All a man needs out of life is a place to sit ‘n’ spit in the fire.
Today Jessie decided to roll around in the chalk drawings the kids were making on our back patio. It was blue, very blue, and Jessie decided she would look fetching in blue. I didn’t get a picture in time, but it was hilarious, our little warrior dog with a blue head and shoulders, ready to charge into battle sounding her fury at the occupying forces.
"Who… me?" She seemed to ask. "I just had an itch."
"Daddy?"
"Yes Jaimito?"
"’member in da Spider-Man? When Mary Jane was kissing Spider-Man dat was really Peter Parker?" He asked carefully, measuring his words.
"Yeah, Mary Jane kissed Spider-Man. That was funny, huh?"
"Yeah, it was yucky."
"Why was it yucky, Jaimito?"
He explained. "’cause it was rainin’." And he turned up his palms in a isn’t-it-obvious-to-you shrug, then he asked, "Daddy, why did Mary Jane kiss Spider-Man?"
"Hmm," Oh please dear God, why must it start so early. I thought quickly. "Jaimito, she kissed him because she liked him. People kiss each other when they like each other."
"On, da lips?" he asked incredulously.
"On the lips, yes Jaimito."
"Why?"
"Because they like each other." Okay, who’s going to back down first, I can go circular logic on your butt all day, little man. But I guess that satisfied him sufficiently. "You know what, Jaimito. When mommy comes home, I’m going to give her a big kiss on the lips."
"Like when you got married?"
"Yes, like when we got married."
I was wandering as I usually do. I don’t mean to, it’s just that after such stressful weeks, going to church on Sunday is an opportunity to sit quietly with my family. I’m not answering phone calls, programming, submitting proposals, configuring equipment, not having the TV on, toys, scrambling everything up into a mish mash. No, I just get to be quiet and there’s no escape. It’s nice.
As is usual with my church time, I am somewhat disconnected from the experiences of my fellow parishioners. I know what it is to think differently, to be different, but I still enjoy the perspective and insights that such a burden provides.
So I wander. I wander into the minds of others, poking around, taking snapshots. I was a mental tourist today in church. The theme of today’s excursion?
Baptism.
My first stop on the mad dash trip was into the minds of those that are not now and have never
been Church-goers, some of whom sprout a full plumage of disdain at
the mere mention of religion.
"Ewww. I don’t believe in organized
religion. I think you’re all full of it, and you’re ruining America."
"Haha," I chuckled with my guest, "that is a distinct possibility." We passed the time most enjoyably and when it was done and we had said our goodbyes and thank-you’s, I was reluctant to take my leave. They are a good sort, a tad inflexible, but I don’t hold it against them.
My next stop was a little closer to home. Familiarity breeds contempt, I said to myself, so let’s take a new look through fresh eyes. I peered into the scene unfolding right in front of me. There it was, the ritual, the pouring of the water, the snapshots, the frilly little outfit, everybody in their Sunday best, the priest anointing with oil, saying prayers, the parishioners mumbling their acclamations self-consciousnessly.
And there was the baby, oblivious to it all.
What is this magic that is being performed over me, the baby seemed to ask? Is Baptism magic, divine magic brought to bear upon a young-ling in order that he may be good, that he may have salvation?
Once the act was complete, the sigh of relief was almost palpable. It was a sigh that this child is now protected with his aura of Christly force, that he is now brought into the fold, into the arms of God that the devil may not snatch him up and to do evil.
This is how many people see Baptism, a magic incantation and pouring and anointing. But its true purpose has been forgotten. I closed my eyes to remember, to journey back, to look with new eyes on an old scene. My mind flashed over my own children. I paused to remember how I held them when they were so tiny, how Laura and I (but mostly Laura) rushed to them when they would cry. You are not alone in this world. Just thought you should know.
You see, we have forgotten. We’ve buried Baptism so deeply in abstractions that we’ve forgotten its true spirit, its true meaning. We’ve abstracted God to such a degree that we think he does stuff for us, that by chanting prayers and rubbing oil, we’ll all be saved or we’ll have something more than what we have now.
What do you need anyway?
In my continuing philosophy of "things are no more than what they appear", I tell you this: the rubbing of the oil is the touch, the gathered people are the presence, and the prayers are the solace of a soothing voice. Tu estás acompañado, you are not alone, you are accompanied on your journey through your life.
