Refreshing Biblical Times

Every few years, I read the entire Bible as if it is one book. Beginning with Genesis, I continue on through Revelations. It is a practice I began when I was just five, before anyone taught me that I was supposed to understand what I read before I read it. Perhaps that first experience of reading something that I couldn't understand very well prepared me to ignore my teachers much of the time, which is what I usually did at least until I became a wise teenager. They didn't make much sense and most of them didn't seem to konw God (my litmus test for wisdom). I tried to take the knowledge they could impart and use it to go my own way - I wasn't an easy child.

I strongly reccomend reading the Bible in this fashion as well as studying particular books, reading the lessons in the Divine office, reading and rereading particular, perhaps favourite passages - as well as reading Scripture any way you normally would. One finds the Bible is exciting, more exciting than any novel. It's a history of God's relationship with His people. The Bible shows us so much about them and how they are just like us. It is filled with human beings who are as wicked as we are, as good as we are, significantly better than we are - we can see that we are God's people; He has chosen to continue the story in our lives. The Bible belongs to us and we would be wise to listen to what God is telling us through it.

I am a very fast reader and usually make it through the entire Bible in a month to six weeks. Because my illness affects memory, concentration and other cognitive functions, it will probably take me two years or more this time - I began sometime last year and am only now at Isaiah. That seems to be a blessing because my limited focus is on one chapter or less at each reading and new things jump out at me, old favourites reveal new depths. Isaiah is one of my all time favourite books. A portion of the chapter I read this morning seems quite timely so here it is. Read and be refreshed. May God bless all those who come here.

[12] "I, I am he that comforts you;
who are you that you are afraid of man who dies,
of the son of man who is made like grass,
[13] and have forgotten the LORD, your Maker,
who stretched out the heavens
and laid the foundations of the earth,
and fear continually all the day
because of the fury of the oppressor,
when he sets himself to destroy?
And where is the fury of the oppressor?
[14] He who is bowed down shall speedily be released;
he shall not die and go down to the Pit,
neither shall his bread fail.
[15] For I am the LORD your God,
who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar --
the LORD of hosts is his name.
[16] And I have put my words in your mouth,
and hid you in the shadow of my hand,
stretching out the heavens
and laying the foundations of the earth,
and saying to Zion, `You are my people.'"
[17] Rouse yourself, rouse yourself,
stand up, O Jerusalem,
you who have drunk at the hand of the LORD
the cup of his wrath,
who have drunk to the dregs
the bowl of staggering.
[18] There is none to guide her
among all the sons she has borne;
there is none to take her by the hand
among all the sons she has brought up.
[19] These two things have befallen you --
who will condole with you? --
devastation and destruction, famine and sword;
who will comfort you?
[20] Your sons have fainted,
they lie at the head of every street
like an antelope in a net;
they are full of the wrath of the LORD,
the rebuke of your God.
[21] Therefore hear this, you who are afflicted,
who are drunk, but not with wine:
[22] Thus says your Lord, the LORD,
your God who pleads the cause of his people:
"Behold, I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering;
the bowl of my wrath
you shall drink no more;
[23] and I will put it into the hand of your tormentors,
who have said to you,
`Bow down, that we may pass over';
and you have made your back like the ground
and like the street for them to pass over." (Isaiah 51:12-23)

It's A Faith Issue

We average, ordinary Americans have been given a priceless gift, American citizenship. As part of that priceless gift, we average, ordinary American ciizens have been given the responsibility to govern ourselves. As a child in grammar school, I was taught that this country is a democracy. That is not true. We do have a democratic form of government but actually, we are citizens of a republic.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a republic as a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law. The supreme power rests with us. We elect our representatives and they are responsible to us which is rather difficult to take in: we've been taught to obey the state. But it turns out, we are the state. So whom do we obey? Well we haven't been left to do exactly as we please. Our republic is a nation of laws and most particulary, we live within the boundaries of the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution is another priceless gift.

To be good Christians, we must accept the gifts God has given us. And the responsibilities that go along with them. If we don't, we fail to accept God's gifts; if we will not rule ourselves, we will be ruled by men such as this one*:



Let us remember that God does not give gifts because we are worthy of them but rather because He loves us, rather for the glory of His name, so as to make us able to "declare [His] glory among the nations." We haven't been doing so well at that one either but I honestly believe if we will govern ourselves as our founding fathers conceived, we will begin to declare His glory.

As far as possible citizens should take an active part in public life. The manner of this participation may vary from one country or culture to another. "One must pay tribute to those nations whose systems permit the largest possible number of the citizens to take part in public life in a climate of genuine freedom."**

* Video of Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton
** The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Para. 1

more later

FCC Vote on Internet Freedom

I can't say it better (and I'm too tired to try):

Tomorrow, the FCC votes on "what it calls a "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking" (NPRM) on Net Neutrality. In the event the NPRM passes, it will trigger a comment period in which the public will be allowed to file opinions.

"The Internet has become a powerful communications and economic force because it has been free from government interference. To make sure the power and promise of the Internet continues, we need to keep it free of government interference.

We oppose three basic threats to Internet Freedom:

- Taxes
- Regulations
- and any attempt by the United Nations to manage the Internet"

This concerns every one of us who uses the Internet. Please read this, sign the petition and follow the link (and try) to comment on the FCC's website. (I've tried all week and can never get through.) Thanks and God bless.

Why Wait for Copenhagen When You Can Do It At the G20

Praying and fasting and suffering don't let us off informing ourselves and exercizing our responsibilities as citizens of the United States. So watch this video and really take in what he is saying - at the G20 conference, Obama ceded the sovreignity over our economy to the IMF. If you don't understand the terminology, do the research, ask questions, invest some of your frittering away time on becoming an awake and aware citizen and on learning what all this means to us as Americans and as Catholics.

We Can't Let Them Pull A Fast One

Fallen Sparrow brought this post to my attention. It's worth reading the entire piece but here are some of the relevant excerpts:

At [the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in] Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your president will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it, because they think they’re going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regime from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won’t sign it.

I read that treaty. And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word “government” actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfication of what is called, coyly, “climate debt” – because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.

How many of you think that the word “election” or “democracy” or “vote” or “ballot” occurs anywhere in the 200 pages of that treaty? Quite right, it doesn’t appear once. So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it left within a year, because [the communists] captured it – Now the apotheosis as at hand. They are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He’s going to sign it. He’ll sign anything. He’s a Nobel Peace Prize [winner]; of course he’ll sign it.

[laughter]

And the trouble is this; if that treaty is signed, if your Constitution says that it takes precedence over your Constitution (sic), and you can’t resign from that treaty unless you get agreement from all the other state parties – And because you’ll be the biggest paying country, they’re not going to let you out of it.

So, thank you, America. You were the beacon of freedom to the world. It is a privilege merely to stand on this soil of freedom while it is still free. But, in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your humanity away forever. And neither you nor any subsequent government you may elect will have any power whatsoever to take it back. That is how serious it is. I’ve read the treaty. I’ve seen this stuff about [world] government and climate debt and enforcement. They are going to do this to you whether you like it or not.

But I think it is here, here in your great nation, which I so love and I so admire – it is here that perhaps, at this eleventh hour, at the fifty-ninth minute and fifty-ninth second, you will rise up and you will stop your president from signing that dreadful treaty, that purposeless treaty. For there is no problem with climate and, even if there were, an economic treaty does nothing to [help] it.

So I end by saying to you the words that Winston Churchill addressed to your president in the darkest hour before the dawn of freedom in the Second World War. He quoted from your great poet Longfellow:

Sail on, O Ship of State!
Sail on, O Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all its fears,
With all the hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

Also:

Lord Monckton received a standing ovation and took a series of questions from members of the audience. Among those questions were these relevent to the forthcoming Copenhagen treaty:

Question: The current administration and the Democratic majority in Congress has shown little regard for the will of the people. They’re trying to pass a serious government agenda, and serious taxation and burdens on future generations. And there seems to be little to stop them. How do you propose we stop Obama from doing this, because I see no way to stop him from signing anything in Copenhagen. I believe that’s his agenda and he’ll do it.

I don’t minimize the difficulty. But on this subject – I don’t really do politics, because it’s not right. In the end, your politics is for you. The correct procedure is for you to get onto your representatives, both in the US Senate where the bill has yet to go through (you can try and stop that) and in [the House], and get them to demand their right of audience (which they all have) with the president and tell him about this treaty. There are many very powerful people in this room, wealthy people, influential people. Get onto the media, tell them about this treaty. If they go to www.wattsupwiththat.com, they will find (if they look carefully enough) a copy of that treaty, because I arranged for it to be posted there not so long ago. Let them read it, and let the press tell the people that their democracy is about to be taken away for no good purpose, at least [with] no scientific basis [in reference to climate change]. Tell the press to say this. Tell the press to say that, even if there is a problem [with climate change], you don’t want your democracy taken away. It really is as simple as that.

