♪ The Way We Were ♪

So I'm listening to Barbra Streisand sing, at the Oscars last night...singing for the first time at the Oscars in 36 years. The last time she sang I had my first crush on Jon. We were 10, going on 11. HA

" Memories, light the corners of my mind Misty watercolor memories of the way we were. Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind smiles we give to one another for the way we were. Can it be that it was all so simple then or has time rewritten every line? If we had the chance to do it all again tell me would we? Could we? Memories... may be beautiful and yet what's too painful to remember we simply choose to forget...So it's the laughter we will remember whenever we remember the way we were. The way we were. "

I got misty-eyed listening to her... and more than a little wistful.

Every now and then, I miss my family. Not my boys, or my mom -- or her twin, since they have yet to grow weary of me and set me aside, or they love me enough to not do so. I miss my dad, but in a vague sort of way now that he's actually passed away. I missed him fiercely all those years, hoping for some sort of re-connection, and now that it's gone forever, it's more sentimental at best.

I miss the family I grew up with.  We still talk to each other... but I'm on the outside.

My outspoken, overzealous self painted me out of the family picture more than a few times, and now I'm pretty much out of frame. Either my multiple apologies for erratic behavior fell on deaf ears or worse, were never listened to in the first place. I've tried.

My first impulse this morning was to write to those who have set me aside, hoping to re-establish a semblance of relationship... but then I remembered I gave up co-dependence for Lent, HA.

Gave it up for good.

I have my memories. One of my nieces is expecting her first baby, and I wish I could share that with her, but I'm unforgivable. Sooo... I remember her as a little girl playing with my boys, a headstrong teenager vying for attention between her sisters ( I know how ThAT felt HA ). I remember happy family times with all of our children playing and laughing together. I miss her, and her mother, and sisters, and her brother and his family, but they are content without my infrequent presence in their lives. Her brother, the father of four boys, had one of them sit down and write a letter to another sibling about the things he liked about them.

Good advice. Wishing it would carry across the family, to me... but it doesn't. Oh well.  "So it's the laughter... we will remember.."

I have my memories of one who gathered all the family in on holidays, handled our anxious grandmother ( across town from her), before and after my ever-patient grandfather passed away. I have her recipes, the wooden clogs she sent me from Holland as a little girl, the reverence of worship that she taught me without preaching a word. I offended her one too many times with my political views, and multiple attempts at reconciliation have gone by the wayside. I guess I'm one of those memories that's "too painful to remember.. we simply choose to forget..."

I know some families don't stay close once everyone has grown up and moved on and such...but some do. And some of my family is close to the others. Just not to me. :-( That's where the wistfulness sprang from last night.

Like the baggage I spoke of in my last blog, we can either carry it, set it aside, or consider it a burden. I just remember the good stuff these days...but wish it was reciprocal. "Misty watercolor memories of the way we were. Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind smiles we give to one another for the way we were."

We were fun, once, and loving, and close. Thank God for memories, and for  the way we were. :-)

Baggage. It's everywhere. Get used to it.

Jonathan and I have a lot of baggage. Four marriages,  nine kids, four divorces, living in a war zone, living with cancer, PostTraumaticStressDisorder ( both of us, although mine is non-military related ), family goofiness, you name it. A lot of baggage. 

We also have a lot of luggage. Gorilla boxes, old garment bags, suitcases, duffles, military gear -- a lot of stuff.  Jon works overseas and recently had to get an ADDITIONAL passport because his was full. 

I have logged more air miles in the last three years than I did in the previous 43 cumulatively (including a trip to the Holy Land with my father once upon a time) traveling towards healing from cancer.  

Baggage. For the most part, we tend to handle it pretty well. Neither one of us enjoy hauling luggage around.

It's a pain, post-operative, or traveling alone after having chemo. 

