MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT THOUGHTS ABOUT FRIENDS

In fits and starts I have been writing my memoirs in hope that my grandchildren and their grandchildren will know more about my life and times than I know about the lives of my forbears. I’m not sure why I think it is important that I do this, but my kids think it’s important, so I tell myself I’m doing it for them.

I made a list of the people about whom I wanted to say something in this immortal tome I am giving birth to. A few are in the rich and famous category. Name dropping is one of my favorite ego trips.

But most of the people whose friendship has enriched my life are neither rich nor famous. They made their bucks the hard way and spend them carefully. Their names have never been a household word in more than a handful of households other than their own.

And mine.

There are a lot of them! I was surprised, because I tend to encase myself in an invisible barrier and don’t let many people really in. I’m not sure I really like you and I’m pretty sure you won’t really like me if you get too close.

My list of very-important-people-you-never-heard-of runs nearly two pages single spaced. Some of us go waaay back. Some have crossed the great divide, many are still around and we touch base now and then. A few are new and I won’t live long enough for them to become “old friends”, but their newness doesn’t diminish their dearness. I doubt that it occurs to any of them that I am sitting in my cluttered little cave at 2:00 a.m. thinking about them.

But I am.

I talked to one of those old friends today, one with whom I once spent more time than with my own family, shared some hairy moments and some hilarious ones. When either of us had a problem we couldn’t get on top of, or a happiness we couldn’t wait to tell, we got hold of each other ASAP. That half hour phone conversation across a continent cast a bright glow onto my day that’s still there. I hope it hangs around for a while.

Of course there are degrees of friendship, of closeness and intimacy and sharing and compatibility. You never feel exactly the same about any two friends, like you never feel exactly the same about any of your children.

But I can make an accurate generalization about all of them.

They know me.

The verb “to know” is not about a cognitive awareness, like I know today is Tuesday. Not to get too indelicate here, the Hebrew verb “to know” was a 15th century bible translator’s euphemism for sexual intercourse.

That kind of knowing means nothing important is hidden, it’s a kind of non-physical intimate interaction characterized by open sharing of each other’s basic humanness. My friends know me and love me and let me know it, let me feel it. They love me despite the unlovely things they know about me.

With them I can be myself. Well, within limits. Sometimes I can’t stand to be myself around myself.

No pretense. No fakeness. No trying to impress. No carefully chosen words or shaded meanings to avoid offense. With those who know me, offense is taken only when offense is intended. No cautious guarding against being hurt. It is not unbreakable, but it is tough. Even when there is tension between us we know it will not likely be permanent, or fatal. I give them me and they give me themselves, and with this we are content.

What freedom!

I miss them when I am not with them. I miss their honest “I don’t know” when I am surrounded by those who have all the answers and give them out, bidden or not. I miss them when I have to hang around people in a polite, conforming, shallow nothingness.

Even when we are apart, we are not really separated. When we make contact again we take up where we left off, with no awkwardness, no dancing around to find new feelings which may have cropped up between us.

This column has gone more slowly than usual, writing time was interspersed with remembering time.

It’s time to hit the send button. The glow is still there.

©2012 Jack Wilson      

Up From Bedlam

This was previously published in several other venues, and is posted here in May, which is designated “National Mental Health Month”

                                                                              Up From Bedlam

“Bedlam” is the name of a London suburb where, in 1247, compassionate monks established a place for the care of people with mental disorders. The “care” provided for the unfortunate wretches sounds more like torture. Some “patients” were chained to the walls, some in iron cages, others wandered free to act out their delusions, hallucinations, and violent self-destructive behavior. But Bedlam was progress. It was a first, a new concept, a place intended for some kind of protection and care for mentally ill persons.

About 1948 I accepted an invitation to visit the Missouri State Hospital for the Insane. It was the most mind-searing, gut-wrenching, spirit-gagging experience of my young life.

About 25 men lethargically pushed dirty mops in a continuous circle across a warped and splintered wooden floor. Their eyes were vacant, their faces expressionless. Some of them were drooling, one man‘s sexual arousal was obvious but ignored, now and then one of them would laugh mirthlessly at some secret inner-minded humor. The one stubble-faced attendant, in filthy white clothes, chain smoked and lounged impassively as his custodial charges marched their purposeless, endless treadmill of mindless desperation. They were more suggestive of inmates than patients.

