The Anchoress

Project Valor, a yearly effort to raise funds to buy Voice-Activated Laptops for OUR Injured Troops, is once again underway. I just donated via Confederate Yankee, and ended up on the Air Force team but Ed Morrissey has a Navy widget up if you like. Sister Toldjah’s got the mean, green Gyrenes and Army Wife Toddler Mom brings up the rear. In a good way. Help if you can, it’s a great cause.

I worked hard to impress upon my children the evils of smoking. Seems I’ve screwed up their healthcare!.

And don’t worry about the smoke causing global warming, because that part about it being manmade is still not as settled as some want you to believe. That’s because the climate is very complex. So, it’s hard to simplify it all down to “buy my carbon offsets to save the world”.

Well, I agree with this woman, but here is what I don’t understand…how come Peter Paul has “no credibility” because he has a criminal record, but Sandy Berger still has enough credibility to be one of Hillary’s “advisers” and a sure-bet hireling in her presumptive administration? How can some criminals be more credible than others? I know, I’m so dumb, sometimes. But I’m smart enough to know that Rudy is quite right, and that socialized medicine does not work.

Socialized Medicine doesn’t work in Canada, or the UK, or in France. Why does she want to bring that unworkable model - one which seems to hold life rather cheap when considering costs - here? I mean…one would think it was all about power and control, or something.

If we win in Iraq, this is a bad thing? Only for some. And you have to wonder about that. Ron Silver, feeling satirical, writes on one way to get the world to like us and end the Iraq war.

Congress just gets worse and worse. The Porkbarrel spending is not enough. Now, they want to save their jobs by further limiting free speech. What a crew! My do-nothing congressman is going to be there forever and ever - he’s all anyone knows. And all they know about him is his name, which pops up in the streets and on the telephone polls every 18 months, and then goes back out of sight. I’m almost tempted to say “all whose names you recognize on that ballot? Don’t vote for them - vote for the other guys!” At this point voting for unknowns can’t be any worse than what we’ve got in DC.

I’m not really feeling Halloweeny, but here is a list of top horror flicks. But even better, Brian Saint-Paul over at InsideCatholic links to Orson Welles’ great Halloween radio broadcast from nearly 70 years ago, and he’s right, it does hold up well. Enjoy that! I remember my parents talking about how many people actually believed we were being invaded by men from Mars!

Speaking of flicks, I’ve had a few emails from Catholics and pro-lifers asking me why I haven’t written about the film “Bella.” Well, it’s because I haven’t seen it. But reviews seem to be mixed. Singer Tony Bennet loves it. Barbara Nicolosi is underwhelmed. Deacon Greg is withholding judgment until he sees it himself.

A glowing Sister Francesca makes her first vows.

Here is one for your headerbar: Media Mythbusters is a wiki being maintained specifically to keep track of and document those instances where media either selectively edit or omit something or get a story wrong and then keep on getting it wrong until the myths and narratives are well established. A good resource, and they’re just getting started.

Here is a different keeper: Einstein quotes from Doug Ross.

Got a religious group near you? That’s to your good.

Got gold?

That’s probably it for me today. Working on a prayer shawl, and want to finish it quickly.

Okay, I’m going to say it. I am a Catholic, and my vision of a perfect America would be that everyone was Catholic. I wish all Americans were Catholic. I wish all of our separated brethren, the Methodists, the Baptists, the Episcopalians, the Fundamentalists, the Evangelicals, the Presbyterians, the Lutherans - all of ‘em - were Catholic, because they’d be “complete” Christians - they would have the fullness of Christ and unity within the Church as Christ founded it, one, holy, catholic, apostolic and Eucharistic. Of course I want all the Protestants to be Catholic! After all, all they have now is the Bible - with missing books - and fellowship and potlucks! They just run around saying they’re “saved” but they don’t have the whole, complete experience of Christ!

They don’t have the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, in the flesh, in the Eucharist, coursing through their veins, and because I love my Protestant friends so much, I want them to have that - I want that for them, because I am a Catholic, and that means I am a “complete” Christian. We have it all, baby! Sacraments! Communion of Saints! Liturgy! Tradition! We’ve got John Chapter 6 and 1 Corinthians 11:26-29 and 2 Thes 2:15! Yaaaay!

