"The Winter of Our Discontent"

We recently attended my wife's father's funeral. We had to travel down to "Little Havana" in Miami. It was a strange event.

We didn't get to the hotel room until 4:30am on the day of the funeral. Our flight was delayed out of O'Hare (surprise, surprise), and then we ended up in line for the rental car behind approximately 25 Cubans at 2:30am. At that hour, there were only two rental agents, and only one of the two spoke Spanish...in Miami. Brilliant! Teresa's brother started calling at 8am, wondering why we weren't at the funeral home for the funeral that started at 12:30pm. The family all sat with her father's dead body for a 24 hour vigil. It was a weird, Santeria kinda voodoo thing. We were in trouble with the Cubans, because we did not see sitting with her father through the morning after traveling all day and through the night as an enjoyable thing. We got a, "Well...if you make it to the funeral, you make it, I guess." Sideways, dysfunctional crap.

We got there, and Teresa's step-sister was clearly pissed at us. We had not moved down to Miami to care for Teresa's sick father. The problem was, he left Teresa and her mom very early on, and he quickly remarried. His new wife wanted him to herself away from his original family. So, Teresa and her siblings had been excluded from his life in most respects. On top of that, he made sure he paid for his own live-in care. All Teresa's step sister did was visit him once a week. She was acting like that was a huge burden that she, as a martyr, undertook from the kindness of her altruistic heart (insert sigh and violin music here). Teresa's brother was frantic, because Teresa's mom is suffering from advanced dementia, and he had to put together the funeral arrangements. Then, out of guilt, he sat with the body through the vigil. Therefore, he was stressed and exhausted. He is a good hearted guy, but Teresa had taken care of her mom for 10 years by herself at home. He showed up with some lofty, romantic ideas of family after years of surfing and smoking weed. Family, he is learning, is quite a bit messier than he originally thought.

So, we spent most of our time with Teresa's sister and her family. We all stood around talking quietly. Then, suddenly, without a word spoken or any warning, everyone stopped talking and walked to the casket. We followed with appropriate solemn looks. Each person approached the casket and shed a silent, appropriate tear, returning afterward to their respective position in the semi-circular formation. When all were finished, everyone dispersed again and talked in hushed tones. Approximately 12 minutes later, suddenly, without a word spoken or any warning, everyone again stopped talking and walked to the casket to repeat the cycle. This strange kind of ritual was repeated 3 or 4 times. Then we did a prayer service there. Then we went and did a funeral procession to the church for mass. My wife and I were more Catholic than anyone there, including her deceased father, so we weren't sure why there was a mass. Then we went to the mausoleum for two more prayer services. Holy Cow! That was a lot of prayer services.

OK, so we survived the whole day, and we wrapped it up with some awesome Cuban food. What I learned in all of this was simple. I was there for my wife. I was there to care for her. I did not pick a fight with any of her family, even though I had a hard time with the way they treated her. There are times when one needs to be a support and just keep opinions close to the vest. Also, I realized that families are the result of a great chain of decisions. We all make our choices. We put up boundaries with family members where we choose, and we open ourselves to family members in other areas, according to our own choosing. None of this is a problem, until someone chooses to regret those decisions or project the consequences of them onto others. We have to own our choices. If we all do that, a great deal of dysfunction is diverted.

In order to cleanse ourselves of all of this, Teresa and I went to a bar and watched the Packers win. The Packers heal a lot of wounds.

"Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark"

To see the news video referenced in this post, click here: News Video

I saw a news video the other day on ABC.com. An elderly African-American man was crossing a street in Hartford, Connecticut and a car swerved into the left lane to pass another car and hit the man, tossing him like a rag doll. He landed in the middle of the road and lay there. All of this was caught on a traffic camera a block away. The car that hit him did not slow down. In fact, it sped away and turned down a side street to get away from the scene. If all of that wasn’t disturbing enough, car after car drove by the man’s unmoving body, most of them had to actually slow down and drive around him. He was laying across the center line of the road. THEY SLOWED AND DROVE AROUND HIM!! Not a single car stopped to see if he was all right. The only good thing I can say is that they didn’t drive over him like road kill. Finally, a police officer driving down that road saw him and turned his lights on. No one called 911, the officer just happened to be driving that way. The man survived the accident, but he is now paralyzed. The traffic camera was too far away to get the license plate of the perpetrator, and currently no one is coming forward as a witness.

Would this all have been different if it was a white victim in a rich suburb, rather than a person of color in a poor, violent neighborhood? I believe it would have, but that is not the point. No matter how violent and disassociated from reality the people of this nation have become, there was always at least some care for the welfare of our fellow human. After 9/11, Katrina, and other disasters in this nation, we saw an incredible outpouring of compassion and care from the people of this nation. But now, have we fallen so far that we are frustratedly driving around injured bodies in the street? All I could think was, “Oh my God, this can’t be real!” I could not believe that people could be so sub-human. Have we learned nothing from the atrocities of Nazi Germany, Rwanda, or Croatia? We live in a nation where the life, liberty, and freedom of every individual is said to be sacred. To see such a lack of care for a human life makes me want to weep. I’m sure God is weeping at a divine level. But, seriously, can we expect any less in an abortive society?

