♪ Skyfall ♪

Last Wednesday, at the prompting of my heart and spirit, I flew to my father's home state to arrive at his birthplace.

The next two days I spent caring for, praying for,  and about with his younger sister, on hospice. The little sister of whom he was jealous ...and it turns out he had a right to be.

At the end of HER life, her children, friends, and community  love her and looked after her in return for her years of dedication to their father and to them. 

Barbara Ann. My phantom aunt. HA not her fault that she remained a shadowy figure for years to us, since she lived in Michigan, and we never ventured further than Colorado on summer vacations. Apparently, 1300 miles one way was our limit. As a preschooler, my over-imaginative self thought she was the girl on the bread trucks. Hey. They had the same name. (And the same hair). HA ( I KNEW she wasn't the girl on the beach boys' song, since I don't think she ever wore a bikini, nor hung around  Doheny - or any other CA beach. )

The youngest of the three in my dad's family, she measured a model of strength to me. 

Stalwart, steady, rarely  venturing out of her hometown save for the occasional trip to Detroit  or to Ann Arbor to shop.  One of those was to fly her father's funeral in 1977. We had the odd family occurrence of a funeral AND wedding all in one week. When the life celebrations had passed, we took her to see the Pacific Ocean along the Santa Barbara coast. Fitting, I think, looking back. She radiated sheer joy to wade among the waves, barefoot, slacks rolled up to her knees, feeling the sand and seashells in between her toes. 

A letter my dad wrote to MY mother, back  in college, talked of that same glee, a young Barb who propped up her senior portraits all over the house, to include one against the toaster, so that wherever she went, she could gaze upon her smiling self.  Typical big brother, squashing little sister joy. Sigh. ;-)

That same girl stayed with another family in Hillsdale while her folks moved back to Blissfield, for the duration of her senior year so that she could take languages and get a better education than in the little hamlet where she was born -and would remain. 

Dad probably harbored envy because she had a firm grasp on what eluded him. Barb lived a contented life. Smitten by a local high school football star, an All-State ranked player, she'd gone off to college dreaming big dreams. 

Quitting in her undergrad years to be with her fiancé , who had big dreams of his own, a football star for Michigan state. Most tragically, he was savagely attacked in his dorm room and suffered brain damage. She went to him and never left his side. A once bright young man, now limited to the ranks of the working class. Barb worked as a secretary for a Realtor, making slim ends meet, with my cousin Linda making dinner for dad and two younger brothers while her mom finished up long workdays. 

Barbara Ann.  Her middle name may  have been homage to her grandmother, Anna, a little slip of a thing standing in a starched blouse and crinoline skirt, hair pulled back tight. Squinting through spectacles intense humid June heat, in a photograph from a 1922 family picnic. The Peter were precise and practical farm folk - sending registration forms for such events to get a head count. Necessary practicality - the 1922 photo shows upwards of 100 people stretching over four generations. Barb followed the family precision. 

Started a career as the town librarian when her oldest had graduated high school and her youngest was 8, a career that her friends and neighbors will talk to you about to this day. Some of them have saved certificates earned by their children in her summer reading programs! They'll tell you she was strict and sometimes stern at the library, but that she loved the kids who loved to read like she did.

Yep, that's my aunt Barb. Necessarily practical to a fault. Pretty disciplined, indeed, she was the kind of housekeeper who, when she went into labor with my cousin Bruce, stayed at home until she finished up the supper dishes. Then it was time to go.

I had a hard time leaving her on Saturday, even though she had slipped into the end stages. We weren't close through the years,  but in her lay the last vestiges of my long-gone grandparents, aunt, and father -- and the lady who loved the beach that day in 1977. Sigh.

Got on the plane to go home and the opening of the in-flight movie of the day made me weep a little. "Skyfall". James Bond doesn't ordinarily induce tears. But having seen the film already, knowing an ancestral estate Played an important plot point...the lyric to the theme got me. 

"This is the end Hold your breath and count to ten Feel the earth move and then Hear my heart burst again

For this is the end I've drowned and dreamt this moment So overdue I owe them Swept away, I'm stolen

Let the sky fall When it crumbles We will stand tall Face it all together...

Let the sky fall We will stand tall At skyfall"

I did the dishes at your house, Aunt Barb, straightened things, up, and left it nice so you'd be ready to go, for the last time... :-), and on Sunday afternoon, you did.

We will stand tall, with your kids and granddaughters, and beloved widower, while their sky falls, today. 

Give everyone a hug for us...

Thank you, Pope Benedict. Thank you...

Nearly ten years ago now I worked in the daycare of a local church. Dealing with a sociopath husband, three teenage and pre-teen boys, and younger and more ridiculous hormones of my own, most days gave me grief. I emerged from a bathroom break once, heart heavy, praying my way through the day, and made the sign of the cross over myself, as if hugging myself in prayer.