It's a pain, hauling body armor around and waiting for Space-A flights that often take 24 hours to hop on to. It's just the way it is. You got stuff. It goes with you. You don't REALLY need it...you can always get more stuff. But it's your stuff, yours to lug along, for the journey. 

Occasionally, when we have money problems or a former spouse pops up like a bad penny, we have to carry that baggage again, momentarily, until we remember it needs to be stowed. 

Grief is like that. Initially it paralyzes you. It ebbs and flows and ebbs and flows until the tide recedes. Occasionally it resurfaces, and then goes out with the tide again. You never know when it will pop up. 

I remember a seemingly trivial occurrence, years after my dad left and moved abroad (AND disowned us), seeing someone put their cigar stub on the same flagstone that he used to, on a visit to the house. Daddy would come home, smoke his cigar for a few moments, then put it on that ledge and come in. In the morning he'd grab his remaining cig and head off again for another day. 

That person, repeating that small inconsequential action, had no idea it crushed me - almost physically - for a moment. 

That memory isn't baggage, in the psychobabble term. It's a memory. 

I don't think about it every second, but I remember that instance of grief, and years later, I'm grateful I can recall it vividly without the accompanying twinge. I'd have baggage if it caused me to write a manifesto... but I don't. I just have vivid memories...until someone says, "You've got a lot of baggage." " You've got a prolific amount of triggers that need to be healed." Then I find myself tucked into a ball on a chair, unable to react, the epic failures of my life dancing like skeletons around my heart. " Do you need counseling? " No. 

Do I have baggage?

Yeah, I do. Or... maybe I don't. Setting psychobabble aside, I have that particular gift of vivid memory that brings me back to certain events as though I'm still there. 

Yesterday a friend of mine, a Realtor back home, let me know that in the six-degrees-of-separation world that we live in these days, that she'd gotten a new listing right across the street from the high school we went to together. The house of my lifelong family friend, 'Aunt' Rose and her best friend of 54 years, 'Aunt Jo'. 

I practically grew up in that house. I learned to swim in the pool there, played in the cabanas out by the deck, chatted it up with the rabbi who lived across the street, shared confidences with Rose in the kitchen about love and life and faith, played poker with my sisters...wow. What a wondrous thing to have my high-school friend help a new family move into that wondrous place of happy memories.

Huh. I got tears in my eyes thinking of those happy days, and I wanted to run home and see the house before new furniture got into it, as though it would preserve it. Silly, sentimental, and sweet. 

Last weekend I got tears in my eyes when I chanced to intersect with my past, evoking memories of someone I chose to be with in a less happier time. Huh. I wanted to run home at that time, too, and I did. Home is good. 

Am I a baby for wanting to run home? Maybe. Maybe not. Home is a safe place, especially when someone tries to force you to do something or be something you are not. 

Baggage? Yah, I have baggage. Who doesn't? Who doesn't have a junk drawer, a cluttered closet? Who doesn't have memories that evoke emotion??

Baggage isn't necessarily bad unless it's lost or thrown at someone. Triggers aren't necessarily bad. They remind us that we have been failures, epic in nature, but we have also been huge successes. 

When we take it on a journey, baggage can either be a burden or a comfort. 

The trappings and trailings of our memories, the poignant moments for good or for bad which make us get tears in our eyes are good for our souls. Sometimes, like that guy innocently leaving his cigar on the ledge, sometimes the tears punch us in the stomach for a minute. Sometimes, they bring back images of swimming with my sisters and being loved on by special people, and our hearts are warmed and soothed. Perhaps it's His way of keeping us strong. Lugging it along, stooping to sit on it and close it back up, heaving it into the rubbish bin on occasion, or lifting it gently, to be stored in a special place. 

Jonathan and I have a lot of baggage. We've brought it all home, together. 

We'll continue to sort it out, together -- sometimes closing it back up until it's time to unpack it  -- and either file it or pitch it. 

