July 17, 2014 · 20:40

Hail to the Chief

No, not the president. At least not the sitting one. Someday I’m sure I’ll write about my undying admiration for men the likes of Washington, Lincoln, Reagan, Generals Lee and Chamberlain, PM Churchill, and Bishop Sheen, but not today.

Today, I want to talk about my dad.

Tomorrow is his last day on The Job. It’s been a good job, considering it’s meant he’s been able to keep a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs. The medical bills have always been paid for: The Job is unionized and came with a most excellent insurance package. I’ll be the first to admit it was a tough job – long hours outside in all weather (I think the only time they ever called it off for weather was once during a hurricane and then again in the October Blizzard.) and “peak season” – black Friday through New Year’s we all knew just sucked. If Dad made it to the family Christmas Eve dinner it’s usually been a miracle of Christmas proportions in and of itself.

But he did it. For all the long, cold, wet, icy, snowy, sweaty, hot, humid, “insert weather conditions here” he stuck with it for thirty long years. The Job had nothing to do with what he went to school for. The man has multiple college degrees, including a Masters, he’s a Navy veteran, and he’s spent the last 30 years as a blue-collar package delivery man because it was a surefire way of making sure his family got taken care of. He was unemployed when I showed up and since babies are on the expensive side, he took what he could get.

So for all the dance recitals and baseball games missed (I practically forced him to take a personal day when I graduated from high school. I didn’t want to take the chance he’d get stuck at work and miss commencement.) For all the late hours you came home really too tired to do anything but eat dinner, take a shower, and go to bed, but stayed up and read us a bedtime story anyway (you’re never living down Henry the Duck and the cood fooking on the stove) or help us with homework or explain why politicians were making no sense and why a president had to ask what the definition of “is” is… thanks. Thanks for being a man of great character and integrity, and for always putting your family first.

Thanks for being a Dad, and not just a father.

Enjoy your retirement*.

 

 

*No one can hang around the house too long. Trust me. I highly recommend volunteering, or a golf membership, or a part-time job, or something, anything. Long experience has taught us that if you’re home and underfoot too long, your children may kill you. In a totally loving way. But seriously. Get out of the house every once in a while. ❤

family 2010

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July 17, 2014 · 02:29

The Real War on Women, or Part of It

The Democrat party would have us believing that there is a vast conspiracy by Republican, white men to take women out of public life, put them in a burka-like covering, chain them to the kitchen stove and reduce them to a baby-producing machine.

Hardly.

I will not argue that there isn’t a misogynistic battle that many women are fighting each day though, and it has zero to do with the above. Women are and have been breaking glass ceilings left, right, and center. Truly, how many of you knew that the first self-made female millionaire in this country was black? Not only was she black (and her name was Madame C. J. Walker) but she was the first child in her family born free – 1867, in Louisiana. I’m sure she had to fight for what she earned, and women today owe a lot to women like her. i think it’s safe to say that battle is pretty well won. Women really can be anything they like…

…unless they want to be like the women in the magazines in the grocery store. Or in advertisements at the mall. That’s where one of the real battlegrounds of the “war on women” is fought. Women will starve, pluck, dye, paint, and go under the knife in an attempt to look like Cindy Crawford. Cindy Crawford, who once said that even she wished she looked like Cindy Crawford. That ought hint at something.

There is hope. Never was I more amazed than the day I had the following exchange with my brother. (Names have been changed to protect the guilty. Or innocent. Forget it. I changed the names.) I wrote up the following on Facebook and thought it to be worth sharing here, as well.

Little Brother, I’m going to apologize right now, because I’m probably going to embarrass the hell out of you. But you shouldn’t be. I’m freaking proud of you, baby brother. I don’t know where you learned what you did, but I think it’s important and I’m going to share it.

