What floor do you live on?

Having been a Christmas/Easter churchgoer for the past couple of years, I've gone back to church. Thanks to Jacob for getting me there. Even though it's all fun and games in the pre-school nursery, I want him to know that church is where you go on Sundy morning. He enjoys it, and I'm glad to be back. This Sunday, the minister quoted a theologian (sorry, can't give you the name) who suggested we think of ourselves as a house. Most of us live on the first floor, but there's the second floor and even the attic--levels we could aspire to if we wanted and tried, and then there's the basement, where we could sink to being less than we should be. The image stuck with me. I remembered someone in my class who didn't think she is living up to her full potential--actually I think she's on the second floor, and I hope to share this image with her. I guess most of us live on the first floor but hope that occasionally we make to the second.
I taught a new memoir group today for Human Resources at TCU today--nice bunch of women who seem enthusiastic and genuinely interested. Out of seven present, one wants to write professionally. The others write for their children and grandchildren, and one writes, I suspect, for herself--nothing wrong with that. I caught one woman staring into space and asked if she had a question. She said no, her mind had just slipped back to something that had happened at the office that day. That's the trouble with a lunch-hour class--it's hard for people to put their work out of their minds for one hour and then leap back into it.
I heard today of a politician, Federal legislature I believe, who went on a hunger strike several years ago and is going on one again to protest legislation which hurts the poor. He said, "We can't fix the economy on the backs of the poor. They didn't get us into this mess, and we should not punish them to get out of it." Hope the Texas legislature was listening: Friday HB1 comes up for a vote. It's a budget that closes schools, raises college tuition, leaves senior citizens homeless, cuts funding for those with disabilities, and elminates pre-K programs. There goes the remnants of LBJ's Head Start and the Great Society. I wonder if Texas is headed for the basement.
I know, I promised no politics, but I am also moved by my friend Representative Lon Burnam's plea to protest HB1 and urge legislators to vote against it. I don't think we want to live in a state that ignores people's basic needs.