The ambience in the female area was different only in gender. There was no circular floor mopping, but each of the patients was supposedly occupied in some useful activity. One skinny, pale-faced type approached me with an explicit sexual proposition stated loudly in colorful street vernacular. In the laundry room a cheerful, heavily perspiring fortyish woman stuffed grungy gray bed clothes into a tub of tepid water which matched the color of the sheets. I thought she was an employee.

In times past psychiatric hospitals were sometimes referred to as “Snake Pits”. That is defamatory to snakes. I got a dose of reality that day which has never left me.

Move forward a decade.

With a newly minted doctoral degree in my hand, I reported to the Kansas City Psychiatric Receiving Center for clinical training. The ambience was strikingly different from the ones I just described.

The common room was bright, cheerfully furnished, no gender segregation for most patients. There were a few semi-zombieized patients who were being moved “up” from more restricted levels of care, but most of them were sort of doing their own thing. A few women were knitting with blunt brittle plastic “needles“ which they had to check in and out when they wanted to use them, a few were playing cards or checkers, one man was doing a chess solo. A couple of patients were pacing, driven by inner demons, but disruptive behavior was infrequent. Two female nurses and two or three male Psych Techs were actively involved with the patients, distributing meds, answering questions, or just chatting.

Psychiatrist John O’Hearne gave me an orientation tour; the solo chess player came over to talk. His name was Don. About 40 years old, clean-shaven, neatly dressed, with an educated vocabulary and an easy manner. Dr. O’Hearne told me he was a high school principal. When I asked about his diagnosis, John said cryptically, “Wait a few days”. About a week later Don was in a “rubber room”, stark naked and filthy from his own feces, talking in staccato gibberish about his plans for world reform. A year later he was still in the hospital, having his cyclic battles with his inner demons. Terrible waste! As other medications became available I hope he was able to resume somewhere some semblance of his former life.

Now move ahead thirty more years, another city, another hospital, another man. A clinical psychologist, a professional with four university degrees, he was in the grip of a major depression.

Even doctors get sick. (his symptoms appeared in adolescence, but no one recognized them). At 2 o’clock one morning he was sitting at his desk, ripping pages from his typewriter because he couldn’t write a coherent paragraph. The next morning his wife and his secretary each took him by an arm, walked him firmly to the car, and delivered him to a psychiatric hospital.

The first night he crawled on his hands and knees in the bathroom, afraid the staff would find some pills he had spilled, pills with which he had been medicating himself and smuggled in. The treatment he received was excellent, highly professional, effective. After a month in the hospital, 6 months off work recovering at home, medication (which he will gratefully take for the rest of his life) monitored by a very good psychiatrist, an understanding, supportive boss, and a wife who is a shoo-in for sainthood, he is back doing his thing, doing well.

I was that man.

That was 27 years ago, a third of my total lifetime. That was the birth of 5 great-grandchildren ago. That was a quarter of a million miles of travel in 20 countries ago. 27 busy, active, years I would have missed had there not been some caring, competent people to pick me up when I crashed, some skilled professionals and some incredible pharmaceuticals. Years I would have missed if some people had not been struggling for 700 years to bring mental health care up from Bedlam.

Had I been born a few centuries, a few generations earlier, I would certainly have worn Bedlam’s chains, or mopped a floor, or shared Don’s cyclic nightmare in the rubber room.

Mental illness has always afflicted human beings. Many of its victims made significant contributions of great benefit to society.

Martin Luther was about a quart low on Lithium when he had hallucinations so severe he threw an inkwell at the Devil. Abraham Lincoln suffered from awful depressions that occasionally led to thoughts of suicide. Vincent Van Gogh cut off his own ear. Michelangelo, Isaac Newton, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, Winston Churchill, Mike Wallace; all certifiably mentally ill. Have you seen the movie, A Beautiful Mind, about Nobel laureate John Nash, whose quantum leaps in mathematics were accomplished despite his rampaging schizophrenia?

Progress is being made. Bedlam is history. Psychiatry and psychology have made remarkable gains in understanding and treatment. But there is a long way to go. Mental illness is still stigmatized. Public attitudes are way behind the realities of modern treatment.

We are not crazy, or insane, we are sick.

Sick like you who have diabetes or migraine headaches or ulcers or problems with any other part of your physical equipment that doesn’t work like it should. You take medicine routinely so you can function effectively. So do we. But we are treated differently than other sick persons.