Do read the entire treaty. Here is a most relevant excerpt (I've left in their editorializing and emphasis since they're helpful):

38. The scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention will be based on three basic pillars: government; facilitative mechanism; and financial mechanism, and the basic organization of which will include the following:

World Government (heading added)
a) The government will be ruled by the COP with the support of a new subsidiary body on adaptation, and of an Executive Board responsible for the management of the new funds and the related facilitative processes and bodies. The current Convention secretariat will operate as such, as appropriate.

To Redistribute Wealth (heading added)
b) The Convention’s financial mechanism will include a multilateral climate change fund including five windows: (a) an Adaptation window, (b) a Compensation window, to address loss and damage from climate change impacts [read: the "climate debt" Monckton refers to], including insurance, rehabilitation and compensatory components, (c) Technology window; (d) a Mitigation window; and (e) a REDD window, to support a multi-phases process for positive forest incentives relating to REDD actions.

With Enforcement Authority (heading added)
c) The Convention’s facilitative mechanism will include: (a) work programmes for adaptation and mitigation; (b) a long-term REDD process; (c) a short-term technology action plan; (d) an expert group on adaptation established by the subsidiary body on adaptation, and expert groups on mitigation, technologies and on monitoring, reporting and verification; and (e) an international registry for the monitoring, reporting and verification of compliance of emission reduction commitments, and the transfer of technical and financial resources from developed countries to developing countries. The secretariat will provide technical and administrative support, including a new centre for information exchange [read; enforcement].

We must do everything we can, more than we think we can to certain that this is not signed. We can and will cast off the evil and mischief that is being perpetrated by both parties in this country. And we must become vigilant so that it doesn't seep in again. But the evil that can be unleashed by a treaty that would deprive us of our sovreignity is unthinkable. This is truly scary stuff (and I don't scare easily). If you agree, start making a lot of noise. I've emailed and tweeted everyone I can think of. Please do the same. And don't stop. Make this the topic of conversation for as long as necessary. Let's make it clear that we refuse to become a party to any treaty on climate change without the full consent of the actual people of the United States of America.

We are not serfs. Our elected officials do not reign over us and take care of us since we're unable to care for ourselves. Neither are we blind. And we must not be silent. This climate change garbage has gone far enough. Let's pray, yes! And let's also use every talent God has given us, even if it's just a soft whisper, to do something about it!

Sometimes There's Only the Job

Today I found a new blog, Autographed Letter Signed. The piece, Sunday Soliloquy: Chicken Soup For The Motherless Daughter’s Soul, is so heartbreakingly lovely, it made me realize that I must write one of the posts that has been ruminating in my mind these past days.

There is so much I want to do. There are so many ways I want to participate in the great drama that God continues to unfold in our nation and our world. The time I spend in bed irritates me. Doing laundry on one day should not knock me out the next and the next. I should be able to go to a friend's birthday party and then get up and do something, anything, the next day. I want to be stronger than I am and I really haven't understood why I am so overwhelmingly fatigued. Then last Monday my doctor (who is really a wonderful doctor and among my favourite people) took a look at my bloodwork and said, "Hmm. Your kidneys are only functioning at 60%."

I am rather stupid about these things particularly since I decided to stop searching the internet for every word on every report. I have no way to put all that information in context and reading Lancet* is really no help. So he explained to me that kidneys are supposed to function at 90% or better and 60% wasn't good. He did tell me that they wouldn't think of rushing me to hospital until functioning was down to 20% but I was a bit preoccupied with that 60%. He instructed me to tell my rheumatologist that I have kidney disease associated with autoimmune disease.

I don't know if the disease can be treated, if functioning can be restored. (Well it can - but you know what I mean.) And of course, the internet is still no help. This kind of kidney problem is the most difficult to treat but who, besides a doctor, knows what that means. My rheumatologist will have all the information this week and hopefully, she will have more answers.

But I do understand why I am so much weaker, so overwhelmingly fatigued. Right now, my primary job is to be ill and so I shall do the best job I can. And when I can type out a few coherent paragraphs or twitter 140 characters that make sense, I shall.

To do the job, that's enough. I needn't define it - I can't define it. But when it presents itself, when it stares you in the face, when you know this is the job I must do, the only thing is to do it. And to be grateful that God trusts us so much. And maybe He'll have a different job for me next month.

*I think I have previously intimated my nerdiness. I understand a subscription to Lancet is absolute proof.

** Two friends have already offered me kidneys which is just so absolutely lovely but let's still hope I don't need them.

Important Thing To Do With Frittering Away Money

This is important. Money that we might fritter away on stuff we don't even recall buying would be well spent on helping Belmont Abbey College. And, the repercussions could be great - we could help stop such attacks or at least slow them down; we could help limit the evil that would just love to take over every life in this country. God bless.

from: Rick Santorum
ricksantorum@becketfund.org

Re: Defending Belmont Abbey College

The Obama Administration is working to erase respect for conscience from health insurance and the law in general…

… Don’t believe me?

In his address at the University of Notre Dame, Obama talked a good game about respecting conscience on abortion rights. He did the same thing when he met the Pope. But that was all it was -- talk.

The Obama Administration’s attack on Belmont Abbey College proves that.

Belmont Abbey College is a small, private, Catholic college located in North Carolina. For 130 years, it and the Benedictine monks who run it have been dedicated to handing on the Catholic faith.

But the Obama Administration is now trying to force them to abandon that faith or go out of business.

You see, the Administration at Belmont Abbey College removed contraception, abortion, and voluntary sterilization from its faculty's health care policy after discovering it had accidentally been a part of existing plans.

Employees of the school who objected to this change in policy brought a complaint against the school accusing them of “gender discrimination.”

This accusation against Belmont Abbey College couldn’t be further from the truth.

Belmont Abbey College was not discriminating against women. Unlike many “believers in name only” the college was adhering to the principles of its faith.

At first, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) found no evidence of gender discrimination by Belmont Abbey College…..

After a few weeks, the EEOC mysteriously reversed course and announced, in effect, that the college had better toe the Administration’s line, or else.

They are now demanding the school go against the very principles it exists to serve.

Don’t be fooled.

Killing or funding the killing of unborn children has nothing to do with promoting human health. And including these atrocities in every “health care” plan -- no matter how shrewdly hidden or diplomatically stated – violates the consciences of Catholics everywhere.
No Catholic college or other religious institution should ever be required by the government to violate its moral beliefs ...

... Which is why I’m asking for your help today.

Your immediate support for the defense of Belmont Abbey College is VITAL, not only for Belmont Abbey, but for all religious institutions in America.

Too many were silent when Obama went to Notre Dame. As a result his Administration has been emboldened to attack all Catholic institutions. Now, they are shamelessly picking on a small Catholic college – Belmont Abbey.

Tomorrow it could be your local church, the parochial school you send your kids to, it could be the Jesus bumper sticker on your car…

If Obama is given the opportunity to attack even the oldest and most respected religious establishments across the country, what will be next?

The President of Belmont Abbey College has bravely stated that he would rather close the school than go against the church’s most fundamental teachings ...

I commend him for his moral conviction, but I’m afraid for the future of religious freedom in our country.

… Think I’m overreacting?

The impact of even one Catholic college knuckling under or closing would be a catastrophe for all religious institutions.

Which is why I am asking for your help.

Will you stand with me against the Obama Administration’s war on conscience?

Luckily, the Belmont Abbey College has enlisted the help of a law firm that specializes in defending against this type of travesty. It’s called the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

The Becket Fund has a solid reputation for being the best in the business.

I know first hand how effective the Becket Fund is in preserving our freedom of religion. I’ve known them for years.

Way back in the Clinton Administration when Clinton threatened to court-martial military chaplains who followed their consciences by preaching against Clinton’s veto of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban, it was the Becket Fund that filed suit in federal court and got that gag order struck down.

And just this past week, when the Freedom from Religion Foundation sued to strike “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, it was the Becket Fund that intervened in the case and successfully defended the Pledge.

In between they have successfully defended all sorts of believers and religious institutions.

Archbishop Chaput knows them well too. As he likes to say, “The work of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is more than ‘good.’ It’s vital.”

By contributing to the Becket Fund, you can directly support religious freedom — for Belmont Abbey — and every other religious school or institution in the country.

Make no mistake, this will not be easy. The Obama Administration is relentless about silencing religious believers.

Will you do me a personal favor, in the name of religious freedom, and contribute – today -- to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty’s fight for Belmont Abbey College and for all other religious institutions?

Time is of the essence. Belmont Abbey College stands for the moral teachings and principles of the Catholic Church -- it stands for life.

... You and I simply cannot allow the radical leftists in this country to succeed in demanding Belmont Abbey College turn its back on the most basic and fundamental teachings of the church or else close.

Belmont Abbey President William Thierfelder recently said, "All of us need to have moral courage in today's world." He added. "We are so resolute in our commitment to the teachings of the Catholic Church that there is no possible way we would ever deviate from it, and if it came down to it ... we would close the school rather than give in ...”