Just think, if all Americans were Catholic, Communion - for everyone! - would be everyday instead of once in a while, and it would real, consecrated hosts - “this is my body!” Yaaaaay!

If all Americans were Catholic that means that all the government would be Catholic! Yaaaaay! Everyone would be pro-life! There would be Nativity creche’s and Ten Commandments in all the government buildings! The president would be a Catholic! We’d have Mass at the White House! And Bingo! Insurance companies would not have to cover birth control pills! And Jack Chick would no longer be publishing hate screeds because he’d be a Catholic too! Yaaaaay! The government would fix immigration policies so all our fellow Catholics down in Mexico can come on in and feel welcome and worship with us! Yaaaay! Then we’d go get those Canadians back into church too! And then England! We’d take back Westminster Abbey! Yaaaaay!

I mean, the Protestants - they’re okay now…as long as they’re you know, believing and stuff. But if all the Protestants would just come back to the Roman Catholic church from which they separated themselves, they would be really, really full Christians! America would be perfect!

Regular readers know (or darn well should know) that all of the above was written with tongue firmly planted in cheek. While I am sure there will be some Catholic bloggers who will come after me for saying it, (and who will insist that as a Catholic it is my duty to hope that all Christians take their rightful place beside us at Mass) I am not looking for Protestants to become Catholic. If they they want to, that’s very nice, and I’m happy to welcome them, but honestly, I don’t look for it. I think everyone finds their own way to God, and worships in the manner they best understand, are more opened to, etc. And that’s fine by me because I don’t have a need to decide who goes to heaven and who doesn’t, or who’s got the better way to get there. I have my way; I like it - if you have your’s, God bless you. I am ever a “live and let live” kind of girl.

But I must ask those readers who have been bombing me with “you-just-don’t-understand how-great Ann-Coulter-is” for the past few weeks - how did you like reading that satirical modest proposal? How did you feel when you read it? Pretty angry? Did you think I was an intolerant idiot expressing an idea in a hurtful and insensitive manner? Did you think that I did a poor, clumsy job of it, even though I meant no insult?

I understood, immediately, what Ann Coulter was trying to say about Jews becoming completed (a much better word, than “perfected” by the way) through acceptance of Christ as the Messiah. In fact, I once worked with a Messianic Jew who explained it beautifully, (slightly paraphrased after 30 years)

“I am the flesh of Abraham, greater than the stars, but no longer looking heavenward; my blood is the blood of Moses, but no longer wandering, for my gaze is fulfilled and my journey is completed in knowing Yeshua.”

This will be my last word on Coulter, so please don’t send me any more of your apologetics. Please stop trying to explain or excuse her to me. As Auntie Lillie would say, “save yer breath for yer porridge” and your energy for a worthier opponent than I! For goodness sake, I am a small blog with no influence (and getting smaller every day) and I’m quite sure Coulter couldn’t care less what I think of her performance art. I think that’s what one of you told me, that she is a “performance artist.”

Well, whatever, but her claim that “you have to obey…we have the fast-track” also has problems, implying as it does that Christians don’t have to obey because they’re already so damned perfect.

Whether she’s a performance artist or a “brilliant constitutional lawyer” as others of you claim, let Coulter stick to politics, which is already full of schtick, and leave the religious questions for the theologians. (Or for the pub, like the rest of us Catholics!)

:::rolling eyes::: Oh, lighten up, I’m just teasing!

Due to a large family reunion project that finally went off without a hitch this past weekend, blogging has been light and my email has been heavily piling up.

Today I have sentenced myself to some time in Solitary Confinement within the Email Chamber of Horrors and Funny Dog Photos, and I’m going to try to wade through most of it; if you’ve written and I haven’t responded, well…I’m trying. I may not ever get to all of it. I did have an email I meant to respond to but seem to have lost, so if you’re the gay Catholic fellow who wrote to me a little bit back, could you please resend that note?

