I know my blog is getting dusty. I'm still writing every day, but it's for a book so that's taking a lot of writing energies. Additionally, I am helping to plan a conference and that too, takes up brain space limited by the constant stress of the year 2020.
Anyway, all of this is leading up to the piece I wrote called "At the Foot of the Cross."
Showing posts with label suffering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suffering. Show all posts
Monday, September 28, 2020
Over at the Register Today
Wednesday, August 15, 2018
We're Going to Have to Wrestle With This...
Lots of people say, "I'm spiritual, not religious." and it is because they fail to see the connection between the physical actions (in the sacraments and ceremony) and the deeper reality these physical signs, symbols, gestures and prayers, reveal. Faith without works is dead, as Saint James said. In the case of the Pennsylvania report detailing accusations, assaults, actual documentations and testimony covering several decades, involving 300 priests and over 1,000 children, we have case after case after case, of works without faith.
That seems like it might be an overstatement, but the business of the Church seemed to triumph over the spiritual reality of the Church. There will be some who read the report, and because many of these documented abuses took place decades ago, clamor for everyone to move on. However, these sins, and they were sins, and these crimes, and they were crimes, demand we wrestle with the reality, we are never free from the temptation to cut ourselves off from God, even when where we work, what we do, and all that surrounds us, even the words we must say, call out to God. We can have everything and forfeit it for a want we can't have. We can be living out our vocation, and fail the moment things become difficult. We can fail by looking away, by pretending whatever we see, isn't that bad, or by pretending what we do in this circumstance, doesn't matter.
We're part of the defense against the Gates of Hell because we are the Church. Ergo, we must not be asleep in our spiritual lives. To have acted and preyed upon so many, (1000 known), spiritual deadness must have abounded. By what we do and what we fail to do, we will find ourselves saying, "Lord, Lord! When did we see you suffering?" and find ourselves spit out for our lukewarmness. There's a lot of millstones to go around, for neglect, for institutional protectionism, and for actual assaults and failure to report, and profound indifference to the subsequent suffering.
The error for each of us, is to will only to move forward, as if we can somehow discard sin like a skin. It's an error of worldly thinking to think we could ever purge sin from our hearts. Only God's grace can burn away our hardness of hearts, and forge the soft points that should be steel. We cannot ever taste even a little of sin, for it's like we're all alcoholics, it's just the flavor of the liquor we're debating.
The whole of the Church will have to perform a penance. I propose a Year of Humility, both public and private, where we pray, fast and do reparations and alms giving. We offer masses and shun feasts other than the Eucharist. We hold confessions every Friday from sun-up to sun-down and try to have 24-7 adoration staffed so every parishioner, every family performs a holy hour during the year, as part of the whole Church response to storm Heaven begging for grace, for healing for the victims, and yes, even for the perpetrators.
As an institution and organization, there's a desire to move on, but we need to wrestle with this pain and it's going to be messy. It's going to hurt. To begin to heal, we must first allow ourselves to examine this wound and be willing to enter into it.
The one comfort I can give, is our faith is not based on the faith lives of men but from Christ. He's with us, he's on the cross for us. He invites us to enter into his suffering for the Church and we should. If you want to read what else I've written about this subject, it's over at the National Catholic Register: The Wake Up Call We Need, and if you have a suggestion for further discussion on this matter, leave it in the com box.
The Grand Jury's report is here. Read it. Weep. Pray. Fast, and weep again.
That seems like it might be an overstatement, but the business of the Church seemed to triumph over the spiritual reality of the Church. There will be some who read the report, and because many of these documented abuses took place decades ago, clamor for everyone to move on. However, these sins, and they were sins, and these crimes, and they were crimes, demand we wrestle with the reality, we are never free from the temptation to cut ourselves off from God, even when where we work, what we do, and all that surrounds us, even the words we must say, call out to God. We can have everything and forfeit it for a want we can't have. We can be living out our vocation, and fail the moment things become difficult. We can fail by looking away, by pretending whatever we see, isn't that bad, or by pretending what we do in this circumstance, doesn't matter.
We're part of the defense against the Gates of Hell because we are the Church. Ergo, we must not be asleep in our spiritual lives. To have acted and preyed upon so many, (1000 known), spiritual deadness must have abounded. By what we do and what we fail to do, we will find ourselves saying, "Lord, Lord! When did we see you suffering?" and find ourselves spit out for our lukewarmness. There's a lot of millstones to go around, for neglect, for institutional protectionism, and for actual assaults and failure to report, and profound indifference to the subsequent suffering.
The error for each of us, is to will only to move forward, as if we can somehow discard sin like a skin. It's an error of worldly thinking to think we could ever purge sin from our hearts. Only God's grace can burn away our hardness of hearts, and forge the soft points that should be steel. We cannot ever taste even a little of sin, for it's like we're all alcoholics, it's just the flavor of the liquor we're debating.
The whole of the Church will have to perform a penance. I propose a Year of Humility, both public and private, where we pray, fast and do reparations and alms giving. We offer masses and shun feasts other than the Eucharist. We hold confessions every Friday from sun-up to sun-down and try to have 24-7 adoration staffed so every parishioner, every family performs a holy hour during the year, as part of the whole Church response to storm Heaven begging for grace, for healing for the victims, and yes, even for the perpetrators.
As an institution and organization, there's a desire to move on, but we need to wrestle with this pain and it's going to be messy. It's going to hurt. To begin to heal, we must first allow ourselves to examine this wound and be willing to enter into it.
The one comfort I can give, is our faith is not based on the faith lives of men but from Christ. He's with us, he's on the cross for us. He invites us to enter into his suffering for the Church and we should. If you want to read what else I've written about this subject, it's over at the National Catholic Register: The Wake Up Call We Need, and if you have a suggestion for further discussion on this matter, leave it in the com box.
The Grand Jury's report is here. Read it. Weep. Pray. Fast, and weep again.
Thursday, March 9, 2017
Because We Should Stop
As writers, we're supposed to take everything in, and pull from our memories, from our heart, and weave together associations through sentences that bridge the gap between the experiences we've all had, and the ones only some ever endure. Yesterday, a friend on Facebook announced her son battled demons and lost.
I know countless mothers who hold their breath at such stories, because thus far, their children have won, but there's always the chance tomorrow, it will be them taking down the body of the child they carried, because they weren't there at the right moment to make sure this horrible moment didn't happen.
I know countless mothers who hold their breath at such stories, because thus far, their children have won, but there's always the chance tomorrow, it will be them taking down the body of the child they carried, because they weren't there at the right moment to make sure this horrible moment didn't happen.
The internet makes us voyeurs into each other's lives, it can even create real relationships, but it won't let us be flesh and blood to those friends when flesh and blood is what aches. Her heart's cry pierces the internet, because it cannot be answered. It cannot be comforted, not by anything here.
Suddenly, the internet revealed in addition to being a community, it is dust and amusement. We can be cheerleaders and encouragers, we can even be provocative, but what we can't be, is anything other than virtual in this moment when tangibility means everything, because death is such a tangible, bodily thing.
There are no words to give to a mother who found her son hanging in the garage other than, "I'm so sorry."
These sort of moments, the only appropriate response is to give some tangible form of a hug. Food. Watching her little ones. Offering to help with the mass, anything. Instead, I'm here, my thoughts churning over the children I work with, my own children and their trials, and over her. The rosary in my fingers feels inadequate, and yet I know she holds to it too, along with her other children who must also weather this terrible pain. They hold to it like a safety rope, and I want it to be for them. I have to hope it is.
Everything feels too new, too raw, too simple, too pat to be real. This unreality feeling, facing the deepest and worst we can face, will even make the sounds of cars and doors and phones and the television feel alien. Music will cut the air, and conversations buzz through without leaving an impression. As I feel the round beads in my hands, the realness of her raw reality works against allowing me the comfort of doing the familiar. It must. It is immediate. It is too soon. It is too near.
Her pain cannot be rushed or wiped away or easily healed; it must merely be endured. The rosary too, cannot be rushed, not if it is to be prayed. She will grope through the grief. We will all grope through prayers, hoping to add to the graces she receives, and lighten something of the hard cross she carries. So I'm praying for all of the trials to come, for her to feel as she should, and for the whole rest of the world to stop, and be gentle as it can for as long as possible, to give her leaking heart time to be bound.
My friend Simcha has details on how you can give tangible help. Please keep their whole family in our prayers.
Suddenly, the internet revealed in addition to being a community, it is dust and amusement. We can be cheerleaders and encouragers, we can even be provocative, but what we can't be, is anything other than virtual in this moment when tangibility means everything, because death is such a tangible, bodily thing.
There are no words to give to a mother who found her son hanging in the garage other than, "I'm so sorry."
These sort of moments, the only appropriate response is to give some tangible form of a hug. Food. Watching her little ones. Offering to help with the mass, anything. Instead, I'm here, my thoughts churning over the children I work with, my own children and their trials, and over her. The rosary in my fingers feels inadequate, and yet I know she holds to it too, along with her other children who must also weather this terrible pain. They hold to it like a safety rope, and I want it to be for them. I have to hope it is.
Everything feels too new, too raw, too simple, too pat to be real. This unreality feeling, facing the deepest and worst we can face, will even make the sounds of cars and doors and phones and the television feel alien. Music will cut the air, and conversations buzz through without leaving an impression. As I feel the round beads in my hands, the realness of her raw reality works against allowing me the comfort of doing the familiar. It must. It is immediate. It is too soon. It is too near.
Her pain cannot be rushed or wiped away or easily healed; it must merely be endured. The rosary too, cannot be rushed, not if it is to be prayed. She will grope through the grief. We will all grope through prayers, hoping to add to the graces she receives, and lighten something of the hard cross she carries. So I'm praying for all of the trials to come, for her to feel as she should, and for the whole rest of the world to stop, and be gentle as it can for as long as possible, to give her leaking heart time to be bound.
My friend Simcha has details on how you can give tangible help. Please keep their whole family in our prayers.
Friday, February 24, 2017
Hey! Where did Small Success Thursday go?
It's on Facebook over at Catholicmom.com. I don't know if someone who isn't on Facebook can read that link or not. Please, let me know one way or another. I'm still mulling over how to manage this weekly counting of the blessings of the past week if it isn't able to be shared beyond the walls of Facebook.
Suffice it to say, here's the key point:
We went to the zoo. As happens in most field trips with kids, it got hot. They got hungry. We had to walk everywhere, and there was a temptation to turn what had been a treat into a trial. We got through it and with that struggle, came this insight.
Suffering, albeit in a tiny way, somehow made the whole trip more memorable, the way a story becomes more memorable than if once upon a time, everyone lived happily ever after, the end. I thought about this as we prepare for Lent, knowing we're to recognize, the only way to Easter, is through the cross. Embracing suffering doesn't mean seeking pain, but weathering it well, and weathering it with other people when such moments occur, being the Simon or the Veronica to someone whose burden becomes visible.