.... Will you exercise your moral courage and help me defend Belmont Abbey College with an urgent and immediate contribution of $500, $250, $100, $35, or whatever you can afford, to prevent religious freedom from becoming a thing of the past?

I’m counting on you to act TODAY!



God Bless,

Hon. Rick Santorum
United State Senator 1995-2007

P.S. I’m tired of hearing outsiders and insiders tell Catholics and other devout religious believers to keep quiet about our religious and moral views in society. That's a kind of bullying. And I don't think Catholics or persons of any faith should accept it.... For the sake and the right of religious liberty for all, I urge you to contribute to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, and support the Belmont Abbey College, TODAY!

They're Giving Me Powerful Drugs

I have been sick. Was taking Ambien and then began eating and then cooking in my sleep which is most distressing. I have no memory of eating ice cream, and candy and mac & cheese - it was great mac & cheese at the restaurant and since I added more cheese*, I bet it was even better.  And I gained weight! If I'm going to make myself fat, I want to enjoy it!

Now, we're switching to Restoril. I use "we" because my doctor muttered her way through several possibilities until she decided Restoril was the best choice. Actually, I'm trying Restoril. I've stopped eating in my sleep and haven't found any unexpected dirty dishes in the sink the next day. And I sleep. But, for the past week, I've been waking at 7.30 to take my a.m. meds, then I try to read morning prayer and a bit of Isaiah and a bit of something else but the next thing I know, it's 12.30/1. Except for days like today when I slept through my alarm and woke for the first time at 1. (I went to a party last night. It was quiet. Just a friend's birthday. And I was home by 11. But that must be past my sell-by hour. Que sera.)

Restoril keeps me out of it most of the time. Before, my friends thought I was always slightly drunk. Now, they think I'm significantly more slightly drunk. Yet maybe it's not the Restoril. I've had a lot of wooziness since having the chemo and have spent 3 of 7 days in bed since July when I had to take a break from work. Maybe the wooziness is just increasing and I will be woozier and woozier as time goes on. Has potential to be great fun. Imagine the things one could sleep through. And wooziness might be a defense for all sorts of accidents, like leaving Bergdorf's wearing amazing shoes.

I do have lots of stuff on my mind and a new photo of myself, if my friend ever sends it to me, looking like a deer caught in an SUV's headlights which I might post, if my friend ever sends it to me. So I'll keep posting whenever I can. (It's sort of an adventure.) And if you know anything about Restoril, please advise. This stuff is powerful. (Maybe my body will become accustomed to it and I will sleep less and less. I'm already taking the lowest dose so maybe that will happen soon.)

Meanwhile, here's one of my favourite Onion clips:





* more cheese always makes mac & cheese better

They Work For Us

Where are the leaders we need right now?

In my previous post, I erred in asking, where are the leaders particularly since I was actually asking, Where are those who will take over the job of leading this country so I can get back to my life? Like most Americans, I am still learning to be an American. An education in this country has provided me with much misinformation. I am now re-educating myself so that I am an informed and fully participating citizen. Assisting me are friends such as Fallen Sparrow who pointed out that in the United States of America, we don’t have leaders, we have representatives. The preamble of the Constitution begins: We the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union... We the people are sovereign. We the people are the leaders. Those we elect represent us. They are our servants.

Most Catholics (and I think most people) seem uncomfortable with servants. As Christians, we are taught to be servants. As Americans, we've been taught that we live in a democracy*, that "all men [and women] are created equal", that here, there are no servants (and therefore no masters). The very idea of having servants conjures up images of Cinderella, “let them eat cake,” and a level of wealth that translates into Scrooge's treatment of poor Bob Cratchit or the monstrous Simon Legree**. I get the impression that most Americans believe it’s immoral to expect someone else to be their servant. But in reality we have all sorts of servants. They collect our garbage, chlorinate our water, sweep our streets. But we don't usually feel that those who do such jobs are servants. We think we have become egalitarian. Actually, we have only learned to lie to ourselves better. We pretend that servants don’t exist and so pretend we have no role in regards to them.

Most of us think our primary job as citizens is voting, Many Catholics know we must also be informed so that we choose candidates who adhere to Church teaching or at least, natural law. Some of us vote to limit evil and/or for those who espouse sound economic and foreign policies. On the whole though, we vote and then believe we should be left alone to live our lives while those we elect get on with the business of running the country. But public servants merely represent us. They speak with our voices, carry out our decisions within the confines we set. They cannot and must not make decisions for us. Since we are sovereign, an integral part of living our own lives is running our country.

That is a great difficulty for many Catholics, for many Christians. The Church teaches us that we are to obey the state. That’s not a unique teaching of the Magisterium, scripture teaches the same. But in America, we the people are the state. In America, we the people must govern our own lives. In America we must set standards for ourselves and must teach those standards to our children. We must be the masters of this country, must be good stewards of the unique gift we have received.

I often encounter Catholics who tell me, when they find a candidate who adheres to Church teaching, they will vote for him/her. We have the expectation that others will present us with the right platform. But we forget, it is our job to set the standards, to tell our potential servants what they should be doing. In at least a general sense, we need to create the platforms, the policies and the positions that potential servants will flesh out and fulfill. To do so, we must be well educated and well informed. We must be involved in our communities: unmarried people must participate in decisions that involve children, married people must participate in decisions that involve those who are not married. And not only because those issues involve taxes but because the decisions made for others in our country affect all of us. We must encourage those in our community who can serve to run for public office. We must remain aware of what our servants are doing, of whether they are performing their duties responsibly. We must make certain they have what they need to do their jobs and pay them fair wages.

To ensure that our home is well cared for. Before we ask whether a particular candidate can do the job, we must know what that job entails. We must know the standards for those jobs and make certain candidates have shown evidence that they will live up to them. We must approach elections as if we are reluctantly hiring someone to care for our fragile, infant children; we must not be frivolous in choosing public servants. And, as those of us who have hired staff know, when our servants don't do their jobs we must replace them. We must realize, here, to be a good Catholic, to be a good Christian, we must do the work of governing, we must be faithful masters – that this is an integral part of stewardship.

Our Constitution sets forth the laws by which America exists. All other laws must be in accordance with it. It is not scripture but it is a certain guide within which we, the individual citizens, are able to govern her. Within it, we are the masters. This is the grace God has bestowed upon us through American citizenship. The grace and also the job, because as masters, it is our responsibility to keep our eyes on our servants. If we are not diligent, the servants will take control of our home and they will behave no better than the servants in the parables Jesus told.

* Again, Fallen Sparrow reminds me that the United States is a Republic not a democracy.

** I highly reccommend Harriet Beecher Stowe's, Uncle Tom's Cabin. It is an amazing book that was instrumental in abolishing slavery and is most useful for self re-education. I wonder if modern works such as this one might help change hearts in re abortion.

Twitter Feed...

...I've added one. I have no idea what I'll do with it but here it is and we'll see what happens.

Reworking of My September 18th Post

It seems my post yesterday was as woozy as I was, maybe it's not so bad that I am usually far away from my computer during my more lucid periods. Today, I'm still woozy but I've had input from a few friends so hopefully I won't degenerate into meaninglessness.

America, for many non-Americans, has always been the safe place, the haven. This is the place the poor and oppressed and desperate could come to be safe from destructive governements and economic systems. Many have found asylum here. This is where my parents sent me. And this has been a safe place even though very bad things can and do happen here. There is child abuse and exploitation and crime and all sorts of sin and misfortune. But this is also a place where one can build a life oneself.

Not too long ago, one of my roommates was a young Frenchman who was studying banking. In grammar school, he had been identified to study maths and though his interest was literature, he had been shuffled along the maths route until here he was at Columbia, fees and expenses paid, following an approved maths career. (He plans to make an enormous amount of money in banking and retire in ten or fifteen years.) That doesn't happen here. We choose our own directions, can and often do change course if we desire. In America, we build our own lives and that is a precious gift. If we fail we can try again if we are willing to do so. Our individual wills are the most important possession any of has in this country, the determinant of whether or not we will build lives for ourselves.

Most of us do. And many from other countries have come here and built lives for themselves. I think much of the envy directed at the US is because anyone with some talent, imagination, spunk and the willingness to work hard can create a place for himself here. That place might not be grand. It might not be expensive. It might not look the way magazines say it should. It might not even consist in things but rather in merely the freedom to be free - to be "king of the road." But it belongs to oneself.

Here we can build lives that are neither dependent on nor beholden to the state. Here community and society are freely chosen not imposed. Here, the family, the church or other religious institution, and our neighbourhoods are supposed to provide the moral development we need to care for ourselves, create new families and be good citizens. Here we are trusted to care for ourselves. To care for our families. To govern ourselves and our families.