Also, with all due respect to my correspondents who are Ann Coulter fans - most of whom have written very nice, very long letters trying to convince me that I should love her too - I appreciate your writing, and I am impressed with the loyal base Ms. Coulter has in you, but please know you’re not changing my mind. I may simply respond to all of your letters with one more Coulter post, just for you, later today.

Meanwhile, I wave a hearty “howdy” to all from the Chamber, and suggest you go look at Kimmie’s incredible dog Raven heading into Halloween as both Dorothy and Toto. Clever!

Jay Nordlinger’s column is one of the few places I’ve seen extensive coverage of President Bush’s little-mentioned, must read speech in which he dares to talk plainly about the much distorted realities of Cuba and communism.

Says Bush:

Cuba’s rulers promised individual liberty. Instead they denied their citizens basic rights that the free world takes for granted. In Cuba it is illegal to change jobs, to change houses, to travel abroad, and to read books or magazines without the express approval of the state. It is against the law for more than three Cubans to meet without permission. Neighborhood Watch programs do not look out for criminals. Instead, they monitor their fellow citizens — keeping track of neighbors’ comings and goings, who visits them, and what radio stations they listen to. The sense of community and the simple trust between human beings is gone.

In a funny synchronicity, my husband came home the other night with a borrowed copy of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Oscar Winning film “The Lives of Others”. After moaning for a second that he hated subtitles, he settled in and we watched one of the best, most absorbing and chilling films we’ve seen in years.

Set in East Berlin a few years before Glasnost, before Reagan said, “tear down this wall.” The Stasi (State Security Agency) has 100,000 employees and 200,000 informants. We follow the lives of one couple who - through no fault of their own - come to the attention of the Stasi, who are intent on finding evidence of crime (which can be defined as anything as threatening to the party as the expression of a doubt, or the telling of a joke) where none exist. In a particularly creepy scene, a Stasi captain, observing that a neighbor has seen his crew bug the protagonist’s apartment, explains to her that a word of warning to the neighbor will end her daughter’s academic career at University. Throughout the film we see minor characters intimidated, terrified and distrustful. East Germany’s suicide rate is second only to Hungary’s and watching these lonely, desperate lives, observing the ease with which careers are destroyed on the merest whim of an ambitious party member, or the merest unguarded whimsy of a joke, is hair-raising. We see clearly that a government that “gives” all to “the people” is an illusion, and that when government is handed power over some of your life - ostensibly for your own good - that power can be turned against you..

Says President Bush:

Cuba’s rulers promised freedom of the press. Instead they closed down private newspapers and radio and television stations. They’ve jailed and beaten journalists, raided their homes, and seized their paper, ink and fax machines. One Cuban journalist asked foreigners who visited him for one thing: a pen.

In The Lives of Others, our first protagonist is a successful playwright who has managed rather easily and charmingly to bridge the divide between the freedom of his art and the restrictions of his government. His life is rather better than the lives of others, and one gets the sense that he is not fully appreciative of how tenuous are his privileges. The suicide of a dear friend - a blacklisted director - seems to bring that message home to him. He writes an article on the hopelessness reflected in East Germany’s suicide rate, and tries to get it smuggled out, to the West.

Bush said:

Joining us here are family members of political prisoners in Cuba. I’ve asked them to come because I want our fellow citizens to see the faces of those who suffer as a result of the human rights abuses on the island some 90 miles from our shore. One of them is Olga Alonso. Her brother, Ricardo Gonzalez Alonso [sic], has been harassed by Cuban authorities since he was 11 years old, because he wrote things that the Cuban authorities did not like. In 2003, Ricardo was arrested for his writings and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The authorities seized illegal contraband they found in his home. These included such things as a laptop computer, notebooks and a printer.

In The Lives of Others, our protagonist is outfitted (by dissident friends) with a new typewriter because the East German government would be able to identify his work by his own instrument’s typeface. The government knew, you see, what every artist used to create his art, the easier to track any dissent.