We believe that Jesus died on the cross so we don't have to drape ourselves in it, and feel guilty for it for the rest of our human lives, let alone for eternity. We believe that the sackcloth and ashes that we have each worn, on certain days of our lives, are only for those certain days. 

Jesus died for us, to turning our mourning into dancing. Jesus showed up on the planet to bring life...

...so God doesn't want us to forget about our past. It's part of who we are, part of where He's led us, how He's shaped our lives. If there are parts that were awful, so be it. It's forgiven by His death on the cross -- but just because it's forgiven by Jesus, for all time, doesn't mean it didn't happen.  

Like Jon's passport, when it gets full and tattered, we get another so there are clean pages to stamp. 

That's the passport to peace, the peace that passes understanding. That's Jesus. 

♪ How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? ♪

"She climbs a tree and scrapes her knee, her dress has got a tear She waltzes on her way to mass and whistles on the stairsAnd underneath her wimple she has curlers in her hairI've even heard her singing in the abbey She's always late for chapel but her penitence is real She's always late for everything except for every meal...I hate to have to say it but I very firmly feel: Maria's not an asset to the abbey.
I'd like to say a word in her behalf-- then say it, Sister Margaretta -- Maria makes me laugh.

How do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? How do you find a word that means Maria? A flibbety-gibbet, a will'o'the'wisp, a clown? Many a thing you know you'd like to tell her, many a thing she ought to understand...but how do you make her stay? And listen to all you say? How do you keep a wave upon the sand? Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria? How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?"

Lyricist and songwriting team Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote these lilting notes to describe a novice Catholic nun living in Salzburg, Austria, in the late 1930's. ( My mother probably had no idea that these would fit her second daughter to a tee, as exasperated as she would become, and has  remained, regarding my unconventional Calamity Jane self. Sorry Mom. Least I can sing. ) As we all know, the orphaned Maria became governess to Captain Georg Von Trapp's seven children and they eventually married  -- their remarkable tale crafted into the R & H musical, "The Sound of Music".

I've always been a lot like Maria Von Trapp. Always late, always singing, always hoping for the best but fairly hapless in achieving the best, always judged by others as just not quite acceptable,  loved and cherished as long as I'm making everybody laugh and am a sparkly pretty party favor who follows the rules without question.

I AM a lot like Maria in the fact that despite all that, I am loved and in love with a man who has several slightly incorrigible children who need to be loved. :-)

I'm pretty sure that's also where my interest in Catholicism began, all those years ago, listening to the Nonnberg nuns sing praises to God.

I'm also pretty sure my year's journey into Catholicism has run its' course.

I just returned/escaped from a morning at a Catholic "retreat".

Convinced by peers and associates that it was not Catholic but Christian and a "faith-building" weekend, I reluctantly went, hoping to be blessed by camaraderie and fellowship and time to pray and reflect. I was supposed to stay until tomorrow night. I lasted from 6:30 am for four hours, after being herded to and fro by a team that Captain Von Trapp would have been proud of.

All they needed were ship's whistles.

A team that snapped at me when I wanted to step outside for some fresh air. ( YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO GO OUTSIDE). Huh?

A team that did not allow anything but water to be brought into the upstairs meeting room, even though they'd stated several  times that we were to make ourselves at home and ask for anything we needed. (Don't ask Catholic ladies on a planning team for coffee. Not a good idea. They're on a schedule.)

A retreat without cell phones is one thing. A chance to reflect, to pray, to be away from everyday life, yes, that's what I reluctantly agreed to.

A rigorously scheduled PROGRAM, from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. at night, that the parish priest won't make time to come in to bless, one which does not allow one to reflect, to pray, or to relax, is not a retreat.

It's an in-service.

After being banned from the coffee three times, banned from the outdoors-- to the extreme of cardboard over all the windows--  and desperately trying to keep my claustrophobic self from freaking out in a small room crammed with fifty women, I asked to speak to one of the team in private -- and even THAT had to be approved. By someone else.