We are at a time when many believe we can't care for ourselves. Actually, it seems many believe we ought to care for those who don't care for themselves. I am (or trying very hard to be) a faithful Catholic. I believe we have a moral imperative to care for those who can't care for themselves. But I don't believe the government is the best way to do that and I also don't think the Church teaches that caring for the poor must be the work of the government - particularly when the government has shown it can't do the job. I also believe we have a moral imperative to help those who could use a hand up or a shoulder to lean on. But I absolutely don't believe in taking care of those who will not work or those who do work and yet feel entitled to be cared for while they follow their dreams.

Right now, health insurance is the hot issue. There is a cacaphony about it these days. But there is also noise about welfare and "cash for clunkers" and stimulus money, and various community activist groups and so many other issues. We are in a time of noise and more noise. A time of being intentionally told that all is in disorder. 85% of Americans are satisfied with their health insurance yet there is a health insurance crisis. Well we're not stupid. We know there's no crisis. All it is is noise that distracts us from remembering what it means to be Americans. Distracts us from living our own lives. At the same time, there seems to be a paucity of leaders reminding us of what it means to be Americans too. Reminding us of the good that we have here in this country.

Instead, we've got leaders who create noise and unrest and calumny. They shovel issue after issue upon us and insist, "We must pass legislation now!" All this activity just distracts us, is aimed aat filling us up with chaos so that we aren't focusing on living our own lives, on taking care of ourselves. All this noise puts us in a defensive stance ready to fend off the next blast, caught up in the chaos. Some have hailed at least one of those leaders as a messiah. My first question is, Does the real Messiah bring noise and unrest and calumny and distraction? Does He bring chaos?

And my second question: Where are the leaders we need right now? The ones who will remind us that this is America? The ones who will remind us of the ways we have addressed issues in the past? And we have addressed many issues - independence, slavery, the dust bowl, going to the moon, segregation, child labour. We've addressed issues that seemed utterly intractable. Where are the leaders who will remind us of that?

I don't want leaders who will solve everything for me. I want leaders I can trust, leaders who know what it is to be an American, leaders who will encourage the citizens of this country to find answers to the needs of our time. I want leaders who will trust us, the American people. Though we can and will get things wrong sometimes, we've proven trustworthy in the past. We are trustworthy now but we need leaders who will provide calm direction in the midst of this chaos.

Excuse Me, Isn't This America?

Seems I was woozier yesterday than I realized. Stay tuned...

Today is one of my very woozy, in pain, totally out of it days. Much of the time these days, random thoughts about what I've heard or read run through my mind. Conversation with friends who know that I'm usually talking about several subjects at the same time are most helpful in separating the strands and tying the related ones together. And sometimes clear thoughts just come to mind. Usually I forget them until someone reminds me - but then I am away from my computer. Today, they just happened to come while I was showering and I have enough time to write them down before leaving for my physical therapy appointment. You see I, like so many Americans, am concerned, troubled even. There is so much about this healthcare debate that makes no sense to me: why aren't we remembering that this is America?


Isn't this the oountry where entreprenurial doctors have developed Urgent Care Centers to provide for the sick who don't need the emergency room but do need medical attention? Isn't this the country that creates not-for-profits to enroll the poor in Medicaid? Isn't this the country where brilliant folks, ordinary Joes, entrepreneurs and just plain anyone with a good idea and the willingness to put in some hard work can come up with answers to problems? And isn't it true that those of us who don't have the talent to find answers can work for or invest in the ideas of others? Isn't that what we have done in the past? Why do so many of us insist that health care is a zero-sum game?


Why are we listening to anyone compare the US to Canada or any other nation? When did we stop being the gold standard? When did we stop being the country to which immigrants (legal and illegal) flock and long to flock so that they can build a life for themselves? Maybe even develop one of their own good ideas? Isn't the opportunity for people to build a life for themselves and their families one of the greatest strengths this country has? Isn't that all we want? Not someone to do the work for us but just the opportunity to take care of ourselves? (This "you need the government to fix things for you" attitude is just fucking insulting!)


I really don't get it. The incessant clammouring makes no sense. Is that what a messiah brings? Noise and more noise? Distraction after distraction? NFW! And we know that.


It seems to me that we desperately need leaders who remember what America means. Leaders who are not out to control (another part of being American is being the people who refuse to be controlled), but out to do the job of leading us. Right now, we need leaders who tell us the truth even when we don't like it. We need leaders who point out consequences and trust us to be responsible. Leaders who know we're not stupid but that we could use some direction sometimes and need someone doing the things we can't do - like defense and certain aspects of trade - those things outlined in the Constitution. I don't care if they're Republican or Conservative or something else. I only care that they remember who we are and that they be trustworthy.


PS - I can't find the spell check button and I'm too tired to look for it anymore so please forgive me any mispelled words and other mistakes too. Thanks.

More Riffing On a Theme

I am about five. Actually, I'm an adult woman and sometimes I even present myself as a sophisticated, refined, beautiful one. But most days there's not a great deal of difference between five-year old me and five-plus times five-year old me. I have a drawer filled with baseball caps. Another is filled with neat little t-shirts. I wear comfy pants or full skirts so I can tuck my feet up or sit sprawled out. Most of my shoes are flats. Many of them are beautiful but could as easily be a child's dress shoes as an adult's. Even my hair is little-girl fine and when allowed to air dry forms itself into a mass of little-girl ringlets. Recently, as I waited to meet a friend for lunch, I saw my reflection in a plate glass window and realized all I needed was a lunch box to complete the ensemble. (My friend offered to get me one for my birthday but I declined.)

Watching 50s and 60s classic TV takes me to a time when girls grew into womanhood. Wearing stockings was a rite of passage as was wearing lipstick (lip gloss did not exist). The clothing women in the '50s and '60s wore was not suitable for a little girl not because it was risqué but rather because it was mature and not appropriate for rushing about with flying hair and skinned knees. Something happened to girls so that they were not only interested in boys but also interested in taking their places alongside other adult women; girls wanted to be women like their mothers and dressing like them was an integral part of the something that happened.



I am only now beginning to experience the desire to take my place in the world as a woman. Partly, that includes dressing as a woman because I am one. Whereas I have always loved fashion, I have done so as if I am dressing paper dolls and I am the doll. It's a most interesting place to be: I have put together a wardrobe of beautiful clothes and shoes. I can go to that closet and put together an outfit for nearly any occasion. People often compliment me on what I am wearing. I have worked in fashion, am an expert seamstress and have even designed clothing for myself and others. And frequently, (in fact, as often as I can get away with it) I dress as if I am a child. Donna Reed and June Cleaver always look like women, even wearing old clothing to clean the attic. I often look like a kid even when I'm dressed for a formal occasion.

I would like there to be a difference between the way I present myself today and the way I did when I was five. It seems fitting. I don't know what I will look like - attractive, I hope. And though I love vintage pieces, I don't want to become a costumed throwback to the '50s or '60s. But I do want to grow up; it's time I became a woman.

UPDATE: 17 August 2009 By the way, this is my first embedded picture. It's so exciting (hugging myself with joy). (See, I really am five.)

He Remembered!!!!

During my detour through the Anglican Communion, I seriously considered entering religious life as an Anglican nun. For reasons I shall not try to explain now, I came to the decision that God was not calling me to that vocation. Several years later, I became friends with Fallen Sparrow who is, in many ways, the brother I didn't have until I grew up enough to believe I didn't need one. I soon decided that if someone like him could be a Catholic then there was hope that I could be one too.

My detour into the land of Anglicans occurred partly due to my own pride and partly due to bad catechises. I had fought my Southern Baptist minister foster-father's denunciation of Catholics, had even kept a child's version of the catechism hidden under my mattress and read it over and over. At 11, I began sneaking out to go to Mass. By 13, a paperback copy of Franz Werfel's, The Song of Bernadette joined my hidden catechism and Bernadette became a dear friend. But while preparing for confirmation in NY at 16, I discovered that sin seemed to have been degraded to bad feelings and attitudes, to misunderstandings; it wasn't really my fault. Pre-marital sex was not a sin as long as both parties were "honest" with each other about being "ready" for sex. So much that I had thought clear was suddenly very confusing. And when I encountered priests who ridiculed and belittled me (even shouted at me) or told me a particular work was "over my head", I began to ask myself, Is this what I worked so hard to hold onto? After university while looking for a new parish, I wandered into St. Thomas' Church on Fifth Avenue and by the time I realized it wasn't Catholic, I was mid-way through the class to prepare for reception into the Anglican Communion.

In the late '80s, I found greater orthodoxy in the Anglican Communion than I did in the Catholic Church and more kindness. Not that I conducted any sort of search for either among Catholics, I thought the Church was the same everywhere. Besides, I wasn't being asked to stop believing anything I already believed. The only real difference was that Anglicans believed that the Pope, as the bishop of Rome, was first among equals rather than the head of the Church. But they deferred to him, there were even classes for reading Papal encyclicals; education is taken seriously in high Anglican parishes. And worship was taken so much more seriously, as it was when I was a young child sitting at Mass between Marmar and Papa.