So this week's small successes became focused around when we had the opportunity to be a Simon or a Veronica, did we take it?
Please, leave a comment in the com box if the link works or not (if you are NOT on Facebook). Thank you.
Suffice it to say, here's the key point:
We went to the zoo. As happens in most field trips with kids, it got hot. They got hungry. We had to walk everywhere, and there was a temptation to turn what had been a treat into a trial. We got through it and with that struggle, came this insight.
Suffering, albeit in a tiny way, somehow made the whole trip more memorable, the way a story becomes more memorable than if once upon a time, everyone lived happily ever after, the end. I thought about this as we prepare for Lent, knowing we're to recognize, the only way to Easter, is through the cross. Embracing suffering doesn't mean seeking pain, but weathering it well, and weathering it with other people when such moments occur, being the Simon or the Veronica to someone whose burden becomes visible.
So this week's small successes became focused around when we had the opportunity to be a Simon or a Veronica, did we take it?
Please, leave a comment in the com box if the link works or not (if you are NOT on Facebook). Thank you.
Saturday, February 4, 2017
Mulling over O'Connor, Copying Machines and Minutia
As an assistant in the room, my presence is only an augmentation of the learning enviornment, and some days, the pay is for dealing with difficult students. However, keeping machines on task proved far more daunting. Today, I spent the bulk of my afternoon attempting to amass and assemble copies of O'Connor's most famous short story. The first machine needed a part. The second machine (in the office), could only be used for school business, not classwork. The third copier flashed evil red lights.
With the new semester, we had six more students than versions of "A Good Man is Hard to Find," and while the students could listen to an audio verison and follow along with their phone; for annotation, they needed an incarnational version. Flannery would approve. She also knew, the way we come to understanding of all things, is suffering. I suspect she had a hand in the matter.
After twenty minutes of waiting for the office copier (There was a queue of teachers and assistants ignoring the policy), I attempted to fix the third machine by rebooting it. Much to my astonishment, the screen cooperated and I thought, "I am the master of my domain!" for the five copies of page one it spit up, before flashing the same error as before. Undeterred, I turned off the machine and rebooted again. Five more copies. I now had page two. Each page grew subsequently lighter. At seven pages long, I pressed the buttons and my luck turning the machine on and off for the subsequent five reboots before sneaking out of the copying room with my six versions of the story. I did have to trace the last page with a marker.
Leaving the machine with a red flashing light bruised my conscience, so I rebooted one more time. The next person might not need more than five copies of any one thing, and thus not find out the machine needed a serious repair. That afternoon, four students showed up having lost their versions.
I tried the staff room and planned to simply pull up a pdf of the story and have the computer print it. It did, but swallowed the last line of each story. It also printed them front to back, and flipped every other page, making the new version almost unreadable if you didn't know which way to turn for each page. I spent the rest of the period writing out the missing words of O'Connor's prose at the end of each page and wondering if the whole thing would have been easier and quicker if I'd retreated to a monastery and copied the needed documents by hand.
Having missed period five and six in the classroom, all for papers needed in period five and six, I pondered whether I could plead temporary sanity and remove all the infernal copiers to the outside, and perhaps invite all the faculty to take turns shooting the machines in the woods for being misfits. I thought it would give me great pleasure to imagine the machines being destroyed, or it would if only they could feel pain.
Somehow, the demonic desire for their demise wouldn't find any pleasure unless the copiers experienced agony, my irritation, my annoyance, and the collective pain of the staff and students. I told myself, it wouldn't be a sin, except I knew better. I wanted more than justice. I wanted revenge, and not just revenge, universal revenge for all the printers which ran out of ink, all the copiers which failed, and all the technology that made all of us slaves to their convenience, and masters of nothing.
A fellow teacher came into the staff room ranting about how the machines. He cursed them all and we agreed, Hell is littered with office machines, all unable to print or copy more than a page at a time, and with jams and no ink, and in Heaven, they don't bother with machines because everyone has a copy of the book and they can't lose it. I took satisfaction in the theological rightness of this revelation, that no technology would be saved and even better, I had no obligation to pray otherwise. I pulled out four old Norton Anthologies which included O'Connor's story from the library for the next day. If the kids needed more copies, I'd be ready and maybe, save my own soul from spending further time in preemptive purgatory. A good man may be hard to find, a good soul even harder, but a good copier, that's the stuff of legend.
Monday, September 26, 2016
Double Feature...no Triple!
You get me today all over the internet. That's right, I'm taking over. I have a piece over at Women Speak For Themselves. It's my personal story addressing the damage taking contraceptives did to me, and what I learned when I stopped taking them.
My second writing piece is over at Aleteia, dealing with suffering and grace in the face of suffering, embracing the cross. Please feel free to read and share as you see fit.
Finally, it's Monday so I'm on Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea. You can listen live at 5 o'clock EST, and even call in at 1-574--4BREAD4. Come join us!
My second writing piece is over at Aleteia, dealing with suffering and grace in the face of suffering, embracing the cross. Please feel free to read and share as you see fit.
Finally, it's Monday so I'm on Connecting the Dots with Mark Shea. You can listen live at 5 o'clock EST, and even call in at 1-574--4BREAD4. Come join us!
Tuesday, July 19, 2016
It's always Time for a Han Solo Moment
So in the past eight weeks we've had the car overheat, lice, strep, both ovens of the double oven die, signed student loans, dealt with an air conditioner deciding it wasn't going to start for the summer. This list doesn't include the mental drama of having four teens at home, two with jobs that mean we're playing taxi shuttle at five in the morning and 11:30 at night.
The kids have begun a campaign for a dog. We need to repair the stoop, paint the upstairs, and redo the downstairs bathroom. Strangle vine and Satan's lettuce is cropping up all over our flower gardens. Trump and Hillary are the two presumptive nominees. Stinkbugs are eating our tomatoes. I gained three pounds after starting daily use of a fitbit. The computer is showing early signs of rebellion. We only have six or seven weeks left of summer.
Job hunting has thus far yielded a need to get more documentation.
And this morning, I cracked a tooth...on milk chocolate. I bit and wondered because I knew the bar didn't have nuts, but something crunched. It was me.
My family has a forbidden saying. It's prohibited because saying it invokes the world to test just how much one is willing to suffer. It begins with..."If this is the worst it gets..." and no one ever dares to finish the phrase, because we don't want the powers that be to see what might happen if worse than however worse it has become, happens. Murphy's law is always in force and enforced.
So to the universe, first of all, the position of Job has already been filled.
Secondly, I do not in any way, want the job being Job.
Third, if this is the worst it gets...I just want the world to know...
The kids have begun a campaign for a dog. We need to repair the stoop, paint the upstairs, and redo the downstairs bathroom. Strangle vine and Satan's lettuce is cropping up all over our flower gardens. Trump and Hillary are the two presumptive nominees. Stinkbugs are eating our tomatoes. I gained three pounds after starting daily use of a fitbit. The computer is showing early signs of rebellion. We only have six or seven weeks left of summer.
Job hunting has thus far yielded a need to get more documentation.
And this morning, I cracked a tooth...on milk chocolate. I bit and wondered because I knew the bar didn't have nuts, but something crunched. It was me.
My family has a forbidden saying. It's prohibited because saying it invokes the world to test just how much one is willing to suffer. It begins with..."If this is the worst it gets..." and no one ever dares to finish the phrase, because we don't want the powers that be to see what might happen if worse than however worse it has become, happens. Murphy's law is always in force and enforced.
So to the universe, first of all, the position of Job has already been filled.
Secondly, I do not in any way, want the job being Job.
Third, if this is the worst it gets...I just want the world to know...
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
How We Should Be Holding onto Time
There is a family, I've linked to the mother's blog, Passionate Perseverance, clinging to, celebrating every minute their daughter has left to share with them in this life. They do this despite the other trials that make up their day, like clogged collapsed toilet lines and jobs that might end and bills that seem impossible to pay. They celebrate the warm sweaters, the baked goods and beautiful flowers that show up from strangers and friends, and they hold their daughter through her seizures, knowing that one way or another, they will stop, and life will either keep going on, or not. It takes great courage to get up and face the cross each day, and they do this with passionate perseverance.
Online, I have another friend, who goes and make sandwiches, whole loaves of sandwiches to hand out to the homeless with his children, and he too is holding onto each moment, every moment, hoping that this moment isn't the last one. He hints that all is not well, and that all will not last but goes on as if today is the most important. Neither family is rushing to the end, both are sipping the cup of their lives, savoring each minute, the beautiful, the painful, the hard and the costly, because all of the moments matter. All time we have here, is precious.
So when I read about the state enabled despair of Brittany Maynard, as she's planned her death for All Saints' Day, it breaks my heart and at the same time, makes me mad.
In this day and age, voicing online or in person anything other than approval makes me heartless. I don't know her suffering. But I do know these other people, they suffer, and they are sticking it out. There are whole countries of people less fortunate than this woman in what she has done and they get up and go through the day no matter how hard. I can't not see taking medicine to "end life on my terms" as anything other than being afraid of what it takes to live to the last breath. I could get being afraid. But bragging of one's decision to die to make a statement about desiring to die and demanding everyone else affirm one's decision as good, I won't do. Damn it Brittany, live. Live until you die. Live because it is harder than climbing mountains or running marathons. Anyone can check out early. Anyone can quit when it gets hard. Don't. You've climbed mountains, you've run marathons. You could finish this race by running to the end if you willed to do it. I wish you would.
Make no mistake, brain cancer, tumors, it is all horrible. It is horrible. I wish she would reconsider, because given the unknown limited time she has left, she shouldn't be so quick to want to shorten the journey. She could be a great voice and witness to the courage it takes to get up each day, never knowing if this is the last. But we've become so incapable as a society of bearing what life brings, we now call choosing death a right, and get self righteous about declaring our own autonomy. We call checking out brave, but I think it far braver to face the minute to minute messiness of this business called living. Praying for her and her family, and for all those who face the mysterious grace found only by being at the foot of the cross.
Online, I have another friend, who goes and make sandwiches, whole loaves of sandwiches to hand out to the homeless with his children, and he too is holding onto each moment, every moment, hoping that this moment isn't the last one. He hints that all is not well, and that all will not last but goes on as if today is the most important. Neither family is rushing to the end, both are sipping the cup of their lives, savoring each minute, the beautiful, the painful, the hard and the costly, because all of the moments matter. All time we have here, is precious.
So when I read about the state enabled despair of Brittany Maynard, as she's planned her death for All Saints' Day, it breaks my heart and at the same time, makes me mad.