I almost didn’t, because I know he’s going to blush. Then I thought about it, and thought about it, and decided to share it anyway, because NOT sharing it is the reason women usually feel the way they do. They DON’T hear it. It’s the reason I do, a lot of the time, despite what others tell me. This isn’t the most eloquent or funny thing I’ve ever written, but there’s a whole lot of truth behind it.

We were standing in the kitchen, and he was chugging down either a pre- or post- workout protein shake. I asked him to go to the store with me, and he declined, asking why I even needed to go to the grocery store when I could have that sort of deliciousness instead (my point exactly) as he flexed his biceps. If you have not seen Little Brother lately, his biceps are about as big as my thighs. Somehow, the conversation deviated onto women working out. Little Brother has two jobs, both in very, very male-dominated fields. He relayed the following:

“One of the ladies at work not too long ago asked a bunch of the guys if we thought she was fat. We thought she was out of her mind. She’s curvy. Like, normal curvy. Pretty curvy. Don’t women realize guys like curves? Or rather, guys like women, however the hell you’re shaped and we think you’re sexy? Photoshop is ridiculous.”

I almost fell over.

From the time we’re what, five? we’re told that if we’re not thin enough, if we’re not skinny enough, if our hair isn’t straight enough, if it’s not curly enough, if our thighs touch, if our stomachs aren’t flat enough, if our boobs aren’t big enough, if our boobs are too big, if our eyes aren’t blue enough, if we don’t do this and we do too much of that, then we’re not GOOD enough. We’re not worthy of love. We’re not pretty. No one will want to be with us. Be friends with us. We won’t succeed academically or in the workplace. If we want to be mothers, we fail. If we want to have careers, we fail. If we don’t carry this brand of purse or wear that high of a heel, we fail. If we wear glasses, we fail. We wear contacts, we fail. Spend the day in a tshirt and yoga pants? Fail. Prefer to read scifi over British Lit? Fail. Prefer British Lit over 12th Century Arctic Woman’s Studies? Fail. Like cat videos? Fail. Don’t like cat videos? Fail. Vegan? Fail. Carnivore? Double fail.

My brother, my 24-year old brother, a freakin’ cop who hauls grain and loves zombies and American history and bailed my arse out at the theatre more times than I can count, has seen through all that.

In this particular battlefield, we are our own worst enemies. Maybe it’s time we take a look around and realize that men are not the bad guys, but our allies, and that the ones we know – the ones that count – very well might just like us just the way we are. Warts, unshaved legs, flip-flops, and all.

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July 16, 2014 · 19:34

Yes, God is Love, and So Much More

I may be going out on a limb here, and maybe I’m in the minority, but I highly dislike when God is pulled into political arguments to make a “point” by people who really have, to be blunt, no clue what they are talking about. These people usually try to pigeonhole the Lord into two categories – love and vengeance. They focus on very narrow parts of the Bible, mostly “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” and then will pick and choose various parts of Leviticus and Deuteronomy to show how most of the Old Testament isn’t relevant anymore and can be conveniently ignored since we are cool with divorce and eating shellfish.

Theologian, I am not, but I do pay attention to the world around me, have been blessed to have friends willing to engage in spiritual and religious discussions, and I know some truly wonderful people who have dedicated their lives to God, both lay and religious. I know people who consider themselves “spiritual but not religious” and others who have cast away whatever religious upbringing they might have had and consider themselves agnostic or atheistic. Others may have no spiritual or religious guidance and float from church to church still seeking something, and they themselves are not sure what it is. None of them deny that human beings are made not only of mind and body, but spirit as well. Perhaps this is why it irks me so much when people try to use God, and it is always the Judeo-Christian God, to serve their own political ends. We must accept gay “marriage”, because Jesus said we must love everyone. We must not judge the woman who has an abortion, because Jesus said, “Judge not, less ye be judged”. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone used the story of Jesus stopping the crowd from stoning the prostitute to defend the hook-up culture*.

