Christmas Chronicles 2020 - A Wistful Day Dream, An Insightful Rant

 

I am leaving the Atlantic City Expressway and driving on the marsh road that will drop me right onto the Jersey shore.  In this daydream, I am not far from Rio Grande Boulevard, Avalon, Stone Harbor, or my other favorite haunts, but I am not there yet. 

 It is night and I can see the Ferris wheel, high and mighty in the distance.  The dark sky is lit by its circular rotation of colored lights, as if a Christmas tree was flung up in the air spinning.  It always seemed too big to me, so daunting, I was afraid to go on it.  Standing at its base on the ancient boardwalk, heralded by more than a few doo-wop singers, I stare up at it in wonder.  Can something so great be trusted to take my fragile humanity off the earth so high into the heavens? 

Now all I can think is that I want to be on that road, driving purposefully towards that skyline.  I forgive Hurricane Sandy for sending us away a few years ago before our vacation had officially ended.  For some on that trip, it would be their last time at the Jersey Shore before they crossed Jordan for the Other Shore.  I forgive the black flies for biting us on the beach in 2019, the year they were disturbed by the giant rake machine that tidied the beach in preparation for the upcoming annual Firemen’s Weekend.  I forgive the landlord who was not forthcoming about their lack of internet.  (NO internet connection for more than 3 minutes, ever, is not the same thing as “spotty internet connection.”)  I forgive my friends for the times I may have gotten on their nerves, and vice versa, I hope they extend me the same courtesy.  I forgive the Firemen partiers in the boy-toy pickup truck for passing me on a solid line and almost killing three people in the crosswalk in front of us with me almost having a heart attack by watching it – I know you had too much beer already before nightfall.  I forgive the tires of my bicycle for not being more sporting of my intent to ride long and hard…. I ask a lot of you.  I forgive everybody, everything, ever …. Just give me my Jersey Shore back!

I do not forgive COVID for pulling the brakes on life as I knew it.  I would give you 8 months out of the year – the working months with crappy weather – if you’d just give me back July, August, and September.  I want to be on the beach at the nearby lake without feeling people are too close to me when I go in the water.  I want to not wonder if the surface of the water was loaded with germs, more than the algae beneath its surface.  I want to take my blue mask off for 2 seconds when it fogs my glasses so I can see where I am walking without getting dirty looks by people.  I want to look at people without mistrust:  “are YOU going to make me sick?!”  I want to not feel aggressive about the people who have the devil-may-care attitude and think it’s all a hoax.  But I also want to not feel depressed about the people who think that wearing a mask is any bigger of a deal than it is.  Sure we ran low on toilet paper, but we did not run low on FOOD nor did we have to stand in lines like our ancestors did during the Great Depression …. Which, I imagine was not so “great” at all.

In actual fact, Mr. COVID, I am sick and tired of you entirely.  You make some people nervous and scared.  You make others aggressive, reckless and short-tempered.  You have killed a few people; and you have made others varying degrees of sick.  But as for me, I will emphasize again:  I am sick of you entirely.  The fact that people even mention you or make references to you in their Christmas cards is sad.  You have dominated our horizon and rained on our parade.  I hope you go back from whence you came …. And you know how far south that is!  (think:  heat, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, very much farther South.)

But in your terrible wake, you have left a gift that some have not noticed.  You gave us a re-set.  It may not exactly be a silvered lining of the blackest of clouds, yet it is a gift.  You see, some people want to go back “to Normal,” as if there ever was one.  But I remember, because I am old enough to stir it up, how it was the last time we came back collectively to Normal…. It was worse.

In the 1950’s television was developed (but invented in late 1920’s).  By the 1960’s every house had at least two, and in the 1970’s people had color television.  It was the beginning of a technological maelstrom.  Radio, Television, Movies, Internet, Cyberspace, Gaming, etc.  It spun and spun like a dervish.  And as it spun, our morals too were up-ended as a culture.  We began by portraying happy stories.  Coming out of the Great Depression, that is what people wanted to see:   “happy stories.  Every princess finds a prince; every Ozzie has a Harriet; a goose in every pot.”  Then people complained and said, “not all is happy – show us how it really is” – and Media took over and gave us a look at crime, violence, the seven deadly sins and every vice conceivable.  Our viewers’ perception of how the world was changed.  And they treated it as such.  So, the world changed.  Now we have the world that Media created with vice, mixed virtue, and a reality tv that does not in any way resemble my humble reality (thank Heavens).

While Marshall McLuhan asked in the 1980’s, “Does Reality create the Media, or does Media create Reality?”  we debated it in college classes.  Now, no debate is necessary.  We are 70 years down the road and it is, frankly, getting old.  The sin.  The sick minds.  The violence.  The dissolution of the moral fiber which was truly holding us all together.  Ten Commandments, out!  God, out!  (unless using the Name to curse). Healthy Family Life, out!  Sanity, out!  So maybe it’s time to say, “Trash Media, out!”

On September 11, 2001 the North American world was rocked by terrorist attacks.  Shortly thereafter, there was a hiatus on intense violence in the media.  It was as if Hollywood was giving us a break of some sort.  It was almost relieving to watch tv that was a bit lighter.  Our nerves had been collectively assaulted when our national security was shaken.  We needed a break.  And then people on the streets of New York began to talk to each other, to have caring in their voice.  To greet people with genuine concern.  We sang, “I’m Proud to Be an American” and “God Bless America” in our streets.  A culture had shifted.  And then the media, over time, ramped-up again to poisoning us with more intensity.  Now, in the city where I work, there is at least a WEEKLY shooting or stabbing.  I avoid the colossus that is our mall not because I don’t enjoy shopping, but because I am afraid of seeing a violent episode (as I did the time I was there two years ago).