In this day and age, voicing online or in person anything other than approval makes me heartless. I don't know her suffering. But I do know these other people, they suffer, and they are sticking it out. There are whole countries of people less fortunate than this woman in what she has done and they get up and go through the day no matter how hard. I can't not see taking medicine to "end life on my terms" as anything other than being afraid of what it takes to live to the last breath. I could get being afraid. But bragging of one's decision to die to make a statement about desiring to die and demanding everyone else affirm one's decision as good, I won't do. Damn it Brittany, live. Live until you die. Live because it is harder than climbing mountains or running marathons. Anyone can check out early. Anyone can quit when it gets hard. Don't. You've climbed mountains, you've run marathons. You could finish this race by running to the end if you willed to do it. I wish you would.
Make no mistake, brain cancer, tumors, it is all horrible. It is horrible. I wish she would reconsider, because given the unknown limited time she has left, she shouldn't be so quick to want to shorten the journey. She could be a great voice and witness to the courage it takes to get up each day, never knowing if this is the last. But we've become so incapable as a society of bearing what life brings, we now call choosing death a right, and get self righteous about declaring our own autonomy. We call checking out brave, but I think it far braver to face the minute to minute messiness of this business called living. Praying for her and her family, and for all those who face the mysterious grace found only by being at the foot of the cross.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Faces on Film, and a Friend I Wish I Could See to Say Goodbye
Every year we watch our wedding tape. It was a gorgeous event with over 400 guests. But it has become a sort of mini-All Saint's day as time has progressed. There are many faces I now must miss; like the Bishop who married us and gave us a large nativity set that reminds me of him every Christmas. I'm reminded how we'd lost my cousin too soon, a college friend to cancer, a second cousin to a heart attack almost a week after we wed, the son of a friend, a beloved aunt, my high school vice principal, a high school buddy I'd known since I was four and the cantor for two of the songs who also taught me theatre and junior religion and 7th grade and there are more.
Then there is my favorite picture, of me singing Happy Birthday to my grandmother. Alzheimer's was already taking her away from us at that point.
Every year, as I watch the tape when people are being seated before the mass begins, a few more of the pews are sprinkled with souls I will only get to greet again in memory and in Heaven. Today, one of my bridesmaids is clinging and yet surely slipping out of life. She suffered a brain aneurysm last night. The MRI last night was bad, the morning one was worse and all signs are not good. To make matters worse, she has diabetes, she's in a coma and she has heart issues. That she is still here is testimony to her pure stubbornness which has always served her well. If I were to describe her, it would be strong, rock, steel, fierce. You get the trend. She will stay until she decides to go. That is Jen in a nutshell, life fiercely lived no matter how difficult, words fearlessly said, even when they aren't the most artful, staying and saying, doing and doing, until she decides she's done enough.
I wrote her when I asked that she be in my wedding, that I wanted her to experience something of the "foo-fooness" of life that she often dismissed; in retrospect, I was trying to give her a luminous moment, with a pretty dress and her hair done big and with flowers and all of that; she conceded to me it was fun for a day and a great memory and I considered that a moral victory of the first order. She was one of my lunch crew and we would spar daily about the issues of the day, school, books, movies, the homily, the liturgy, and mostly, our volunteer work at Logan Center. Right and Left, we were both fiercely able to defend ourselves and I think our other friends enjoyed the mental tennis matches; they never ended, we just went to our next classes. She and I went weekly to help run a recreation program for handicapped kids, along with 25 or so other college students. She took it seriously. I thought it was fun.
We both chose it as a career in the end, both going to graduate school to get accreditation to further our service. But health issues dogged her from about the age of 30 on, and for the past 15 years, she's burned through three kidneys, gone on dialysis, had heart surgery and heart surgery and other surgery, and yet always made a point of coming to visit if she was in the vicinity. (She grew up in Virginia). She also always comes with gifts for my kids, really cool toys like puppets and things that flew or that one would fling, oragami frogs, slinkies, playdough and crafts crafts crafts. She gave gifts that everyone wanted to play with, and then we'd get on with the business of playing.
We'd laugh, we'd eat, we'd talk and we'd wonder aloud why we do not talk more often. We'd both promise to call more. We'd both not.
Both of us seemed comfortable and said we didn't mind the lapses inbetween; we seemed to simply pick up where we left off.
It would have been better for both of us if we hadn't allowed ourselves this out, if we'd been more vigilant with each other, but it is what it is and now, that opportunity to do otherwise, is no longer available. Jen always fought illness, and yet it always seemed, she was so strong, so determined, I was convinced, she would out live everyone. She'd demand that I think things through, I'd demand that she be nice even if she was right. Neither one of us liked losing. Neither one of us liked giving up. Neither one of us liked giving in. We relished our stubborness; it was a badge of pride for us both.
It is a hard thing to have a friend in a hospital states and states away and to not be there to rub her feet, to make her laugh or to share the time she has left. If I could be there, I'd probably talk too fast and too much. She often told me I did.
Neither one of us liked sentimentality and so we made fun of much. In college, we ate together often, we sang at mass and she and I liked signing the mass. She drove a small white car that her sister had air brushed silhouettes of animals onto. She was my cool prickly pear friend, the wasabi to my ginger in the sushi of life, a counterpoint necessary for music to be fuller and deeper; an anchor of hard thought for the fluffy stuff that often passed through my brain. I will miss her company deeply when she dies, because her strong voice was a something one could count on to be just that, strong.
Prayers that she is in no pain and that she knows, she is deeply loved both here, and in Heaven. I know I will see her every time I see that tape and recall that day; and I look forward to the reunion.
Then there is my favorite picture, of me singing Happy Birthday to my grandmother. Alzheimer's was already taking her away from us at that point.
Every year, as I watch the tape when people are being seated before the mass begins, a few more of the pews are sprinkled with souls I will only get to greet again in memory and in Heaven. Today, one of my bridesmaids is clinging and yet surely slipping out of life. She suffered a brain aneurysm last night. The MRI last night was bad, the morning one was worse and all signs are not good. To make matters worse, she has diabetes, she's in a coma and she has heart issues. That she is still here is testimony to her pure stubbornness which has always served her well. If I were to describe her, it would be strong, rock, steel, fierce. You get the trend. She will stay until she decides to go. That is Jen in a nutshell, life fiercely lived no matter how difficult, words fearlessly said, even when they aren't the most artful, staying and saying, doing and doing, until she decides she's done enough.
I wrote her when I asked that she be in my wedding, that I wanted her to experience something of the "foo-fooness" of life that she often dismissed; in retrospect, I was trying to give her a luminous moment, with a pretty dress and her hair done big and with flowers and all of that; she conceded to me it was fun for a day and a great memory and I considered that a moral victory of the first order. She was one of my lunch crew and we would spar daily about the issues of the day, school, books, movies, the homily, the liturgy, and mostly, our volunteer work at Logan Center. Right and Left, we were both fiercely able to defend ourselves and I think our other friends enjoyed the mental tennis matches; they never ended, we just went to our next classes. She and I went weekly to help run a recreation program for handicapped kids, along with 25 or so other college students. She took it seriously. I thought it was fun.
We both chose it as a career in the end, both going to graduate school to get accreditation to further our service. But health issues dogged her from about the age of 30 on, and for the past 15 years, she's burned through three kidneys, gone on dialysis, had heart surgery and heart surgery and other surgery, and yet always made a point of coming to visit if she was in the vicinity. (She grew up in Virginia). She also always comes with gifts for my kids, really cool toys like puppets and things that flew or that one would fling, oragami frogs, slinkies, playdough and crafts crafts crafts. She gave gifts that everyone wanted to play with, and then we'd get on with the business of playing.
We'd laugh, we'd eat, we'd talk and we'd wonder aloud why we do not talk more often. We'd both promise to call more. We'd both not.
Both of us seemed comfortable and said we didn't mind the lapses inbetween; we seemed to simply pick up where we left off.
It would have been better for both of us if we hadn't allowed ourselves this out, if we'd been more vigilant with each other, but it is what it is and now, that opportunity to do otherwise, is no longer available. Jen always fought illness, and yet it always seemed, she was so strong, so determined, I was convinced, she would out live everyone. She'd demand that I think things through, I'd demand that she be nice even if she was right. Neither one of us liked losing. Neither one of us liked giving up. Neither one of us liked giving in. We relished our stubborness; it was a badge of pride for us both.
It is a hard thing to have a friend in a hospital states and states away and to not be there to rub her feet, to make her laugh or to share the time she has left. If I could be there, I'd probably talk too fast and too much. She often told me I did.
Neither one of us liked sentimentality and so we made fun of much. In college, we ate together often, we sang at mass and she and I liked signing the mass. She drove a small white car that her sister had air brushed silhouettes of animals onto. She was my cool prickly pear friend, the wasabi to my ginger in the sushi of life, a counterpoint necessary for music to be fuller and deeper; an anchor of hard thought for the fluffy stuff that often passed through my brain. I will miss her company deeply when she dies, because her strong voice was a something one could count on to be just that, strong.
Prayers that she is in no pain and that she knows, she is deeply loved both here, and in Heaven. I know I will see her every time I see that tape and recall that day; and I look forward to the reunion.
Jen passed at 1:05 a.m. on Sunday.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Love Opens All Doors
Back when I was a graduate student, I took a great course on policy making which focused on systems of understanding, the lenses we put on when we view a problem and those we may never remove that may prevent us from seeing solutions. One of her best quotes that stayed with me was a cautionary reminder to all who live around DC, not to allow the political lens to dominate, because it would mean we would never trust the motivation of anyone; we would devalue all decisions as calculated self interest chess moves. She did not want a class full of cynics who knew the meaning of everything and the value of nothing.
I also took a class on Epistimologies, required of all students. It articulated the concept that there were "Ways of knowing," unique to the shared experiences of cultural/historical/physical groups: white and African American, male and female, hetero-sexual, homosexual, and that how one integrated the responses of the world around one, was filtered through this "Way of Knowing." This class troubled me greatly because of the subsequent premise I will now put forth: If there are ways of knowing that one cannot access because one cannot be part of a set --one cannot change race, and at the time, one could not change gender, then there are "Ways of Ignorance" so to speak.
The whole construct of a way of knowing indicates that this sort of knowledge is insular, secretive, and unknowable by those not in the protected class. Ergo, the ignorance of others of that way of knowing is not born of malice, but of an unreachable reality, and the chipping away at it can only happen if 1) the non member comes to believe there is a way of knowing that he/she is incapable of comprehending 2) then acknowledges the legitimacy of the unknowable reality and 3) acquiesces to whatever truths thus revealed as being truth that cannot be known except in an incidental and secondary manner. Suffering, in deed, all of experience becomes unsharable, empathy virtually impossible, sympathy, a pandering attempt to pretend to understand what one cannot by definition comprehend because one hasn't shared the experience. You can only peek through the keyhole of the class, bridging the gap is on a person by person basis and it is never more than partial. The doors cannot be thrown open to all.