The problem with only using these few verses or passages is that there are 73 books in the Catholic Bible. Protestant versions vary; the King James version, for example, has 80. Out of these books, there are countless verses, as each verse is only a sentence or two. So yes, Jesus did say, “Do unto others whatever you would have them do unto you. This is the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 7:12) but a few verses later He followed that with “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in Heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.'” (Matthew 7:21-23) In Matthew alone, Jesus speaks of punishment for wrongdoing at least as much as he preaches love and forgiveness. Indeed, he often speaks of ways to avoid sin, to give up material world goods in order to bring oneself closer to His Father. Does your hand or eye cause you to sin? Pluck it out or chop it off. Better to lose a hand or an eye than to suffer eternal damnation in the fires of Hell. Men, stop oogling women. He who hath looked at a woman with lust in his heart has committed adultery with her already. That’s a two-fer right there, with the 9th Commandment (adultery) and one of the Seven Deadly Sins (lust). Moses permitted divorce, but Jesus spoke against the practice, again saying that it forced women to commit adultery.

Here’s the long and short of it. People sin. We do bad things, we hurt others. We make mistakes, we falter. We tell little white lies, and we tell big whoppers. We mess up. Big time. God knew that 2000+ years ago, and Jesus came down to take the heat for us. Instead of us suffering eternal damnation with no hope of Heaven, He took the punishment. We’re not entirely off the hook though. Like a parent, God is looking out for our best interests. He will comfort us when we’re sad, rejoice with us when we’re happy, and when we screw up, as we will do inevitably, we will be punished in some way. A child who was allowed to run roughshod over his parents is a child who will grow up to be a spoilt pain in the butt. Any parent of a toddler knows the benefits of a time-out. Yes, God DOES love us, more than anything, because like we create our children, God created us in His image. Like we reprimand children when they misbehave, so must we be reprimanded. It’s the consequence of having free will. Catholics call that place of “eternal-yet-temporary” time-out Purgatory. It is, from accounts I’ve read, definitely a place of punishment, and not in the “sit here and think about what you did” type, but bearable because souls there know that it is temporary and one day we will be reunited with Christ.

Beyond that? God is God. The Alpha and the Omega. The beginning and the end. He cannot fit into any little political idea. He cannot be narrowed into one, concise statement like “God is love” fluff. That’s just the first sentence. God just IS. In fact, He summed it all up quite nicely Himself, without any help from us.

I am.

*For what it’s worth, His last words to the prostitute were, “Go forth, and sin no more.”

EDIT: I found this blog post over at the Matt Walsh Blog. It’s one of my favorite blogs, and Matt pretty much summed up what I said above, just better. 🙂 I hope he won’t mind that I’m linking to it from here. Please read it.
http://themattwalshblog.com/2014/04/07/jesus-didnt-care-about-being-nice-or-tolerant-and-neither-should-you/

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July 16, 2014 · 02:49

Bono: Not Just for Music Anymore

This clip was featured in Dinesh D’Souza’s new film “America: Imagine a World Without Her”, which I saw this evening. I can’t recommend it enough, for liberals and conservatives alike. It tackles many of the things that people say are “bad” about America, and why we shouldn’t be proud of our great nation, from the early treatment of the aboriginal population, to slavery, to our current foreign policy, and capitalism. The film interviews people who have a stake in each of those opinions, and then reviews each of them from a historical perspective, speaking with historians, economists, scholars, military veterans, and more.

And then, there’s Bono, who really just summed up everything.

 

 

America. I can’t live with or without you? Scratch that. Just can’t live without her.

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July 16, 2014 · 02:10

The Unintended Victim

The straw that finally broke the camel’s proverbial back was the following article:

http://liveactionnews.org/what-you-call-a-rape-exception-is-an-innocent-child-worthy-of-life/

Thirty-plus comments and several angry people later, I decided that in the interest of keeping friends, maybe a blog would be a better idea. For what it’s worth, this isn’t the first time the idea has crossed my mind. Anyway, the article was written by a woman who discovered in her late thirties that her birth mother was the victim of rape, who had been beaten and left to die by the side of the road by her rapist: the rapist who was, incidentally, the writer’s father. The rape victim, upon learning she was pregnant as a result of the crime, attempted to terminate the pregnancy. The abortion failed, and the child that resulted was the writer of the article.