The generation that followed that time kept their kids increasingly more busy.  Their business lives were frenetic as well.  Their home lives were fraying more than just “at the edges,” and divorces went up to 50%  As a society we were running on high-speed.  It was the new “normal” that had been created after a national crisis. And it was fast and furious leaving a lot of spiritual deficit in its wake.  And then from across the sea, allegedly from an open-air market and an order of  take-out “bat-to-go,” (on rice?) the whole known world was brought to its knees. 

Wake up:  There is no Normal to go back to.  From this point, we must push forward to create the world of good health, yes, and peace and spiritual balance.  It is the season for a reign of peace.  It is the season for hopes and dreams.  It is the season for an end to violence in our streets.  It is less about who sits in the White House, and should be more about who we are forming and shaping in our homes.  For the section of culture that was satisfied to have the government form its children’s moral values, “welcome to Home Schooling.”  You see how you have a unique opportunity to give something truly meaningful to your kids right now.  Do it.  Do not let this chance pass you by, or we will talk about these days when we are sitting in the nursing homes in 30 more years. 

Mr. Covid, you make me look into the mirror again.  I see a new me.  I am stronger, I am wiser.  I will walk in Faith more than ever before.  I will live decidedly for the goal of making the world a better, more virtuous place.  You may have tried to use leaders to take our places of worship away, but my God says that MY BODY IS A TEMPLE.  So now, as I walk with my God, I will be what He wanted the world to see all along:  kind, caring, virtuous …. If I can do it, it will be by His grace alone. 

I still long for the ocean.  But now that I have been made brave by the pressure of adversity, I will stand at the foot of that Ferris wheel, turn to the woman in the booth and say:  “One, please.”  On that day, I will see the world with joy.

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Exercises in Sanity

 

Although by and large I am "against" exercising, I find myself a proponent for the things we do to stay sane when in times of distress.

Here below I offer you a beloved list with a bit of humor from you're old friend Bik:

*Begin by counting dust bunnies on the floor.  Then turn your whole vacuum cleaner around backwards and see if you can chase them across the floor with the exhaust-end.  Do they blow apart and make more bunnies?  Set a timer and see how many you can vacuum up in 60 seconds.

*Go online to a paint company and continually swap out bathroom wall visualizations.  You must find a color that is not yellow, is not white, has no hint of lavender in it, and is not brown.  It must also look like sand on your favorite beach so that it matches the mini mermaids hanging on the wall.

*Read through the 1001 Muffins book and pick what you are going to make in two weeks when your current supply of breads and treats is down some.  Hey, carbs are our friends because they make glucose, and glucose is keeping you going right now.  

*Try on every pair of pants or jeans you have in your closet and decide which ones you can hold until you drop a size and can zip them, and which ones you should donate.  For every donation, set five dollars of your own money aside in the special account you have for your vacation fund to Hawaii.  Call your travel agent and book the flight.

*Re-organize your pantry so that you can see and remember what is actually available for a quick meal.  Take a sharpie and write the month and year on the top of the lid of the 5 unexpired canned goods that remain.  Open the can of apricots from 1999 to see what they look like...

*Change and launder the curtains in your rooms.  Wash the dog saliva off the living room window because your "boy" stands on the back of the loveseat to bark at the squirrels in the back yard.

*Take a break with the dog.  Scratch him under the chin until you can get him to say "arooo."  Follow this with the verbal command, "Oh, So Scary!"  until you can get him to do the ghost-noise on verbal command without the chin-scratching.  (may take a few sessions.) 

*Get on your hands and knees and wash the baseboards around each room of the house.  Quietly pray the rosary to keep yourself from killing the cat who has put claw puncture-marks in one particular spot.

*Clean out all the cards that the missionaries from every country have ever sent you.  You would not be able to use all these mass cards unless every person you have ever known in your entire life time x2 were to drop dead on the spot.  Have a plan for all of the white envelopes left over.  Trash the yellowed-ones or the ones with silhouettes of poinsettias.

*Revisit some of your favorite scrapbooks.  Then when you find the three you haven't finished, spend an hour looking for pictures from the third litter of puppies that are most likely sitting on the dead cell phone in your kitchen drawer.  (good luck with that).  Give up and make yourself a bowl of cereal for supper.

*Look for a new dog online that costs under $1500.  That will chew up about an hour of your time for the next six months.

*Stand in the middle of one room.  Visualize which piece of furniture you want to move to another room in the house.  Then, look at the clock.  See how long it takes you to relocate that one piece.  Caveat:  you must displace an already existing piece of furniture in the next room to a third room.  Keep going until every room has moved at least one piece of furniture.  You are not done until you have changed the couch cover, and cleaned any floor or flat surface.  If you time this exercise correctly, you will miss Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy and be moving furniture long into the night.  You will collapse onto your bed with a sigh of relief when you are completely done.

It is my hope that you have had a media/news-free day to clear your head of the fear and jargon.  After you have done all of these activities above, you will be ready for another week of working at home.  And hopefully your house will be more organized .... that elusive wish you used to say when you walked into your friend's place that was always immaculate.  Now you know there are only three ways people can have spotless houses:  they pay someone to clean FOR them; they don't live there long enough to make it dirty; or ... they have no life and all they do is clean!

To the Big Ass Truck Driver who almost hit me

 

To the big ass truck driver who almost hit me last night:  Yes, you have a big-ass truck.  How appropriate that YOU drive it.  They say some people buy dogs that look like them.  They say some people buy vehicles that reflect their personalities.  Mission accomplished.

I work in healthcare, but I am not a hero.  I go to church but I am not worthy of the title Christian.  I have taught people the importance of intentionally cultivating virtues (like patience, and forgiveness), and yet I myself am a work-in-progress.  Somehow between now and tomorrow morning when I go to church I have to figure out how to forgive you for almost killing both of us.