The Lives of Others has moments of beauty interspersed with scenes of harrowing loneliness, shame, purposeless and hopelessness, but the moments of beauty are sublime - a man at the piano, his music deeply affecting the Stasi agent assigned to listen in - a conversation between that agent and a child of about six. The little boy, holding a ball, enters an elevator with the agent and asks, “is it true you are with the Stasi?” The agent responds, “do you even know what the Stasi is?” The boy: “My father says they are the bad men…”

The agent, on automatic pilot, begins to ask the boy what is the name of his father - another comrade to check up on, you see - except he seems to realize he is about to exploit an innocent, and he stops himself. The Stasi agent, in his relentless, thorough and dedicated spying, has observed real, committed and selfless love. He has been moved by art (which so many disdain as useless). He has encountered a true innocent in a land where no one is considered that. And just moving against the periphery of this powerful but underappreciated trinity - love, art, innocence - rocks the Stasi’s world.

This is a great movie, which I can’t recommend enough. Watched with Bush’s speech about Cuba in mind, it’s a one-two punch to the American psyche, both a wake-up call to renewed appreciation for (and dedication to) the liberties we enjoy and too easily take for granted, and an pointed reminder that there are people suffering from totalitarianism a mere 90 miles from our shore.

Go read the rest of President Bush’s remarks on Cuba, and The Freedom Fund for Cuba, which is being implemented under his administration, and then rent The Lives of Others. Submit to the one-two punch, without investing your own ideological spins and partisan furies into them. I believe you will be moved, for the better.

Also read: this Wired Magazine article on East Germany. Fascinating.

Related: Is Totalitarianism Incompatible with Religion?
The Remnant: To Worship Underground

It’s guest-written by Stephen Colbert, who takes shots at everyone he can. My favorite:

Before I get started, I have to take care of one other bit of business:

Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all George Bush’s fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay.

There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too.

So why I am writing Miss Dowd’s column today? Simple. Because I believe the 2008 election, unlike all previous elections, is important. And a lot of Americans feel confused about the current crop of presidential candidates. For instance, Hillary Clinton. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to be scared of her so Democrats will think they should nominate her when she’s actually easy to beat, or if I’m supposed to be scared of her because she’s legitimately scary.
[…]
And Fred Thompson. In my opinion “Law & Order” never sufficiently explained why the Manhattan D.A. had an accent like an Appalachian catfish wrestler.

Really funny stuff is usually funny because it is dead-on true.

While Colbert, ala Pat Paulsen (it really is 1968 all over again, isn’t it?) is contemplating a run for the White House, he gives us his positions:

Look at the moral guidance I offer. On faith: “After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up.” On gender: “The sooner we accept the basic differences between men and women, the sooner we can stop arguing about it and start having sex.” On race: “While skin and race are often synonymous, skin cleansing is good, race cleansing is bad.” On the elderly: “They look like lizards.”

I couldn’t write about Ms. Dowd for a few years because she was behind a wall. I got out of the habit of reading her. I may have to start, again, and that’s never pretty, but I’ll try to be more gentle, this year. She gets thumbs up and props from me for this one.

UPDATE: Colbert’s penchant for reality blurring “truthiness” is confounding the feds.

Apparently, Carnegie Mellon University did some sort of study which I don’t understand at all, and which measured something else I don’t get, and they compiled a list that we spouses of engineers can appreciate in the context of “efficient use of time.” So here, thanks to Soccerdad, who explains it better than I can is a list of the top 100 blogs that are efficient uses of your time…or something. Your humble hostess is (surprisingly) included, at #25. Don Surber (#2 after the unsurprisingly efficient Instapundit!) has generously posted links to all blogs included in the list, so if you’re looking to blog-read more efficiently, he’s yer man to see!

The list was comprised of 2006 blogs. I’m quite sure my reduced blogging-time in 2007 would throw me off the list, btw, and that would feel more natural.

Also, Kevin Aylward has extended the nominations process over at the 2007 Weblog Awards until the end of the day today. So, if in your newly efficient blog-reading mode you discover a blog you really like, you can head over there and nominate ‘em.