Insurance companies usually pay a percentage of the cost of mental health care. Not long ago my primary care physician wanted me to have a series of tests. My wife and I are fortunate to have excellent health insurance coverage, which is simply too expensive for many people. Probably most people.The hospital and physicians bills looked like a page out of the national debt, but didn’t cost us a nickel out-of-pocket. But on my quarterly check-up visit to my friendly shrink, the same insurance company pays only 50% of the cost, which is about the price of a tank of gas or a meal for two at a mediocre restaurant. Go figure.

This year, about 168,000 Coloradans are, or will become, mentally ill. (That’s a terrible term, but I don’t know what else to call it). Disorders of their body chemistry, which are known, understood, and treatable by methods which exist in this state. About 40% will be unable to get treatment. The majority of these will get worse, their illness progressing until they are disabled or homeless. A few will commit suicide.

And it’s all so unnecessary. But so are a lot of sad things in life. Whining doesn’t help, or complaining, or thinking there is nothing to be done. There is plenty to be done. Some of it you can do. And what we do will make a difference. We must simply keep whacking away at this particular piece of “outrageous fortune”.

I am very glad some people, long ago, thought there had to be something better than Bedlam.

© 2012 Jack Wilson

In Praise of Atheism

                                                     IN PRAISE OF ATHEISM

My friend calls himself an atheist, I’m a Christian. Of course neither of us “are” those things, the words are just labels, handy handles employed to reveal a snippet about one dimension of our selves to anyone who might be interested.

He and I enjoy each other’s company and share many interests. He’s bright, articulate, has a quick mind and a mostly upright character, certainly as upright as mine.

Conventional expectations might assume that we hold radically different, incompatible, antithetical beliefs and spiritual values. Not so! The fact is we are more together on such matters than many who carry either of the two labels are with each other.

“Atheist” and “Christian” are both widely misunderstood and incorrectly used words. Even among those who apply the labels to themselves there is not unanimity about what the words mean.

In the first century C.E. Christians in the Roman Empire were considered atheists because they did not believe in or worship the correct deity, the Roman Emperor. Both “Christian” and “Atheist” carry a lot of historical and cultural baggage.

Some self-identified atheists interpret the word to mean not-a-theist, that is, a person who does not attribute human-like characteristics to a deity. Belief in god is OK, non-theists just can’t believe He is a he, or keeps a 24 hour day, get tired, changes his mind, walks to-and-fro, or experiences emotions like love and anger, as does the god of the Hebrew bible.

Lots of atheists don’t categorically deny that god or gods exist, they simply have not found persuasive reason to believe it.

The kind of atheists who really rattle Christian’s cages are the aggressively outspoken ones whose core, bedrock belief is that there is not, anywhere in any form, never has been and never can be, a deity. Atheism is their religion; to positively deny that god exists is their core article of faith.

Atheists of this variety can be passionately evangelical; they aggressively pursue efforts to persuade others. Indeed there are those who speak of the Gospel of atheism, Gospel meaning Good News, like 18^th century French philosopher Denis Diderot who earnestly declared, "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest".

OK – so? Is atheism a terrible thing, a danger to right thinking and a well-ordered civil society?

Atheism, as all other “isms”, is simply an opinion. It’s not what somebody is, it’s where that somebody is at a particular moment along the road of life. They may not be at exactly the same place tomorrow.

Atheists are not my enemy, or God’s. They simply are, as we all are, incomplete finite human creatures, blessed and burdened with a brain that asks questions and must find some answers, even if the answers are inaccurate or partial or put them at odds with the prevailing beliefs of their society.

Most atheists I know have open, searching minds and are far less dogmatic and absolute than their counterparts among the Theists. And they make a habit of being courteous. They rarely clang around denouncing religion or dramatically challenging God to smite them if he exists.

Atheists and Christians come in a variety of flavors. I prefer some flavors of atheism to some flavors of Christian.
©2012 Jack Wilson      

Tora! Tora! Tora!

Those words, spoken into his radio by Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, the leader of the Japanese air fleet attacking Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941; code words telling his boss Admiral Yamamoto the attack was beginning. At our neighborhood movie theatre I watched the grainy, jerky newsreels of the battle a few days after it occurred, 70 years ago this week.

Local boys joined the Navy and came home in body bags. Tarawa, Midway, Iwo Jima, Subic Bay, Bataan Death March; the deadly details were my daily information diet.