I was leaving work, it was dark.  My regular lights were on, as were my fog lights because then I can see better.  The road was clear.  I was listening to an interview on the radio where someone was talking about how to raise children that feel they can communicate with you.  You have to start when they are little and say:  “You can tell ME anything.”  I found that fascinating and a very purposeful child-rearing technique.  I was thinking about who I could share that with.  I was driving in a straight line, and I was driving about 5 miles slower than the speed limit.

This past summer I told my nephew who is a brand-new driver what You again proved last night.  That I can be the best, most careful driver in the world but I still have to take into account that we are surrounded by inconsiderate idiots on the road.  People do things you just can’t predict or reckon.  And THOSE are the people new drivers - and all drivers - have to watch out for.

I also told him that I found that just before an Event happens on the road, we find ourselves moving in slow-motion.  It’s like the Twilight Zone.  Last night found that to be true as well.  I could hear the radio interview in regular conversational tone, but I could see you coming down from the hill on the road to my right and looking like you weren’t going to stop.  Some drivers wait until the last minute to stop at the sign and that makes me crazy – because YOU NEVER KNOW WHO IS GOING TO MISS THE STOP SIGN … LIKE YOU DID.

I watched you keep coming into the road and in less time than it takes to type this I saw 3 options in front of me:  #1) to stay straight and hit you on your driver’s side and kill us both; #2) to swerve to the right and try to go up that Side street hill without flipping my vehicle or clipping your truck bed; #3) to swerve out to the left into the oncoming lane where no traffic was coming.  All of those three options were in front of me in a split second in a very omniscient way. Yet, I was only thinking how bad it would be to go to the hospital where I work, dead, in the back of an ambulance. 

You know what I chose.  I am amazed that I did not have the wherewithal to even swear at you and your big ass truck as you caused this scene.  As if I had eyes on the back of my head, I saw you change course from your initial attempt to shoot out in front and around me to turn quickly, sharply and go behind me.  My heart in my chest felt like it was quivering as I drove along.

Were you in a hurry to pick up a pizza?  Were you on your way to get beer?  Were you already rushing someone to the ER for some reason?  What was so important that you were going to blow off that stop sign and shoot into my path to try to cut in front and around me to the left side.  I will never know.  But what I do know is this – you have added to an already totally stressed-out year by being a belligerent driver.  I consider us walking away from this in one piece as no less than a MIRACLE. 

In this last twelve months: I have buried a close friend, consoled another friend who buried her husband, tried to help colleagues at work not get bogged down with talk of the pandemic, talked with my parents through the serious health issues they are struggling with, dealt with a bully at work, had hives, and other health issues crop up, had stressors this week relative to my dog’s upcoming surgery and the list goes on ….  But this morning when I got out of bed it was like I didn’t remember in my brain what happened last night.   Instead, my whole BODY remembered it …. I ached and shook from the stress.  I was not sure I could pull myself together and move into the day.

Oh, but I did.  Like every other day, I pulled myself together.  I put myself in God’s hands.  I tried to get some life energy flowing through me by putting one foot in front of the other.  I looked at my weekend task list and started to do the small things that were manageable.  I still could not process the events of last night yet.  So, here I am doing it the way I know best:  writing about it. 

I am someone.  I deserve to live as much as you do.  I have dogs that depend on me, friends and family that care about me.  I want to see my nephews make Eagle Scout someday.  I want to be there for my sister when she achieves her next big thing in life.  I am needed in the delivery room at a neighboring hospital to help a young woman have a baby in February.  I matter.  I may be a small piece in the puzzle but you, Mr. Big Ass Truck Driver, do not see that even small pieces matter.  You think you are first.

I hope you get your license taken away.  If last night was not a wake up call for you, if you are talking to your buddies saying what a kick-ass driver you are that you avoided a collision last night, I hope you don’t kill someone from your recklessness.  Actually, I hope every neighbor on your street lets their dog dump in your driveway.

Maybe tomorrow I can forgive you.  But for now, I am really, really mad at you.

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No Fever Today ...

 

 No Fever Today .... 

No fever today.  But, man, do I have a headache.  I feel like someone banged me on the top of the head.  Maybe it was me.  I have one of those cedar post log beds and it is a possibility.  I am sure if you ask the dogs I was not a good bedfellow last night:  I probably thrashed a lot.  But it was their fault.  I was having a nightmare that I lived in apartment and some man walked into my kitchen and somehow, I knew he was not going to hurt ME, but he was after my dogs.  I ran out the door and found my limbs uncooperative with the speed I was attempting; I stumbled helplessly by a guy I know from work and he said nothing.  I floundered my way to the Rental Office to have them call 9-1-1 and discovered I could not speak, nor could I shout.  But in my chest, as I slept, I could feel myself screaming.  I threw myself across the rental agent’s desk.  Then, I woke up.  My dogs smiled at me as if nothing happened.  That’s the thanks I get for saving their lives in my dreams!  Was it watching cop shows before bedtime that caused this … or the pretzel squares smoothed over with port wine cheese that I must blame?

Or COVID?  Maybe, like everything else that has gone wrong, we can blame COVID.  I am so sick of that word.  Sick of the 3-point instructions (if you don’t know what they are after 7 months of hammering from every direction, SHAME ON YOU!).  So what happened to all my good intentions on how to keep my life “together” as a single person moving through this community-world-wide-health-disaster? 

I sleep a lot, but I am not well-rested.  I talk to the same handful of people every week, because I love them.  Yet there are people that I thought might care enough to pick up the phone and check on me, that have by-and-large not done so.  Consequently, my Christmas list is shrinking in my head.   I realized that it is probably pointless to consider online dating, because we are as a State getting ready to “close down” everything again.  Will there ever be a real-life date again?  Not that I had a shot at that in the last decade.  I felt like before COVID I had very few possibilities of finding a good match, True Love (think “Princess Bride” movie dialogues), or anything related to relational happiness.  Now, my overall hope is swirling the porcelain bowl. 