Put together, we have the cautionary tale of not wearing a single lens to view all of life that by definition distrusts all human beings motivations and the secondary premise that knowledge and experience are not truly sharable because language is insufficient to convey the reality; what one person means by something is not what another means by the same words, ergo we cannot actually really reach each other if our worlds are too disparate; my way of knowing cannot be yours. We cannot really share our stories or connect them beyond the fringe edges.
That may seem to be putting it too strongly, but I did not see that there was a parameter one could not deliberately insert to make one's self more insular. The ways of knowing the world are not limited by one's gender and race, there's faith, politics, background, level of education, age, marital status, income, I could think of countless ways to dissect and parse reality to make one's own life less accessible to others; to make reality more singular and unsharable.
Additionally, the arguments put forth in this class did not seem to consider access to new ways of knowledge to be something one could aspire to having, we could only understand the patterns and lens as articulated from an internal member. Creating insurmountable mental walls around classes seemed to me a short hop skip and a jump from creating insurmountable mental walls around individuals, so that we could become unreachable frozen in our hurt and own private hell.
In this day and age, there is a great temptation to presume that whatever our situation, our pain, our cross, our cares, whatever our personal baggage is, that it is somehow singular and therefore unique; that no one can actually heal whatever it is because no one other than us, fully comprehends the nature of our suffering and it is unfixable. It is part of the consequence of having a culture that cherishes and promotes a belief in epistimologies, and these dictate our experiences are unsharable, unconnected and alien to each other, and that all truth that we hold transcends our own experience is fiction developed by our own epistemological blind spots. The culture of the world gambles on our embracing in our egoistic manner, the uniqueness of our understanding of our suffering, and likewise sinful blindness to others as proof of our incapacity to comprehend anything beyond our own experience. It is designed to drive us both into insatiable wrath at a world that cannot understand us, and ultimate despair because our own world is so injured and irreparable. It is a small wonder that we now are a Prozac nation, seeking a pill to make all the pain we think no one else is experiencing, go away so we can be normal and non suffering like all the other people out there in the world. Why if it is our nature to be like no one else, do we cry out desperately to be like everyone else? Answer, we are not aliens. We are not other. We are everybody else and ourselves, and our experiences however diverse in nature, are not that diverse in feeling.
The truth is that the world is suffering, big and little, global and singular, for the 1 and the 99% and the pain of it is inescapable by any means but grace. It is filled with papercuts and snarky comments, pains that are physical and ones that preoccupy one's whole mind all day for weeks on end. Dullness and desire for wanting for those who never know want and want that drives one to dullness if want is all one knows. There are wolves everywhere that rip at our spirits, and winds that cut fingers and faces when we just wish for once, it would be easier. It would be easier if we believed we weren't the only ones being stalked by the wolves, houdned by fear or pain, if we recognized that everything that is and isn't, comes with a choice of how we respond, and that the choices we face today and now are not so different from those faced 1000 or 4000 years ago, or from those 1000 or 4000 years from now; to love or not, to forgive, or not, to help or not, to do or not, to add to the beauty or curse the ugliness, these are our choices, not fight or flight, but create feast or stay starving. Rest or stay running ragged. Pray or stay anxious.
For Catholics, the Catholic lens is supposed to be in place of our eyes, so that we see with the eyes of Christ first, rather than through a political lens or a capitalist or American or feminist or what have you. For Catholics, the lens is that Our God understands all, and loves us all, understanding intimately the all that is us, even our sin, even our private sufferings, and that the only true way of knowing is a way of loving. It is the only way that opens all doors.
Editor's Note: Not sure why I needed to write all of this but it hounded me all morning and now I can let it go.
I also took a class on Epistimologies, required of all students. It articulated the concept that there were "Ways of knowing," unique to the shared experiences of cultural/historical/physical groups: white and African American, male and female, hetero-sexual, homosexual, and that how one integrated the responses of the world around one, was filtered through this "Way of Knowing." This class troubled me greatly because of the subsequent premise I will now put forth: If there are ways of knowing that one cannot access because one cannot be part of a set --one cannot change race, and at the time, one could not change gender, then there are "Ways of Ignorance" so to speak.
The whole construct of a way of knowing indicates that this sort of knowledge is insular, secretive, and unknowable by those not in the protected class. Ergo, the ignorance of others of that way of knowing is not born of malice, but of an unreachable reality, and the chipping away at it can only happen if 1) the non member comes to believe there is a way of knowing that he/she is incapable of comprehending 2) then acknowledges the legitimacy of the unknowable reality and 3) acquiesces to whatever truths thus revealed as being truth that cannot be known except in an incidental and secondary manner. Suffering, in deed, all of experience becomes unsharable, empathy virtually impossible, sympathy, a pandering attempt to pretend to understand what one cannot by definition comprehend because one hasn't shared the experience. You can only peek through the keyhole of the class, bridging the gap is on a person by person basis and it is never more than partial. The doors cannot be thrown open to all.
Put together, we have the cautionary tale of not wearing a single lens to view all of life that by definition distrusts all human beings motivations and the secondary premise that knowledge and experience are not truly sharable because language is insufficient to convey the reality; what one person means by something is not what another means by the same words, ergo we cannot actually really reach each other if our worlds are too disparate; my way of knowing cannot be yours. We cannot really share our stories or connect them beyond the fringe edges.
That may seem to be putting it too strongly, but I did not see that there was a parameter one could not deliberately insert to make one's self more insular. The ways of knowing the world are not limited by one's gender and race, there's faith, politics, background, level of education, age, marital status, income, I could think of countless ways to dissect and parse reality to make one's own life less accessible to others; to make reality more singular and unsharable.
Additionally, the arguments put forth in this class did not seem to consider access to new ways of knowledge to be something one could aspire to having, we could only understand the patterns and lens as articulated from an internal member. Creating insurmountable mental walls around classes seemed to me a short hop skip and a jump from creating insurmountable mental walls around individuals, so that we could become unreachable frozen in our hurt and own private hell.
In this day and age, there is a great temptation to presume that whatever our situation, our pain, our cross, our cares, whatever our personal baggage is, that it is somehow singular and therefore unique; that no one can actually heal whatever it is because no one other than us, fully comprehends the nature of our suffering and it is unfixable. It is part of the consequence of having a culture that cherishes and promotes a belief in epistimologies, and these dictate our experiences are unsharable, unconnected and alien to each other, and that all truth that we hold transcends our own experience is fiction developed by our own epistemological blind spots. The culture of the world gambles on our embracing in our egoistic manner, the uniqueness of our understanding of our suffering, and likewise sinful blindness to others as proof of our incapacity to comprehend anything beyond our own experience. It is designed to drive us both into insatiable wrath at a world that cannot understand us, and ultimate despair because our own world is so injured and irreparable. It is a small wonder that we now are a Prozac nation, seeking a pill to make all the pain we think no one else is experiencing, go away so we can be normal and non suffering like all the other people out there in the world. Why if it is our nature to be like no one else, do we cry out desperately to be like everyone else? Answer, we are not aliens. We are not other. We are everybody else and ourselves, and our experiences however diverse in nature, are not that diverse in feeling.
The truth is that the world is suffering, big and little, global and singular, for the 1 and the 99% and the pain of it is inescapable by any means but grace. It is filled with papercuts and snarky comments, pains that are physical and ones that preoccupy one's whole mind all day for weeks on end. Dullness and desire for wanting for those who never know want and want that drives one to dullness if want is all one knows. There are wolves everywhere that rip at our spirits, and winds that cut fingers and faces when we just wish for once, it would be easier. It would be easier if we believed we weren't the only ones being stalked by the wolves, houdned by fear or pain, if we recognized that everything that is and isn't, comes with a choice of how we respond, and that the choices we face today and now are not so different from those faced 1000 or 4000 years ago, or from those 1000 or 4000 years from now; to love or not, to forgive, or not, to help or not, to do or not, to add to the beauty or curse the ugliness, these are our choices, not fight or flight, but create feast or stay starving. Rest or stay running ragged. Pray or stay anxious.
For Catholics, the Catholic lens is supposed to be in place of our eyes, so that we see with the eyes of Christ first, rather than through a political lens or a capitalist or American or feminist or what have you. For Catholics, the lens is that Our God understands all, and loves us all, understanding intimately the all that is us, even our sin, even our private sufferings, and that the only true way of knowing is a way of loving. It is the only way that opens all doors.
Editor's Note: Not sure why I needed to write all of this but it hounded me all morning and now I can let it go.
Friday, September 9, 2011
A Request Until She has a Face
The other day, I had to schlep several children to the pediatrician. It was pouring rain and a difficult errand at best. Leaving with prescriptions in hand, I turned onto the road and saw a strange sight. A woman walking in the pouring rain, wearing a black overcoat, sneakers and a hood. From the back and side, there was nothing unusual. But her face.
She was wearing a skull face covering her entire face. It was the kind you see in bad horror movies, like Scream, only a variant that was more realistic, less abstract. It was the kind that are otherwise only spotted on or near October 31st. Walking in the rain, a grown woman was dressed like this, she stopped at the bus stop.
My mind scrolled through possible benevolent explanations.
1) She lost a bet she shouldn't have made.
2) This was a set up by some reality television exec.
3) It's pouring, really pouring, and she grabbed a hood only to discover it was this, but it was better than getting soaked.
4) There is some flashmob zombie convention somewhere.
5) She works in a costume shop and was going home. She works in a costume shop and was trying to drum up business.
But the thoughts didn't mollify as I remembered, there is an abortuary near by where second trimester procedures take place. I hoped the person wasn't affiliated with either the prayer vigil outside or the employees within, one would reveal a lack of charity, and the other, a chilled heart.
Her "face" or the lack there of, took my mind off of all the amoxicillin I'd be forced to dish out over the next ten days. It nagged at me though I sought out the radio, my children, anything to deter my brain from pondering how ragged a soul might possibly be to willingly don a mask of this nature. I couldn't make those happy square peg thoughts fit in the round wounded hole I'd seen in that scene. It seemed at best angry, at worst, mentally ill.
So I called my mom.
She reminded me: the answer to everything, is when in doubt, pray. When you're frightened, pray. When you're hurt, pray. When you're angry, pray. When you don't know what you need, pray. When you do, pray.
So I did. But the woman stayed in my mind again today, so I prayed for her again today. It still feels like not enough, like this woman, whoever she is, needs more. And what's more, I want to give this woman more.
So I'm asking all of you, to pray: That whatever it is, is made better. That whatever it is, is healed. That this woman walk the street, and we won't know it, but she will show her face. That would be a start.
If it was nothing, no harm will have been done. If it is something, since we cannot know, we can do this. Maybe the world will feel a little less heavy today for that woman in the rain. I hope so.
She was wearing a skull face covering her entire face. It was the kind you see in bad horror movies, like Scream, only a variant that was more realistic, less abstract. It was the kind that are otherwise only spotted on or near October 31st. Walking in the rain, a grown woman was dressed like this, she stopped at the bus stop.
My mind scrolled through possible benevolent explanations.