Justice

The Patriots lost! The cheating, lying, scum of the earth, stain on the face of football Patriots will forever forward be the team that stole an undefeated season only to lose the Super Bowl!! There is, without a doubt, a God in heaven, and all is right with the world tonight. I will slumber in the peace and knowledge of sweet justice served.

Make-a-Wish Gone Wild

This is just too funny. Enjoy!


Child Bankrupts Make-A-Wish Foundation With Wish For Unlimited Wishes

Owl Jolson

Quite possibly my favorite cartoon ever. It's from 1932. Enjoy!

"Give Me My Robe, Put On My Crown. I Have Immortal Longings In Me"

This evening I wasn't feeling very good, but I was moving slowly around the kitchen getting dinner ready for the kids and warming some leftover soup for Teresa and me. My wife runs a very tight ship around here, so I am not permitted rest or sick days. She demands dinner on the table within 30 minutes of her arrival from work, and I'd best mind my P's and Q's and get it done. No one who knows my wife wants to face her wrath, and after 14 years of marriage, I know better than to test her fury, lest I pay the price for my insolence. Quit your whining, Bill, and fetch my dinner!

Anyway, there I was with something akin to the Bubonic Plague, wearing gloves and a bio hazard suit, so as not to infect the rest of the family. Teresa was sitting at the table waiting and demanding I get her a beer, but I was not allowed to stop fanning her off with the palm branch while reaching for the beer in the fridge - a feat that took some serious dexterity. While reaching for the beer, my arm fell off (most likely from the leprosy I contracted as a result of my plague-weakened immune system). No matter, prosthetics are very well made these days. After grabbing the beer with the toes of my left foot and opening it for Teresa with my nose hairs while continuing my fanning, my daughter Grace looked up from her homework at the dining room table out of the blue and declared, "I don't want a woman to be voted in as President." The comment brought both Teresa and me to a cold halt. My right ear promptly dropped on the hardwood floor. I am not sure if it was from my shock at Grace's comment or the gangrene, but I was grateful that in my condition there was very little blood around the edges of the ear's cartiledge, saving me from more discipline for making a mess on the floor.

I think Teresa and I were thinking the same thing. We both carefully said through clenched teeth and strained breath, "Oh? Why is that?" Our kids go to a fairly conservative Christian school. The teachers are very supportive of letting parents instill the values in our kids that we want instilled. The problem is usually with other students, a few of whom are the offspring of true, red-blooded, ultra-traditionalist, American Evangelicals. Some of them have their kids tell other children in the school that there is no Santa Claus, anyone who believes that the world is older than 6000 years is going to Hell (which is much worse in the Evangelical, ultra-conservative mind than global warming), and women have no business even thinking about leading men. If we're not careful, women may even start wanting to become doctors or may want to vote! Now, those kids are the extreme minority, but they are a very vocal minority. Correcting their words in the minds of our children is not very difficult yet, because our kids are still young enough that they listen to their parents more than their peers. In a couple of years, though, this will be more of a problem. It's not like talking to our kids about something an atheistic kid told them on the playground at a public school. That would be much easier, because our kids have experienced Jesus, and they can see through the BS of most non-believing comments. The problem with this is that these kids profess Jesus just like my kids, so the truth of who we all are in Christ gets much more muddled. Can my creative, imaginative daughter love Jesus and still believe in a beautiful, magical childhood world where Santa Claus, Trick or Treating, and friendly woodland fairies and unicorns abound? I think so, and Teresa and I encourage her to not lose her imagination. We believe that the loss of imagination is possibly the greatest current threat to the Body of Christ. But still, our 8 year old, who wants to please her parents and the Jesus she asked into her heart, struggles at times with the judgmental Jesus portrayed by some of her closest friends. So, we braced ourselves, lining up the arguments and corrections to help our daughter realize that a woman can lead, whether we think Hillary should be that woman was not on the table. Best stick to the simple facts.

After a long pause and some coughing up of blood on my part, my daughter gave her reason for not wanting a woman to be voted in as President: "Because I want to be the first woman to become President of the United States!"

We were so happy, that we didn't even bother to comment on selfishness or too much ambition. We both released our breath and said, "Oh, thank God! Absolutely, you should be the first woman president!" I almost had tears in my eyes (if my tear ducts hadn't completely dried up from my dehydration), as I sat down with Grace to start planning her fund-raising for the campaign. I was so proud of Grace, a kid who was very meek when younger, that she felt strong enough and bold enough to believe she could be President one day!

My reverie was short lived, however, because Teresa saw me sitting down and began beating me with a reed. During the barrage of painful strikes, in my head I kept hearing, "Grace is Woman. Hear her roar!"