Getting a part time job is high on my list at present.  However, getting the virus is NOT.  Consequently, all the Help Wanted signs on the big box stores are irrelevant to me.  I am trying to get online, work-from-home jobs.  Or maybe I could just “marry into money,” but then again see the previous paragraph’s conclusion.

Valor, Prince of Morning Glory Acres, is in desperate need of a wife.  I have hunted for one online for him and come to the realization that the Law of Supply and Demand does indeed function and thrive in such times as these.  People are working from home.  Kids are doing school remotely.  I can’t imagine how four and five-person households must be tripping over each other right now, both physically and emotionally.  What’s the American solution? – Get a dog.  Which, if you think about it, is incredibly short-sighted (or desperate).  What happens, the Amish puppy-broker woman asked me, when these kids go back to school and these adults go back to work?  What happens to the dogs indeed?  I can tell you at my house when I am not home they haul out the cigars and the poker game begins … just like on that classic painting.  Then, when I arrive home from work or wherever, I am greeted like the whole world revolves around me…. And that idea is an utter ruse, and very tricky on the part of the dogs.  Because, the world does not revolve around Me.  It revolves around, well, THEM … treats and climbing all over me on the couch when I am trying to read a book.  They are even at the point when I end a phone conversation with my typical, “Okay, bye” the dogs shoot off the couch to the door leading to their pen outside… even if it is 38 degrees and drizzling rain.  They are die-hard narcissists. 

I may have mentioned my strange spiritual shift during the lock-down as well.  I was not attending Church for those first three or four months of COVID.  My weekend worship was televised – and came with some fabulous homilies (and only a couple not-so-fabulous ones).  My Tuesday night Bible study dissipated.  My Wednesday night chapel appointment evaporated.  And with all of this paradigm shift I found myself…. Relieved.  I welcomed the break.  It is helping me distill what is really important about spirituality:  the relationship between He and I.  But that has taken a shift as well.  I’m not one of the people relentlessly pounding on the doors of heaven for Him to save us from illness, etc.  I think of the man Job, portrayed in the Hebrew Scriptures (OT) as suffering tremendously yet toughing it out.  When he finally gets cranky with God, the answer comes back to him:  “Where were YOU when I laid the foundations of the Universe?”  In other words, God knows what He is about and what He is tolerating from creation gone-awry and He does not owe us any answer.  He provides us only (and the word “only” should not herein feel so diminutive, but rather, pointed) the assurance that He is with us always.  I have a stickie note on my desk at work that says:  “The same God that got us through the 10 plagues in Egypt and the waters of the Red Sea is still with us.”  I didn’t steal it from a magazine.  I just finally realized that it was true and it calmed me down.  It gave me an historical-theological perspective.

Yesterday I found out that I actually weigh a few pounds more than my father.  That was a piece of messed-up news.  I’ve been on the Wellness Challenge with the group from work for three months and have not lost one pound for more than three days.  Have fun with that math.  Actually, my father lost weight because his health is struggling.  My only goal for the Wellness Challenge was actually to prevent weight gain.  So, I keep a food diary – as a Type-A person that is no big deal.  And then at the end of the week I look at the dismal pattern of eating-as-a-single-person and think to myself, “Maybe some day you will have the zest to attempt weight loss, but relevant to the place your head is right now with the world events, this is no time for Refrigerator Heroes.”  My Wellness Coach, bless her sweet heart, has agreed that “not gaining” is a good.   In an incremental way.  LOL.

Months ago, when the weather was great, I attempted walking the track next door on a regular basis.  Experts say that activity accompanies or precedes weight loss and control.  I logged my activities onto my Food Diary so I could be honest.  I even took my poor, sad, neglected bicycle out there a few times.  The tires don’t hold air like they should but I rode anyways.  And I was kind of crest fallen when after a few weeks of three days of successful effort, I did not see the needle move on the scale.  Damn bagels.  At any rate, it is cold now and not the weather that I will walk outside.  Luckily the dogs are amenable to going out to their yard by themselves.  I just can’t get my system to adjust to cold weather these past few years.  My body remembers the glory of Arizona wistfully.

I had a dream once about retiring to a warmer climate.  But I am not sure I will actually LIVE long enough to retire.  And the jerks that run the system have moved that needle as well.  I figure I will be 92 when I can retire and not need to move into my nephew’s garage.  Really, I should lose weight just from all this mental mountain-climbing I’ve had to do in the past seven months. 

Dear reader, I hope you and yours are well.  I hope that you can be entertained by my stated plight.  And if you feel sorry for me enough, send me cookies.  By all accounts, it seems I’m losing the war anyways.  I may as well go out with a smile on my face.

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The Bible Study Crasher Had ... 2 humps (sing-along)

 

The Bible Study Crasher Had 2 Humps

Maybe I just shouldn’t go to Bible studies that are supposed to be nice.  Nice people look at the Bible and ask questions that I would not ask of the text.  I am aware that things are not always as they seem in real life, so why should we presuppose that Bible stories have some idyllic method for comprehension?  I will give you my two most recent examples.

The very nice lady remarked, “The story that worries me is the Narrow Gate.  What if I am not quite on the Narrow Road, I think I am, but I may not be?  I won’t be able to pass through what the Lord calls the Narrow Gate.”  My brain scrunched.  I think I even squinted and tilted my head to the side.  Why do we presume that Jesus is telling us we might not make it?  If His baseline message was mercy and forgiveness, and I am banking on Him being honest with us – He did say “I am Truth” after all – then why would anyone presume, even accidentally, that He was setting us up for an ultimate failure?  God would be very unjust indeed if He told us to follow Him, and we did, and then He jettisoned us to hell in the End.