To the ’sphere: Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit nails it in once sentence when he writes:

“When the history of media reportage on this war is written, it will not be kind”.

Damn straight. If we are winning in Iraq don’t expect to hear about it in the mainstream media. Progress in Iraq is ignored completely by the press who may not want to see defeat but who clearly don’t want to see victory under this president. Or, wait…according to the press, it’s the president who’s hiding the good news!. That’s why the Democrats made fools over themselves regarding Gen. Petraeus, because the White House didn’t tell them things were markedly better over there. The press doesn’t mind really, really reaching for the bad news, though.

Thank God, though, for milbloggers, and the mythbusting bloggers who love them!

If you ask me, President Bush needs to go before both houses of Congress and the American people to tell them where we’re at in Iraq, tell them that the surge is working, but he won’t. Bush seems to have little-to-no interest in countering established narratives, but he should be talking up the better news in Iraq, for the sake of his soldiers, at least. We know he has the mettle. Why not use it, here?

On the campaign front, as the press tells it, an adoring American public is throwing so much money at the Clinton campaign that sometimes they just can’t keep track so good, you know? Hillary Clinton is mushmouthing initial queries into her astonishingly lucrative Chinatown fundraiser, in which many anonymous and untrace-able dishwashers and street stall owners averaged gifts of over $1,500.00 to her campaign. And wouldn’t you know it, since they can’t find a lot of them, the campaign can’t return the funds, either! And, wouldn’t you know it, not one of the three major network news programs has had the time or inclination to even look into the questions surrounding Hillary’s fundraising ever since the Norman Hsu story cracked. The press has zero curiosity about where Mrs. Clinton’s money comes from, or where Bill’s comes from, either. It’s all A-OK with them!

Her mushmouthing on this issue is better than her pottymouthing elsewhere. Hey, at least she doesn’t spy on people! A Jacksonian has decided he really doesn’t like or trust this lady.

To my way of thinking, Rudy Giuliani still has the best sound-bite on Hillary:

“Honestly, in most respects, I don’t know Hillary’s experience. She’s never run a city, she’s never run a state. She’s never run a business. She has never met a payroll. She has never been responsible for the safety and security of millions of people, much less even hundreds of people.

“So I’m trying to figure out where the experience is here. It would seem to me that in a time of difficult problems and war we don’t want on the job training for an executive. The reality is that these areas in which - maybe there are some areas in which she has experience but the areas of having the responsibility of the safety and security of millions of people on your shoulders is not something Hillary has ever had any experience with.”

J’s Caffenette encourages the candidates to stick to substance, please.

On Heath Issues: Sorry you must lose your bladder, but the excellent National Health Insurance plan in Canada, which so many Democrats in this country vaunt as a model for the US can only do a few of those minor surgeries that would have saved your bladder, each year.

Bill Gates is concerned about Malaria and praises the Bush administration’s actions on the issue. Amazing.

In Education: John Leo asks (as he has been asking since the late 1980’s by my memory) Who will stand up for free speech on campus? A good question. Evan Coyne Maloney is doing his best.

Betsy Newmark notes some idiotic college courses.

On Religion: Ed Morrissey is waxing enthusiastic on Dinesh D’Souza’s newest book, What’s So Great About Christianity?. Siggy is waxing enthusiastic about Ed’s interview with Dinesh and writing pretty insightfully on the book, D’Souza, Chris Hitchens and more here. Deacon Greg is intrigued, too. I plan to listen to the interview later and pick up the book soon.

Just a few asides:

Have you wondered if the California wildfires were in fact arson, and possibly terrorism? The FBI is wondering the same thing. Apparently the idea was talked about by Al Qaeda in 2003. But let’s face it, anyone with a grudge and a pack of matches could have started this, so…it’s anyone’s guess.

As a New Yorker, I knew Spitzer would be a disaster and he has been from day one. He essentially ran for office unopposed, too. We have a long haul before us.

Reading a lot about “rendition” are you? Here are five myths.

Great links, especially the Halloweeny ones at Happy Catholic.