1) She lost a bet she shouldn't have made.
2) This was a set up by some reality television exec.
3) It's pouring, really pouring, and she grabbed a hood only to discover it was this, but it was better than getting soaked.
4) There is some flashmob zombie convention somewhere.
5) She works in a costume shop and was going home. She works in a costume shop and was trying to drum up business.
But the thoughts didn't mollify as I remembered, there is an abortuary near by where second trimester procedures take place. I hoped the person wasn't affiliated with either the prayer vigil outside or the employees within, one would reveal a lack of charity, and the other, a chilled heart.
Her "face" or the lack there of, took my mind off of all the amoxicillin I'd be forced to dish out over the next ten days. It nagged at me though I sought out the radio, my children, anything to deter my brain from pondering how ragged a soul might possibly be to willingly don a mask of this nature. I couldn't make those happy square peg thoughts fit in the round wounded hole I'd seen in that scene. It seemed at best angry, at worst, mentally ill.
So I called my mom.
She reminded me: the answer to everything, is when in doubt, pray. When you're frightened, pray. When you're hurt, pray. When you're angry, pray. When you don't know what you need, pray. When you do, pray.
So I did. But the woman stayed in my mind again today, so I prayed for her again today. It still feels like not enough, like this woman, whoever she is, needs more. And what's more, I want to give this woman more.
So I'm asking all of you, to pray: That whatever it is, is made better. That whatever it is, is healed. That this woman walk the street, and we won't know it, but she will show her face. That would be a start.
If it was nothing, no harm will have been done. If it is something, since we cannot know, we can do this. Maybe the world will feel a little less heavy today for that woman in the rain. I hope so.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
The Whisper of God
If this season teaches us anything, it is that our eyes ache for beauty. In Maryland, spring is a feast of flowers and blooming trees. I'm always shocked at the constant loveliness of this month, with tulips and cherry blossoms and dogwood, forsythia and azaleas. It's hard to feel anything but awe when surrounded by such lavish loveliness.
Then I got a phone call from a friend. In my eyes, this woman is the equivalent of spring any day of the year. Her light brave spirit and easy laugh are contagious. Today however, she called to tell about her cousin's child, a four month old facing a possible tracheotomy on Friday and a lifetime of being paralyzed from the neck down. Facing the foot of the cross on a daily basis with her own daughter's chronic and potentially lethal condition that requires daily monitoring and nightly vigils, my friend knew there was only one source of comfort, one source of strength and healing. So she was asking people to pray.
My friend is one of those people who pours everything out. She also has a wicked sense of humor that keeps anyone from feeling crushed by sorrow. When faced with my own son's pending open heart surgery, she came to the hospital bearing hot chocolate. She'd not seen Paul before. Peering down at him in his isolet with the IV and the feeding tube up his nose, she quipped, "Wow! He's Down Syndrome hot!" I had to clean up my hot cocoa.
Sure enough, she told her cousin, "You can do this. I know you can do this." Her cousin asked why my friend knew. "Because you're not lazier than me." and the blessed laughter washed over the conversation for a moment.
I must learn never to drink diet coke when she calls, it's hard on my nasal passages. She remains a willing pitcher pouring out God's love through the grace of good humor.
As we talked, she told me the story of how she'd quasi-adopted a child in her apartment complex by providing a place after school for a meal, homework help and comfort while the mother worked. It was the type of constant but seemingly random kindness that mostly goes unreported on the news and Internet. It isn't random, it's wilful cooperation with God's grace.
The whispers of God were revealed in these moments of kindness, of beauty, of prayer, of diligence and they go on every day in countless homes, in countless hearts. These whispers are greater than the noise and bluster and violence and wrath that pours forth on a daily basis from the news whatever the source. God waits to be discovered in all those places where the ordinariness of love is the norm. God is in the details of being willing to submit to the rigors of this world when quitting or running away or pulling back would be seemingly easier. And the world practically sings with this sort of strong truth (especially in Spring), just as surely as flowers sprouted in between the rocks despite the presence of the rocks.
So please pray for my friend's cousin and her family, they need to feel the presence of God.
Then I got a phone call from a friend. In my eyes, this woman is the equivalent of spring any day of the year. Her light brave spirit and easy laugh are contagious. Today however, she called to tell about her cousin's child, a four month old facing a possible tracheotomy on Friday and a lifetime of being paralyzed from the neck down. Facing the foot of the cross on a daily basis with her own daughter's chronic and potentially lethal condition that requires daily monitoring and nightly vigils, my friend knew there was only one source of comfort, one source of strength and healing. So she was asking people to pray.
My friend is one of those people who pours everything out. She also has a wicked sense of humor that keeps anyone from feeling crushed by sorrow. When faced with my own son's pending open heart surgery, she came to the hospital bearing hot chocolate. She'd not seen Paul before. Peering down at him in his isolet with the IV and the feeding tube up his nose, she quipped, "Wow! He's Down Syndrome hot!" I had to clean up my hot cocoa.
Sure enough, she told her cousin, "You can do this. I know you can do this." Her cousin asked why my friend knew. "Because you're not lazier than me." and the blessed laughter washed over the conversation for a moment.
I must learn never to drink diet coke when she calls, it's hard on my nasal passages. She remains a willing pitcher pouring out God's love through the grace of good humor.
As we talked, she told me the story of how she'd quasi-adopted a child in her apartment complex by providing a place after school for a meal, homework help and comfort while the mother worked. It was the type of constant but seemingly random kindness that mostly goes unreported on the news and Internet. It isn't random, it's wilful cooperation with God's grace.
The whispers of God were revealed in these moments of kindness, of beauty, of prayer, of diligence and they go on every day in countless homes, in countless hearts. These whispers are greater than the noise and bluster and violence and wrath that pours forth on a daily basis from the news whatever the source. God waits to be discovered in all those places where the ordinariness of love is the norm. God is in the details of being willing to submit to the rigors of this world when quitting or running away or pulling back would be seemingly easier. And the world practically sings with this sort of strong truth (especially in Spring), just as surely as flowers sprouted in between the rocks despite the presence of the rocks.
So please pray for my friend's cousin and her family, they need to feel the presence of God.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Request for Prayer
This blog is many things; sometimes political, sometimes silly, sometimes serious. Today, it is urgent.
A friend of mine has a daughter. She is my daughter's first and to this date, still best friend despite having moved to Texas. Zoe has a rare condition that is called Ondine's Curse; her autonomic functions stop if she loses consciousness. Thus, to make it to the age of 10 alive, she's had to be put on a respirator every night, has pacers and has had more tests and hospital stays than can possibly be counted.
Right now, she's having a bad spell of days and nights, where she is on and off oxygen and the machines are a companion that is not leaving. People with this condition sometimes have spells where it is better or worse as they age and develop and the demands on their bodies change. This is a type of growing pain that none of us ever hope to experience. There simply isn't enough known about this condition because so few have it and survival is so precarious.
Whenever I feel the least bit overwhelmed by my situation of too much, I think of my friend and her family and how I have the odd luxury of not having to be hyper-vigilant. Maybe I should be, but I have the taken for granted by most of us, gift of not being on red alert all the time.
My friend (Zoe's mother), bears this burden with tremendous luminous grace and humor and her faith is Christian steel. She surrenders her daughter to the trust of God at the foot of the cross every night, and every car ride and every time she lets her go out into the world. Even more impressive, she does let her daughter go out and seize life. Zoe has done cheer leading and gymnastics and gone to school and has a vivid imagination and wicked sense of humor; she reminds me of her mother. (Zoe would carpe diem regardless as she is a zealous creature; part of why my daughter loves her so).
Her family does not hide this daughter under a bushel basket, nor do they allow it to color her faith or her temperament with the martyrdom of suffering; the condition simply is. As her mother said once, "How could I do less?" Well, I don't know of any who could do more and still keep themselves so grounded, so present, so lively and so laugh and light filled.
When I was at the hospital with Paul for his open heart surgery, Zoe's mom made a trek to DC to see me within the first week, bringing Starbucks hot chocolate. She had not yet seen my son. Looking at him in the isolette as she handed me my drink, she studied him for a few moments and said, "Wow, he's Down Syndrome Hot." I spewed cocoa everywhere --it was the first time I'd laughed hard since I'd been at the hospital staring down the prospects of Paul's procedure. It was a healing moment for me.
So I'm asking everyone to pray for Zoe and her family; to pray that they can go back to simply preparing for Christmas, that this bout of having difficulty maintaining blood oxygen levels and continuing to simply breathe and exist passes. Pray for Zoe to spend Christmas at home with her family and for the extraordinary gift for their family of ordinary days and peaceful silent breath filled nights.
A friend of mine has a daughter. She is my daughter's first and to this date, still best friend despite having moved to Texas. Zoe has a rare condition that is called Ondine's Curse; her autonomic functions stop if she loses consciousness. Thus, to make it to the age of 10 alive, she's had to be put on a respirator every night, has pacers and has had more tests and hospital stays than can possibly be counted.
Right now, she's having a bad spell of days and nights, where she is on and off oxygen and the machines are a companion that is not leaving. People with this condition sometimes have spells where it is better or worse as they age and develop and the demands on their bodies change. This is a type of growing pain that none of us ever hope to experience. There simply isn't enough known about this condition because so few have it and survival is so precarious.
Whenever I feel the least bit overwhelmed by my situation of too much, I think of my friend and her family and how I have the odd luxury of not having to be hyper-vigilant. Maybe I should be, but I have the taken for granted by most of us, gift of not being on red alert all the time.
My friend (Zoe's mother), bears this burden with tremendous luminous grace and humor and her faith is Christian steel. She surrenders her daughter to the trust of God at the foot of the cross every night, and every car ride and every time she lets her go out into the world. Even more impressive, she does let her daughter go out and seize life. Zoe has done cheer leading and gymnastics and gone to school and has a vivid imagination and wicked sense of humor; she reminds me of her mother. (Zoe would carpe diem regardless as she is a zealous creature; part of why my daughter loves her so).
Her family does not hide this daughter under a bushel basket, nor do they allow it to color her faith or her temperament with the martyrdom of suffering; the condition simply is. As her mother said once, "How could I do less?" Well, I don't know of any who could do more and still keep themselves so grounded, so present, so lively and so laugh and light filled.
When I was at the hospital with Paul for his open heart surgery, Zoe's mom made a trek to DC to see me within the first week, bringing Starbucks hot chocolate. She had not yet seen my son. Looking at him in the isolette as she handed me my drink, she studied him for a few moments and said, "Wow, he's Down Syndrome Hot." I spewed cocoa everywhere --it was the first time I'd laughed hard since I'd been at the hospital staring down the prospects of Paul's procedure. It was a healing moment for me.