" Do you know her? Let me see if it's okay." Really???

We finally got to go outside. GASP -- the horror.

I told her that the crux of my dilemma was that one of the team leaders happened to be the aunt of the girl that my former husband had denied knowing. Denied seeing someone else, denied getting engaged when I saw them together WITH their engagement pictures, and denied being STILL MARRIED TO ME after I called the pastor who married THEM. While WE were still married.  Yep. That's what we call bigamy, folks. And that's what my lawyer told him  -- and my former Hurricane Husband promptly sent the divorce fees, got a divorce from me four months AFTER marrying this lady's niece.

I wasn't mad at that niece's aunt-lady. She didn't marry him. Lucky for her.

I'm not mad at the niece. She was lied to, just like I was when the serial groom married me after abandoning his first marriage.

But because of all that, I couldn't concentrate fully in the room crammed with fifty women and no window to look out of ,when I wanted to ask her if she liked my furniture which he took from me when he left, if the big screen TV I paid for had a good picture for the Super Bowl last week at her niece's house.

 I know. Get over it. Yep. Move on. Thank you.

Same thing people tell my dear friend who lost her first-born four years ago.
"You've got to move on."

We do, dammit. We move on because it will kill us too if we stay there, but we'd rather lay down and die. We keep moving on. Until we find a baby shoe in a drawer, or until we see someone who knows the someone that we loved, even if it was the wrong thing to love them.

Sometimes it's too much, especially when leaders of a retreat see you crying and still make snide remarks, and get irritated with you for disrupting THEIR PLANS EVEN THOUGH THEY SAID THEY WERE THERE TO SERVE, just like the nuns in the Abbey in Salzburg.

I was in a corner, FINALLY with coffee in my hand, trying to collect my sad self in the corner before rejoining the group with the little dignity I had left.

Another Team lady walked past me, looked over at me, and said, " Let's hope she's done talking...".

I thanked them for their 'hospitality', grabbed my stuff, and headed home.

Problem solved for the Captain Von Trapp Team leaders. Now they can stick to their schedule.

TWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETTTT.

I'm at home, and in seclusion, just like Maria at one point.

The Catholic Church has run just fine, yep, sho' has, for two thousand years without me, and it can keep on going that way. I love the antiquity of the Church, the traceable continuity to people who KNEW Jesus, who ate with Him, and walked with Him.

A 2,000 year-old-faith, built on the message of the Messiah who never snapped at anyone except money-changers defiling the Temple, unfortunately still remains in the clutches of power-mad peeps. I do not love the rigid order of things that is explained  vaguely as " there have to be rules...". No duh.

That's what the Ten Commandments are for.

I AM like Maria. I sure as hell don't fit in the Abbey.

I do not fit, anywhere -- except in a room full of young children.

Funny, that's what one of the staff told me one day, that I had skills and talents that worked well in that room, and that's where I should stay. I'll do just that, until my own 'Captain' comes home and whistles for me.

How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand? With care and awe. It doesn't stay long...

Murder, She Wrote, With Exception...

Of late I have resumed my affinity for British storytelling, which began with Mary Poppins ( P.L. Travers' book series -- and of course, Julie Andrews as The Practically Perfect Nanny) and continued with a voracious consumption of Agatha Christie's detective novels in my youth. "Downton Abbey" and "Call the Midwife" satisfy my weekly craving for clipped sentences, pert remarks, and great British timing. 

To wit, "I could murder a gin-and-tonic right about now," a young nurse remarks after a ghastly day as a midwife in post-WWII London.

Her colloquialism marks the least objective use of the word, sparks the least debate... with the exception of the plural term for a flock of crows, which is, of course, a 'murder'. Colloquial for horrific traffic, frenzied Christmas shopping, and losing championship games by great amounts, we've made light of the term 'murder' to the point where we can dismiss it, grossly de-sensitized and mildly apathetic. 