Newsbusters is celebrating the Media Research Center’s 20th Anniversary by offering a daily collection of newsmedia excesses, rants, distortions, etc.

Today they give us what they call the most “notable quotables” - the excessive love some members of the press have expressed for Mr & Mrs William Jefferson Clinton.

Let me go on record to say that these startlingly sycophantic snippets would be appalling displays of lip-smacking bias by responsible journalists were they written/speaken about ANY president. But I believe it has only been for one president that members of the press have managed to induce nausea in singing fulsome praises:

“Hillary Rodham Clinton will define for women that magical spot where the important work of the world and love and children and an inner life all come together. Like Ginger Rogers, she will do everything her partner does, only backward and in high heels, and with what was missing in [Lee] Atwater — a lot of heart.”
— Time correspondent Margaret Carlson, May 10, 1993.

“His sturdy jaw precedes him. He smiles from sea to shining sea. Is this President a candidate for Mt. Rushmore or what?…A single medley of expressions from Clinton may be worth much more, to much of America, than every ugly accusation Paula Jones can muster.”
— Los Angeles Times television writer Howard Rosenberg reviewing Clinton’s Inaugural Address, January 22, 1997.

“She’s ecumenical but prefers Italian and Mexican. The President fixes her eggs with jalapeno peppers on the weekends….Valentine’s Day at the Red Sage restaurant. Even at a romantic outing, the President can be the date from hell, talking to everyone but the girl he brung….Finally alone, they have ‘painted soup’ and the lamb baked in herbed bread. They exchange gifts and touch each other more in two hours than the Bushes did in four years.”
— Time reporter Margaret Carlson, June 1993 Vanity Fair.

You’ll want to read them all. Read ‘em and then ponder how inevitable it would be that these same worshipers would relentlessly, unquestioningly trash any GOP president who succeeded Clinton, and basically any member of the opposition party who did not play the maverick.

I’m betting that if you look in the “conservative” press - such as it is - you will not find comparable gushing-unto-quivers reportage about any Republican, not George W. Bush, not Ronald Reagan. Nor SHOULD you. We shouldn’t have to read such romance-novel prose about any politician…or his wife.

It will be interesting to read (as I’m sure Newsbusters will at some point) a similar collection of remarks - by very likely these same people - spewing over-the-top hate and venom at President George W. Bush, with some of it even preceding the 2000 election (which - let us recall - Bush won, in every conceivable scenario as confirmed by the NY Times and a consortium of papers). I’m sure the Newsbusters folks will have no trouble compiling such a list.

In the interests of fairness, Newsbusters should also compile a list of these press folk saying mean things about Clinton and complimentary things about Bush. But I doubt they have the time or manpower to find those rare snips!

Jack Shafer at Slate takes a look at how the Clintons use the press and the press allows itself to be used by them, with starry-eyed acquiescence.

MEANWHILE if you can get yer mitts on the latest issue of America Magazine, they have an interesting piece entitled How the Media Shape Elections by CBS’ Dotty Lynch, who writes:

Walter Shapiro, the author of One Car Caravan, a delightful look at the early phase of the 2004 campaign, when reporters could get up close and personal with candidates, says that this year it is almost impossible to do that. The top tier had entourages with palace guards, canned speeches and television and online ads from the beginning of the campaign.

Well…I guess if the press really wants access, they can just gush a little. Then gush a little more. That must be the key to access, because otherwise, I can’t find any justification for the behavior of the press as illustrated in those snippets!

UPDATE:::: If you have not been hearing good news from Iraq, that’s Bush’s fault…because…because he wants the Democrats to look bad…or…something. I don’t know.:::: END UPDATE

Ed Morrissey explains:

Michael Yon has grown frustrated with American and European coverage of the war in Iraq. He has experienced the vast gulf that has opened between the reality of his own observations throughout the Iraqi nation and the depictions of doom that the Western media create out of whole cloth — and he has reached the boiling point in his latest dispatch. Yon writes of a “dogma dome” which insists that Basra has descended into chaos when it hasn’t, and that Iraq has collapsed when it has actually started to coalesce into a real nation

Yon’s whole piece is here.