Have you ever heard stories of little babies of Christian families that have died soon after being born? Priests and ministers are on call to Baptize these little souls so that they may take quick flight to a heavenly place without the stain of original sin. Have you heard that? Doesn’t that sound silly?
It’s a lot of words that mask the true purpose of such an act, and it is this: little child, you are not alone in your death. We love you, your people love you, you will not die alone in the cold. We will be there until the end for we are a people with great empathy. We love you.
Have you head of people in car crashes or other traumatic accidents where death is a mere step away. There are some that have not lived a life in Christ, and in the last moments call for a Baptism or magic ritual. Our response should not be magic. Our response to such a person in need is nothing more and nothing less than to hold his hand so that he may know that he is not alone. He may have been alone throughout his life, living selfishly, thinking little of others, but at the hour of his death, he is a child of creation, loved and lovable – as he has always been.
Baptism isn’t a religious exercise, folks. Baptism is a communal gathering of souls who hold up an individual, weak and fragile, to let them know that they are supported by the hands of their fellows, that they are not alone, and that they will always be and have always been, supported by love.
Tell someone today, you are not alone, you will never be alone, and you have never been alone.
Okay now that I’ve straightened out the rhetoric, we just have to do it. Okay?
I’ve come to the conclusion that the Operating System is irrelevant, that the base that allows a computer to be useful no longer can or will be a primary focus. I arrived at this conclusion after having Laura’s computer completely die. Lately, she’s been using her old Windows 98 machine while I figure out what I’m going to do.
Yesterday I set up X windows for her under Cygwin on Windows 98 so she would have access to her Linux desktop on the terminal server.
X -query 192.168.1.3
and voilá there’s her desktop as if she’d never left it. I thought it was cool, but I started wondering, why would she need that? She’s got her OpenOffice under Windows 98, she’s got her jabber instant messenger client. She uses Firefox which doesn’t care what it runs on. She doesn’t use Gimp very often, but it’s there too. I can even install Inkscape if she should desire it. In short, I can’t think of, and neither can she, a single reason to use her Linux desktop. All the infrastructure stuff runs on the Linux server: the webserver, database server, filesharing server, access controls, filters, and whatnot. The email is accessed via IMAP so you can use webmail, or Outlook, or Thunderbird, or Outlook Express, or Evolution, or Kmail. Anything you can dream up and it’s all synchronized. It all works seamlessly with Windows or Linux or Macintosh. All her documents and images are completely divorced from whatever lies beneath, normally ready to strike and swallow up your precious data. Call it a reinforced hull so you don’t end up being fish food.
For myself, I am happy with my Linux environment. I do not like Windows XP or any of its ilk. It’s a personal choice, not an indictment on which is inherently better. You may like XP. I may like Linux. Both seem to run Free Software just fine, and make the issue mostly about personal taste or comfort. For example, I like the way my apps behave in Linux. I like my kpovmodeler front-end to Povray. I like Quanta for some webwork. I like vim for programming and webwork. I like GIMP for graphics work. I like xmms as my music player. I use K3B as my dvd/cd burner (I love it). I use Scribus for desktop publishing. But I guess for me the ONLY killer app is the bash shell… which once again is available as part of Cygwin, so I guess it’s a non-issue.
You see? It doesn’t matter anymore and I like it that way.
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
— H.L. Mencken
Jesus said, "Dude, relax. It’s not about all this, even though
it is. Look, it’s hard to explain, but you gotta lose yourself to
find yourself. You’ve gotta give up your salvation to get
it. But you know that it shouldn’t be your aim, and believe me I
can tell. I’ve got this omniscience thing going on. Do you
run up and help the homeless guy because he’s ‘Jesus’? I get that
a lot, and I’m all like, ‘Dude, you’ve got eyes, right? He’s not
me.’ No, I’m right here. He is a child of mine, though, and
I’d appreciate it if you’d help him out but not for me, though.
No no. It’d be great if you could help him out for him.
Know what I’m sayin’? It’s kinda like that for most things.
I’m not all into this mysticism thing. Dad put the universe
together to be internally consistent. It doesn’t violate any
rules. Stuff doesn’t just magically happen. There’s a
process. Dad’s big on process. In fact, he got a little carried
away with process, and that’s why he sent me. Had to get back in
touch with humanity.
Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah,
Fear. Fear is probably the toughest thing I’ve ever had to deal
with, both what I experienced, and what I observed in all of you.
Fear is just the worst. It binds up your hearts in ways that you
couldn’t imagine. You see, I don’t want you to live like
that. Fear really just makes me sad. It’s really hard for
me to see people wanting so bad to save themselves that they forget to
love, forget to put themselves out there for others. All they
want to do is connect to me, worship me, all the while hitting each
other with that book. I’ve got mixed feelings about that book,
btw. It’s not like I don’t get into it, but I understand the
limitation that people have trying to describe life-changing events,
changes in direction that come with a profound, transforming,
life-altering, some say mystical revelation. I understand that
it’s tough to put it down on paper, so I empathize. But some of
it is just so wrong. All that stuff about retribution and fire
and brimstone – water to wine (I mean, geez, it was there all along,
but they had to do the whole, Oh look Jesus turned water to wine.
It was really embarrassing. Yikes).
Anyway, so you’ve got these
people who are fearful hitting each other with this book like that’s
going to solve something. Then you’ve got these other people who
are afraid to speak my name for fear of being labeled ‘one of
them.’ I empathize with that too. Humans like to bottle up
these magnificent soaring attributes of faith, love, devotion, and
service into valuable commodities that they can own and keep
away from others, thereby increasing their perceived value (I picked
that up in a business class I took a while back). So you hoard
your little trinkets hoping upon hope that they will appreciate and
then you’ll have something of value that your neighbor might not
have. Of course the root of all this is that you’re afraid that
your future isn’t secure, that your faith might not be the right one,
that you’re on the wrong path. By increasing the quantity of
like-minded individuals in your little "group" you increase your
value. I like to call it Amway Christianity.
Sigh, Dad and I got a good laugh out of that one, but I digress.
So
we pre-package up all this magnificent stuff into these little
bundles. Let’s call them words and symbols… or better yet,
let’s call them gangs. Yeah, I like that. So you’ve got
this quasi-believer, somebody who’d fallen away from the faith.
Let’s call him an agnostic. He just feels uncomfortable about all
these gang symbols. He’s doesn’t want to get gunned down in enemy
territory, so he uses safe words like "mojo" or my personal fav "may
good thoughts be with you." Jesus! (can I say that?) just say
I’ll pray for you, it’s not gonna kill you, and anyway that’s what good
thoughts are. Sigh, no really it’s all good.
I
don’t care what color you wear, or what you call prayer, good thoughts,
or mojo. I know what you intend, and what’s more important, I
hear ya, dude. Don’t matter what you call yourself, whether you
don’t like Jesus freaks (actually that’s our team name for a little
basketball league we put together up here… really does a number on
the opposition) ’cause you’re afraid or whether you don’t like gays and
hippies because you’re afraid, because they are subverting society and
the sanctity of marriage. I know, and it’s okay. But I’ve
got to say it just one more time in the hopes that it will sink
in. I made you all (look, if it makes you feel better that you
just sprang into existence, that is perfectly okay with me as long as
you’re not afraid). Better a courageous agnostic than a craven
Christian, I always say. But you know I’m always rooting for that
craven soul, that lost, fearful, small little mustard seed. I
keep saying, grow little seed, grow. Encompass the world.
Show me what you can do. When you screw up – and you will – I
don’t go all retribution like. I keep hoping upon hope that
you’ll put it together and make the shot.
And finally, I
don’t fear that you’ll fail. You will. I know that each
life lived is an opportunity. It’s your chance to grow that
mustard seed of a spirit you have. Whatever you do with it is
your choice, but I’d like to see you really come alive out there.
Hey, this has gone on longer than I intended. Sorry about
that. What do we do, you ask? Okay, here it is,
but don’t tell anyone you got this from me. We’re big on the
whole "figuring it out yourself thing" around here. Chalk it up
to Dad’s whole "process is important" thing. Whatever.