So I'm asking everyone to pray for Zoe and her family; to pray that they can go back to simply preparing for Christmas, that this bout of having difficulty maintaining blood oxygen levels and continuing to simply breathe and exist passes. Pray for Zoe to spend Christmas at home with her family and for the extraordinary gift for their family of ordinary days and peaceful silent breath filled nights.
Friday, May 7, 2010
What is Required
Somewhere in this mixed up century, we came to the deluded conclusion that if we pad enough of life, we'll never get a skinned knee and that nothing of value can come from ever having experienced a bruise or a bump or a hurt feeling.
Somewhere across time, we went from sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me to names can hurt me so anyone who names me as I do not which to be named shall be stoned. Somewhere in recent history, we went quite mad as a society when we embraced the idea that while life isn't fair, it should be and all unfairness not in our favor shall be deemed evil.
Somehow we decided as a civilization that suffering has no purpose and no meaning and as such, should not be tolerated except when we can ascribe a value and a meaning. The actual meaning and value (by the way) must be readily accessible to everyone or it is a mere projection of wishful hopes and an overly optimistic coping mechanism.
People in America can now control the air in their room, their side of the car, the firmness of their mattress and what TV they watch when. We have created a heightened sense of anxiety about everything because suddenly numbers rule everything. We watch the Dow spiral. We watch our calories. We measure our inhales and our exhales and the fat and salt content and sugar in grams, in milligrams, in ounces. We measure the minutes, we bill the hours and with all our knowledge, with all our access to knowledge, we still cannot create one minute more in the day nor can we guarantee that if we do everything perfectly, we won't suffer. It is a giant dellusion to think otherwise but we constantly act shocked with life takes more effort, more commitment, or more energy than we wanted to give.
Life has random elements, friendships that grow and those that die, weeds that take root, pounds unexpectedly stubborn and minutes that get lost. There are bills we forget about and ones that are bigger than we preanticipated and weather that rains out playoffs. There is always more to do and there are always people doing more than us. Sometimes, doing more isn't better and sometimes we can do everything right and someone else will still win. Being constantly on alert to measure and weigh and anticipate everything still doesn't mean everything won't get screwed up when the lights finally go dark and the curtain finally rises. We freeze. We forget lines. We forget our place in the universe and we forget our primary job. We're human.
We spend much of our modern days trying to be free from want, from need, from all discomfort, from all we disagree with, from all pain, from all work, from all that requires the more from us that makes us human. Animals live within their limits. They conserve energy. They hunt when they are hungry. They do not eat when they are not. They sleep as they need. Their lives are measured by instinct and the physical limits of their being. Our lives exceed our instincts in all things. To be human is to have physical limits we ignore and mental and emotional limits we impose and not always have the wisdom or the instinct to know the difference.
Our goal in life is not to not suffer; but to do, to have our body doing and our spirit being such that whatever unfairness we find, we make less painful, whatever injustice we suffer, we do not nurse, that our needs and wants are not mixed up, and that Our wants and Our needs do not dominate the landscape of our souls or how we pour out our lives. We are made for others. My youngest son woke this morning with a runny nose and rejected his normal breakfast of toast and cheerios until I held him and kissed his forehead constantly. This is what is required of us, not that we can cure the cold or eliminate the reality of colds, but that we can be close with and hold those who hurt for whatever reason. It is all that is required; that we let God do the measuring of our lives, and we be willing to live them to the fuller measure that is God's.
Somewhere across time, we went from sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me to names can hurt me so anyone who names me as I do not which to be named shall be stoned. Somewhere in recent history, we went quite mad as a society when we embraced the idea that while life isn't fair, it should be and all unfairness not in our favor shall be deemed evil.
Somehow we decided as a civilization that suffering has no purpose and no meaning and as such, should not be tolerated except when we can ascribe a value and a meaning. The actual meaning and value (by the way) must be readily accessible to everyone or it is a mere projection of wishful hopes and an overly optimistic coping mechanism.
People in America can now control the air in their room, their side of the car, the firmness of their mattress and what TV they watch when. We have created a heightened sense of anxiety about everything because suddenly numbers rule everything. We watch the Dow spiral. We watch our calories. We measure our inhales and our exhales and the fat and salt content and sugar in grams, in milligrams, in ounces. We measure the minutes, we bill the hours and with all our knowledge, with all our access to knowledge, we still cannot create one minute more in the day nor can we guarantee that if we do everything perfectly, we won't suffer. It is a giant dellusion to think otherwise but we constantly act shocked with life takes more effort, more commitment, or more energy than we wanted to give.
Life has random elements, friendships that grow and those that die, weeds that take root, pounds unexpectedly stubborn and minutes that get lost. There are bills we forget about and ones that are bigger than we preanticipated and weather that rains out playoffs. There is always more to do and there are always people doing more than us. Sometimes, doing more isn't better and sometimes we can do everything right and someone else will still win. Being constantly on alert to measure and weigh and anticipate everything still doesn't mean everything won't get screwed up when the lights finally go dark and the curtain finally rises. We freeze. We forget lines. We forget our place in the universe and we forget our primary job. We're human.
We spend much of our modern days trying to be free from want, from need, from all discomfort, from all we disagree with, from all pain, from all work, from all that requires the more from us that makes us human. Animals live within their limits. They conserve energy. They hunt when they are hungry. They do not eat when they are not. They sleep as they need. Their lives are measured by instinct and the physical limits of their being. Our lives exceed our instincts in all things. To be human is to have physical limits we ignore and mental and emotional limits we impose and not always have the wisdom or the instinct to know the difference.
Our goal in life is not to not suffer; but to do, to have our body doing and our spirit being such that whatever unfairness we find, we make less painful, whatever injustice we suffer, we do not nurse, that our needs and wants are not mixed up, and that Our wants and Our needs do not dominate the landscape of our souls or how we pour out our lives. We are made for others. My youngest son woke this morning with a runny nose and rejected his normal breakfast of toast and cheerios until I held him and kissed his forehead constantly. This is what is required of us, not that we can cure the cold or eliminate the reality of colds, but that we can be close with and hold those who hurt for whatever reason. It is all that is required; that we let God do the measuring of our lives, and we be willing to live them to the fuller measure that is God's.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
The Dream We Have May Not Be Ours to Realize
Today I was busy trying to be busy, trying to be a good mom by making it to mass to see my son read for three seconds of petitions. My four year old daughter always needs to use the facilities at mass. Today was no exception.
A friend offered to watch Paul and Regina so I could take Rita by myself and I stopped to watch the class of students aiding the set up of the soup kitchen. These were children with moderate disabilities, some of them non verbal. They were serving those who would come to eat because they had no other place to eat. They were doing meaningful work despite their disabilities, or perhaps because of their disabilities. If they had not been handicapped, they would be in regular classes learning history or algebra or wondering why they had to learn history or algebra and when was lunch?
Instead, they were setting the tables, adding napkins and flowers and notecards. I watched a young man pushing a cart. This could one day be my son, feeding the hungry. I thanked the teachers overseeing the students. Today, a dream I'd harbored was fulfilled not by me, but for me.
You see, when I was a doctoral student, I wanted to run a soup kitchen where the students with developmental delays served and cooked the food. I wanted the kids to do meaningful work that served others. I had served as a supervisor in graduate school at a "simulated workshop" where simulated work was done and hated it. I had watched students grow angry at not the menial nature of the work but the menial nature of their lives, of expectations.
"Who wants to grow up to be a maid?" a student Christina had said one day as she slapped down her book bag. I found I could only agree. Who wants to be a servant? It was then that I started pondering how to make vocational training as it was called, vocational learning (my term). “Who wants to serve?” was a much more compelling question in my mind.
Going back to the mass, we made it to hear my son say his part and I sat there feeling my heart plucked by the readings and the Mass and the ashes and the reality that the meek were feeding the hungry and how great it was, that even little ones like my son Paul might one day be able to act as Christ to others in the little way of setting a table or adding flowers.
The degree didn't happen and neither did the school I'd planned, but the vision of what I hoped did, without me. I just was blessed to see it and to recognize it realized today.
A friend offered to watch Paul and Regina so I could take Rita by myself and I stopped to watch the class of students aiding the set up of the soup kitchen. These were children with moderate disabilities, some of them non verbal. They were serving those who would come to eat because they had no other place to eat. They were doing meaningful work despite their disabilities, or perhaps because of their disabilities. If they had not been handicapped, they would be in regular classes learning history or algebra or wondering why they had to learn history or algebra and when was lunch?
Instead, they were setting the tables, adding napkins and flowers and notecards. I watched a young man pushing a cart. This could one day be my son, feeding the hungry. I thanked the teachers overseeing the students. Today, a dream I'd harbored was fulfilled not by me, but for me.
You see, when I was a doctoral student, I wanted to run a soup kitchen where the students with developmental delays served and cooked the food. I wanted the kids to do meaningful work that served others. I had served as a supervisor in graduate school at a "simulated workshop" where simulated work was done and hated it. I had watched students grow angry at not the menial nature of the work but the menial nature of their lives, of expectations.
"Who wants to grow up to be a maid?" a student Christina had said one day as she slapped down her book bag. I found I could only agree. Who wants to be a servant? It was then that I started pondering how to make vocational training as it was called, vocational learning (my term). “Who wants to serve?” was a much more compelling question in my mind.
Going back to the mass, we made it to hear my son say his part and I sat there feeling my heart plucked by the readings and the Mass and the ashes and the reality that the meek were feeding the hungry and how great it was, that even little ones like my son Paul might one day be able to act as Christ to others in the little way of setting a table or adding flowers.
The degree didn't happen and neither did the school I'd planned, but the vision of what I hoped did, without me. I just was blessed to see it and to recognize it realized today.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Fat Tuesday
Stepping on the scale, it certainly is Mardi Gras. (Sigh). Ten days of being snowbound did not help with my nutrition or weight. There are cups and towels and shoes and socks and papers and magic cards and pennies and Valentine scraps and cheerios scattered everywhere. Every room is a project waiting for a devotion of an entire day. Last week, we shoveled snow, this week; I will be shoveling everything else.
It's like the kids were house guests who threw a week long party and you know the rule about fish and visitors. Three days, they've been here 10. Even if school had not been in session, the kids would have been dropped off there today for at least 5 hours. But I'm not completely heartless; I would have packed them lunches and maybe a snack.
But I've decided for Lent, I'm not going to indulge my irritated gritch that resents when the lion's share of the domestic chores get left for her to do. I'm giving her up. She wasn't very good company, she didn't even get much done and no one will miss her, not even me.
Naturally whenever one reaches for grace, the world pulls back with all its vigor. Look. Your daughter just deliberately poured an entire box of cheerios onto the floor and began smashing them. The gritch was ready to pounce but I handed my daughter the shop vac and watched as she took care of the problem.
The rest of the house loomed. I made beds. When I found my daughter's lost shoe, three bottles, fifteen socks and a spare load of laundry sitting in the closet from a child's attempt to clean the room without cleaning, I reminded myself, all suffering is a means of grace.