At first, I was simply awed by the amount of sheer knowledge available to me and I imbibed as much of it as I could. During that time, I began to seriously consider becoming a nun. The All Saints Sisters of the Poor in Catonsville attracted me. I spent time with them and actually began the daunting application process. And though I did not join them, in the short time I knew them, I came to love the All Saints Sisters precisely because of their desire for holiness.

Eventually I realized that learning was making me able to comment knowledgeably about all sorts of churchy things but was not helping me to love God better. I saw that holiness was impossible unless I returned to the Catholic Church, that I just couldn't do it on my own. And though I had been taught by Anglicans and Catholics that the Church is run by old white men who are out of touch with current reality, after many conversations with God and with FS, during which I insisted that I was an Anglican and had no intention of returning to the Catholic Church, I woke one Sunday morning to the proposition, What would happen if I went to Mass? So I went to Mass and nothing happened except that I knew I couldn't go back to the Anglican Communion. And I didn't. But since my return, the conversion of the All Saints Sisters of the Poor has been in my prayers because it has been obvious to me that they are Catholic and Catholics belong at home.*

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of my return to the Catholic Church. I had forgotten. At brunch, several friends told me that nearly an entire convent of traditional Anglican nuns in Maryland had become Catholic and I knew of whom they must be speaking. And so it is. As a friend told me yesterday, whether I had joined them or not, it was God's intention that I come home. And it was His intention that the All Saints Sisters come home too, and that I receive a lovely, lovely anniversary gift: ten of the All Saints Sisters and their chaplain (the only Anglican confessor I could ever find) - how awesome! Doesn't God give such lovely gifts?

* Now I can look forward to all the others I'm asking Him to convert, like the President and his family. Praying for conversions is so exciting!

Riffing on a Theme

I've moved my computer to my bed. Having a library/work area is, I've decided, reason enough for a single person to have a wide bed (I wish mine was a queen instead of a full). When I was out ill last year I was stronger than I am now. This year, I spend much more of my time in bed. I'm very fortunate to get through the simple form of Morning Prayer in Magnificat. (Who knew that prayer was such demanding work?) Reading is pretty much limited to first thing in the morning. If I don't get it in then, it doesn't happen. And even at that hour, I only get through a few paragraphs which I don't remember.

Forcing my brain to focus has become exhausting. And when I demand too much of myself, I crash - hard. I've just spent the past three days in bed. On Sunday, I could hardly stay awake and missed most of my meals and several doses of meds. Two dear friends were over and I reclined in a big easy chair as my mind wandered in and out of lucidity. Yesterday, another friend stopped me in mid sentence and told me I was rambling. Today, I'm a little more awake, a little more aware, but that means I'm also more aware of pain. I did get out for a walk only to discover that there was not enough air - one hopes the pulmonologist will be able to weigh in with some remedy for that. But then, one has been hoping he would do so for some time now. It would be lovely if there were more air when I exert myself.

My mind wanders a lot these days. Oh I use it as much as possible. I try to keep a Health Journal, work on puzzles and trivia quizzes and take simple surveys. Once in a great while, I participate in a more demanding survey or an IM exchange for a few minutes. (I'm hopeful that I can rebuild my cognitive faculties by using them. And I certainly don't want my brain to atrophy. It may or may not work but it's certainly worth a try.) Mostly though, I watch family comedies from the 50s and 60s and let the thoughts come. Right now, I'm watching Bewitched* and Leave It To Beaver*. And I've made it through Nanny and the Professor (a very sweet program that I highly recommend) and most of Father Knows Best. I've assembled a three page list of family sitcoms from the 50s and 60s (by that I mean sitcoms that focus on the family in some fashion). Those old comedies are gentler than what's available now. Sweeter. I can't even stand being on a noisy bus. Having loud, glaring programs assaulting me through my computer or TV screen is excruciating. Many older sitcoms explored very simple themes through very simple stories. But today, sitcoms are like Times Square in NY - harsh, brash, painful and meaningless. Even the harshest early sitcoms, such as Bewitched, is gentler than those shown today.

And while I'm watching them my mind wanders. The themes they explore are very much the themes I think we need to be exploring today. So many thoughts come to mind. I wish I had more energy to write - these few paragraphs have been stretched throughout the day, whenever I could get a little more done; in the past, this post would have been an hour's work or less. But to the extent possible, I want to write about some of what comes to mind particularly the themes having to do with women and girls. If possible, I'd like to begin a new hobby which I'll write more about later. For now, I just want to suggest that women have been taught to be like Times Square and maybe some of us would like to be something different. Not something that would take us backwards to a golden era that never really existed. But something that will take us forward, bring us closer to God, develop femininity and womanliness. More later...

*Additional episodes available on Netflix.com.

I'm At Home Again

By the grace of God, I'm home. In bed much of the time (I've slept most of the past two weeks), hoping there is a way to rebuild strength, willing to change my life and accept being disabled if that is what I must do. The chemo has treated many of those things that were killing me but it brings with it overwhelming side affects. The treatment is not worse than the illness but it's at least as debillitating. I can truly say, making it through these past few months has been the hardest thing I've ever done: we truly underestimate ourselves and what God can do with us.

It's hard to imagine what God can do with me right now. He'll work that out. I know that now better than I did a year ago when I was out sick for three and one-half months. What a difference a year of suffering makes.

A few days ago, I dreamt that I had taken a temporary job in God the Father's Office. My supervisor decided that I should spend part of each day working on some special projects with the Father Himself. After lunch I was to go and meet Him. I had a doctor's appointment and told her I might be late. I also mentioned that I would stop and get some jelly beans while I was out. She told me the Father likes the green ones. My appointment ran late but I love jelly beans and hurried to the shop to get them. They had no separate bags of the green kind so I bought only my usual bag of mixed ones. I returned to the office concerned at my tardiness, couldn't find my supervisor so just decidied to ask the angels to point me to the Father's office.

As I approached the innermost sanctum, I became more and more concerned about seeing Him. This was God, the Holiest of Holies and I was too small and too silly and too messed up to see Him. No one else was at all concerned, they just sped me on my way. And when I arrived at the Father's suite of offices, the angel at reception didn't know what I'd be doing but told me I should just go in and see Him; the angel didn't think my opinions about myself had much to do with it. I looked up, and saw the Father's schedule up on the wall and there was my name indicating that I was to spend several hours with Him.

Behind reception was a small hallway with two or three doors. I tried one but it seemed to be a closet. I tried another and there was my supervisor going over schedules with an enormous Person. He was someone I could never have imagined. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry or bow or run away and hide. I thought maybe the Person was a woiman and then, thought, No, maybe He's a man. And then I didn't think anything at all about Him because He asked me a question: Did you bring the green jelly beans?

I was a bit frightened because I didn't have a separate bag for Him but then I found myself saying, I have some green jelly beans at my desk. I'd be happy to get them for You. The Father nodded to me and I returned to my desk and picked all the green jelly beans from my bag of assorted flavours and put them in a bowl for Him.

I think we make things more difficult than they need to be. A year ago, I couldn't stand to be at home alone, couldn't imagine what God might do with me and that drove me crazy. Today, having a shower is exhausting and the question of what God will do with me usually has nothing to do with it - I just need to get dry. These days He seems to want green jelly beans and is patient when I'm late, patient while I pick them out of the bag. And it's good there was no separate bag of the green kind because then God would have only had one flavour. But there are several different flavours of green jelly beans in the bag of mixed ones and I am happy to have the task of picking them out for Him.

PS - I'm hoping to post more often but writing is also exhausting so we'll just see how it goes. I have put my laptop on my bed (reason to have a large bed when you're single - there's space to create a study/TV area) so we'll see.

Silliness

I've been getting some unsavoury and downright boring comments of the automatic variety - I hope no human being would post such silliness - the models were probably mostly fake too! So, I've enabled both comment moderation and word verification in an attempt to prevent further misuse of my site.

PS - I'm still getting over the infections and extreme fatigue and weakness caused by the chemo. It's a choice of types of crappiness: I'm not sure th way I feel now is better than I did before but this seems less likely to kill me and I hope I'll feel better eventually.

PPS - Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

I'm Still Here

Just to let you all know, I've been ill and writing has been more than I can do. Chemo is on the near horizon and perhaps also treatment for my heart and lungs so perhaps I'll be better soon.

You are all in my prayers. God bless.

Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam* - Part I

I have had many reasons to ask God why. For long, my top three “why” questions were: Why did You allow my parents to be killed? Why didn’t You let me be killed? Why did You put me with a horrible, hateful foster-father?

Eventually my questions began to be answered with a bluntness that surprised me. Before, I had always experienced God as nice and cozy. Then, when He began answering Why?, not so much:

Why did You allow my parents to be killed? If the bullets had not been real and capable of actually killing, there would have been no freedom – only a pretence. I do not deal in pretence.