Whatever
light you have that you use on yourself is wasted. Whatever gift
you have that you don’t share with others to help them out is
wasted. There’s this cool little story that I heard a bit
back. In hell (which doesn’t actually exist, but after hearing
this, we’re thinking about putting one in just to see if this would
actually happen), inhabitants stand with their hands tied to a six foot
spoon over a pit of food. The inhabitants are in a perpetual
state of hunger because they can’t feed themselves. In heaven
(and this is the part I love) it’s the same deal, except no one goes
hungry. Everybody feeds each other with their spoons. I
don’t know if it’s because they’re less dumb or less selfish. I
suspect the latter. That’s it. That’s all there
is.
Peace out."
Olaia is just the funniest character. She has a hilarious sense of humor. This morning she came into the bedroom complete with melodramatic booming voice wearing a Spider-Man glove.
"James O’Malley, I am here to announce that it is time to get up. And Xiaolin Showdown is starting in a few minutes. Your presence is requested. You see my Spider-Man glove? That’s neat, huh?"
"Haha, you are a funny girl." She turned a bright shade of red, snickering and bashful. I love that little girl and her accents. She does a lot of different voices. She is a little girl after my own heart.
There is method in the madness that is American politics. Among all the posturing, partisan rhetoric, back-biting, and power struggles, there are some basic truths that I think have been forgotten through it all.
The US Gubment is broken down into three branches. The Executive branch executes, that is, enforces laws, makes priorities and sets the tone. The Legislative branch makes the laws according to the will of the people. They are a body that represents a cross section of age, class, and culture. They write the plan so to speak. The Judicial branch is the final say through it all with the US Constitution and judicial precedent as its authority.
Think of the three branches as the hands on a clock. The Executive, transient and ever changing with the whim of the people, is the second hand. The Legislative, more measured less fickle, its movement almost imperceptible, is the ticking of minutes. The Judiciary, conservative and lumbering is the ever steady indication of hours.
The President can effect change only through executive order or policy insomuch as it doesn’t break any laws. Executive orders, such as a policy on gays in the military, may be removed with a stroke of one man’s pen. Policy changes of that type could possibly change every four years. Gays are in, gays are out. The President can also decide which laws are important or not. The business of the Federal Government is such that not all laws are enforceable. Where are our priorities. For one President it might be social services. For another it might be immigration. They are transient and subject to rapid change. We have a saying back in Missouri. If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes. The same goes for Presidents.
Why is the President such an important figure? One: there is only one. Two: in the big scheme of things seconds are important because they are the only thing that happens right now.
The Legislative branch is a slower beast. If you look close enough at it, you can just barely see its movement. Like VH-1’s retrospectives of the 70’s etc. you can only see how silly you were given the shift of a decade. So it is with the Legislative branch. It is made up of young and old, male and female, different cultures, different socio-economic classes, and political ideologies. It is hard to get them to cooperate, to find an issue upon which they can all agree. When they do, you can bet with a reasonable amount of certainty that it is the will of the people.
And, damnit, I like it that way. I want my Legislature to be slow, not too efficient, not too unified, not too smart. I want them to reflect us, and our spirit is pretty constant – at least over the decades. Change is good, but changing too quickly is disruptive.
The Judiciary has been in the news recently. Conservatives decry "activist judges" as violating the constitution by forgetting their place as the creeping hours of the day. I actually agree, but not for the reasons conservatives say. Conservatives only complain when activist judges are doing things contrary to their wishes. There are numerous "activist judges" with political and social agendas who run with the conservative posse. These are the judges who proudly display the Ten Commandments in the courtroom and let religious or cultural values flavor their decisions. Defendant living in sin? Well perhaps you will not be looked upon as favorably.
Frankly, I think most judges do the right thing though. Teri Shiavo? Mr. Judge says, "Sorry, doesn’t matter what my personal feelings are on this matter, and for the record, I don’t personally agree with the husband’s decision. But according to Florida law, upheld by other courts and passed by the Florida legislature, this woman’s fate has already been decided by her legal guardian." That’s it folks. There’s no activism there. I’m just a judge, he would say. I don’t enforce laws. I don’t make laws. But I make sure that when I take that brick and place in in the construction of history it fits and will stand the test of time. It has to fit with the other bricks. It has to hold up to the specifications written by the building’s designers. That’s a lot to do on its own. I’m not interested in activism. Leave that to the politicians. I’m a curator. I am the slow hand of time, sweeping deliberately ever forward. You can build on that. Do we have flaws? Sure we do. There where some gaping holes and errors in our decisions throughout the years, some of which took until 1963 to fix, but only because some judges, and I’m not naming names, Taney… ahem, couldn’t stop being activists, beholden to special interests.