All suffering is a means of grace. All suffering is a means of grace.
Then I found a puddle of water from the melted snow in the basement requiring seven big towels. There were books that I had collected and ordered taken to the bookcases in the basement that had been placed on the floor where they got to soak up all the snowy goodness instead. There were also legos everywhere and a costume box that had been dumped. Grrrrrrr.
The Gritch loomed, "See? See? Ash Wednesday isn't until tomorrow." she hissed.
Maybe I'll just give up chocolate.
It's like the kids were house guests who threw a week long party and you know the rule about fish and visitors. Three days, they've been here 10. Even if school had not been in session, the kids would have been dropped off there today for at least 5 hours. But I'm not completely heartless; I would have packed them lunches and maybe a snack.
But I've decided for Lent, I'm not going to indulge my irritated gritch that resents when the lion's share of the domestic chores get left for her to do. I'm giving her up. She wasn't very good company, she didn't even get much done and no one will miss her, not even me.
Naturally whenever one reaches for grace, the world pulls back with all its vigor. Look. Your daughter just deliberately poured an entire box of cheerios onto the floor and began smashing them. The gritch was ready to pounce but I handed my daughter the shop vac and watched as she took care of the problem.
The rest of the house loomed. I made beds. When I found my daughter's lost shoe, three bottles, fifteen socks and a spare load of laundry sitting in the closet from a child's attempt to clean the room without cleaning, I reminded myself, all suffering is a means of grace.
All suffering is a means of grace. All suffering is a means of grace.
Then I found a puddle of water from the melted snow in the basement requiring seven big towels. There were books that I had collected and ordered taken to the bookcases in the basement that had been placed on the floor where they got to soak up all the snowy goodness instead. There were also legos everywhere and a costume box that had been dumped. Grrrrrrr.
The Gritch loomed, "See? See? Ash Wednesday isn't until tomorrow." she hissed.
Maybe I'll just give up chocolate.
Monday, February 8, 2010
So They Won't Suffer
I wrote this in response to a video article by Radio Free Europe about a journalits' piece proposing "Post Natal Abortions" and the position that children with disabilities ought to be "Finished off" as an act of mercy. If you want to see the piece, it is very inspiring what two women did when they committed to speak out against evil. They managed in Russia to fight the culture of Death and get the government to at least begin the process of treating these children for their very real needs. Miraculous indeed.
I've linked it in the title of this column so you can see the whole thing but suffice it to say, it fired me up. The journalist may have lost this round but we've heard this kind of thinking before. It lingers behind every discussion of abortion of the disabled in the womb. It festers in every legal wrangling over assisted suicide. Ultimately, it is an argument that only the undisabled life is worth living, and that everything less than fully rendered, is to be weighed, measured and ultimately, found wanting.
My grandmother had Alzheimers' disease, and in the end, she could not talk or do much, but if you prayed the rosary, she nodded her head. If you brought her communion, she put out her tongue. The Coco (our name for her) that swam in the ocean and picked out my wedding dress and knew all the words to My Fair Lady and liked an Old Fashioned and broiled lobster still beat within that shell of her body. Trapped by a decaying disease of the mind that robbed her of everything, still, she could rouse herself for the Eucharist. Her struggle was difficult to bear, but because we still watched, because we still waited with her, we were rewarded with these ever so quiet miracles when she would momentarily triumph over everything.
Years ago, I worked with children with severe developmental disabilities. These were non verbal kids with multiple competing issues, cerebral palsy, mental retardation, seizures, attention deficit disorder, autism, any and all combinations. Their lives were hard to be sure with medical needs, physical needs and poverty that often loomed large. Care varied from day to day and kid to kid in the state institutions that sometimes were understaffed. The sum total of their obstacles made life a bit duller than most of us would prefer our own on a daily basis.
But these kids who couldn't talk and couldn't walk and in some cases couldn't feed themselves; they loved being alive! Put them in the pool and even the most withdrawn and disabled lit up like Christmas trees. Slap some cologne on the boys and they'd grin and grin. Brush the girls' hair and they'd preen in the mirror like any teen. Crank up the tunes and you had a dance party like nobody's business. Each one of them opened like a sunflower no matter what the Individual Education Plan said about their hostile or anti social behaviors if given not simply basic needs, but human connections, relationships that mattered however short the time a volunteer, teaching aid or teacher had with the student.
In 1992, an editorial by a County Council woman ran about how some of these children would be better off dead than to suffer as they did. Our principal spoke out against this type of thinking publically. I remember her saying "These children are not dogs to be put to sleep." Her words barely contained her indignation. I admit to feeling fairly righteous myself and wanted permission to take a field trip to park my whole class on the lady's front lawn with signs, "I don't deserve death because you are uncomfortable with my life."
We didn't.
We went to McDonald's instead at the Galleria. Some guys from the NBA's Houston Rockets were there getting burgers and stopped to take pictures and hi-five with two of my students who spent the whole rest of the trip laughing and happy for being noticed.
They couldn't talk but they tried to tell everyone we passed in the mall to look at their new Rocket hats and to look at the new Polaroid pictures they had taped to their trays as we pushed them along. Their wheelchairs and exited faces made it almost impossible for people to walk by and not notice. But my students demanded eye contact because they wanted to share their joy. A lot of people tried to pretend they weren't there. Most of them couldn't.
Not having a disability allows everyone else to ignore one's presence, to not make eye contact and walk on without any guilt or recriminations. No one expects a stranger to make eye contact. When we must hold together a society wherein no one ever experiences discomfort because of the existence of another, we will become very fragile indeed. We will become a nation of extremely touchy islands that pontificate to ourselves, consume ourselves, and eventually die checking our emails for someone, anyone to post a response affirming that they saw or read or liked or hated what we did, wanting ghost acknowledgments for ghost opinions and virtual accomplishments while the real instruments and books and relationships lie dusty and undiscovered.
Now the creeping return of killing them "so as to not let them suffer." is once again on the march as voiced by this initial journalist and paralleled by the public thinking about handicapping conditions being a legitimate rationale for abortion. Disabled children like my son Paul, like kids discovered to have Trisomy 13, or hydrocephallus or cerebral palsy or any number of conditions definable pre-birth, are eliminated via abortion.
"So they won't have to suffer." But the truth of that lie is that we don't want to see. We don't want to be tested. We don't want to bear more than our comfortable controlled lives manage now. We have scotch guarded and helmeted and padded our lives to cover every contingency such that we cannot bear anything outside of our carefully crafted plans well. One day, technology will advance to the point that all disabilities can be known pre-birth. At that point, will any child survive the Rubicon of the womb? How will we love if we will only tolerate perfection? Will we be able to bear the realness of being if we keep deciding that we can bear less and less of what it means to be real?
We don't want to have our spirits exercised or our hearts of stone broken."So they won't suffer." "So we won't have to love." is more accurate. We would rather feel nothing than the pain of loss; or the fear of having our hearts taken over by another. One thing is for sure, we will miss out on brighter smiles, better dance parties, warmer softer hearts, Polaroids and hi-fives and the quiet miracles that we cannot linger to see if all who fail to meet the standards of bodily perfection are summarily dismissed via speedy deaths.
And when we decide that we can no longer tolerate anything real, what will we be?
I've linked it in the title of this column so you can see the whole thing but suffice it to say, it fired me up. The journalist may have lost this round but we've heard this kind of thinking before. It lingers behind every discussion of abortion of the disabled in the womb. It festers in every legal wrangling over assisted suicide. Ultimately, it is an argument that only the undisabled life is worth living, and that everything less than fully rendered, is to be weighed, measured and ultimately, found wanting.
My grandmother had Alzheimers' disease, and in the end, she could not talk or do much, but if you prayed the rosary, she nodded her head. If you brought her communion, she put out her tongue. The Coco (our name for her) that swam in the ocean and picked out my wedding dress and knew all the words to My Fair Lady and liked an Old Fashioned and broiled lobster still beat within that shell of her body. Trapped by a decaying disease of the mind that robbed her of everything, still, she could rouse herself for the Eucharist. Her struggle was difficult to bear, but because we still watched, because we still waited with her, we were rewarded with these ever so quiet miracles when she would momentarily triumph over everything.
Years ago, I worked with children with severe developmental disabilities. These were non verbal kids with multiple competing issues, cerebral palsy, mental retardation, seizures, attention deficit disorder, autism, any and all combinations. Their lives were hard to be sure with medical needs, physical needs and poverty that often loomed large. Care varied from day to day and kid to kid in the state institutions that sometimes were understaffed. The sum total of their obstacles made life a bit duller than most of us would prefer our own on a daily basis.
But these kids who couldn't talk and couldn't walk and in some cases couldn't feed themselves; they loved being alive! Put them in the pool and even the most withdrawn and disabled lit up like Christmas trees. Slap some cologne on the boys and they'd grin and grin. Brush the girls' hair and they'd preen in the mirror like any teen. Crank up the tunes and you had a dance party like nobody's business. Each one of them opened like a sunflower no matter what the Individual Education Plan said about their hostile or anti social behaviors if given not simply basic needs, but human connections, relationships that mattered however short the time a volunteer, teaching aid or teacher had with the student.
In 1992, an editorial by a County Council woman ran about how some of these children would be better off dead than to suffer as they did. Our principal spoke out against this type of thinking publically. I remember her saying "These children are not dogs to be put to sleep." Her words barely contained her indignation. I admit to feeling fairly righteous myself and wanted permission to take a field trip to park my whole class on the lady's front lawn with signs, "I don't deserve death because you are uncomfortable with my life."
We didn't.
We went to McDonald's instead at the Galleria. Some guys from the NBA's Houston Rockets were there getting burgers and stopped to take pictures and hi-five with two of my students who spent the whole rest of the trip laughing and happy for being noticed.
They couldn't talk but they tried to tell everyone we passed in the mall to look at their new Rocket hats and to look at the new Polaroid pictures they had taped to their trays as we pushed them along. Their wheelchairs and exited faces made it almost impossible for people to walk by and not notice. But my students demanded eye contact because they wanted to share their joy. A lot of people tried to pretend they weren't there. Most of them couldn't.
Not having a disability allows everyone else to ignore one's presence, to not make eye contact and walk on without any guilt or recriminations. No one expects a stranger to make eye contact. When we must hold together a society wherein no one ever experiences discomfort because of the existence of another, we will become very fragile indeed. We will become a nation of extremely touchy islands that pontificate to ourselves, consume ourselves, and eventually die checking our emails for someone, anyone to post a response affirming that they saw or read or liked or hated what we did, wanting ghost acknowledgments for ghost opinions and virtual accomplishments while the real instruments and books and relationships lie dusty and undiscovered.
Now the creeping return of killing them "so as to not let them suffer." is once again on the march as voiced by this initial journalist and paralleled by the public thinking about handicapping conditions being a legitimate rationale for abortion. Disabled children like my son Paul, like kids discovered to have Trisomy 13, or hydrocephallus or cerebral palsy or any number of conditions definable pre-birth, are eliminated via abortion.
