middle of the night in the Skull Valley desert, I'd never seen the rings around Saturn with my own eyes.

There is a lesson here about how to teach science, and how much more I could have learned if I'd been exposed to real things years ago (after all, I got a 33 on my ACT in science and all I've seen are protozoa?), but the greater message to me is about perspective. It's about seeing--both intimately and infinitely. And ultimately it's about love.

Microscopes are the tools scientists use to see intimately. No soft focus lens there! That's the way Christ sees us. With intimate understanding, not put off by our weakness, he loves "day-by-day, hour-by-hour, even moment by moment" (Callister, 2000). I've seen that kind of love in action. While I was visiting my sister with a newborn child, her Relief Society president dropped by for a visit. In her arms she carried a bag of fresh vegetables, and while she was there she prepared a fragrant homemade soup in my sister's kitchen. When my own family hastily checked into a motel for a night, a woman who barely knew us brought coloring books and candy for my children. Intimate Christlike loves dares to peek behind our smiling made-up faces and see hidden sorrows and feeble knees. That is the lesson of a microscope.

Telescopes are the tools scientists use to see infinitely. Time blurs as light travels long distance, the present becoming just a speck in the expanse of eternity. We can learn to see one another that same way, through the light of distant perfection, bringing patience to current struggles. C.S. Lewis said: "For God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo. Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious than unfallen humanity would have been...And this super-added glory will, with true vicariousness, exalt all creatures." I'm reminded of the perspective of eternity when reading a patriarchal blessing, watching a sleeping child, listening to the Sacrament prayer. That is the lesson of a telescope.

Today's resolution is to see with intimacy and infinity, to love actively and patiently, to work joyfully and tirelessly. Again, solutions taught perfectly by the Savior.

Women and the Priesthood

I came of age during the famous ERA years in American politics. During my freshman year at BYU there were frequent political cartoons in local newspapers depicting the conflicts women and especially LDS women faced. I saved a few in my journal. One showed a woman with a flat tire who had just left an ERA rally taking off her rally button before asking a man to stop to change her tire for her. Another showed women protesting outside a session of LDS General Conference, and the caption read: "Mormons for ERA: A Non-Prophet Organization".

Of course the Equal Rights Amendment didn't pass. I'm glad it didn't. But what I didn't know then, that I do know now, is women half a generation before me needed some problems addressed. It was not unheard of for a woman to be refused a temple recommend if she used artificial birth control, even when fertility strained her health and her marriage almost to the breaking point. It was rare for women then to have much of a public voice in meetings that included both women and men. Sometimes women felt ignored in church matters. My own mother tells of crying herself to sleep at night while my father was in many positions of responsibility in the church and she herself had five different church callings and half a dozen children. She was exhausted and no one was listening, including my father. By contrast, I remember some years later, when my father was called as a stake president, my mother was invited to be part of all the organizational meetings as his new stake presidency was organized. By then, her voice and her partnership were valued assets in church governance.

I appreciate these cultural advances that make women more influential in church government and more balanced at home. I appreciate more, though, the fact that doctrinal elements didn't change. Priesthood authority is a man's grace. It helps men become like the Savior.

I left my father's home at seventeen, and since then, sadly, have little good experience with priesthood in my family. Within a ward family, though, priesthood power has guided my most significant decisions and fueled my spiritual, financial, intellectual and emotional growth. Beginning when I was a student in the dorms, a good bishop recognized my willingness to serve--and my immaturity. As an eighteen-year-old Relief Society president I didn't even know that a girl in one apartment next to me was pregnant and a girl on the other side was suffering with bulimia. I think the bishop's wife took care of most of the welfare issues. But I organized Sunday meetings and homemaking meetings, visiting teaching and parties. I learned a lot. I felt inspiration and love. Under the direction of the Priesthood, I was part of the Savior's ministry.

Many years and many ward callings later, it was a bishop who mentored me through a sacred period of spiritual understanding. I was a Primary president at the time, serving on his ward council. During one Sunday council meeting he introduced a new plan. The ward council would go to the temple together every Tuesday morning, meeting at the 5:00 a.m. session. Other ward members were invited, of course, but we were pretty much required to go. He suggested we have an early family home evening Monday night and all go to bed with the temple in mind. A peaceful, early night would make a 4:00 a.m. wake-up time easy. He'd been doing it for a long time.

I went purely to be obedient to my bishop's counsel. I didn't have an early or a peaceful night. I had four children, the youngest were preschoolers and the oldest a young teenager. My marriage was in chaos, and my husband was always angry. Getting up at 4:00 a.m. was not fun or easy. But I did it. And I continued to go. Within a few weeks, I understood the urgency behind our bishop's directive. Frequent temple attendance brought sweet miracles into my life. Soon each Tuesday morning felt like Christmas and the heavens were filled with singing angels.

During this period, the contention at home became more severe. I loved my Primary calling but knew I could no longer serve and take care of family matters. I called my dear bishop to explain, only to have him say, "I've known for three weeks that I need to release you. I've just been trying to figure out how to tell you." Later this bishop was instrumental in helping me follow the inspiration I had received to divorce. This kind priesthood holder was a savior to me.