More from Ed:

Yon is doing something rather unusual — he is offering his reports for free to members of the National Newspaper Association. Rather than charge for his dispatches as most independents would of syndicators, Yon will allow them to use the reports for free. He is putting his money where his mouth is, in order to give newspapers no excuse to recycle old stories or print new falsehoods, as he puts it. He wants an end to the dogma dome and the truth about Iraq to get to the American people.

If you have been regularly reading Yon’s reports, you know that he is an independent journalist (and excellent photographer) who has at times been the only source for in-depth coverage of what is going on in Iraq, for better or worse. Iraq has made a dramatic turn-around and that fact is getting little attention from the press. The American public is basically unaware of it, and their unawareness is harmful to all of us and to our soldiers, who deserve recognition for what they’ve accomplished. I am sending a donation his way and hope some of you will, too.

Michael Barone says Iraq 2007 is not Iraq 2006 in a must-read piece, and AJ Strata has more on the changes in Iraq. And if you like charts, Bluto has a chart.

Someone wrote worriedly, asking me if I am not writing because I am zonked out on painkillers. No, the back is better, the pills are packed away. I had every intention of getting back to work today and was looking forward to it. The problem is that over the weekend a family member has been dealt a very bad blow and is suffering hugely and needs a lot of attention.

There is an old song by Paul Simon, called “Some Folks’ Lives” which goes, in part

Most folks’ lives
Oh, they stumble
Lord, they fall,
through no fault of their own
Most folks never catch their stars

That pretty much sums up what he is going through, and being present to him in his pain is all I can do. That sounds like nothing. It feels like nothing, too, except being willing to be tired for someone else’s sake - as you sit through a night with him - consenting to hear his grief and be a witness to his exquisite pain.

I think of the Gospel, and how Jesus asked his friends to be with him on a dark and fretful night, and it was all he wanted or needed. He didn’t get it, but that’s all he wanted.

Mostly I think of Mary, who could do nothing for Jesus - nothing - but be with him from the time of his arrest. She was with him in spirit while he was imprisoned and tortured - outside, but as near as she could be - and waiting. She was with him again, on his last walk.

We have a tradition in Catholicism that Jesus, on his Via Dolorosa, met his mother, that he and his mother saw each other through the crowds. It stands to reason that she would be there, as near as possible, doing nothing more than loving him and hurting. Hurting for him. Hurting with him. In this way Mary models that behavior to us, and shows us the value of simply being present to another.

But even if one understands that value, it doesn’t make it any easier to know there is nothing else one can do but simply that - be there - that no action one undertakes can change a moment of that hurting person’s reality, of what he must go through, and go through alone. These experiences of rejection, doubt, questioning and raw emotion, no matter how universal they may be throughout humanity, are still singular, lonely journeys.

You can stand with someone, and you can walk beside them, but you cannot take their steps for them, no matter how much you wish you could. It is natural, then, to ask Mary - who could not walk Jesus’ steps for him - to be with us and pray for us as we live through this experience. She’s been there. Done that. Has the tee shirt. I ask Jesus to be with him. I ask Mary to be with him, as she was with Jesus. And to be with me, to teach me how to do this - how to be present. How to know when to speak and when to just shut up and bear a silent witness that says “I love you.”

And through all of this, it is difficult not to hate the person who is doing the hurting, but one must try to avoid that, avoid assigning an evil persona to the person responsible for the pain. That’s an instinctive thing to do: “you are cruelly hurting someone I love, and I want to hate you for it,” but reason and all the things Christ has taught prevents that instinct from really kicking in. Instead…I just find myself praying for each of them, and upholding him - the one who needs my presence - as best I can while he endures this devastating and disorienting maelstrom.

It is natural, in that prayer, again, to turn to Jesus, who said “forgive them, they know not what they do…” and to turn to Mary, who simply stayed, and never wavered.

I’m staying. I may be here a while.

Tough to blog when one has company…

I’ve got company.

It’s good company - family members I like, but can’t really blog.

Be well, all.