I looked at her and said, “I have the answer.  There is a mystery story here.”  Everyone’s attention was on me.  I told them to look at the Gate in the story.  The gates in Jerusalem were low and short and, well, Narrow, as He said.  In order to get a camel through the gate, you have to make it kneel down.  Have you seen a camel lately?  I will give you $20 if you can make him kneel down all on your own. 

Once the camel is kneeling, the handler unloads all the baggage from the camel.  To get through the door loaded with parcels is not only useless:  it is an obstruction.  The stuff on the camel may be good or may be junk, but it aint going to make it easier to get the camel through the gate:  It makes it harder.

Now you just have the camel at the gate entrance.  And all hands on deck need to assist the camel through the passage.  WE ARE ALL CAMELS.  That is the key to the story.  Keep your eye on the camel!

#1) To enter into The Gate, symbol of eternal life, we have to kneel down, to humble ourselves.

#2) We have to divest ourselves of the baggage we carry.  The stuff that weighs us down and makes our shape distorted needs to be stripped away, set aside.  It may be our accomplishments or our hang-ups.  It may be our wallowing in brokenness or our obnoxious pride.  We have to set it aside.

#3) We have to realize that this journey is not a solitary one.  There is a Guide who is more committed to our passing through the Narrow Gate then we are ourselves.  The hands of the community of faith, as well as the hands of God will guide us – sometimes gently, sometimes with a shove…. And we will be through the gate.  We are not alone.  And, we won’t accomplish the task alone.

The friends listening to me liked the image.  The almost-deacon asked if he could borrow it for a future homily.  I said sure, unless I get to preach it first.  No one knew what to do with that.  Our faith culture is still “muting” women, despite education, experience, or virtue.  Mother Teresa, I am not.  But I worked hard for what I know and I don’t believe God is going to set me aside because of my gender.  At present, women are not permitted to the Catholic diaconate.  At present.  But that is a custom, and customs can change.  If maybe all the women who are catechetical leaders across the world pick a Boycott Sunday and just don’t do their jobs until we get some review of the scope of our duties, maybe that will wake The Boys Club up.  Maybe.

My second Bible Study crasher example comes from Luke 5.  For decades of our lives we hear a Bible story preached the same way every year.  We may get one piece of the pie, but we are missing another.  I asked the study group if they, like me, had noticed the one person no one EVER mentions in their homily.  Nope.  We talk about Jesus.  We talk about the man who was healed.  We talk about his friends who lower him through the roof to be healed by Jesus.  No one ever talks about the guy who owned the roof!

What was HIS reaction to the dismantling of his thatchment?  Did he say, “Sure, guys, take some more of that off!  I was getting around to working on that next week anyways.”  I bet he did not.  I bet he said, “HEY!  WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING UP THERE!  WHY DO I SEE SHAFTS OF LIGHT AND PARTICLES OF DUST AND PIGEON POOP DROPPING DOWN INTO MY LIVING ROOM?!”  Did he not let a swear word slip out because Jesus was standing there – we can only hope he didn’t. 

Here’s the point:  he was more than inconvenienced.  His roof was damaged, dismantled.  He was going to have to deal with that himself because everyone else got all swept-up in the miraculous happenings.  Sometimes before the miraculous can happen, status quo gets interrupted.  The things we are comfortable with, the things that in our minds “are the way they should be” get tweaked … as does our nose. 

Application:  sometimes when God wants to do something miraculous you are going to be inconvenienced.  He does things His way, His time and without needing to ask any piece of His creation for permission.  We have to yield to the moment of the miracle.  We have to allow our own sensibilities to be offended, our roof to be dismantled, as it were.  We have to accept that our inconvenience is not God’s problem.  He is like the friend that comes over to watch a movie with you on Friday night.  When you say to him, “make yourself comfortable,” and truly mean it, that friend might just get his own beverage out of your refrigerator, open your cabinets without asking, sit in your recliner, and put his feet up on your coffee table.  If that is His definition of “comfortable,” and you truly are the Good Host, then you are good with that.

Are we good with that?  Do we let God have that kind of leeway?  I hope I do.  I love God’s miracles.  I love to be around when He starts working.  I surely don’t want to be an obstacle to what He needs to do.  I am all about letting Him have His way… not just when I am sitting in church and singing those surrender songs.  The rubber meets the road when I walk out the front door of church and someone cuts me off in the parking lot.  It begins that quickly.

“Have Thine own way, Lord, have Thine own way.  Hold o’er my being, absolute sway.  Melt me and make me after Thy will, while I am patient, waiting and still.”

Well I’m not still yet.  And I’m not even patient, but when He gives me that look, I melt.  He can have His way.  Even if I get kicked out of nice Bible studies.

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The "A-word" and the "E-word"

The “A-word” and the “E-word”

I’ve rambled around this house for a while looking for two things:  my coral-colored 8x8 baking dish and my green paperback copy of The Code of Canon Law.  Wherever they are, they are not here so I will have to move along without them…. (side note: no brownies tonight, apparently).

I have a bumper sticker that says:  “I’m Catholic and I Vote.”  I mentioned that to a church worker a few years back and she, a convert to Catholicism, donned a tone of moral outrage and said:  “What’s THAT supposed to mean?”  You see, sometimes in the ebb and flow of life people become members of organizations without really researching what it means to endorse a religious philosophy of life.  For so many people who “became Catholic” so they could marry in the Catholic Church to a partner who already is Catholic, they may not have realized that.  When you, as an adult, ask for reception into This Church, you are buying in to a certain set of faith-based norms.  I will lay them out for the sake of the cause:

Ø  Not just one Golden Rule of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” but there are actually Ten Commandments we endorse.  The Holy God gave these to Moses and they were then handed down to the people of Israel and all people of good will.  These 10 Commandments are not suggestions or nice ideas.  For a world that is sin-sick and dying and morally corrupt, these are “the 2 tablets you can take and call the doctor the next morning feeling better.”  They are the prescription for an orderly and godly society.

