Privilege

Pastor Lehmann had an interesting meme on the concept of privilege. You can click here to read it. It lists some 34 items to determine "privilege" and the higher your score, the more privileged was your upbringing, I suppose. I scored a meager 11 out of the 34. My wife was a bit higher at 18 out of the 34. What amazed me was in scoring my children: they scored a whopping 26 out of the 34! Ha - they'll not believe how privileged they are. :)

I noted to Pastor Lehmann that what doesn't seem conveyed is the sense of privilege from land, which is inherent in the southern mindset, I think. My family was not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but we knew that we owned, in addition to our home and property in Maryland, my father's family farm in Virginia. Not a big farm - laughably small by Midwest standards - just 40 odd acres. But it always provided a sense of groundedness. When my father died in 1980, I don't think it was an accident at all that within six months my mother was living again in Virginia on that parcel of land, or that my sister and her family and my brother and his family still live there to this day.

So check it out: how privileged are you? Are you a hick like me?