Gruesome reports of kindergartners murdered in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, combined with vitriol aimed at our current President who has consistently voted pro-choice, prompt a train of thought.


By definition...
Murder. Felony crime:"1: the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought." First recorded in history in the Bible, where Cain bashed Abel's head in, jealous over a better offering. Fratricide. Ancient Scripture indicates that God himself punished Cain by marking him for life. First gangster tattoo...but that's only the beginning. 


Murder. Mortal sin: A serious, grave or mortal sin is the knowing and willful violation of God's law in a serious matter, for example, idolatry, adultery, murder, slander. 

I overheard a speaker remark that everyone has a basic moral code of right and wrong, and at the core of that code is the respect of life -- Thou Shalt Not Kill. In context, within a community that protects all human rights, his remark makes perfect sense. "Everyone knows that murder is wrong", he reiterated. 

A quick glance back through American history, let alone world history, indicates that he might be a little off... as defined by Websters or religious authority.

To wit, some exceptions to the rule.

•Two years ago, Jack Kevorkian passed away at 83. Known as "Dr. Death", he advocated and assisted the suicide for 130 terminally ill patients. Convicted in 1999, he served 8 years in prison -- and then got out after promising not to assist in any more euthanasia practices.  The New York Times reported in June of 2011,"In Oregon, where a schoolteacher had become Dr. Kevorkian’s first assisted suicide patient, state lawmakers in 1997 approved a statute making it legal for doctors to prescribe lethal medications to help terminally ill patients end their lives. In 2006 the United States Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that found that Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act protected assisted suicide as a legitimate medical practice." 

•Forty years ago, a court decision thankfully brought abortions out of back alleys and under medical regulatory standards. Women finally had domain over their bodies, which they hadn't before. 

The flip side of this is the increasing number of unborn children being sucked out of those privately owned bodies as a form of pregnancy avoidance.

Yes, women should have the right to their own bodies and not be regulated by the government...however...Andrea Yates went to prison for killing her five young children. A woman who has had five abortions doesn't go to prison. 
That being said, if you are on a street corner, or anywhere else, and have the capacity to stop a killer from committing murder and you do nothing you are technically an accessory to murder. 
However, as a medical practitioner or staff, you abandon a living breathing newborn who survived an abortion to die without care, it's just your job.  

In any other situation, after leaving a helpless baby without food or water or life support you'd be charged with murder, not to mention malpractice and lynched in the media --but not if a mother claims domain over her body, requesting the cessation of that newborn life. 

•Speaking of lynching...thousands, thousands of black men and women (and a few white people) were lynched in this nation, some less than fifty years ago (the practice stretching back to when the sea merchants began to bring kidnapped slaves as cargo) while others looked on in varying shades of approval or horror. The attackers were rarely, if ever, prosecuted. 

•Fratricide revisited...the Civil War saw brother shoot brother over the right to own those kidnapped slaves' descendants. Five years of war between brothers and cousins and neighbors... and 618,000

Americans died. 


•Let's not get started on the merciless slaughter of the Native Americans who lived here first. Too many variables, including the fact that many of them were merciless warriors as well, among their own...but still... too many horrific incidences of genocide against the Original Americans which include Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, and the Mystic, Connecticut massacre of 700+ native Americans -- by the hands of the Puritans. Holy people. Huh. 

Some 80 years later, the Colonists raged against the King's soldiers, the Redcoats, killing them in scores, and vice versa, to gain independence for the very nation where we live. True, they acted with force during war, but running someone through with a saber can't really be classified as anything except murder. If someone dies by your hand, they die by your hand. Patriotism or not...


World history follows a pattern of one kingdom rising and falling to another, murder and treachery and power grabs... and if you waaaay back to the beginning, I doubt that any caveman court existed to decide whether or not Hominid vs Hominid had any merit. Killing another in self-defense/for survival gave way to tribes taking over territories, giving way to kings being anointed over those territories, leading to kingdoms warring and killing...and on into our own existence.