Not long after the 'director' of the daycare summoned me to her inner sanctum. " Some one saw you cross yourself. ARE YOU CATHOLIC?"

My California-psyche sat stunned at the narrow-minded, pointed-ness of the question.

"I'm sorry, what did you just ask me?"

Venom dripping from her sharp tongue, she repeated."ARE YOU CATHOLIC?"

Huh. I looked at her and said evenly, " As my employer you should know that, under federal law, you are not allowed to ask me any questions like that. What else did you need?"

She didn't have much else to say.

I think I've always been slightly Catholic.

Of course not baptized or raised as such, but living with the constant need for approval from other human beings, all in the name of God, of course, is very Catholic.

Wait. I take that back. On a few levels, I was raised as a Catholic, disguised as a Presbyterian. HA

The late 1960's and 70's in our household, like many others, left little room for varying thought, sex=sin, church attendance: mandatory; God watches naughty little girls -- but Jesus loved me, ♪ this I know, and like all the "red and yellow, ♪ black and white ♪ little children of the world". That was our world back then.

Yes, He does. My born-during-the Depression parents couldn't help it. One side moved from church to church in the Mennonite community, the other grew up United Brethren; both generations fresh out of the tent revival days at the turn of the century -- where EVERYONE WAS A SINNER GOING TO HELL.

Watching the resignation of Pope Benedict put the seal on my decision to not complete my journey into Catholicism.
 Two weeks ago I beat myself up over "not finishing another quest, what a loser I am." The very next day the head of the Church ( in which I'd tried desperately to understand and fit into) stepped down, stating, "After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths due to an advanced age are no longer suited" for the task."

If the Pope can step aside then it's okay for me to do the same, thought I.

And then the Christian in me realized how very Catholic I have lived. Who cares what the Pope chooses for himself? Why does that matter to me????

Granted, Catholicism has done much for the world. Established hospitals, schools, given remarkable aid to poor nations. Done much for humanity and....stayed rooted in humanity.

"On this rock I will build my church, " declared Jesus. And He did. The tomb of St. Peter lies below the Basilica. The Church that sings, " we profess your death o Lord, and proclaim your Resurrection, until You come again..." at every mass, has yet to let go of the death, and yet to fully live in the Resurrection. They still want you to focus on becoming holy... which, for us fully human peeps, is unattainable.

I can't ascribe fully to a faith system that says that Jesus' mother is as holy as He is. He was fully human AND fully divine. She was fully human. Like us.

I can't ascribe fully to a faith that only allows the approved to accept the gift of the Eucharist, the body and blood of Jesus given to all mankind.

I can't ascribe fully to a faith that requires your sins to be absolved by one of your peers, in a confessional. While confession and accountability are necessary for a healthy soul, Jesus did not hang six hours on the cross for me to be forgiven by a seminarian. That's going a little bit backwards. The Jews HAD to go to God through a priest, as well, until the Crucifixion, when the Temple curtain ripped in half, from bottom to top at the moment of His death.

A curtain woven three feet thick and ten feet high. Ripped, in half, to reveal the Holy of Holies. From top to bottom. No human force could have done that.

So I went backwards in my quest to move forwards... which is okay as long as you look at the past in the rearview mirror and not make a u-turn.

I've realized that I've lived my life like some sort of crusading Scarlett O'Hara, always dependent on the kindness of others, and always measuring myself against myself and (what I perceive to be) other's standards, and, not unlike the Catholic church and other zealous religious factions, throwing MY faith into other people's faces trying to coerce them into MY way of thinking. That's not faith.

That's religion.

That's the humanity of faith, the rules, the laws, the doctrine, the dogma. The knowledge.

Webster's sums it up nicely: "a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs."

Human affairs. 

Millions of  Catholics bewildered as to what will happen now, since the normal order of their faith system has been disrupted by a human choosing to be human, and not divine. 

I asked my late father, on the one face-to-face visit we had in 20 years, why in the world he became an Orthodox Jew -- after living a life as Christian proclaiming the freedom of faith from such oppressive religion. In his alcoholically academic vagueness, he mumbled, " I was always looking for more answers."

I'm my father's girl. Always looking for more answers, the surety, the inside scoop, the cocky confidence that comes from Knowing All and Seeing All, and being able to Explain It All. Oye.

It's time I step past the rent Temple curtain, the one torn from top to bottom by an unseen, inexplicable force, beyond the human affairs and into the space which only contains God. No answers. Just God. 

"We proclaim your death oh Lord,♪ and profess your Resurrection, until You come again..."

THAT'S the mystery of faith.

♪ 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.