Take this example. This is the opinion and decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Scott v. Sandford case.
The Supreme Court dismissed the suit on jurisdictional grounds. Chief Justice Taney
explained that the parties were not citizens of different states
because the Constitution did not consider blacks to be citizens. The
Chief Justice also added that the Missouri Compromise, which prohibited
slavery and involuntary servitude in certain parts of the Louisiana
Territory, violated the Fifth Amendment because it deprived slaveowners of their property without the due process of law.
Now that’s activism. The US Constitution never said blacks weren’t citizens. That fact is a convenient assumption based on the current values of the day. He goes further to decide that blacks are not only not citizens, but neither are they people. They are property, and as such the rights of property owners are protected by the Constitution. Yikes. That’s some activism sure enough, activism for slave owners.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Eventually slavery as a legal practice with the sanctioning authority of the Judiciary of these United States was abolished.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as
a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,
shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their
jurisdiction.
The only problem with the 13th Amendment was that it was not a court decision. Maybe if there had been fewer activist judges in the land during the 19th century, we wouldn’t have had to write this thing. Hello? All men are created equal? These are men. Are they equal? End of story.
But I digress. The judiciary should not be subject to the whims of current thinking. They must be of studied character, dispassionate, and moreover taken to, at any time and in any situation, question everything they have ever believed or known. All assumptions must be abolished and the building reconstructed piece by piece slowly and deliberately, like the slow moving hour hand.
Or I could be wrong. I dunno.
Why oh why is the world like this? I was listening to the bizarre
account of the two little girls who where stabbed in Illinois. The
suspect/culprit is the father of one of the two. How could it be? How
could a person become so enraged that they would kill their own child.
Obviously the answer is that this person is broken, a broken human,
aberrated and twisted by a lifetime of apathy, violence, and despair.
What
is it about our society that crafts these wackos? They are works of
beautiful twisted art, perfectly shaped from babes to fulfill their
seeming lifelong purpose to go out in a blaze of violence and
destruction.
Remember the runaway bride? It was so long ago
now, and I don’t give a crap what her name was, I don’t even remember much
about her particular case. It is lost to me lo these many days. What I
do remember of the incident was that I’m sure she was mad at somebody.
There was anger, displaced resentment against, I can only imagine, her
parents and their relentless pressure for her wedding to be perfect,
her husband to be perfect, for her to be perfect. She had been arrested
and convicted twice for shoplifting. Her family was wealthy,
upstanding, but they’d demoralized her, belittled her, drove her insane
with their control, her church’s control, her community’s control.
"LEAVE ME ALONE!" She acted out in the only way she didn’t know how.
She flailed and writhed to cause them pain in the way that gave her
control. I want to hurt them, she screamed to herself. She didn’t care
about consequences. She was not thinking. She just wanted to hurt them
because it was the only thing that she felt she could do.
Fight or flight. Let’s do both, shall we?
So
back to Zion, Illinois. Let’s paint a picture of this guy Mr. Hobbs and
his life. He was born into poverty, possibly lower middle class. His
parents struggled all their lives. Dad was an abusive type. He worked
long hours at a menial job. He resented his lot in life… these damn
kids, this damn job, and his meager life of anonymity. So he drank. The
alcohol helped him not care. When he’d smack his son around, he didn’t
feel a thing. Damn kids, clean up your goddamned room! Pick this shit
up! Your mother’s too soft on you. And he’d whack ’em, whack ’em good.
When he wasn’t hitting his kids he was just gone.
Sooner or
later, Jerry started getting into trouble in school. First he’d just
pick on those littler than himself. He was the classic troubled bully.
As he got older, he got into more and more trouble with the
authorities, both school and otherwise. He dropped out of school.
You
should be able to figure out the rest from here. When he got into a
dispute with anyone or anything, he lost it. He’d start lashing out
with whatever was handy. He didn’t care. His rage flooded his senses,
brought back his powerlessness. Somewhere deep down he remembered the
lessons of his father.