Sigh. 

"Everyone knows that murder is wrong....it's a basic moral code". 

He's right. We do know it. We've always known it. We, the continuing line of Hominid-Descendants, don't always believe in it...  especially when it can be explained for social, medical, or political purposes...

Sigh. And another sigh. 

I could murder a gin-and-tonic right about now.    

A candle, in defiance of sadness

December 16, 2012...the third Advent candle lit today, the last Hanukkah candle lit tonight.
A year ago tomorrow, my long-lost father was laid to rest in Israel. 

Two days ago, my heart was broken for families that I will never know.

Today, I'm going to hear  a choir perform Handel's "Messiah", in a church sanctuary that slightly resembles a synagogue, HA, which I did on this Sunday last year. My dad loved that glorious work and I grew up hearing it every Christmas. 

I take great comfort in the lyric, taken from Scripture, "Behold, I tell you a mystery; We shall not all sleep; but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet." 

We shall. We shall be changed...

In the meantime, we mourn for the lost ones in Connecticut, for the lost ones in Hurricane Sandy, for the lost ones in this Crazy Year That Nearly Was. My dad numbers among those.

Today, I pray for the parents of the kindergartners lost to evil, the children and spouses of staff lost to evil,  for the first-responders that encountered the aftermath of evil, as I get the house ready for the man who shares my life.

As I pray for those lost, as I pray for us left behind, as I move on into my bright future with Jonathan, I'm putting away some of Daddy's things. His daughter Kfirah, my sister, told me that in Judaism one is taught to mourn for a year and then forget that person. I don't know about that. You can't simply forget someone, especially someone who gave you half your DNA.

I've officially mourned for a year, after unofficially mourning for most of my life. I used to feel bad about that, and be made to feel bad about that.

I recently read a musing from one of my aunts, who lost her first baby, long ago before I was born. "... as this is the 52nd anniversary of our first son's birthday... in defiance of the sadness that still can overwhelm me on this day, if I let it,  I wrote to my three kids this morning to tell them how grateful I was for their lives..." If I let it. In defiance of sadness. 

"If I let it". We don't want to be permanently paralyzed by grief...yet we don't want to be cold as stone and forget that we loved someone once. She's a good model for that -- remembering the great love she had for her first-born and still pressing forward.

"In defiance of sadness." We can combat grief with said-aloud gratitude for joys in our lives, indeed, while we recognize and embrace our humanity and our tender hearts. My aunt has a tender heart, and I know that her faith in life after death gives her the strength and spunk to use the phrase "in defiance of sadness'.

I could spend this day mourning my father. In a way I am, obviously, and I don't feel bad about it at all. He loved me once, and I him. That's something to celebrate.

I miss him. I always have, and I always will.

However, 'in defiance of sadness', I'm putting away some of his books that I've kept in sight for years. I've kept them about me, like comfortable old shoes. I certainly don't ascribe to the Jewish hardness of forgetting all about the dead, but I think I can let go my grip on my grieving at last.


I don't know when that will happen for the families in Sandy Hook village.It may be 52 years, it may be 34 years, it may be never, that they will be able to feel defiance against sadness. Along with the Hanukkah candles, and the Advent candles, I'm lighting another one -- just for them.  This light is for them, in the sudden darkness that has engulfed them.

May they somehow know the arms of God around their shaking shoulders.

Oooh... shiny!!