Why didn’t You let me be killed? You are not an appendage of your parents: I have other work for you to do.

Why did You put me with a horrible, hateful foster-father? To save your life.

Today many of us ask Why? The United States is the greatest nation in the world. We play an important part in worldwide stability and sanity – at least we should. So then why would God allow this country to elect the most pro-abortion president ever? Why would He allow us to give the keys of the F16s to a man who knows neither obedience nor how to command? Why didn’t Our Lord and Our Lady grant the miracle for which so many of us prayed and fasted?

Every few years, I read the Bible as one book, from Genesis through Revelations. This is the first time I’m doing so since my return to the Church and I’m finding the story so much more exciting than I did the last time. I love action movies and keep thinking, with the right people, the Bible would make a series of the best action movies ever. There’s romance and drama and comedy – it’s the most amazing book. And the most awesome action. It’s so much more than battles. In fact, the battles are minor in proportion to the action that occurs as a result of God’s relationship with His people.

In 1 Samuel: 4, the Israelites go out to fight the Philistines and are routed. They go out again but carry the ark of the Lord as if it’s a magic talisman, as if it’s presence is all that is needed for them to be victorious. They are routed again and the Philistines capture the ark. The Israelites are astounded, the glory of the Lord has left them. Finally, Samuel tells them: "If you are returning to the LORD with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ash'taroth from among you, and direct your heart to the LORD, and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines." (1Sam 7:3) And so the people of Israel put away their foreign gods and idols and serve the Lord only and the ark of the covenant is returned. God delivers them from the Philistines. Ultimately, He gives them a king – David (and we all know how important David is).

A few month ago, before my health flare-up, I was working on a series of articles under the general category: “Unmarried, Not Single.” While conducting research, I spoke with several priests who insisted that the besetting sin of our age is selfishness. Selfishness is when I become my own God. This past election is proof of that. In the weeks before the election many of us came out of the woodwork, commented on a variety of threads and prayed and even fasted but what were we doing before then? Two years ago? One year? Six months ago? What were we doing well before the election was imminent and we became scared? For many of us, the answer is Huh???

Is being Catholic something we are 24/7 – 365 – on the outside? How do we present ourselves to the world? Do we keep our faith and the rest of our lives separate? Do we try to keep ourselves untouched by the world? Is being Catholic limited to Mass and when we’re alone? Mass and when we’re with like-minded friends and family? Do we limit our contacts to a Catholic sub-culture? To those who are like us? Do we even know our neighbours at home and at work? Say hello to them whether or not they speak to us? Reach out to them whenever the opportunity presents itself? Involve ourselves in community events and organizations? Are we involved in local politics? Do we consider running for office or working on a pro-life candidate’s campaign? Do we give money to support pro-life candidates and pro-life work? Do we even vote in primaries and other local elections? Do we write and/or call our elected officials to weigh in on proposed legislative actions? Are we still asking, Huh???

Do we proclaim the good news even in situations when we can’t mention Christ’s name? Do we even know how? Have we tried to learn? Are we learning to respond from the Church’s teaching to comments such as abortion is only one issue among many? Are we importunately asking our priests and bishops to teach us how to do so? Do we take the light and love of Christ out into the communities in which we live and perform the corporal and spiritual works of mercy with eagerness and joy so that we attract those who are so hungry they accept anyone or anything rather than Christ?

So many of us cannot give a positive answer to any of those questions. (And for some of them, neither can I – this is not an I’m doing it right pontification.) For so many of us, they’re not even on the radar. We really have no reason to wonder why God in His wisdom and mercy and love, has answered our last-minute fervent prayers and fasting for victory with: NFW?

And while we are still shocked and wondering why and before we lull ourselves back to sleep with too many platitudes and consoling phrases, we need to accept that God gave the election to Barack Obama. We watched it happen. In amazement, we asked how can people be so blind? We commented about it on a variety of threads. The blindness prevailed. Not so much in the popular vote** but in swing states many of which are more than 30% Catholic: once again, Catholics determined the election.

And we can’t say it’s the fault of those who are not real Catholics either because blindness prevailed amongst us serious, devout, Sunday Mass-going Catholics too. We thought we could be lazy and then dutifully fervent for a bit and then lazy once again. We can’t. But in doing so, we failed this country and the world. Most of all, we failed to serve God. We didn’t fail to save the world. That’s not our job. We didn’t fail to defeat Obama. That wasn’t our job either. For years many, many of us have been complacently inactive. We have failed to participate in the lives God has given us. We have failed to proclaim the good news in our words and actions where we.

We complained about those running for office when we were not running ourselves. We expected candidates who follow Church teaching to spring up but we neither instructed them nor supported them. We excused ourselves by saying, the non-negotiables are natural law and available to everyone, while knowing that our knowledge of natural law has been so badly fractured even devout Catholics often don’t know the difference between right and wrong. We live in a time of insanity and we too are insane: to do nothing for years, to be complacent and inactive and yet to expect victory because we have been smart and witty on a few threads and prayed and fasted hard at the last minute is our personal form of madness. We know prayer and fasting are not charms that will give us the winning number in the great lottery of American politics. We know God will not let us use Him or His Mother as good luck charms, as idols. And He didn’t. We were routed.

The day after the election a friend sent round an email that told us "[t]hings will be bad for us for a while by the world's standards." She then went on to assure us that she hadn’t given up hope and knew all would be well. Though I’ve commiserated with messages of that sort in the past, even made such remarks myself, this time I objected because I’ve been thinking so much about hope recently and have come to realize that deciding the way things will be in advance, be it persecution or all will be well, is not hope. It’s hard to accept but hope is being workers in the vineyards who, having been hired earlier in the day, roll up our sleeves and get busy from the first moment because we’re so happy to be hired, so happy to be working with Him. It is joyfully enduring with Christ because He is giving us the gift of hanging in there with God Himself. Hope energizes us. It does not leave us sitting about waiting until the last hour to make certain we needn’t do more than our fair share of work since we’re only getting the same pay as the last hirees. That’s selfishness. And hope is certainly not treating God like a machine that fails to start but only needs a bit of perseverance and perhaps a swift kick. That is as if God is a genie awaiting our personal commands – again, selfishness.

The night after the election a friend who works in a pro-life/pro-family ministry told me he had been hoping McCain might win so that he needn’t work so hard but now he must work very hard and in ways he hadn’t imagined. His face showed amazement as he thought of it. His words are prophetic: we must work very hard and in ways we have never imagined. We don't know how things will be. We only know that it is our job to go out into the world and in our words and deeds, through the lives God gives us proclaim the good news every day. Without advance decisions. Or advance intel. With only the commitment to live our baptismal vows and the knowledge that we work alongside God.

We cannot participate with God when we treat prayer and fasting as talismans. Neither can we do so if we are waiting for others to do the job for us. Nor if we decide all will be well because we are fervently and faithfully devout. Nor if we spend our lives flitting from shadowy doorway to shadowy doorway, cringing from the blow we expect to fall. Nor if we use any other lame excuse to avoid the work of proclaiming the good news with our own lips, using our own bodies. Lame excuses only leave us thinking we are doing our best when we are just being selfish and lazy. They infect our hearts and lives and ministries with defensiveness and fear, convince us to stay hidden. We think we are serving Christ when we are actually using Him as a false god and if He is false, then we have nothing at all.

I am convinced that Our Lord and Our Lady have many surprises in store for us. We ain't seen nothing yet. But then too many of us really haven’t done anything yet either. And others could do more. We’ve been made so much stronger than we know, so much more than we realize. If we all get busy, we’d soon be amazed at how much God would use us: On the day after the election, 40 Days For Life reported that during their campaign on “more than 540 [occasions,] women arriving for abortions changed their minds and decided to keep their babies,” that abortion mills (I can’t call them clinics) shortened their hours or closed down during the prayer vigils and some of the employees have had changes of heart. On the day after the election a friend decided not to vote for Obama because of a long conversation she had had with two other friends that had convinced her a vote for Obama was a vote for abortion. On the day after the election, I learned that a co-worker had decided not to divorce her husband of 22 years after long conversations with me and another Christian friend who struggles to be devout.

After my parents died, after I was left alone in a strange country with strange people, I begged God to let me die. God gave me a horrible, hateful foster-father to fight and in fighting him I learned to fight for and love my own life, to turn away from seeking death. If we ask God, Why Obama? I think He will tell us that He is saving our lives. We must get this: corpses are inactive. Life requires activity. And if we’re alive in the Church, we must be alive in our communities, we must be proclaiming the good news to those who haven’t heard it – and that’s a lot of people. We must put aside our lame excuses to be selfish and lazy because they are killing us: failing to proclaim the good news is deadly. It makes us weak. And then we die.

