My bin Laden Rant

The kids in my son's first grade class wanted to talk about Osama bin Laden yesterday. Who was he? Why did he die? The teachers determined this wasn't a good classroom topic, and asked all the kids to talk to their parents if they had questions about the news. My son's classroom is very diverse, and several of his playmates are probably Muslim. Likewise several of them are probably being raised by atheists. My son did not come home with any questions last night -- I received an email from his teacher with this information, as did the other parents. My son did not come home with questions, and I didn't bring it up myself. When the news about the "death parties" appeared on prime time last night, I snapped off the TV.  My son looked at me, but said nothing, and went back to his book.

In a sense I'm just avoiding the discussion, it's true. It's not appropriate to tell my sensitive, anxious child about the jet planes that destroyed thousands of lives and two monumental buildings. Every time I see a jet passing over the skyline, I think about that day, 9-11. Every time. And I don't think it's appropriate to tell my child about the war we started overseas as a result, or about the thousands and thousands of combatants and civilians, women and children, suicide bombers, killed in the past decade. He'll internalize our society's perpetuation of violence soon enough, without help from me.

This morning on Facebook I saw an image posted by one of my relatives: a picture of the Statue of Liberty, torch upraised, with bin Laden's severed head dangling from the Statue's fist in place of the torch, and a caption beneath that reads "GAME OVER." Right. It's just a game, and we win. So all the dead will be resurrected now, and the lives ruined will be restored; the two towers will reappear new and sparkling on the Manhattan skyline, and the scoreboard will be erased. Two of the world's great civilizations will turn their swords into plowshares, and all the babies will be wanted and cared for and well-fed and loved. RIGHT????

Get your heads out of your asses, people. Seriously.

I know grown adults who are celebrating because bin Laden "got what was coming to him." But God help us, if we all "got what was coming to us." Was bin Laden a bad man? Sure, all evidence presented points to him being a bad man. And now he's dead. But his life, his one biological entity, his arms and legs, his heart, his head, weighed out, cannot equal the lives of thousands, the dead and injured on both sides. His life, his one soul, is not price enough to pay for the souls of thousands of others -- because souls cannot be bought and sold. Not really. And because life is a gift, we can take life or give life, but we never own it. A man is dead. Let those who survive the ones killed in the Towers, the ones killed on the front, take the death of bin Laden as some comfort for their grief, if they believe they are helped by the death of one more. Surely that's easier than confronting the violent nature of humankind and the crimes committed by society against society that have never been justified. 

If those children don't understand, it's just as well, because to understand they would first have to be taught about religious prejudice, about mortification of the flesh, about evil and love and the battles between too complex and overwhelming to be understood at times. Let them be innocent a little longer.

Easter, and Easter's coming

There is something more and more elusive about these Holidays as time goes by. I'm sure that's a humorous statement. Truly though -- even as the steps towards Easter become more clear and predictable, the final burst of light can't be contained, the experience is fading almost before it is consciously registered. Warm, golden days like today, appearing almost magically from behind the parting curtains of Good Friday's blustery gloom, add to the effect.

The long wait for sure signs of Spring echoes the feeling around church and worklife this time last year -- the nerves thinned beyond taut to numbness, the banal side by side with the ludicrous. But last year's spring weather was generous, hot even -- we were watching and waiting for a different set of signs. Real estate deals hinged upon financing schemes, hinged upon capacity to formulate and justify ourselves in a shell-shocked lending climate. Triangulation over triangulation, relationships in every corner taking on the tone of power-struggle and gamesmanship. And in the midst of all that, Lent, then Holy Week, then our last Easter on the old home turf before breaking camp and once again hauling our tents to the next meetin' place.

This year, our first Easter at Grace Center, was of course some measure of our reward for all that waiting -- which may be why I felt, not let down, but ambivalent, after worship today. Staff duties have doubled and tripled, we've taken a pay cut, and Holy Week means three bulletins for worship, three sets of liturgical considerations, three significant sets of goals, three sermons... leading into the most important day of the church year, and all of that layered upon more than enough other work to distract us from the chilly overcast skies and the general lack of sleep. Plus school breaks, family logistics, emotional challenges and blah blah blah. What, you mean life doesn't stop for the Resurrection?? Ha ha.

The Resurrection is, as Sara Miles has said, something that can be perceived only fleetingly out of the corner of one's mind before the gates of rationality slam down and blot out the sight. And that's on a good day! CHRIST IS RISEN! We say it again and again during the service, during the Gathering and the Word and the Sending. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia! Because we have to say it over and over to ourselves, to keep the miracle firmly framed. Monks pray continuously in their yearning for Christ. I want to splash the water from the font over my face and hair -- want to bite into a large, fragrant chunk of the Body, the bread -- want to wash it down with a bracing shot of the Blood, the wine, the salvation. Give it to me first thing in the morning, before I'm even fully awake, and perhaps then the Spirit will find me open and eager instead of distracted and fragmented and cross. I wanted Easter to really sink in. But I'm not the ready, fertile soil I'd like to be; I didn't prepare. So we wait. The church has two seasons, Easter, and Easter's coming.