A few years later I got a haircut at the Pearl Harbor base barber shop, where a yellowed hand-written sign on the still shattered and taped mirror bore the legend; “Courtesy of the Japanese Imperial Air Force 12/7/41”.

Captain Fuchida became a symbol of the loathsome “Japs”. Any American military man who could do him in was a shoo-in for a medal. Given the opportunity, I would have, without hesitation, done the job myself.

Ten years later I was having lunch with Mitsuo Fuchida in my hometown.

Slightly built, he was quiet, almost reserved, with the mien of a scholar rather than a fierce warrior who dealt in death. He spoke of his changed attitudes about the Pearl Harbor event and Japan’s reasons for starting World War II, and of his newfound life-changing faith.

He believed that Japan’s initiation of World War II had been a mistake. Disillusioned with his inherited religion that worshipped the emperor as God, he had converted to Christianity and was in the U.S. on the post-war evangelical speaking circuit, as I was. I met him as a colleague, a fellow believer; this man who I had hoped would be killed.

My friends were full of questions. “What did you talk about, what made the greatest impression on you? What were your feelings as you listened to what he said?”

Actually, I don’t recall that I had any particular reaction to the meeting, any emotions stirred, any profound reflections. I had met some important and impressive people; he was just another one. I was very young.

Over the years I seldom think about that meeting, except once a year. On December 7.

I think about the sad impossibility of eliminating war from the world, despite the seductive solipsism of hopeful dreamers. Everybody thinks the eradication of violence is a great idea until they are themselves violently attacked physically, economically, politically, then they become convinced they have no other recourse, that in protecting themselves they are protecting the world.

Sometimes they are correct. Fuchida’s conversion and genuine regret over the carnage carried out by his country didn’t turn him into a fuzzy-minded peacenik, nor did he adopt a no-war-no-more position. A patriotic and respected Japanese hero until his death in 1976, he believed the defeat of his country saved the world incalculable grief.

Especially in these tortured times I reflect on the shallow silliness of imputing inherent, immutable evil to be the essential nature of any race or nation, or of attributing inherent righteousness to any race or nation, including ourselves. I recall that religion is the first Horseman of The Apocalypse.

I think about the innate ability of humanity to heal. The sick madness of hate, vengeance, blood lust, the “kill-the-bastards-they-deserve-it” mentality rarely persists indefinitely, although the ongoing Israeli/ Palestinian mess seems to be an exception.

Some people call this inherent, invincible inclination to healing and peace the Spirit of God. I think they’re right.

 

AGATHA

“And the Lord God made man from the dust of the earth, breathing into him the breath of life: and man became a living soul.” Genesis 2

We adopted her when she was six months old. Her name is Agatha, named for my wife’s favorite mystery writer.

In appearance she is a perfect 10. Her beautiful face morphs into limitless subtle expressions, her personality sparkles with more facets than a gemstone. She communicates superbly by direct vocal interaction and an infinite vocabulary of body language. She is acutely aware of what’s going on in her world and sometimes tells us what’s going on in our world. She frequently comes from the kitchen to my study to fetch me to dinner. She teases me, scolds me, speaks softly, stridently, or conversationally, appropriately to the circumstances.   

She is endlessly entertaining, a joy, a comfort, a companion in happy times and sad, and she expresses her love for me a gazillion different ways many times a day. She is snuggled up against me as I write this.

I adore her!  

I’m not sure she knows she’s a cat; but she knows she is a person.

Most adults who have kids and pets have encountered childhood metaphysical curiosity in the form of “do animals have a soul?” Just reading everything written on the topic could be a lifetime career. “Will non-human creatures go to heaven when they die”? Googling that question will lead you on a mind-bending trip through the zaniest parts of religious kookdom. Most otherwise knowledgeable people don’t have a clue how to answer.   

Neither do I. I don’t even know what “Soul” is. Dictionary definitions include:

·       The immaterial aspect of personhood.

·       The self-aware essence of a particular living being.

·       Consciousness, mind, spirit, self-awareness and self-actuation.

·       The capacity to make reasoned decisions.

·       The spirit or essence of an individual human.   

·       All of the above in some kind of combination.  