God is in control. He’s not a false god no matter how we treat Him. And Obama’s election is for His greater glory. We know that. We also know that His presence is all that is needed for victory but He will not let us use Him and He will do all things to save our lives (and Obama’s too for that matter). He will not be complicit in out attempts to hide out in shadowy corners. If necessary, He will allow circumstances to scare us into activity. But it’s only the activity we should have been involved in all along. He has insisted, all along, that we put away our false gods and “serve him only” by serving all those with whom He has put us.

* For the greater glory of God

** I do wonder how many felt their vote didn’t matter and so stayed away from the polls or voted third party mostly for that reason and not because they honestly could not vote in good conscience for McCain. That’s another question we need to ask ourselves: What can we do to swing certain states to a pro-life direction?

The Children We Fight For

I have longed to be a mother but I’m unmarried and then there’s my health – giving birth to children just isn’t going to happen. Of course, there are miracles but once, when I was most distressed about being unable to have a child, I heard the familiar Voice say: I do not promise that you will have children of your own but I do promise you will have many spiritual children. At the moment, I was thrilled but that moment didn’t last very long. Were I as good as St. Therése of Lisieux or so many others, spiritual children would be enough for me. But I am not so good. I want babies. I love babies. When I was three I asked Marmar if we could have a baby (she told me she wasn’t able to have more children) and I haven’t stopped wanting them since. I did go through a short time in my late teens when I pretended otherwise but I baby sat a lot so there were babies anyway. And while others may read my work and God may use it and just use me in general in others lives and while I might mother all sorts of people giving to them what God has given to me, I still want babies.

A few months ago as I penance, my confessor suggested I pray one decade of the rosary for myself and in particular for those things I was having such difficulty changing in myself (read impatience). He told me it was important to pray for myself – something I have never really done. Other things, other people have always seemed more important; God has always cared for me anyway so I tend to forgot about praying for myself.

The rosary is not always one of my favourite prayers. I tend to drift off into meditation or distraction – often both within the same decade. I get lost and then spend a great deal of time trying to recall where I left off and, in the midst of remembering, drift off again. I begin at the Annunciation and half an hour later discover I’ve been praying for Obama’s daughters and thinking about Michelle Obama’s lack of fashion sense and how horrid it is that some women think she might be worth emulating and then drift off into musing on the way we women are having been raised with mothers whose minds have not really been on us even when they’ve been physically present and then drift off into something else … until finally, I remember I am supposed to be praying and ask God to tell me where I left off. Then there are the times when I don’t think at all, when my mind is blank and I’m just snuggling up but half an hour still passes and I still don’t remember which mystery I’m on or how many Hail Marys are left and sometimes I get the Chaplet of Divine Mercy tangled into the rosary and it’s just a big mess. Praying the rosary is a lot of work. It takes hours and I might not even finish it. But since I was given a penance and penance is important I decided I could handle one decade, if I forced myself to focus and if God helped me.

My confessor didn’t specify which mystery I should use neither did he give me a specific number of times to pray, neither say this once nor for the next week nor anything else that would encapsulate the penance into any sort quantity or time period. So I, as I am wont to do, just began praying a decade of the rosary as instructed nearly every day. Usually, I prayed the Annunciation. It is the first one I remember. But then I discovered one decade wasn’t enough. I kept thinking of Obama’s children growing up believing that babies are punishment and that that’s what they are. So I added a decade for the Obama family and asked Our Lady to protect the Obama children (and defeat their father too). And soon I discovered other personal petitions, other things connected to me for which I had never really prayed: a girlfriend going through a similar experience of discovering Mary as her Mother whose determination has encouraged me, my work and, most importantly, the intentions of my heart – those things that a Mother knows about. Very soon I was up to all five decades, oft times wandering off in my meditations but somehow making it through.

It turns out mothers know their children. Marmar knew me. Once in a while, even my foster-mother knew me: not long before her final illness she came to understand that I lived with deep, deep sadness and pain, that I could not just forget my family, that she couldn’t just fill-in for my mother. I have known that I longed for my mother. And perhaps that too is why I found the rosary so difficult – it is a long conversation with Our Mother about all the wonders and joys in Our Lord’s life. It’s chock full of: And then He did that! and Okay, I’ll go through the scary parts as long as you hold my hand. and Isn’t what happens next wonderful? The rosary is an exciting, cozy nursery experience. But that closeness can be excruciating for those of us who long, especially when we keep such longings from ourselves.

I’ve tried to pretend not having babies was okay since that’s the way God wanted it. (I sort of told myself that longing for my mother was enough longing for one lifetime.) But I didn’t know that my desire for children cuts a deep channel through my heart that joins up with longing for my mother. Certainly, I’ve thought I could adopt or foster a child but as my health declines and as I get older I realize that adoption or even fostering a child might not be a great idea – unless I choose to be selfish.

And haunting me has been the experience of friends who have aborted their babies. Four times I have known women who have been pregnant and have gone from being pro-life to pro-abortion because of their special circumstances overnight. One changed her mind and I hope I had something to do with it – certainly I told her that aborting her child was not taking care of it as she said. That taking care of a child could never be killing him. Not long after deciding not to have the abortion, she miscarried. It hurt her badly. I mourned with her and also rejoiced that she had trusted God and had not murdered her child.

The other three each aborted their children. I understand their fear: once, when I was seventeen, I thought I was pregnant and the terror was amazingly huge – I was hysterical (I do not become hysterical). But I don’t understand their actions particularly since they were not alone. Particularly when they told me about their pregnancies and knew me well enough to realize that I would remind them that they were against abortion, that abortion was wrong. Particularly when I not only offered to help each of them but begged them to allow me to care for their children. Particularly when I was willing to change my life so that I could provide for a baby. Particularly when I offered open adoption or guardianship so that if they changed their minds, at some future point, I would return custody of their children. We were friends. We were close. We loved and trusted each other. And two of them loved God too. But they did not love their children. They did not love and trust me enough to allow me to care for their children. And even the two who loved God did not love Him enough to choose His will over murdering their children. They knew I would do whatever necessary to care for their children. They decided it would be better to kill their children instead.

I fought for those children. And I fought for those friendships. But the children were more important. I wanted to give life to those children, wanted them to become what God had created them to be. I cajoled them and reminded them of God’s love and begged them. I sent the two who believed in God to spiritual directors who also reminded them of God’s love and providence, reminded them that abortion was a mortal sin. I prayed many prays and asked other to pray. I fought hard and I failed.

I would do it again even though my friendships with the children’s mothers were casualties of those battles and I still miss them – our friendships could not withstand such evil. I would fight for any child though again I might fail, though I myself might not have the strength to raise them, would probably need to entrust them to someone else. And that is what I am doing when I insist that Our Lady protect the Obama children, when I ask others to pray for them: I am fighting for them. I have fought for a number of children in my life (and have taken on several terribly remiss parents). But I didn’t know that in fighting for them, in doing what I can, be it fervent prayer, fasting, providing substitute care, seeking to remind their parents that abortion is not an option but simply murdering their own children, in doing whatever I could do the children I have fought for have become my children. I have mothered them when their own mothers did not. I have cared for them, valued their lives when told to dismiss them. God has given them to me to be my children. And in praying for the deepest desires of my heart, in wandering off whilst lying my head on Madrinha’s* lap, I have come to realize both the deep, painful longing for those children murdered in their mothers’ wombs, children I might have raised, and I have come to see that God answered my prayers before I knew to ask. He has given me children that I didn’t know I had – there are babies waiting for me in heaven, caring for me as I tried to care for them. But they are don’t fail because my children are with mi Madrinha and She never fails.

In taking Our Lord into Herself, She was made the perfect vessel of love: She cannot but love us. And She fights for us, fights against the foolish convictions we use to close our hearts off to Her love. She is immensely patient and tenacious and simply wears us down with love. And, like Our Lord, is ready to take advantage of the tiniest chink in our protective plating. She knows we are worth fighting for, worth loving. She cannot but know our hearts, our longings, our prayers and asks Her divine Spouse and Her Son to give us more than we can let ourselves desire.

So I wander off as we rehearse the mysteries of Her Son’s life and have stopped being hard on myself for doing so. I am just a child resting her head on her mothers lap** so at home that my heart shares its entire contents even though the story line sometimes becomes incoherent. She will sort it out. And when I ask to become the woman God would have me be and I pray for the desires of my heart, the things She knows I long for better than I know myself, I can be confident that She is listening and that my prayers are being answered in surprising and wonderful ways. I’m a mother and the day will come when I hold my children in my arms and laugh with them and rejoice at what God has done with us. And my friends are safe with Her – I’ll trust Her to wear them down too. I am not bereft as my heart imagined (I’ve been laughing even more these past few days – and that’s probably getting insufferable). I’m filled with excitement: what lovely things has Madrinha prepared for me next?

* Madrinha is the Portuguese diminutive for Mother. I have called Our Mother that privately, when I needed to call her anything at all, for several years.

** My friend Dawn Eden told me about St. Catherine Labouré’s vision for which I am most grateful. She and it have also been instrumental in helping me to accept Our Lady as mi Madrinha.