Divorce, however, brought financial challenges. I hadn't had a paying job in nearly fifteen years. My former husband was suddenly out of work. It was another church event, an employment seminar, that guided my decision to return to school to do graduate studies, take out student loans, and become marketable. Through the work of the Priesthood I was on my feet again, becoming financially stronger and intellectually better. The Savior cares about our growth in all these areas.

It is hard to write about current and recent priesthood leaders. My feelings are tender, and the goals we are working on are still in progress. I have a home teacher who has embraced my family's needs now for almost eight years. Every fall he gives blessings to each one of us as we begin a new school year. We work hard to follow his counsel, and because of his blessings we are healthier and happier. I've listened to three bishops in these nearly eight years, each one loving and guiding our family. Our current bishop inspires me to be good and kind; his gentle example of love and service reminds me always of the Savior. I want to be more like both of them.

There are women who suggest that priesthood leadership is domineering and demeaning. That women's growth is limited by male control. Culturally, there are occasions where this is sadly true. Men in my own life have been all of these things. However, these women misunderstand. Priesthood is not the problem with men. Priesthood is their solution.

Roses from Ashes, Part 2

I first started keeping a journal when I was about thirteen. Mostly it was a lot of slurpy stuff about boys; I wrote pages and pages while listening to Chicago play "Color My World" and Donny Osmond sing "When I Fall in Love" in his new deep voice. I also wrote about how good I wanted to be when I grew up. I would always have fresh lemonade in the refrigerator and watch sports with my husband. I wouldn't gossip or criticize and I would always help the poor. I would have ten children who would come home from school to warm cookies and cold milk and a tender, involved, loving mother.

Then after I was married, the entries tapered off. Something about the contrast between sweet idealism and bitter reality silenced my voice. About ten years ago, however, I started writing again. This time, my entries are powerful and sharply focused. Their literary value is deeper.

My life had turned to ashes.

This isn't the time to recount painful details. In fact, I barely remember them, which is exactly the point. Looking back, almost every entry for about a year and a half tells the story of a miracle. A family is rescued, a life remade. And through it, an undeniable witness of God's love.

I want to write about the subject of suffering, not to recount my own story (which is neither unique nor extreme), but to add my few drops of understanding about why we suffer. It's simply the only way most of us learn to trust in God with all our might. It's simply the only way most of us learn the value of a human soul. It's simply the only way most of us distill the vital from the trivial. It's simply the only way most of us learn how much Jesus Christ loves us.

My Christmas reading has been from Tad Callister's The Infinite Atonement. He quotes Ezra Taft Benson, who taught: "There is no human condition--be it suffering, incapacity, inadequacy, mental deficiency, or sin--which He cannot comprehend or for which His love will not reach out to the individual." Then Callister elaborates: "This is a staggering thought...when calculating the hurt of innumerable patients in countless hospitals...the loneliness of the elderly...the hurt of hungry children, the suffering caused by famine, drought, and pestilence. Pile on the heartache of parents who tearfully plead on a daily basis for a wayward son or daughter to come back home. Factor in the trauma of every divorce and the tragedy of every abortion. Add the remorse that comes with each child lost in the dawn of life, each spouse taken in the prime of marriage. Compound that with the misery of overflowing prisons, bulging halfway houses and institutions for the mentally disadvantaged. Multiply all this by century after century of history, and creation after creation without end. Such is but an awful glimpse of the Savior's load." (p. 105)

My favorite scripture, from Isaiah:

"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, ...to comfort all that mourn....to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness..."
--Isaiah 61: 1-3

Last week I watched as Erica lifted the box holding her mother's ashes. I've never been so close to death as when our little family buried their mother and grandmother. I'm glad for the beauty that awaits because of our Savior's Love. Beauty from ashes. Roses from ashes. Jesus is the ultimate solution. Being with Him is my ultimate resolution.

So when it gets distressing it's a blessing!
Onward and upward you must press!
Yes! Yes!
Till up from the ashes, up from the ashes grow the roses of success.
--from "Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang"

If I Were a Shoe Store (Ya Ha Deedle Deedle, Bubba Bubba Deedle Deedle Dum)

Over the Winter break I read yet another book on school reform. This one, written by a respected educational historian with a brilliant mind, exceptional education and experience, and strong political connections to both parties, criticized the current trends of accountability and school choice. She based her point of view on the erosion of democratic neighborhood school stability that is the fallout of these efforts and the lack of sustainability that seems to be their long term results.

While I agree with some of her conclusions and lament the lack of her faith in certain progressive capacities of the reform movement, it seems that she too is missing the mark. On my first day of teaching I recognized why schools fail some students completely and all students at least a little bit. The problems are easy, and the solutions easy too. Just imagine that my classroom were a shoe store!

