Gentle Readers 2

By that, I do not mean to indicate that I have two gentle readers . . .

My offer to answer questions has, sadly, been declined, yet my readership is up despite that fact that I have made very few posts of late. I’m not going to try to figure that out.

I have a new post percolating as I write and will post that shortly.

Gentle Readers

Gentle Readers,

I have not written a post in weeks, and my stats have gone up!

I’m not sure what to make of that.

So let’s try something different:

Ask me a question, any question, and I will answer it to the the best of my ability.

Over to you . . . 

No tp Gay Marriage

Gay marriage is becoming legal all over the Western world, and personally, I went from being against it, to being for it, and am now having second thoughts, and the thing that is giving me pause is the raising of children by same sex parents.

I do not doubt that there can be love between people of the same sex – I have seen it, but what, exactly, is marriage? To me it is, and has always been, the basis of the family. Society formalizes it and grants it benefits under law in recognition of that reality. But how elastic should that practice be?

We know that a mother and a father have a profound influence on the development of a child, including providing models for later relations with the opposite sex. So how would that work in the case of a straight child raised by gay parents?

I don’t think that works.

I know that there is research showing that children of gay parents can grow up “normal”, but I am suspicious of that. You can find research that supports both sides of most issues. And I think that the researchers who study this issue have a vested interest in the outcome – I understand that from a gay woman I went to high school with who is doing precisely such work.

So I would encourage my Member of Parliament to vote against gay adoption because I do not believe it is in the best interests of the child, and since marriage and the family are inextricably bound up, emotionally and legally, I cannot, in good conscience support gay marriage.

 

A Little Miracle?

If you’ve been reading the blog, you’ll know that I’m a recent convert to Catholicism. I don’t take every article of the Catechism literally, and I hold what I like to call some complimentary beliefs from other faith traditions. Personal revelation is very important to me. But the Catholic Church has become my spiritual home.

I go to church every Sunday, and for much of Lent, I’ve been going to Mass daily. I’m nearing the end of a novena, which is a personal, nine day prayer cycle. I wear religious medals on a silver chain around my neck, under my shirt.

That’s not bragging – as in, “Look  how holy i am” – it’s context. Like any honest person, I must acknowledge my “manifold sins and wickedness”, but that isn’t one of them. I have enough others to make up for it, though.

There are three medals on my chain: Mary, St. Jude (who can resist the appeal of a saint whose portfolio is “things despaired of”), and St. Barbara (who was recommended to me as an intercessor for negotiating the dramas that can arise at work).

Each of them is an oval metal disk with an eyelet at the top for the chain to pass through – and those eyelets are solid and secure. They will stay in place unless the chain breaks – and it hasn’t.

Yesterday, I decided to buy a silver crucifix. I wasn’t sure whether to put it on a separate (presumably shorter) chain or add it to the one I had. Undecided, I opted for the latter. The jeweller added it to my chain between two of the medals – I clearly remember watching him take the medal off, add the crucifix, replace the medal, and do up the hasp (or whatever it’s called), and put everything in some silver cleaner. Later, at home, I looked at it – as one naturally does when one buys something new – and again, I clearly remember seeing it between two medals.

This morning, the position of the crucifix had changed – it was no longer between two medals but to one side of the three.

At no time did I undo the clasp or even take off the chain.

I am certain of all these things.

I tried to duplicate this, but failed – it’s not built that way. What happened is impossible, but it did happen.

My belief in God and in the immortal soul that survives the death of our physical bodies is founded on many things over the course of many years. I don’t need a miracle to sustain it.

So was it a miracle?

No.

What happened was that one of the medals had migrated all the way around during the night, leaving the crucifix on its own. So it was not divine intervention. It was an active sleeper, tossing and turning, moving his medals around.

It did not affect my faith one way or another – that faith is already very solid. What it did do was to leave me with the feeling that I should get a second chain for the crucifix, a little shorter than the one I have so that it doesn’t get all tangled up with the medals.

Happy Easter everyone.

Feelings Are To Be Felt

It sounds kind of obvious doesn’t it? “Feel what you feel”? Perhaps, gentle reader, you are wondering if your humble scribe has finally lost it, written one two many blog posts about his insights, perceptions, and . . . feelings.

I am hopeful that I have not.

Too often, when we are children, we are taught to swallow our emotions. “Be a brave little soldier.” “Children should be seen and not heard.” “Don’t be a crybaby.” We have heard all these and more.