To speak of “having a soul” is incorrect. Living creatures don’t have souls, they are souls. Although it is customarily used in a religious context, soul is not essentially a religious word

The bible verse from Genesis which begins this column defines “life” as “having breath,” and uses “life” as synonymous with “soul.” The words “spirit” and “soul” are used interchangeably in many biblical passages.

“Soul” is never used apart from its embodiment in a particular unique individual. A few obtuse and sometimes mutually contradictory passages obliquely refer to a body/soul dichotomy, and there is widespread confusion and disagreement among seriously religious people about soul and what happens to it after physical death.

I abhor “proof-texting” the Bible, using it to support or refute a particular idea or point-of-view. I take the Bible to be an authoritative statement about what its various authors believed, but not necessarily authoritative about what I am to believe. And since the Bible does not specifically say anything about animals being souls or going to heaven, I feel free to create my own doctrine as it specifically refers to Agatha.

Leaving aside for the moment the problems inherent in the phrase “go to heaven,” which implies heaven is a literal place in a specific geographic location, as long as there’s Agatha’s and my souls in whatever form, I don’t want to be anywhere that she is not close by.

If heaven is a place/condition/whatever, where:

·       Unconditional love is the norm.

·       Infinite varieties of beauty abound.

·       There is bonding between all creatures, great and small.

·       Happiness is a bundle of fur softly rumbling on its inside,

Agatha will be there.

NO PARADE FOR THESE VETERANS by Jack Wilson

The first parade I recall ever watching was Armistice Day 1938.

Bands playing, flags flying, lots of horses, and real live soldiers, some with stumps where hands, legs, or arms should be. A few declined the proffered vehicles and struggled valiantly on crutches; one or two rolled in wheelchairs.

The little boy in me was enormously impressed. Although I didn’t really understand what it was all about I knew I was seeing some very important people. Just how important, and what it all has to do with me, has been a growing revelation through all the years since.

The change in designation from “Armistice” to “Veterans” was appropriate. Better than saying, “Hooray, we won!” is saying “Thank you” to and for the still living men and women who did the winning at unfathomable personal cost.

I never earned the right to march in a Veterans parade. I know some who have, and there is no way our gratitude however elaborately expressed can match their gift. 

But there is one group of military veterans we will likely never see in a parade. One of them is my eldest granddaughter.  Her husband served 20 years in the Special Forces. Everything you have heard or read about what Green Berets do, he has done. Here are excerpts from one of her letters to me.

(Note: Following the 1999 release of the Academy Award film, “The Hurt Locker”, the term became part of the vocabulary of military people.)

“Army wives have their own kind of hurt locker; and we protect our husbands from it, just like they protect us from theirs.  Not because there need to be secrets, but because you love one another too much to make an already hard situation more difficult. 

It used to frustrate me that I seemed to be the only wife who didn't know all the details from her guy’s deployments; that I had to wait until they got together and had a few drinks in them before I ever learned anything that went on.  At the same time, I always knew that it was because he loved me that David didn't tell me everything. He said he couldn't see how it would have been helpful to give me the details on how horrible it all was, knowing that he would be going back into that again. He loves me.

 

In fact, he only started talking once he was retired, and even then very little.

I haven't imagined David's funeral for a couple of years, now. But I used to have a plan for it. 

Before each of David’s deployments, I had to name a civilian person to accompany the Casualty Assistance Officers to my house. Several of my friends have called me and said, "You're my person."  You say, "OK" and then you never mention it again, because you both know what it means. 

I had detailed plans for what I would do if I got notified while the kids were in school, or at home; who would take care of them for me while I was making arrangements; where we would go and what we would do afterwards. 

Attending a fallen soldier's funeral, whether you know him or not, brings it all home that you could be next.  My girlfriends and I used to go to funerals together for moral support.  Our husbands didn't work together.  If someone from one of our husband's units was killed, we'd go together so we could hold hands. Then we would pick up our kids and go to one of our houses, give them pizza and soda, plop them in front of the television, and go into the kitchen and get drunk.  We'd have one big slumber party; cry because you felt like such a dirt bag because all you could feel was happy that it wasn't your husband's boots and gun on display at the front of that church; laugh because you knew you were with people who understood that you absolutely HAVE to be able to do that so you can get up and be happy mommy for your kids the next day.

 

 When he was deployed, I used to take the telephone with me into the bathroom while I showered; and would sometimes turn off the shower in a panic because I thought I heard it ring.  Never wanted to miss a phone call from David; I never knew if it would be the last one. 