"So they won't have to suffer." But the truth of that lie is that we don't want to see. We don't want to be tested. We don't want to bear more than our comfortable controlled lives manage now. We have scotch guarded and helmeted and padded our lives to cover every contingency such that we cannot bear anything outside of our carefully crafted plans well. One day, technology will advance to the point that all disabilities can be known pre-birth. At that point, will any child survive the Rubicon of the womb? How will we love if we will only tolerate perfection? Will we be able to bear the realness of being if we keep deciding that we can bear less and less of what it means to be real?
We don't want to have our spirits exercised or our hearts of stone broken."So they won't suffer." "So we won't have to love." is more accurate. We would rather feel nothing than the pain of loss; or the fear of having our hearts taken over by another. One thing is for sure, we will miss out on brighter smiles, better dance parties, warmer softer hearts, Polaroids and hi-fives and the quiet miracles that we cannot linger to see if all who fail to meet the standards of bodily perfection are summarily dismissed via speedy deaths.
And when we decide that we can no longer tolerate anything real, what will we be?
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
The Unsecret Formula for Surviving Life's Mishaps
Yesterday, my son was sky high. He texted me about getting a 94 on his German test. His father and I were both very pleased.
My husband took the train to New York last night. As a result, this morning, my son had gallantly offered to take the bus. He left the house at 6:00 a.m. calling me 15 minutes later as the 90 bus had passed him by. My son explained that the driver pretended he wasn't at the stop and even felt him hitting the side but kept going. "The guy even gave me eye contact through the mirror!" He was understandably, upset. I told him to come home and I'd drive him.
While I was getting everyone else ready, he came in and updated his Facebook about the incident. Getting in the car, I pointed out that maybe, that wasn't the wisest choice of actions at 6:30.
We started on the road, it was crowded. We saw the offending bus. His father called and after listening sympathetically, said well, "Happy about the 94, sorry about the 90." "That's not funny." my son said. "Not today." and after a moment, "Maybe tomorrow."
It was at this point, I revealed my secret formula, "Suffering + Time =Humor."
He said,"I'll take my humor without the suffering, thanks. I can make up jokes. I have a great immagination. I don't need the pain as inspiration."
We were quiet for a few minutes, then his phone indicated a text message.
He made a face. "I hate text chain mails. I always kill chains. I don't care if it ruins my businesses for the next thirty years! This one, by hitting delete, I've lost out on true love." He explained.
"So that explains your bad luck this morning."
"I guess it does."
"You know, your true love is on that bus."
"Well, one things's for sure, it wasn't the bus driver."*
"See? That didn't take long."
*Mental note: may have to subcontract blog out to son more.
My husband took the train to New York last night. As a result, this morning, my son had gallantly offered to take the bus. He left the house at 6:00 a.m. calling me 15 minutes later as the 90 bus had passed him by. My son explained that the driver pretended he wasn't at the stop and even felt him hitting the side but kept going. "The guy even gave me eye contact through the mirror!" He was understandably, upset. I told him to come home and I'd drive him.
While I was getting everyone else ready, he came in and updated his Facebook about the incident. Getting in the car, I pointed out that maybe, that wasn't the wisest choice of actions at 6:30.
We started on the road, it was crowded. We saw the offending bus. His father called and after listening sympathetically, said well, "Happy about the 94, sorry about the 90." "That's not funny." my son said. "Not today." and after a moment, "Maybe tomorrow."
It was at this point, I revealed my secret formula, "Suffering + Time =Humor."
He said,"I'll take my humor without the suffering, thanks. I can make up jokes. I have a great immagination. I don't need the pain as inspiration."
We were quiet for a few minutes, then his phone indicated a text message.
He made a face. "I hate text chain mails. I always kill chains. I don't care if it ruins my businesses for the next thirty years! This one, by hitting delete, I've lost out on true love." He explained.
"So that explains your bad luck this morning."
"I guess it does."
"You know, your true love is on that bus."
"Well, one things's for sure, it wasn't the bus driver."*
"See? That didn't take long."
*Mental note: may have to subcontract blog out to son more.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
The Answer to Prayer is Always “Fish”
I've been reflecting on the means by which suffering can have or rather does have meaning, on the sorrowful mysteries.
Sometimes, you can see how suffering brings us closer to God, how it cracks open a community that was meant to be more than it is at the moment before the suffering begins. The community can be a family or a church or a school or a town or a nation or a people, but the suffering is a means of revealing the true relationships that were obscured by the world, by sin and by the false comforts.
I can get that far, and then I get afraid. That awareness is too much knowledge for me, unbearably intimate and overwhelming as it washes over, and I find I did not trust love, trust God enough to use these great pains and sufferings for good because I find the great pains and sufferings so very great.
It is only if we Trust God, that we can bear suffering and know it has meaning.
Next time I hope I will remember. He always give us "fish."
Read More
The Answer to Prayer is Always “Fish”
Posted using ShareThis
Sometimes, you can see how suffering brings us closer to God, how it cracks open a community that was meant to be more than it is at the moment before the suffering begins. The community can be a family or a church or a school or a town or a nation or a people, but the suffering is a means of revealing the true relationships that were obscured by the world, by sin and by the false comforts.
I can get that far, and then I get afraid. That awareness is too much knowledge for me, unbearably intimate and overwhelming as it washes over, and I find I did not trust love, trust God enough to use these great pains and sufferings for good because I find the great pains and sufferings so very great.
It is only if we Trust God, that we can bear suffering and know it has meaning.
Next time I hope I will remember. He always give us "fish."
Read More
The Answer to Prayer is Always “Fish”
Posted using ShareThis
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Health Dare Reform
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/08/04/dying/index.html
First Joe Biden says it is patriotic to pay taxes. Now, apparently, it is patriotic to die early, or at least before one encumbers the general public by needing medical care beyond a red or blue pill.
The piece if you don't care to sully your computer with reading Salon, discusses how as Americans, we don't accept death, we fight it. Gosh, I never knew this was strictly a U.S.A. type sentiment, but let's just let that slide.
Anne Moore's piece explains that we could as a country, save millions if we would just allow death to occur like we did in the good old days. She fondly remembers all the fun wakes she attended and how healthy they were. In the good old days, those who loved the person or felt obligated, gathered to toast the person's life and reflect on his or her meaning in their lives. This still happens regardless of whether one used tubes and an ICU prior to passing or not, but it happened after death.
Now, we should gather, throw a huge blow out and kiss the relatives at the door of the hospital good bye forever. It sounds so soothing, so reasonable, to go into a cocoon room where everyone could hang out and take pictures and then die.
It would be selfless to die and more sensible, no pain, no mess, just hold a big party to kiss your loved ones good-bye and then off to that good night. The problem is, that's not what happened in her romantic childhood, nor is that what she's advocating here. She romantically attaches what people did after those they loved died, to what people should now do in the present pre-mortum.
I bet the government could encourage such behavior by waving the death taxes that normally come on one's estate upon demise when such heroic selfless action is done with full proper documentation and witnesses.
This is the same psuedo compassion that encourages abortion to be considered merely an unpleasant episode, rather than a grave evil act.
People don't know even when they receive a bad diagnosis about their health when they will die, and as such, all that they do up until that moment, amounts to part of who they are. Their sufferings and difficulties also reveal how well we love as a society.
We have the freedom to face death or not at this moment in our country as we will, with the tenacity and courage to hold on or with the equal quiet grace of endurance unto death. What we should not be in the business of doing as a nation or individuals, is asking people to "hurry it up" out of fear of suffering, nor should we be in the business of telling people who wish to go on, that such actions would be selfish because of cost.
If I were a boomer staring down the beginnings of old age, I'd feel very queasy about this mind set becoming the expected norm. Because I love people who have come before me, I find this way of thinking disturbing. There have been countless nations before this one that used the need to decrease the surplus population as an excuse to kill millions. The problems of a society of how to deal with elderly, the young, the handicapped and the poor have all been "solved" by death in the past. This is just the latest modern version of justification for killing.
So to those who offer this snake oil in the name of all that is good for the country, offering the simplicity of a red or blue pill rather than extended medical care, here are the red and blue pills. If you think it is so good for the country to die before medical care is needed, you go first.
First Joe Biden says it is patriotic to pay taxes. Now, apparently, it is patriotic to die early, or at least before one encumbers the general public by needing medical care beyond a red or blue pill.
The piece if you don't care to sully your computer with reading Salon, discusses how as Americans, we don't accept death, we fight it. Gosh, I never knew this was strictly a U.S.A. type sentiment, but let's just let that slide.
Anne Moore's piece explains that we could as a country, save millions if we would just allow death to occur like we did in the good old days. She fondly remembers all the fun wakes she attended and how healthy they were. In the good old days, those who loved the person or felt obligated, gathered to toast the person's life and reflect on his or her meaning in their lives. This still happens regardless of whether one used tubes and an ICU prior to passing or not, but it happened after death.
Now, we should gather, throw a huge blow out and kiss the relatives at the door of the hospital good bye forever. It sounds so soothing, so reasonable, to go into a cocoon room where everyone could hang out and take pictures and then die.
It would be selfless to die and more sensible, no pain, no mess, just hold a big party to kiss your loved ones good-bye and then off to that good night. The problem is, that's not what happened in her romantic childhood, nor is that what she's advocating here. She romantically attaches what people did after those they loved died, to what people should now do in the present pre-mortum.
I bet the government could encourage such behavior by waving the death taxes that normally come on one's estate upon demise when such heroic selfless action is done with full proper documentation and witnesses.
This is the same psuedo compassion that encourages abortion to be considered merely an unpleasant episode, rather than a grave evil act.
People don't know even when they receive a bad diagnosis about their health when they will die, and as such, all that they do up until that moment, amounts to part of who they are. Their sufferings and difficulties also reveal how well we love as a society.
We have the freedom to face death or not at this moment in our country as we will, with the tenacity and courage to hold on or with the equal quiet grace of endurance unto death. What we should not be in the business of doing as a nation or individuals, is asking people to "hurry it up" out of fear of suffering, nor should we be in the business of telling people who wish to go on, that such actions would be selfish because of cost.
If I were a boomer staring down the beginnings of old age, I'd feel very queasy about this mind set becoming the expected norm. Because I love people who have come before me, I find this way of thinking disturbing. There have been countless nations before this one that used the need to decrease the surplus population as an excuse to kill millions. The problems of a society of how to deal with elderly, the young, the handicapped and the poor have all been "solved" by death in the past. This is just the latest modern version of justification for killing.
So to those who offer this snake oil in the name of all that is good for the country, offering the simplicity of a red or blue pill rather than extended medical care, here are the red and blue pills. If you think it is so good for the country to die before medical care is needed, you go first.
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