With the British “Stiff upper lip!” or the American “Suck it up!” we refuse delivery of our own emotions. It becomes a life-long habit. A profoundly unhealthy one.

The trouble is that refusing delivery of an emotion does not make it go away. “Sucking it up” is closer to the truth, and a clear clue that it is a strategy that does not serve us.

When we pretend not to feel something, when we ignore a disappointment or swallow our anger – another telling turn of phrase – it does not go away; it is internalized, and there it festers.

Ouch.

Suppressed anger is the lifeblood of depression, anxiety and ultimately, more anger. And what does one do with those? Suck them up? Like turning a vacuum cleaner on itself? Creating a denser ball of negative energy, collapsing on itself. A emotional black hole?

Suppression as a lifestyle must lead to something like that.

Sucking it up may make for good cinema, but it’s lousy emotional hygiene.

Feelings are there to be felt, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Disappointment, sorrow, anger . . . all to be felt because then they can be processed and released.

“Sucking them up” ensures that they stay with us forever.

 

Celebrating the Mystery

I went to do the Stations of the Cross and Benediction at my church last Friday evening. For my non-Catholic readers, the priest speaks about each station on Christ’s final journey, from the condemnation to the tomb, offers a meditation on how it applies to our own lives, then leads a prayer. There are lots of Our Fathers and Mail Marys. Then the Blessed Sacrament was put on display for fifteen minutes, followed by a concluding prayer. I’m a recent convert, three years ago this Easter, and this was my first attendance at this rite, and it resonated deeply with me.

Catholics know how to do ritual.

The priest began by using and emphasizing the word “mystery”, which also resonates deeply with me. He explained that so much of what the Church teaches is “mystery”: the Incarnation, Resurrection, the Mass . . .

And our lives themselves are mysteries. We come from we know not where and go to we know not where. Life does not come with an instruction manual. The answer to many of our most basic questions is, “I don’t know.”

But there are many different kinds of knowing.

Someone – Google let me down – asked if Life was “a puzzle to be figured out or a mystery to be celebrated”.

There’s that word again!

Mystery.

I bought a statuette of the Virgin Mary and some candles – time to do a novena, which is a nine day prayer cycle. (I’m really starting to enjoy being a Catholic!)

And I saw a wall plaque with a particularly apt saying: Faith is seeing light with the heart when the eye sees only darkness. Or to relate it to the subject of this blog post, the eye is defeated by the puzzle while the heart revels in the mystery.

Life and Death are not the only mysteries. So is love – do we really want to figure that one out? Or just revel in it when it goes well, and sometimes give it some extra care when it is beset with difficulties?

What about children? We watch them appear and grow and become fully adult . . . I don’t know about you, but to me it’s all a mystery, and a thing of great beauty.

Maybe, all of the best things in our lives our mysteries.

And one of the greatest – Easter – is just around the corner.

Let’s celebrate!

 

Maybe It’s All They Have

As I rode the Kipling bus up to the subway station, I noticed a woman seated opposite me. She was in her late thirties of early forties, but looked, in some ways, much older – I’ve seen that before in alcoholics, the homeless, people with chronic illnesses, and so on.

Her mouth and jaw were large for her face, disproportionate in a way that, in a happy person, might have looked appealing, but in her, was not. There are a lot of public figures with exaggerated features who look quite attractive – Cameron Diaz, who has a very large mouth (in a good way), comes to mind – but not so with this woman.

She looked unwell, was sneezing, and seemed very fatigued. Whatever was wrong with her, she was in pretty sad shape. And there was something about her bearing – the way she sat, her facial expression – that seemed almost belligerent.

She was not appealing, but suddenly I felt love for her.

When I saw past her distressed physical state, I saw a person who was suffering – that left her “belligerence” to process, and this thought came to me: That’s all she has. It was her only way of asserting her value to a world that found her valueless.

How can you not love someone when that is what you see in them?

I looked around the bus and saw human beings with strengths and flaws. How can I not love them all, I thought.

And what about the most irritating people I know? The ones who grate on me like nails on a blackboard. The ones I am positively allergic to? The ones – thankfully few – who honestly mean me harm?

How can I love them?

The same way that I loved that woman on the bus, I suppose. By realizing that whatever I dislike about them so much might be what they need to assert their worth, not perhaps in the eyes of others, but in their own eyes. Or why would they be like that? Surely not by choice, for what sane person would choose that?

In other words, it’s all they have.