They are bringing it on themselves. Bitch doesn’t listen to me. She’s a fucked up bitch, telling me what to fucking do.
She
screams that she’ll kick him out, or she’ll leave him, or call the
police. She used that threat a lot. She used it like a blunt object.
I’ll call the fucking police, she screamed. She doesn’t deserve to be
treated this way, she’d say.
Goddamnit… treat HER this way.
What about how you’re sucking the life out of me. You – you’re doing
this to ME, fuck you, bitch, I don’t give a fuck how you feel you
deserve to be treated. You’re a whore and bitch, and – and.
He
was cooling down in county lockup. He wasn’t so enraged now. The
bruises from his tussle with the cops who responded to the domestic
disturbance were starting to throb. Four of them had piled on. They
seemed to take pleasure is roughing him up. "Hit a woman, didcha, tough
guy. You’re a big fucking tough guy, hittin’ a woman. You hit kids
too?" He rubbed his shoulder where they’d wrenched his arm high up on
his back in a chicken wing. They’d clubbed him in the kidneys too.
Damn, that hurt. He couldn’t sit comfortably. Was he still mad? He
hurt, but he’d calmed down. It was out of his hands now. Remorse
started to creep in. Damn it, he didn’t mean to lose control. She was
just – doin’ it again. A twinge of rage lit off like a spark plug.
He
was sentenced to 18 months in state prison. This was the final straw.
The judge could see where this was going. This guy needed to know that
society was serious and that he’d done wrong. Justice decided that he
spend some time outside of the boundaries of society, an adult time
out, so to speak.
Jerry, fully intended to change his ways.
He thought about it every day. He wrote crudely spelled sentiments to
his wife. He loved her and looked forward to turning it around. He saw
all the good in his life. It was modest, but they had a little house, a
beautiful daughter, and he could always get some work. It’s not like
they needed much.
The day came that Jerry had waited for.
Here was his big chance to start over, to take control of his life and
live it. His wife accepted him with open arms. She’d fallen in love all
over again, mostly. Jerry, it seemed, was a new man with a new outlook.
Mother’s Day 2005
"Jerry,
don’t worry about it. It’s okay. It’s Mother’s Day. I don’t want to
fight about this. I’ll punish her tomorrow. Can’t we just have a
special day without yelling?"
"No, she took that money, she’s got to answer for it. I won’t have any daughter of mine growing up a thief."
"Look, can we just drop it?"
Little
Laura pranced out the front door with a nahnahnah to greet her friend
and scamper off to play. There it was again. His blood began to boil.
She’d sassed him. They’d all sassed him, made him feel powerless.,
revealed his impotence. Nahnahnah, there’s nothing you can do, you
stupid son-of-a-bitch with your limp dick and ugly face, they seemed to
say. His face twisted up almost unrecognizably and he charged out after
her. I’m going to drag her back to the house by her hair if I have to.
She’s not going to get away with this. I’m the man around here. She’s
the kid. She’s got to listen to me. He flew down onto the path where
the two girls were laughing and giggling. "Come here," he yelled.
"You’re going home."
"Mom, said I could go out," she retorted.
"I say you can’t, now get over here."
"I’m not coming and you can’t make me. Mom said I could stay out. Leave us alone." and the girls turned to leave.
First
he slapped her, then grabbed her hair and threw her down. Her friend
had a small pocket knife and stabbed at Jerry to protect her friend.
She didn’t know any better. She thought she was protecting her like on
TV. A knife?! raged Jerry’s mind. You’d try to stick me with a knife
you little bitch. What the fuck kind of parents do you have. And he
grabbed her wrist twisting it unnaturally. She yelped in pain as Jerry
snatched the knife and stabbed it back at her. Stick me, will you! He
slashed and slashed and slashed. His daughter’s horrified face looked
to him like contempt. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!! He silenced her
disdain. That’ll teach her.
As soon as it was over, the rage
left him and the weight of what he’d done came down. It was only a
matter of time, but he was strangely calm. It was all out of his hands
now. He was free.