Show me the nail holes in your hands, and your feet, and let me push my fingers into the wound in your side -- then I will believe. 

the waiting

Spring. I've had my hair dyed to include several artful orangy-red streaks through my bangs and at the back of my neck. I'm ready.

The week before last, the week my son had Spring Break, the week of the Supermoon...which I didn't see due to overcast skies, March in Minnesota always so unreliable... that week, I couldn't get my brain to stay on track. I was foggy, spacey, in a state of abstraction much like the hormonal empty-headedness I experienced in my first few months of pregnancy. Work barely got done, between this and my altered schedule due to childcare. Plus we all ticked over into Daylight Savings time, and got terrible sleep for a week as the result. A useless, kerflummoxed sort of week.
This was followed by the week of Chaos and Conflict, Madness and Martinis. With a little PMS thrown in for good measure. I struggled with my spouse all week. I kept a good and respected friend waiting for me at lunch for nearly an hour before I realized I was standing her up (something I NEVER do to people.) At work I tried to prep for two large projects/events while fielding questions and concerns about a third (big demolition effort inside the building last week, prepping for renovations this summer.) I signed off on two new tenants, delivered a rent increase and new lease to a third, ran out of food at the food shelf and had to close the doors randomly between donations. I was blessed and blasted last week. Nearly cried a number of times, and finally broke down at the end.

But I dyed my hair orange in defiance. I tried to counsel and support a good friend who is really suffering right now. I drank too much, and tried to behave in a calm, grateful manner at least some of the time. I worked in a couple bike rides. I cornered an accordion player at the grand opening of a local library and convinced him to play at a food shelf fundraiser that same afternoon. I read to my son a goodly amount. I bought a bunch of new underthings. I drew in my present sketchbook, in great detail, in homage to Japan and its tsunami survivors and those who perished.

Spring will come. I'm ready. 

March 20

I just watched another YouTube post of the tsunami in Japan, this one footage from a dashboard cam (supposedly the driver survived) as the first wave crested over a coastal freeway and briefly submerged the vehicle, before washing it into the strip mall adjacent. Not long after, I checked in at one of my favorite blogs, only to find that the suffering and environmental devastation in Japan has caused the blogger to cease writing -- protesting the self-centered, individualistic triviality of the blogosphere. Most of my favorites have continued in some way discussing Japan, which in various ways has captured attention from the world less noticeable after the quake in New Zealand. And grief, and sorrow. Anger.

The scientists have weighed in, the seismologists and the oceanographers, the ones who predicted the eventuality of such an earthquake as Japan's. And the deep -- really, bone-shaking -- origins of Earth's periodic shudders are unavoidable, ineluctable, time-transcendent. The tiny people flee from the scale of the Creation.

a short walk

Way past tired at a mere 9pm, Daylight Savings kicking all our asses as usual, everyone dragging.

And yet it rained today, and I was out in it. I walked fifteen minutes in what was admittedly a mere sprinkle, barely a shower; and ate my chipotle turkey wrap from the coffee shop as I walked. Late back from the bank, heading for the office. Failing in my Lenten resolve not to shop until Easter, I stopped at the Saks discount and spent what I shouldn't have on a pair of cropped pants (Seven for All Mankind, striped Eighties denim), and two tops (one lacy black Juicy, one tie-dyed gray - I know it's spring, but my wardrobe is comfortably composed of black separates.) I concealed my purchases in my purse and juggled my sandwich as I crossed the railroad tracks in the rain, hood up. Considering how long it seems to have taken this Spring to arrive, it was a sublime few minutes.

The melting snowbanks reveal their archeological layers, and the first rains of March wash the accumulated carbon grit and sand down the brimful storm sewers. This reminds me of a song that I love, "Waters of March" by David Byrne and Marisa Monte (here).Yet is also reminds me of Japan, of Sendai, and the unstoppable waters of tsunami. "A drip, a drop, the end of the trail."