       I recently went back to work (after a two-year hiatus due to StupidCancer and StupidCancer complications) and took on a squirrelly class of two-year-olds that'd had previously had little or no discipline. I came home exhausted for the few two weeks. This is why we have kids when we are YOUNG. HA!
       Part of the previous problem lay in the fact that they had been given worksheets to color and alphabet letters to trace -- and no other opportunities to be creative. Yep. In a two-year-old classroom.
     On one of the first days holding the reins I discovered a pack of glitter glue bottles in a jumbled-up cupboard in the classroom, and let my little ones decorate tiny tambourines I'd made with them.
One generally does not use glitter with two year-olds, but in the form of Elmer's glue it becomes fairly innocuous and quite captivating. One little sprite spent 40 minutes carefully squeezing out teensy-tiny squiggles of shiny strands, and the rest followed suit. To be honest, I snagged that box of glitter glue out of the cupboard two more times when plans had to be abandoned, before I'd developed a stronger schedule and curriculum.

Last Friday, I made sense out of the Big Supply Closet, finding yet more glitter glue and glitter and sparkly colorful beads and sequins and crayons and paints and other required elements of early childhood education Art Experiences. Color, sparkle, glittering...for some of us, it's the modern-day equivalent of finding buried treasure. Ooooh, shiny!!

Ooooh shiny! I laughed to myself in the supply closet. ( I could hear Jonathan teasing me with that phrase, when I abruptly change subjects in a nanosecond, distracted by something I want to share with him in the moment. LOL )

Pretty, ooh-shiny glitter-glue provided a back-up for me these past few weeks, when I needed to get those wee ones settled down and focused and teach about taking turns.

Seems like modern-day humans tend to sometimes use God as a glitter-glue entity. We know where to find Him, we know He'll come through in a tight spot, and He makes everything beautiful and sparkly. All of that true...to a point.

I stood with twenty other sojourners yesterday during Mass, listening to the litany as we were presented to the congregation and the priests. I stood silently, after giving my commitment to further my journey, with my fellow travelers, as my sponsor made the sign of the cross on my head, to help me think on God, my eyes to see God, my ears to hear God -- and so on with heart, hands and feet.
We returned to our pews and to the kneeling benches to pray. It's been a lifelong journey for me to find a house of worship where I didn't have, or need, connections to fit in, and my prayers on the kneeling bench oozed out in tears of humble gratitude.

Last night, a visiting priest 'happened' to touch upon on the disappointing election, and asked this of us -- if we trust in God, not just believe in His love and power, why can't we trust that God is up to something good in all the chaos? "Isn't He always?"

As I listened, knowing he had a good hold on the truth, I thought about half of the population of the U.S.,  who'd waited for God to flood the streets with 'glitter-glue' during the recent election, saving us from what we perceive as a truly tight spot. (I, for one, will have a hard time finding a full-time job with benefits, since the new 'HealthCare' Plan won't get repealed. I'm not alone -- and the millions of us who categorically reject the Plan have reason to worry.) We had our hopes dashed as we prayed for our nation to be restored under different leadership.

Somehow, God had not heard the prayers of over 100,000,000 people. How could that be?

'Glitter-glue' got flung. Sometimes still in the bottle, sometimes splashed angrily on blogs and e-mails and Facebook, and sometimes it just pooled out of abandoned containers and dribbled down the drain with our hopes.  Anger always covers fear...always. Adding to the passion, it's hard not to feel as though we need to constantly fight evil. It's the American way! " Bomb the enemy! Save democracy!" "Hi-ho Silver! Away!" " Use that slingshot! We are in the army of God!"

God, the ultimate Commander-in-Chief,  isn't a God of glitter-glue. We can't just apply Him to situations on demand.

Nor is He only a back-up plan, nor just for special occasions, nor to be used as a pretty Scripture-projectile missiles to prove our points. Even if there's a battle to be fought.

He is the Creator of the trees with which to make paper, and of the minds who create upon the blank pages. He's the Light that makes color appear...so since we're made in God's image, no wonder we love glitter! It catches the light and makes the world sparkle. Ooh shiny! isn't necessarily a bad habit...as long as we remember the source and purpose of the light.

He's always up to something good. Always.

He. is. God.

As the priest said last night, "we must open the door of faith", and I shall add, to let the Light in.

Be blessed.