Ø  The Beatitudes given by Christ, also on a mountain, and also to help form a loving, godly society.  These beatitudes are not just platitudes – they address your attitudes – and develop virtue in the human heart.  With injunctions to desire to “hunger and thirst for righteousness” and to be “pure of heart,” these are no light-weight slogans.  In order to achieve them, you have to pursue them with diligence and discipline.

Ø  The Seven Sacraments – signs along the way of how we encounter God in the workings of daily life.  These are rituals by which we invite the Lord to be present with us in the key moments of life – our worship, our marriages and ordinations, our childrearing and coming-of-age, and our dying.  They help us deal with the joys, mistakes, sorrows and victories of life.  They remind us that life itself is holy.

Ø  The Nicene Creed – which is the statement of belief handed down for hundreds of years as a distilled collection of what particularly we believe about God and our faith.

So, okay, to my point I want to talk about why I was looking for The Code of Canon Law.  I want to talk about “excommunication” from the Catholic Church.  This is the means by which someone is cut-off from the faithful.  I think I can do this without the Code in my hand because I’ve read it enough times to know the sense of what it is. 

First, a definition from the Catechism (SS.1463):

“Certain particularly grave sins incur excommunication , the most severe ecclesiastical penalty, which impedes the reception of the sacraments and the exercise of certain ecclesiastical acts, and for which absolution consequently cannot be granted, according to canon law, except by the Pope, the bishop of the place or priests authorized by them.  In danger of death any priest even if deprived of faculties for hearing confessions, can absolve from every sin and excommunication.”

Second, to state that excommunication from the Catholic Church is not the same as an Amish shunning.

The Amish “shun” someone, or place them under the ban for varying reasons which vary from one community in Indiana that will ban you for having a front porch swing (it’s pride & vanity to have a nice thing out front) to another community that will ban you from holding the back of your dress together with a straight pin up near the top of the neck (vanity).  The Amish hold that shunning over you so you will repent and see the “evil” of your ways and come back to conformity with the community.  Not so with the Catholics.  Our excommunication is not a warning.  It is the official seal on what a person has done that goes against the official doctrine of the church defined in faith or morals.  It is a reaction to deeds of a person that causes scandal on the name of Christ and the Church because the deed(s) was so egregious.  Amish can be shunned as a result of doing something on accident and getting caught.  Catholics are excommunicated for doing something with full knowledge and ability to freely choose otherwise.  It would be safe to say that for an item to be topic for excommunication, it will also be matter of mortal sin as well – and in order for a sin to be death-dealing (mortal) to your soul it has 3 criteria:  it involves serious matter; you can choose otherwise; you choose it with knowledge that it is serious matter.  End of story.  No one accidentally makes a mortal sin, or accidentally gets excommunicated.

But sometimes I wonder what the HELL takes our bishops and cardinals so long in making a formal excommunication … particularly with politicians…. A person of more genteel character would not suggest here that perhaps MONEY could be involved, but I am not that virtuous.  I wrote a letter to a Cardinal a couple of years ago and spurred him to make a formal excommunication of a high-profile person that was notoriously supporting …. Abortion.  No response.  No forthcoming excommunication.

So the more I agonized over the wrongness of his spineless inertia as a faith leader…. Look, Saint Catherine of Siena told the Pope who was hiding in Avignon France, “The Lord says to you:  Go back to Rome, or you go to Hell.” I remembered one important thing about excommunication.  It is not so much something someone DOES TO YOU.  It is something you do to yourself.  Your decision, your immoral activity, your scandalous behavior put you outside of the realm of the people who are striving to live virtuous lives and obey the precepts of the Holy One.

When I worked as a pro-life crisis pregnancy center director many years ago, I did one thing to make sure I knew what I was talking about:  I watched videos about the various types of abortion, and the testimonies of the women in pain after they made those choices.  And I want to say two things with absolute certainty:  Abortion is intrinsically evil.  And, We can do Better by our women.  We can provide women with better choices and options and support. 

I also want to be clear on this:  Abortion is intrinsically RACIST.  I thank God for the work of Dr. Martin Luther King’s niece Alveda King and her work with Priests for Life.  The minority communities need to stand up and say “NO MORE!”  Anyone who reads the booklet about abortion foundress Margaret Sanger will get a very sobering picture about her intention:  eugenics via birth control and abortion.  It is called “Father of Modern Society.”  It explains her targeting the inner city communities, of which she clearly was not a member.

The current push in the abortion community has been to legalize it up to nine months AND immediately upon birth.  People, that is called:  Infanticide.  It is just as grave matter as prenatal abortion.  If you do it, if you assist in it via money or car ride or are the physician, if you sign it into law or promote it on your placards …. And if you fancy yourself a Catholic, you… are… not.  Here’s the cup of coffee as you wake up. 

And.  If the alleged President Elect made such a big show of going to Church the morning of the voting … please note that you only saw him coming OUT the door …. Because the moment he officially signs any abortion declaration in Office, he is declaring upon himself an automatic (latae sententia) excommunication, no spineless clergy required.

And.  If you actually for some reason voted for his party that has a death warrant out on babies in America and spreading it overseas as well, then you best cart your sorry self off to confession.

Is the sitting president perfect?  No.  Is he respectful and always classy and gentlemanly?  No.  But he has done more for the sake of the pre-born children and the maintaining the sanctity of human life (think:  Thou Shall Not Kill, cf. 10 Commandments) than any other president.  That is a single issue.  Really, respect for human life is the primary and only issue because all other issues flow from that.  Respect.  For.  Life. 

And Mr. Biden can wipe that smirk off his face now, because there is a God who someday WILL.  And that is no joke.