My Facebook wall became a very heated battleground involving the rights of rape victims, the rights of children, and whether or not it was right to further punish a woman who had been raped to endure a pregnancy, labor, and delivery. In one corner was the pro-abortion crowd. In the other, the pro-life crowd. Attempting to referee was me, who was friends with all the people posting. It got ugly.

Our culture has a problem. We view things as too disposable. Cameras. Paper towels. Plastic bags. Cell phones that we upgrade every two years. Marriages had a 50% divorce rate last time I saw the statistics. Take a look at that. The man or woman we promise to love and cherish, forsaking all others, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, is served papers the moment that hot new secretary catches our eye, or the dashing young pool boy. We hear the laments, “He’s not the same man I married!” No kidding. People change. They grow. They grow old, and we hide our elderly away in nursing facilities so we don’t have to see them. When once we would have taken our aging parents into our homes, we leave them in hospital-like facilities and hope they die quickly so they don’t spend our inheritance on medical care, room, and board.

Children, once the pride and joy of a family, are brushed aside as quickly as possible. Dropped in daycares as mere newborns, from there to nursery school and after school programs, pre-K, full-day kindergartens, and more after school activities than one can count. Enrichment camps each school vacation week and a variety of overnight camps each summer ensure that working parents don’t have to worry about taking time off to be home with Johnny and Suzy.

Those are the ones allowed to live. Others, for whatever noble or ignoble reason you can make up, are rent limb from limb in their mothers’ wombs, extracted a piece at a time. Still more are burned to death by saline or other chemical injection. Up until 2003, it was entirely legal for a full-term baby to be half-delivered, only to have a pair of scissors puncture his skull and his brains removed via vacuum. That particular barbaric act is known as partial-birth abortion, or “intact dilation and extraction” in legal terms. It’s infanticide. A doctor (and I’ll use that term loosely) who performs such an atrocity faces only a fine and up to a two-year prison sentence. To put that into perspective, premeditated first-degree murder (which would be the non-abortion equivalent) generally carries a sentence of anywhere from 25-life, sometimes with the chance of parole, to the death penalty. Just let that sink in for a minute.

Meanwhile, you get these kids who, through no fault of their own, have a father who committed one of the worst crimes imaginable against another, and a mother who has to bear that trauma. Being only a few cells large at this point, it’s not like you can say much in your defense. One might hardly blame a woman for wanting to erase any trace of what she suffered.

The sins of the father shall not be visited upon the son.

This is why our culture needs to change. Not only to become a life-affirming culture, but a culture in which we stop throwing away value. The value of what we make and more importantly, the value of who we are. That family on the corner working and struggling to make ends meet, but Mom and Dad manage to have a sit down dinner with everyone at least once a week? Yes! Paint them a banner! (Literally or metaphorically.) Joe and Jane have grown apart from each other and separated for a while, but decide to go for marriage counseling? Yes! It will be hard, but what a way to honor your vows. Sam rearranged  things at the office so he can work from home, and help out his widower father? Good for him! It will be a sacrifice, but how much more comfortable will Dad be, and how much will their relationship grow? Claire and Frank already have three kids and surprise! Claire is expecting again? And she’s keeping the baby! Yay! More sibling playmates, even numbers around the table (for the OCD among us), and that many more hugs, kisses, and refrigerator art pieces.

Somebody spiked Julia’s drink at a party and she got raped? And she just found out she’s pregnant because of it? And she’s keeping the baby and giving him or her up for adoption? Or even keeping the child to raise on her own? That child is still 1/2 her, after all.

Somebody give that woman a medal.

That is the culture we need. A culture of mutual support. Not a culture of mutual trashing of what we have.

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