Shenandoah, revisited...

My sister Karen and I used to go to the PTA sponsored Summer Film Series at the Fox Theater in downtown Riverside back in the early 70's. Our mother would drop us off every Tuesday afternoon, and afterward we'd wait for her to pick us up. While protected from the hot California sun underneath the awning of Shook's Shade Shop, around the corner from the grand old theater, we'd go over the movie we'd just seen again and again, as we wondered if the roller shade in the shop window had possibly been there since the Spanish-American War. HA . Those were the days... 

One 70's summer week, we saw Jimmy Stewart, and Doug McClure, and Katharine Ross, and a (pre-Dukes of Hazzard "Uncle Jessie") Denver Pyle in the gloriously filmed and wonderfully heartfelt "Shenandoah", a Civil war-era film. This screen shot shows the featured Virginia family seated around the table. Not but a few frames later in the film a bitter argument breaks out amongst the family members. Stewart, as the patriarch, insists that none of his sons will fight in this war unless it affects the family. 

Events unfold, family members die as casualties, and in the final frames of the film, most of the chairs remain unfilled.

We girls were so sad to see that empty table. Tears welled up in our pre-teen eyes, in the dark rows of the Fox Theater, and we told our mom all about it on the way home from Shook's Shade Shop. 

A similar occurrence has developed amongst the "family of Americans" during this long and ridiculously hateful political season. The left paints the right as hysterical conspiracy theorists and the right paints the left as commie-pinkos, to coin a phrase from the past. The family divides in the film as in the actual Civil War, brother against brother, and so has our country. 

Friends ditch friends over ideological differences. And not just ditch, but stab through the heart.

Family members stop talking to each other, even on common ground, because one can't stand a certain candidate whom the other respects, and so all other conversation becomes stilted and obligatory, if any ensues.

People try and play the race card, even when people of the same race as a candidate oppose him politically. 

Religion comes into play -- " which is worse, Muslim or Mormon?" -- when neither are inherently bad to begin with. 

This family, this nation, this America is divided. I offered up a 40 Days of Prayer posting on Facebook during the last few weeks, focusing on finding truth, dignity, integrity, civility. All things which  I myself certainly need to work on, and which I see a deplorable lack of across the nation. Campaign signs are destroyed, vehicles keyed and damaged, candidates openly mocked -- DURING DEBATES. 

Perhaps this all began during the Kennedy campaign, when whispers that 'that Catholic will take over the country with the Pope' circulated viciously. 

Perhaps this all began with Nixon and his botched attempt to lie under oath. At least he had the dignity to resign and go away...

Perhaps this all began with Reagan and the Nuclear Arms Race, scaring the bejeebies out of all of us on a daily basis. 

Perhaps the deplorable lack of civility began with Clinton, whose quite admirable successes as President are forever tarnished by his degradation of the Oval Office to a publicly discussed den of sex, deceit, and lawsuits, along with the dubious and dire distinction of a trail of bodies who could have been witnesses in the lawsuits, to boot. 

Regardless of where or how it started, this election season split this country asunder, like lightning through a hundred-year-old oak that no one ever expected to fall. 

There are empty seats at the table. 

No matter who garners the votes on Tuesday, those seats will remain unfilled. Our nation is divided. 

One nation, under God, no longer indivisible, due to the current political climate. we are no longer "under God". IF we believe in Him, we tell Him how it should go, or we dismiss the thought of a God, or worse, we claim to be Christians but instead choose politics as our god, shunning family and friends who do not share our political thoughts. 

 No matter who garners the votes next Tuesday, we have become a nation at war -- the war of hostility and incivility and hatred. Over politics... we claim, but truly it's the lack of decency and morality that has led us to this place. We are at war, not only with terror, but with each other, in the pews, in the workplace, on the news, in social media. Brother against brother. 

As the Anderson family does in the above photograph, before they are forever disbanded, let us pray.