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*Side note: I want to commend 40 Days for Life as well as crisis pregnancy workers, and Project Rachel workers for their tireless work over 40+ years to provide better options for women and their babies.  And to the “Silent No More” women who are coming out of their sorrow to say they made a mistake:  May the peace of God be upon you and heal you. +

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What I saw at The Polls - 2020

 

What I Saw at the Polls

I live on the outskirts of a small village with mostly farm livestock as neighbors.  I like it that way.  Working as an election worker at the polls was a chance to be among human neighbors.  And I will say this right out front – they were nice people and it was a good experience working alongside them.  If you know about “working the polls,” you understand that I sat side by side with people who are declared officially to be the opposite political party as myself.  That is done on purpose:  to keep the work honest.  Among us as workers, I think we had a positive day.  No one hurt anyone’s feelings.  No one raised a voice in argument.  No one got contentious. 

So when it comes to the national concern – a very grave one – with fraudulent voting practices I am just as alarmed by that as anyone.  I think cheating is a lousy way to win, but it is a truism to state that not everyone feels that way.  And frankly it makes me sick to my stomach to think that people would do something to tamper with the integrity of the process.

But.  It also should not be left unsaid that some people should not vote.  I witnessed two cases.  I did not view this in a vacuum, my opposite-party colleague also saw it.  I saw this with my own two eyes.  I want to share it with you incase you don’t believe it is possible.  My right hand on the Bible, this actually happened as I tell it to you:

Case #1.

Perhaps she was in her 30’s.  She was in the company of two other young people who shared the same address.  None of them had the same last name.  The other two were anglo she was not.  She was some sort of Asian.  I know “my Asians,” having friends who are of Eastern descent, and she was none of these:  not Chinese, not Japanese, not Taiwanese, not Korean, not Philippino.  Perhaps Bhutanese?  But she seemed a bit tall for that group of people.  None of that matters, welcome to America to all people; however – it did not appear that she spoke English.  And, again, welcome to America people of all and many languages…. Except you need to know what the hell you are reading on the ballot in order for your vote to be a meaningful exercise in citizenship. 

So my election-worker-partner asked her if she ever voted before.  She did not say no.  She shook her head no.  He simply offered that you take the sharpie pen and fill in the circle next to the name of the person for whom you are voting.  We handed her the blank ballot, the sharpie, and sent her off to the polling privacy station to do her part.  She cast her ballot and the machine rejected it as spoiled.  Apparently, she had filled in ALL THE CIRCLES. 

My partner took a second shot at explaining how to vote.  “You read down the columns.  You pick one person in each column (insert index finger here, signifying ONE), you fill in the black dots.  She returned to her station and then to the machine and cast a second spoiled ballot.  (We don’t look at your ballot choices by the way.)  Her friend was now standing by her side and said, “I will go help her.” 

So for the third time she took a clean ballot and proceeded to the polling privacy booth.  My colleague and I logged the second spoiled ballot and watched from a distance as the two women stood next to each other and the one told the other – it appeared – which circles to fill in.

Now I ask you:  If my alphabet looks like ABCDEF…. And your alphabet looks like Stick-figure-running-house-firecracker- upside-down-tree, how are you going to know which man’s name is who?  I don’t think she spoke English.  I think she understood some limited English, but for my money, whomever her friend was that assisted her really got the chance to vote twice…. And that is not fair.

Case #2

A young woman approached our table to get her ballot.  I recognized her, since I had taught teens at a church for a few years.  She had been a high school student over a decade ago.  She did not recognize or acknowledge me.  My impression of her from back in those days was she didn’t show up to class to often but seemed very timid.  Even at this voting experience something seemed, well, “off.” 

She went to the privacy station and with her back to those of us who were easily 20 feet away or more she began gesticulating wildly at the ballot before her.  She threw her hands up in the air a few times.  She sighed.  She groaned aloud.  She pointed her finger from one spot to the other many times all over the ballot without bringing the sharpie down to mark a circle.  I poked my colleague on the arm.  I said to him, “I knew her over a decade ago in passing.  I do not know if she is unstable or if she can’t read but something is truly wrong there.” 

Then I felt like I was going to choke.  I touched his arm again.  I asked him, “do you see what she is doing?”  Her hand was pointing on the far-left side of the ballot up and down, up and down, between the two choices.  She was doing “Eenie-meenie-miney-moe” to make her choice. 

THAT is a TRAVESTY of the process.  She finished her antics, went to the machine and cast her vote.  It was accepted as a legitimate ballot and she walked out the door.  So wrong.  So very, very wrong.  Perhaps even sacrilegious.    When you consider that the fate of millions of people, the economy, world peace, and other huge human interests depends on the integrity and capability of the person we put in Office, there should be no room for people of incomprehensible behavior to make a mockery out of the whole process.  You may say, well, rules say nothing about the behavior of the voters.  Perhaps.  BUT, if she is a certifiable lunatic, her ability to make a valid, semi-well-considered choice on a ballot is more than compromised.  Or did we send ballots to asylums to get those dear people to weigh-in as well?

Throughout the day we had many conversations.  This is not the job for an introvert – since the shift is SIXTEEN HOURS long.  It was an endurance test the year I did this in a community that was very, shall we say, non-welcoming to new comers?  This year was more fun.  We had two people there who are super-extroverts and they were entertaining.  When we got to 8 pm and the room was empty of voters, and we were starting to fade, they regaled us with stories and joking.  That was a gift. 

Throughout the day one person shared with me she heard of a household that received THREE ballots in the mail, and only one person who lived there was registered to vote.  Additionally, a ballot was mailed to a dead woman.  It made me harken back to childhood days…. My father was a rural route letter carrier (aka: mailman).  I loved mail.  I would come home from school and go to the kitchen counter to see what envelopes were lying there.  “Dad!  Can I open this envelope?”  He asked a rhetorical question:  “Whose NAME is on it?”  (not mine.)  followed by:  “It is a federal offense to open someone else’s mail.”  All things considered, put me on record as saying:  Only a jackass – by any definition of that word – could think that mail-in ballots were not a BIG, HUGE DISASTER IN THE MAKING.  Or maybe that was someone’s intent all along.

