Hurtling down the highway on my morning rounds and I see another one up ahead. The shape is familiar, a small yellow triangle emblazoned on the corrugated side of a shipping container. The words are well-known to me now. "SUPER HEAVY", it says, right there on the side of what the warning label declares to be a high-cube model. About 8,600 pounds of weathering steel clamped to the back of a semi and loaded with who knows what. This day, clouds and all, I feel it. Super heavy.
This sort of thing makes you think while spending so much time on the roads in the middle of the country. Shipping containers are all over the place out here, on trains and trucks. Danish, German, Korean, Chinese concerns pushing their charges overseas and through the woods and to Grandma's house we go. Curiosity got the better of me, because I had to know how the super heavy vibes got here, and landed on my head and filling my heart with ghosts.
Container ships. It is how it gets done. Insanely large vessels carrying thousands of twenty- and forty-foot long steel boxes full of stuff. Boxes that get loaded, offloaded, put on trucks and trains and sent forth into the world to scatter their contents hither and yon. Things that you didn't know you needed, perhaps, or things you didn't want but found you anyway. It hit me this morning that this is my grief, too. A load of super heavy, coming from a strange place far away.
Amongst my vehicular ruminations in the soggy heat of a tenacious summer I could not also help but wonder just what it is that powers these huge ships that bring us stuff from all points on earth. A little research turned up that most of these vessels burn something called "bunker fuel", which turns out to be sort of the lowest of the low amongst refined petroleum products. It is thick, black-brown sludge leftover after all the other easier to use and more valuable fractions have been extracted from the crude.
Bunker fuel is so thick you can walk on on it when it is cold. Cheap and easy to get, it burns like the outer rim of hell and creates a lot of pollution generating all sorts of nasty things when it goes up in flames. But it is what drives the fleet. It makes it possible to move tonnage, even if we don't want or need the weight.
Another day, another road trip, and when I spied another yellow triangle the pieces of all this began falling into place. I know why the clouds seem so low, the air too hot, the weight too much to carry. All that semi-useless knowledge and the thick, black well of my grief congealing into a metaphor so bitter I had to laugh as I wiped my eyes.
I've seen this ship before, this behemoth of sadness and grief barreling out of the mist to run me over. Not once, not twice, but three times has the darkness punched me in the heart. A person can't watch three babies dies in his life and feel like he is a typical passenger on the cruise we hope to call life. No one can.
But I know what this is. Having sailed my ship right into a storm only to be fished out of the sea and carried away by a hulking black steel mass known as the MV Grief, I am a container lashed to the deck. The engines thrum and moan, burning the bunker fuel of sadness at a rate that threatens to drain the core of the world. The joke is on us, that this ship burns the same stuff packed into the container that I am. A person-shaped container full of the black-brown sticky spew of hell that wrapped itself around my heart faster than I could scrape it off.
I had to laugh, I said. The images burning in my head were too terrible for any other reaction. I have a secret that the captain of the Grief does not know: I can carry more than his ship can ever dream of. There is no vessel that can carry what I have had to carry. I have proof. I am alive. I burn the bunker fuel in my heart and know that memories of the children and grandchild that I held are cargo that far outweighs the grief of their loss. I am super heavy, but I am not lost at sea.
Showing posts with label godsmack. Show all posts
Showing posts with label godsmack. Show all posts
21 September 2016
23 August 2014
The Little Boy Who Mattered
The little boy was found on a beach, naked, alone and sick. So sick he just sat there and panted. He was surrounded by a group of onlookers, none of whom wanted to take him home. To touch him could mean signing one's own death warrant. No one wanted to risk it.
To live in a poor part of town in the capital of a country, Liberia, that by many measures is also poor, is perhaps difficulty enough to forge a life. To be placed in a "holding" facility because you are sick, that is doubly difficult. To know that the "holding" facility is not really a care facility, it is to get you off the streets because no one knows what to do with you, is an exercise in cruelty.
It was a miracle and a mystery that the little boy, ten years old by local accounts, managed to get out of the facility the night before it was attacked by an agitated mob who forced a number of the victims to flee the facility. The little boy ended up on the beach where he was found last Wednesday, and witnessed by a pair of photographers covering the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. He had no clothes. He was deathly ill. No one wanted to touch him.
Someone brought the little boy some clothes, but he was so weak he could not get the shirt over his head. The photographers gave some local women pairs of latex gloves, and the women helped the boy get the shirt on. But still, no one knew what to do with him. Understandably, they did not want to risk catching Ebola, assuming that was the affliction upon the boy.