*** Please continue to pray for the Obama children.

“And For a Helmet the Hope of Salvation”

But you are not in darkness, brethren, for that day to surprise you like a thief. For you are all sons of light and sons of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. For those who sleep sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But, since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we wake or sleep we might live with him. Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. …Be at peace among yourselves. (1 Thessalonians 5: 4-11, 13b)

I have a hazy memory of sitting on the floor in a very large church between two coffins and wondering why everyone was so sad. Actually, the memory is quite clear. What I am not certain about is whether it is a memory of Grandpére’s and Ti Eduardo’s funeral. But I do remember sitting on the red carpet. And I do remember wanting to play but being quiet because everyone was so sad. And I remember that it made no sense because Grandpére had not been sad. He had been calm – concerned with Marmar, concerned with me, concerned with the soldier who shot him – but not sad. In fact, I don’t think he was at all concerned about dying at that moment. I think he was busy doing something else.

We think of the last days as days of terror, days to be frightened, days of woe – days when the horrors we read of in the book of Revelations will happen. But aren’t they also good days? Great days? Amazing days? Aren’t they exciting days that usher in the greatest most exciting thing ever – the manifestation of the Kingdom of God? For Christians, shouldn’t they be days of rejoicing particularly since we know we fight on the winning side? There’s no doubt about that. The stable is real. The Cross is real. The empty tomb is real. The fullness of time intersects with what we know as reality and everything changes seemingly in an instant. But the change is actually happening all along – it’s just that most don’t recognize it. But we have inside intel, we’re members of the team. And though we’re on a need to know basis, we have some awareness of what is happening. We’ve been given so much information. When we read the lives of many of the saints, when we read scripture, and, even for a few of us, when some of those we know and love have faced death or just faced the hard work of illness or of simply living as God calls us to live in this world, many, many of them have not experienced terror and great anxiety but rather, have been full of joy. During the days of being starved to death with nine others who were being starved at the same time, St. Maximillian Kolbe sang in the darkness and his companions sang with him. We know he was busy doing something else.

Certainly none of us wants to be starved to death. Neither do we want to be shot nor persecuted nor even inconvenienced. We want to be left alone to live our lives. But the fullness of time is upon us; we’re in the midst of a war. In fact, it was only an illusion to think we could just go our own ways and be concerned with ourselves and our families and friends and our own personal salvation. But really, if we are honest, we know we should never have become so lacksidasical in the first place – we have always lived in the end times. We are and have always been in a time when we ought to be busy doing something else.

My spiritual director used to tell me that hope was more important than getting what I wanted. I’d nod my head and try to take it in but really, I found his words confusing. Why bother hoping if it wasn’t to get what I wanted? Why hope for the sake of hoping itself? I have goals and I want to reach them. But what if I don’t reach them. At what point do I stop hoping? (I was actually quite proud of myself for continuing to hope.)

My spiritual director was telling me that I had envisioned a goal that I expected to reach and when I did, my job would be done. Then I would rest. I would no longer be engaged in this constant perseverance, this constant struggle, this work that life is. I wanted an end place, a place where I would be out of the fray, out of the action, where I could sit and relax and know that I had finished and there was nothing more demanded of me. I wanted a holiday from persevering. That was my definition of hope. That is not hope at all.

Hope never takes us outside the action but, rather, puts us right in the middle where we might be starved to death or shot or faced with choosing a viable candidate in an election or even become aware and fluent enough to tell others why we hope, why we persevere, why we are grateful for a chance to fight alongside God Himself. We know hope will not take us to the goals we have established and leave us there to have a well deserved rest. Hope isn’t a road to retirement. The job continues regardless of what happens on 5 November or when the electoral college does its job or if any or all of our neighbours choose to be violent and uncivilized once a decision has been made. We know we will be failed. And we will fail. And we will be played. And we ourselves will be the player. And the winner of the election will break many promises, make many mistakes, commit many sins. And babies will die. And someday, two little girls will become aware that their father believes children are a punishment and their mother has not smacked him in the head and insisted he publicly affirm that their daughters are precious gifts - at the very least, they will wonder if they are punishments. No matter what happens, there will be no halcyon days of retirement. There will only be hope.

We are in the midst of an immensely exciting election. And there are thousands of babies whose lives might or might not be saved. And mothers and doctors and nurses who might or might not the commit mortal sin of abortion. And two little girls who might or might not learn that they are beautiful gifts from God regardless what their parents let slip. There might be even more gains in defeating the evil of abortion or all we have fought for these past 35 years might be lost. But this is not an apocalyptic movie. Neither is it some sort of cultish frenzy. We really are, right now, in the last days, in the time when what we do matters. What we do participates in the might or might not of it all. We are not in a lull. Others can't pick up the pieces for us in the future. We ourselves, at this very moment, are awaiting the Bridegroom and woe unto us if we are the foolish virgins.

What we ought to be busy about is our Father’s business. We ought to be loving and praying and sacrificing and saying that some things are just plain wrong and running for office and chooisng a viable candidate who will protect life and caring for neighbours whomever they happen to be at this moment and lighting up the world with an immensely bright flame – all at the same time. There’s no place for petulance or frustration or just plain fed up-ness. And while it isn’t our place to try to force others to love God (and it won’t work anyway so it’s really not worth trying), it is our business to be doing everything we can to make His love known. It’s urgent. We haven’t any time to waste. We must just do it.

And we can do it. That’s part of the gift of fighting on the winning side. We’re with angels and saints and the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We have more help than we know - we probably don’t even make up a division in God’s army. (I’ve dreamt that I was surrounded by four angels, one on each side and that Marmar and Papa walked along beside me.) We are not alone in this. And we’re given supernatural endurance – that’s what hope is. Otherwise, we couldn’t do it. We’d have given up long ago. And it’s as simple as that. That the Church continues to persevere with all our divisiveness and foolishness and sinfulness is evidence that God gives us the strength to do it. We have been given armour that makes us stubborn and hard headed and able to insist that Jesus Christ is and always has been and always will be Lord. Our stubborn insistence that salvation is real is proof of its reality. Maximillian Kolbe and Grandpére and so many, many others have attested to that truth and to the hope as endurance, as perserverance. We have plenty of examples that tell us we must just keep doing it. Not until we get it right. Not until our government gets it right. Not until we reach any goal we can imagine at all. But because we can’t love unless we hope. We can’t love if we will not endure. Because when Christ ascended to Heaven and took His seat at the Father’s right hand, it wasn’t so that God might take a well deserved holiday. He continues to persevere with us and gives us hope as a helmet that we might persevere right alongside Him. He really wants us with Him in this greatest action-adventure.

We Must Do This

This may be the most important post I have ever made.

Our Lord and Our Lady are awesome. Let's trust them.

A Call for a Rosary Novena
By Fr. John Corapi

Among the most important titles we have in the Catholic Church for the Blessed Virgin Mary are Our Lady of Victory and Our Lady of the Rosary. These titles can be traced back to one of the most decisive times in the history of the world and Christendom. The Battle of Lepanto took place on October 7 (date of feast of Our Lady of Rosary), 1571. This proved to be the most crucial battle for the Christian forces against the radical Muslim navy of Turkey. Pope Pius V led a procession around St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City praying the Rosary. He showed true pastoral leadership in recognizing the danger posed to Christendom by the radical Muslim forces, and in using the means necessary to defeat it. Spiritual battles require spiritual weapons, and this more than anything was a battle that had its origins in the spiritual order—a true battle between good and evil.

Today we have a similar spiritual battle in progress—a battle between the forces of good and evil, light and darkness, truth and lies, life and death. If we do not soon stop the genocide of abortion in the United States, we shall run the course of all those that prove by their actions that they are enemies of God—total collapse, economic, social, and national. The moral demise of a nation results in the ultimate demise of a nation. God is not a disinterested spectator to the affairs of man. Life begins at conception. This is an unalterable formal teaching of the Catholic Church. If you do not accept this you are a heretic in plain English. A single abortion is homicide. The more than 48,000,000 abortions since Roe v. Wade in the United States constitute genocide by definition. The group singled out for death—unwanted, unborn children.

No other issue, not all other issues taken together, can constitute a proportionate reason for voting for candidates that intend to preserve and defend this holocaust of innocent human life that is abortion.

I strongly urge every one of you to make a Novena and pray the Rosary to Our Lady of Victory between October 27th and Election Day, November 4th.

Pray that God’s will be done and the most innocent and utterly vulnerable of our brothers and sisters will be protected from this barbaric and grossly sinful blight on society that is abortion. No woman, and no man, has the right to choose to murder an innocent human being.

May God grant us the wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and counsel to form our conscience in accordance with authentic Catholic teaching, and then vote that well‐formed Catholic conscience.

Please copy, email, link and distribute this article freely.

God Bless You
Fr. John Corapi
www.fathercorapi.com