Where I live, Trump signs out number Biden signs on front lawns in both size and quantity.  I find it curious that Biden did not really campaign.  He made an absolute joke of the first debate.  As I stated elsewhere before, with his smirking, refusal to answer questions, and general evasive attitude it made me think of how growing up if we made THAT face to my father he would have most assuredly said:  “Wipe that bleeping bleeping smile off your face, before I wipe it off for you!”  It may not be appropriate soft-approach parenting of the 3^rd Millenium but it taught us respect…. Something that Mr. Biden did not display. 

I also find it curious that no Biden parades (just riots), no rallies, masked-or-otherwise, and generally the zealous output of a fart in the wind from his supporters.  And Nancy Pelosi stated PRIOR to the election that they had already won.  I am not sure if someone thinks we are voting in mute sages and omniscient prophets or what.  Then the celebrating and claiming of victory before a concession speech from the current sitting president…. The slurring of him ever-so-disrespectfully on CNN yesterday.  The whole process has been marred by disrespect. Shame on those who are involved! 

They say it aint over till the fat lady sings.  Well, I haven’t sung in a while, and unfortunately by medical definition, the other descriptor applies to me.  You won’t hear me singing until the Supreme Court hears the cases regarding fraudulent voting allegations.  And to the mailman in Pennsylvania who changed the dates of the ballots, if you don’t fear the Federal Government, you should fear the ghosts of all letter carriers who have gone on before you …. Listen for their footsteps in the night …. As they haunt you for your treason.  May every dog in Philly pee on your mailbox.

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The Nonsense continues

So I stopped at O'Rourke's Cheeseburger Palace to get lunch on the way in to work.  There were no less than 15 vehicles in the line waiting to order.  It was, oh, a million degrees outside.  The exhaust from the truck in front of me was seeping in through my air conditioner making me cranky.  Or perhaps I was just hangry. (love that word!)

My bill was $4.32.  That is:  four dollars and thirty two cents.

I handed the cashier a twenty dollar bill, a quarter, a nickle and two pennies:  $20.32.

I said, "Here is twenty and thirty two cents."  She tore the receipt off the register with one hand and pushed it back out the window to me.  With the twenty dollar bill in her other hand she was lifting the drawer to tuck it under inside the register.  They do that with big bills.

"You're all set," she said.

I believe I said, "Hell, no.  You owe me sixteen dollars."

She looked puzzled and said the order was $20.32.  "No.  Not for a 6 pack of chicken chompers and a drink," I replied.  I continued:  "You owe me $16 in bills.  Look at the twenty in your hand.  I gave you change and a twenty.  I have bills coming back."

She went pale.  She stammered, "I need to go get a manager."  She left the window.  Please tell me why she didn't give me $16 and fix her register error with the manager AFTER I left for the window because now I am more hungry and more cranky.

In my next life I want to teach Math to the children in this community.  That's all I'm saying.

Crappy customer service is one of my favorite topics to rant about.  And if you know me personally, you have seen the rolling of the eyes and grimaces I make when I tell the stories before a live “audience.”  Unfortunately, I have not chosen to become a podcaster yet, so here’s my latest:  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! blog.

It’s mid-day and about 400 degrees outside.  I am making my way into work, via a drive-thru burger joint that shall remain nameless.  If I had the energy, I’d call their manager but maybe I’ll just mail him this story some day…

Because COVID has put the kibosh on “dining room seating,” the line wrapping around the building is about ten vehicles long.  I feel like I am in a roller coaster car waiting for the thing to get moving.

Finally, I make it to the kiosk with the speaker in it.  I have been going through these drive thru’s for decades.  I go to the same ones.  I order the same things.  I am a creature of habit.  I expect the same results.  The place where I get my coffee makes it the same every single time…. Unless …. I go to the same company but a different franchise location.  Last week I had a frozen coffee that had me trembling for hours from caffeine or espresso overdose.  I am wondering how that fool made it.  I keep checking to see if I have hair growing on my upper lip now.

But at the burger place I said:  “I’d like a cheeseburger with no onions and no pickle.  I’d like a small iced tea.”  THAT WILL BE 3.54 she blurts back through the speaker.  I go, “Wait.  Do you have any cookies?”  She doesn’t say no.  She doesn’t bother to say we are out of desserts.  She says:  “We have mini milkshakes for $1.  Vanilla and chocolate.”  I blink with mild confusion.  Shakes are not baked goods. 

I try again:  “Is the speaker working properly?  I asked you if you had any cookies.”  She comes back at me with:  “And I said, ‘we have mini milkshakes for $1.  We have vanilla and chocolate.”  I am astonished that she got curt with me.  I am wondering where she was educated that she doesn’t know the difference between an ice cream product and a baked good.  If she was my employee, she wouldn’t be anymore.  Is there a reason that the phrase, “The customer is always right” is etched on a tombstone in front of a car dealership in the city?  Is competent, pleasant customer service a thing of the past?

I drive forward, asking God to NOT let her be the one at the window.  (It’s the “lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil” clause.)  No, she wasn’t.  The young man takes my money, hands me the bag o’ burger and says, “You’re all set.”  And I say:  “Not without the iced tea, I’m not.” He hands it to me, and I tell him to have a nice day.  (Isn’t HE supposed to say that first?)

I look at the plastic top.  Do you know that on cold beverage tops there are bubbles for the worker to PUSH to indicate if it is Regular, Diet, Tea, or Rootbeer, because they all look the same in the cup?  True fact.  And yet we’ve got a whole generation of kids that don’t push the stupid button.

Well, they can’t push that one button, but they sure know how to push MY buttons!

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