Later, he was somehow moved to a nearby alleyway. He lay upon a sheet of cast-off cardboard, crumpled in a heap. So ill he could not move. People apparently walked by, eyeing the boy, but for a long time no one moved to help. Under the circumstances, maybe they felt all had been done that could be done.
The boy lay dying. One of the photographers, David Gilkey, took the boy's picture, later saying that the situation was an "evil Catch-22". A better phrase perhaps cannot be found to describe what they witnessed there in that alley. People want to help but they don't know what to do. They do not want to risk getting sick themselves.
By some turn of events, a neighbor took the boy to a local hospital where they had some facility to care for a person sick with Ebola. Fortune turned slightly. There was word that the boy was improving, news that was of no small import in a region so hard hit by a modern plague. Maybe the universe was not such a hard case after all.
But we know different. On August 21st the other photographer, John Moore, spoke with the boy's aunt. She herself and her children were checking into a clinic because they suspected they had contracted the Ebola virus. She told the photographer that the little boy had died of Ebola, as had his mother before him. An unsurprising outcome given the circumstances, we tell ourselves and shrug.
I told myself the same thing. I could not insulate myself from the effects. I heard the news while driving down the highway in air-conditioned comfort, thousands of miles away from a lonely and sick little boy who died because no one could do enough. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, choking down the lump in my throat. It is not hard to imagine that he perhaps had no one to mourn his passing. I did not curse the universe, because I know better. I know the futility of such endeavors from direct experience of the worst it has to offer.
Later, I saw the picture of him in the alley. He had on the red shirt someone had brought him. He was sick, so sick, and I hope he did not die alone. His name was Saah Exco, and he was a little boy who mattered.
To live in a poor part of town in the capital of a country, Liberia, that by many measures is also poor, is perhaps difficulty enough to forge a life. To be placed in a "holding" facility because you are sick, that is doubly difficult. To know that the "holding" facility is not really a care facility, it is to get you off the streets because no one knows what to do with you, is an exercise in cruelty.
It was a miracle and a mystery that the little boy, ten years old by local accounts, managed to get out of the facility the night before it was attacked by an agitated mob who forced a number of the victims to flee the facility. The little boy ended up on the beach where he was found last Wednesday, and witnessed by a pair of photographers covering the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. He had no clothes. He was deathly ill. No one wanted to touch him.
Someone brought the little boy some clothes, but he was so weak he could not get the shirt over his head. The photographers gave some local women pairs of latex gloves, and the women helped the boy get the shirt on. But still, no one knew what to do with him. Understandably, they did not want to risk catching Ebola, assuming that was the affliction upon the boy.
Later, he was somehow moved to a nearby alleyway. He lay upon a sheet of cast-off cardboard, crumpled in a heap. So ill he could not move. People apparently walked by, eyeing the boy, but for a long time no one moved to help. Under the circumstances, maybe they felt all had been done that could be done.
The boy lay dying. One of the photographers, David Gilkey, took the boy's picture, later saying that the situation was an "evil Catch-22". A better phrase perhaps cannot be found to describe what they witnessed there in that alley. People want to help but they don't know what to do. They do not want to risk getting sick themselves.
By some turn of events, a neighbor took the boy to a local hospital where they had some facility to care for a person sick with Ebola. Fortune turned slightly. There was word that the boy was improving, news that was of no small import in a region so hard hit by a modern plague. Maybe the universe was not such a hard case after all.
But we know different. On August 21st the other photographer, John Moore, spoke with the boy's aunt. She herself and her children were checking into a clinic because they suspected they had contracted the Ebola virus. She told the photographer that the little boy had died of Ebola, as had his mother before him. An unsurprising outcome given the circumstances, we tell ourselves and shrug.
I told myself the same thing. I could not insulate myself from the effects. I heard the news while driving down the highway in air-conditioned comfort, thousands of miles away from a lonely and sick little boy who died because no one could do enough. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, choking down the lump in my throat. It is not hard to imagine that he perhaps had no one to mourn his passing. I did not curse the universe, because I know better. I know the futility of such endeavors from direct experience of the worst it has to offer.
Later, I saw the picture of him in the alley. He had on the red shirt someone had brought him. He was sick, so sick, and I hope he did not die alone. His name was Saah Exco, and he was a little boy who mattered.