I wrote this after one of my Confirmation classes. I think it’s
about the best contemplation on the Eucharist that I’ve ever heard,
that is, I like it and it sums it up for me. I always try to look at
the rituals of Catholism through the eyes of an outsider. Are they
silly? Where did they come from? Why do we do them? What does it mean
to believe? And what is belief? They may be silly, but there is a
wisdom that can be grokked if you know how to get in there, separate
yourself from your preconceptions, supersititions, magic, and just see
and know a thing for what it is. Life isn’t any deeper than what we
are. That is, it’s plenty deep enough, thank you. You just have to look
and listen and ponder. It’s all there, the spirits, the magic, the
flavor – all there right in front of you. It’s not weeping concrete
stains in the shape of the Virgin Mary. It’s not miracle medical cures.
It may not even be eternal life in heaven.
And with that I begin my meandering through the true nature of the Holy Eucharist.
The next week we talked about spirits. First we talked about the
spirit of a tomato? They all looked at me quizzically. Eh? Tomato? I
explained where the tomato comes from, where it is grown, how it is
cared for, who picks it, how it arrives at the supermarket etc. The
tomato becomes more than what it would first appear. The tomato, the
more you know about it, its journey, the more it becomes a symbol of
something deeper, and the deeper you go, the more it becomes an icon
– it actually becomes that thing it represents.
Take the beef cow for example. “Ew!” they all chorused. “We
don’t want to know about our food being alive at some point.” They
all shuddered, thinking about the slaughterhouse, the death of the
cow as it arrives at their plate, all ground up and cooked. How can
knowing the path of the cow make our enjoyment of the burger any
better?
Ah, I said, but you miss out on a great opportunity to imbibe more
than just a burger. Take, for example, my experience in the Basque
Country of Spain. We lived near a rural community called Oiartzun in
the north of Spain. In the town, the country folk each raised and
slaughtered their own cow. They would raise the cow for a year or so,
and then they would kill it. They fed their cow the best of things,
alfalfa, cabbage, beets, turnips, the best of things. They would grow
and cultivate an entire plot of land just for the cow.
We were visiting the Aristizabals house one Sunday afternoon. The
family wanted to show off their prize cow. The mother, Maria de los
Angeles, took us to the stall where the healthy looking young cow
stood munching on some nice fresh greens. The cow raised her head and
glanced our way, half-curious as to who were these intruders to her
space. She couldn’t be bothered to turn around and give us her
attention, head down munching on her lunch. Maria de los Angeles,
anxious to show off her cow, grabbed a pitch fork and poked the cow,
yelling, “Yeha yeha.” The cow did not budge an inch. She poked
harder but the cow did not move.
Mikel, the father and cabinet maker, gently clucked to the cow and
patted it on the rump. She turned as easily as if on a trivet. Beautiful
she was, healthy strong, and big. Everyone in the family beamed with
pride for their cow.
Some time later, we heard that Beltza had been slaughtered, the
meat packed into two large freezers in the family’s farm house.
Ekiñe, the youngest daughter, excitedly told us they had
bought a new young calf. She laughed as she told us they had named it
Beltza.
Later, during the Christmas season, Laura and I were invited over
for a holiday season dinner, on the menu, Beltza. I knew her, I
thought.
We shared with the Aristizabals the finest cut of meat from
Beltza, a cut from which there was only enough for one meal. I
remember that meal, the communion, the shared experience, the
newness, the realness, the depth of experience, appreciation for the
life that we had taken as well as the life that we were living, the
sacrifice, the brotherhood, and community. Beef had never been more
alive to me, on my taste buds, but more importantly in my heart.
I had used that story to illustrate to my class how knowing more
about reality around you leads you to deeper satisfaction. Sometimes
it’s not pleasant. Sometimes there is pain, even death, but by
closing yourself off to it, you close yourself off to the richness of
life, the beauty of living. Without awareness, consciousness, life
becomes unseasoned and bland.
Jaimito cracks me up… what an artisitic sensibility
"Mama I’m like a butterfly," he says as he swings his arms upward and downward clapping his castanets, walking in circles.
"Mama I’m like a leaf," as he puts his arms up reaches to the sky and then contorts his body downward, falling to the ground.
"Mama I’m like a birdie," he says as he flaps his arms faster clicking the castanets faster.
Our artistic and musically gifted percussion boy likes his castanets!
He
brings them to my ear so I may appreciate their wonderful snappety
click click. Then his attention turns to Olaia who is using the piano
to make the sound of ants and instructs him to do the castanets like
ants.
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