If practicing for a funeral doesn't sound bizarre enough, I had to stop going to church for a while because I would actually turn away from the altar after communion and think I saw him walking down the aisle. 

After David did come home I used to lie in bed at night and cry while he had bad dreams, never waking him, because that's the last thing you want to do.  Knowing that there's a part of him that I can never heal just by loving him feels pretty bad.  And being married to a man whom you will never fully know has its own challenges. 

I used to watch David with our babies, and try to imagine those big gentle hands in combat. I actually used to be able to picture only his hands but not his face. You know it must be really hard for him to be two completely different people at the same time, and it makes me love him even more.

I guess we all come away fractured, yet somehow better people. Husbands and wives have their own separate forms of PTSD, but I would never have missed it for the world. I would never have wanted David to be less than he was, or to be something other than a Green Beret. 

It was a full and happy life. I am strong because of the experience.  I was able to be part of a community of people who really know what it means to love this country. Military families are tested in ways that most people can't imagine; but we come through it because we know that there is something way bigger than all of us, and it's worth fighting for. I think a lot of people hear things like this and think it sounds cliché. It only sounds cliché if you've never lived it. 

I'm glad I did.” 

 GUADALUPE

My wife and I once thought of retiring in Mexico. Some of the most pleasurable, memorable moments in our lifetime occurred there, and some powerful learning experiences.

The Basilica of The Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City is the most revered, frequently visited religious site in that country. Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes wrote that "...one may no longer consider himself a Christian, but you cannot truly be considered a Mexican unless you believe in the Virgin of Guadalupe."

A mestiza child-woman, wearing a shabby shift, was climbing the stone stairway to the shrine on her knees, leaving bloody spots on the stone. Her shoes were yellow rubber flip-flops. 

She appeared to be talking to herself, then I realized she was praying. And weeping.

The object of her grief was a motionless gray infant cradled in the crook of her left arm. With her other hand she repetitiously made the sign of the cross, a motion that revealed two coins clutched in her right hand: two centavos, intended as an offering to accompany her prayers to the Virgin to heal her baby.

The baby was obviously dead; the mother did not appear to know it.

The throng of pilgrims and tourists swirled heedlessly around them; a perspiring portly priest passed by with a dispassionate glance.

This teenage mother with her lifeless child could be the poster girl for 18 million of her people living under the poverty line in that beautiful, benighted metropolis, 7 million of them squatters in filthy enclaves sprawling for thousands of acres on the city’s perimeter. 600,000 children sleep on the streets each night. The worst U.S. slums are comfortable in contrast.  

Many places in the world I have seen ignorance, and the poverty which it feeds and feeds upon. But why there, why then, did a burst of unaccountable emotion grip my gut?

Certainly it had something to do with the dark desperate drama playing out in the shadow of a monument to compassion, healing, and love. It had something to do with the pitiful cash offering intended as a contribution to a church which housed treasures valued at more money than her mind could ever comprehend. It had something to do with my cassock-clad clerical counterpart performing his walk-on cameo role in this video of the human condition.

My emotions included helpless pity, frustration, raging anger, a struggle for comprehension, and guilt.

Human pathos, viewed in the abstract and from a distance, produces a low level of emotional intensity, a mental murmur of “how sad”. Up close the urge to help surged, bidden by instinct and training, to the surface of my awareness.

I could help her! I had money, connections, the cojones, my gringo Spanish was passable. I moved toward her, and stopped.

I could not help her. Just three feet apart, we occupied different worlds.

A bomb of emotion exploded inside me; I grappled with the fallout for days.

Non-rational guilt that I couldn’t fix her life. Most clergy have some Superman delusions.

Anger at a world in which abject wretchedness is allowed to co-exist with so many who have enough, and more. The words of Jesus came to mind, “the poor are always with you”.

Anger at an institutional church served by clergy who can ho-hum their way past an anguished mother and her dead baby. But whenever I get ethno-critical of religion I remember that religion reflects the culture; I cannot judge the church, or its clergy, by what I think they ought to be.

Anger at a religious system that takes money from an impoverished peasant girl and builds palaces to house its icons. But reality reminded me that she needed that icon, that palace. It was the only grand, beautiful, luxurious thing in her life, and God was there. And hope. Two centavos would buy her part ownership; who would deny her that?

 I must find my place somewhere between ho hum and useless judgmental anger.