I can't help myself -- the longer I walk (and it's been years), the longer I look, the more the wrack and ruin of city streets appeals. The dirtier, the better. I would like to start carrying rubber gloves in my purse so I can lift up the tattered, mud-caked layers of the anonymous world, and rinse them off, and make a city quilt of them all. Gloves because while I love to see the streets I don't especially want all that under my fingernails. I think though again of Sendai, of Japan, and the acres of lost belongings and torn-apart things once cherished, and desolate filth -- the wrack, and the ruin. And I think (in spite of myself) look at the photos of the burning house floating down a river of mud and tree roots -- look at the wasteland of rice fields strewn with buckets and corrugated metal and a boot and a book and some twisted cotton shirts -- look at the sad bright child in his only coat clinging to his mother's back as she picks through what's left of her seaside home -- LOOK. Even in suffering, everything God made is beautiful. Christ ease their suffering. And forgive me for looking, when perhaps I really ought to look away.  

I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts for Art Adventures training last week, and was treated to a lengthy docent tour of certain works while learning how to talk to children about these -- Picasso, Tanguay, and several others, learning how to elicit thoughts and interpretations only, not to judge, not to historicize -- only to treat children to the pleasure of consuming with their eyes and realizing with their imaginations the creative process, the narrative of thoughts and marks and colors and shapes, the interpretations of the world around us. It was a privilege.

It makes me want to look at the rest of the water-logged world this way.

What do you see? What do you think is happening here? What's going on in this picture? Yes. Yes, that, and what else?

Frame the neighborhood with fingers and thumb in a square, the old L-7. What's going on in this picture?

Thank God for Spring. Protect Japan from the worst depths of possible suffering. We rejoice, and tears fall.

Sorry: Reflections on Japan

Juxtaposition: spring cleaning at the homestead, a kid splashing in the tub, snow still crusted over the lawn and rooftop. Videos of tsunami waters ripping through Japanese towns, cars and homes adrift in deep fast-moving currents, the water leaving behind trees festooned with garbage, clothing, odds and ends. Lent, an Ash Wednesday recently passed, Sunday School tomorrow and a lesson-plan to fine-tune. Sirens in the distance. Bread cooling on the kitchen table. Soon we'll play "Sorry" and probably eat some popcorn.

I took Oceanography in college, and I understand plate tectonics. I know that the "Ring of Fire" is not just a song by Johnny Cash, and realize that these things happen; earthquakes, tsunamis, loss of life. The epicenter of the earthquake in Japan was so close to the coast that the Japanese had a scant 15 minutes to collect their thoughts and their belongings, their children and cars and pets, before the waters came. Improved warning systems are fine if you have some distance between your town and the seismic event. Time and space --

and Luck. I just won at "Sorry," a barn-burner of a game in which all three of us wound up vying for low-numbered cards as we attempted to get our last pawn Home. After reshuffling the cards three times, I finally drew the low number. My seven year old son is learning how to calculate odds as he plays -- which pawn has the best chance of making it to safety first? Which player has the best odds of winning, and needs to be sent back to Start ASAP?

As I consider the probability of the Japanese death toll numbering in the tens of thousands, it occurs to me to wonder whose job it is to recalculate the economic health of a region, after a sizable percentage of its population is swept out sea? It depends, doesn't it, on how many of the victims were women and children; on the industrial base for local employment; on whether a coastal town relied more upon fishing or farming. If a significant number of the dead lived in poverty, is the nation improved? Does the math of clean-up costs versus medical expenses make human survival more or less helpful?

What about the long-term prospects of the inundated region? Are the fields more fertile, or are they damaged by industrial pollutants and sewage? What about the explosion and near-meltdown at that nuclear power plant -- what are the prospects in that company town now? What was the environmental impact of the fires at the oil refinery? Will whole towns abandon their former neighborhoods and prefectures and flee to the cities, where they can live amongst the relatively sturdy urban highrises and find subsistence work where infrastructures are still relatively intact -- are they the new Tokyo underclass?

What of the children? Like those Haitian orphans, mud-covered, naked, lost from their families. Who is wandering the desolation, looking for a single face, wondering if it's the end of the world? Someone, somewhere in Northeast Japan. Odds are.

Lent is a time to be grateful.
Do we thank God that we are from the Midwest; that we struggle merely with long winters? Do we thank God that we live on the high ground? God be merciful to me, a sinner. To whom can we send our blankets? 

wide-awake ticks from Missouri

I have a close friend who is in the dog rescue biz. She runs a regular railroad between Sioux City and Minneapolis for dogs (mainly labs and bully breeds), placing them with other rescues and with foster families to await adoption, getting them fixed, updating vaccinations and the like. Today, her birthday, she had care of a dog named Samson. A dog possessed of many "wide-awake ticks from Missouri." I can only imagine the courage it must require to invite unknown numbers of ticks into your home, however unwillingly, in order to save a dog's life. Ticks that would undoubtedly like to get to know you better. Blah! Cathie, my hat's off to you.

I have another friend who knows all too much about such matters. She and her family deal with chronic Lyme Disease, a maddeningly pernicious condition that doctors are still squabbling over. Tick season is commencing, people. And again I say, Blah!