If I were a shoe store, I'd be out of business my second day. But let's start on Day One. As an ambitious entrepreneur, I would have spent weeks preparing for this Grand Opening! I would have stocked a perfect inventory, anticipating the demographic that would walk into my store. I'd have a showroom and a back room, a counter for checkout and the latest technology for managing transactions. I'd have places for customers to sit and attractive window displays. But this shoe store would not have hired any additional help. I'd be working all alone.

Imagine my showroom, filled with interested patrons, waiting to be fitted for shoes. Imagine me running back and forth, arms spilling over with boxes and boxes and boxes, needing to find the perfect pairs for each customer. Now imagine me at the cash register, then again in the back room, then again on the showroom floor. Clients handle the displays, and they don't put them back in the right places. Now I am struggling to fit, sell, transact, record, straighten, replace, fit, sell, transact, record, straighten, replace, fit, sell, transact, record, straighten, replace...all by myself, with a showroom full of people needing service with a smile, one at a time.

How long would my clientele remain happy? How soon would I be deserted for a store with a staff of eager salesmen and a counter clerk ready to ring up their sales?

Teaching children is a lot more difficult than fitting shoes. I have students who are ready for college level reading and high school math. I have students who can't draw a model of 5/4. I have students who can't sit still longer than an average two year old and students who are better disciplined than I am in a classroom setting. I work alone--planning, preparing, designing, implementing, grading, recording, filing, cleaning, communicating--and start the process new each day. I work a hard eight or nine hours at school, pressing through recesses and lunch, minimizing my own bodily needs to squeeze every possible use out of every possible second. And then I take the rest home.

I'm not a martyr. I love what I do. I miss my kids over breaks and my heart wrenches when I fail them. I wish I had another two hours with students in each school day to accomplish more. I check my email every few minutes all evening long in case one of them or a parent needs me.

But it's an impossible job. There is no way I can meet all of the needs.

If I were a shoe store, everyone would be screaming, "Hire some help, for goodness sakes!" But because children have no political voice, and they are not a commodity worth greater investment, the public looks for a magic answer without recognizing the obvious. I could work magic if a classroom were structured more like a retail environment. Imagine three teachers working together with twenty students. One could be preparing, filing, grading and recording. The other two would be teaching--a lead and a support teacher for every lesson. Small group instruction could happen as children fall behind or move ahead. Three trained professionals, working together, just like in a shoe store. Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum.

Roses from Ashes, Part 1

There are a few experiential moments in life that are larger than life; they influence our perspective and color our choices. One for me happened just a few days ago when I went with my stepdaughter Erica to a cancer center. Erica is undergoing treatment for breast cancer just months after her own mother's death to lung cancer, and the day following her chemotherapy I accompanied her to the infusion room where she received a follow-up shot. (Living three thousand miles away, I have not been a part of her cancer path, but I did share a few short days with her over our Christmas break. She is a brave and inspiring woman.)

The twenty minutes I spent in that room changed me more than a thousand chapel sermons about compassion ever could. Every few feet around the perimeter another dear human being sat in a recliner, linked by IV tubing to chemotherapy medications. Most were sleeping; a few were reading. Only one woman spoke to me, a leukemia patient who had been undergoing treatment for seven years. She smiled at me, explaining that she hoped her hair would last long enough this time to donate to Locks of Love. I didn't dare invade anyone else's privacy enough to look very closely, but I wondered about each of them. Who would conquer their cancer? Who would fail? What important or routine events in their lives were disturbed by the relentless slowness of cancer care? The contrast of the drip-by-drip medication and the fatigue all around me with the cars speeding obliquely past just twenty feet away on the highway was startling. Just moments before I had been one of those fast cars. Now, whenever I pass I cancer treatment center I will bow my head a little and pray.

You Are All On The Same Team!

Being a grandma is completely different than being a mom. When my kids were little, I'd take them to sports team practices armed with a book to read, a checkbook to balance, or I'd sit and talk with the other parents. Of course I watched their games diligently, but practices were just another part of a day I took for granted.

The other night I went to Ben and Taylor's basketball practices. Ben, almost six, practiced first. I brought nothing but wondering eyes as I watched the coaches teach these little ones the arts of the game. I was particularly impressed by the lesson taught by the coach of another team practicing at the same time. He spent 15 minutes explicitly drilling this message: "You Are All On The Same Team!" Over and over he would toss in the ball and teach eager five year old's to judge who had possession and then help cooperatively. They weren't ready for formal plays; they just needed to learn to not hurt each other's progress and thereby strengthen the team.

Then this guy expertly moved to the next level. He introduced opposition. He started a little scrimmage and taught the children: "They Are On The Other Team!" He began introducing principles of defensive guarding so the children could protect the ball from The Other Team. They practiced this concept explicitly for another 15 minutes, carefully identifying who to trust and against whom to defend, who to cooperate with and from whom to run away.

Maybe every sport begins on this level. Probably my own children received this training when I was busy with my own minutia. But after watching this brilliant coach, it crossed my mind that many of us weren't listening. Otherwise, we'd be much better at cooperating with Our Own Team, and we'd recognize the forces that oppose our progress instantly as The Other Team.

Today's resolution: be a better member of My Own Team, and defend ferociously against The Other Team.