09 March 2014
Jesus Christ Movie Star (Sunday Meditation #35)
Is your faith not enough that it takes movies to make it real, or to banish doubts? Belief in heaven, of whatever stripe, seems to me to be the minimum requirement to make it real for the believer. I say this after having seen an ad and two film trailers this week for religious-themed movies, "Son of God", "Noah" and "Heaven Is For Real".
A big Hollywood production is a low benchmark of imprimatur, in my opinion, to make one feel better about choosing to believe. Faith is faith, and it doesn't need a camera or an audience for validation.
A big Hollywood production is a low benchmark of imprimatur, in my opinion, to make one feel better about choosing to believe. Faith is faith, and it doesn't need a camera or an audience for validation.
25 July 2012
Blasphemers Know All The Cool Bands
"Ellis."
"Wake up."
(silence)
"Ellis!" The Inquisitor slams a hand down on the table. "Wake up! We have more to discuss!"
Ellis groaned, and lifted his head up just high enough to peer at the Inquisitor through his swollen left eye. The orbit around hurt like the hell with which he had always been threatened. His right eye stubbornly refused to open, the crust of blood and mucus cemented it shut. He sighed wetly while his head dropped down again. The pain was hot, and the dizziness from the interrogation serums they had forced into his system made him want to puke. Ellis hated puking.
He sighed again, trying to get comfortable. A rope of drool dangled from the corner of Ellis' mouth, thick and bloody. Streams of it had stained his t-shirt, one of Ellis' favorites, the deep purple "Jesus Puppies" concert shirt from their infamous "Kibble Krucifix" tour of three summers back. The front had a gaudy monochrome outline of a mans' body sporting a dog's head. The creature was dressed in a robe and was holding aloft a cross made out of dog biscuits. At his feet lay a semi-circle of smaller dog-headed creatures, prostrate before the dog-man and staring up at the cross with tongues hanging out. The dog-man was breaking off a piece of the cross, hand poised to drop the tidbit in his mouth.
The images were disappearing under a layer of drool and dried blood. Ellis grunted in shock, filled with a surge of anger. The anger gave him the energy to look back up at his bald-headed tormentor. The Inquisitor sat vulture-like, perched on the edge of his chair. A faint sheen of sweat glistened on his shaved head, darkening the tattoos of rank placed there by the Regime. The optics in his eyes swiveled slightly, emitting a faint whirr as the Seeker of Truth studied the boy's face, so distorted by drugs and the "Hands of the Lord".
The slight sneer on his surgically enhanced lip inspired Ellis to spit at it.
The Inquisitor leaned back, with the economical slithery grace of a serpent, to watch the gob of bloody sputum hit the table with a wet smack. He smiled wearily and removed a rag from a box at the end of the table. Ellis noticed that the smile did not reach up to the onyx marbles of the Inquisitor's eyes, who slowly wiped the spittle from the table. He daintily folded the rag and tossed it into a nearby wastebin.
"Ellis. You shouldn't have done that. But I would expect nothing less than vulgarity from a blasphemer such as yourself. Tell me, young man, do look forward to your time in Hell?" the Inquisitor asked.
"It's Mephistophilis," said Ellis, thickly and with a small, twisted smile, "and this is Hell, and I'm not out of it. So don't threaten me with Hell, you tool. And you are going to pay to replace my shirt."
The Inquisitor's eyes widened, a flush sweeping over his head and neck. "Don't you treat me with impudence, little boy, I will MAKE you understand the meaning of Hell!" he roared, standing straight up with his palms flat on the table. The regime-issued black ballistic holy vestments clung to muscles honed by fanatical adherence to the Physical Vespers, and Ellis knew the Inquisitor could probably dislocate every joint in his body without cracking a holy sweat.
The Inquisitor leaned over the table, sneering, his modified ceramic alloy teeth just inches from Ellis' face. The young man leaned back, more to escape the Inquisitor's fetid breath, which reeked of eucalyptus and machine oil. Spit showered Ellis' face as the Avatar of the Regime growled "Don't make it worse for yourself, sinner. Just tell us what your were doing with that crate full of memory we found in the panniers on your zipcycle. You can still repent." Snake eyes scanned Ellis, recording, waiting. Ellis leaned back as far as he could go. He drew in a deep breath.
"I'm telling you nothing. You know why? Because you are a tool. And tools are useless and dumb in the wrong hands. The hands on you are very, very wrong." He lunged forward, swift like a adder, and drove his forehead as hard as he could into the Inquisitor's nose. The sharp crack of bone in meat echoed off the sweating concrete walls of the holding cell, drowned out by the scream of the Inquisitor as he fell back over the chair behind him. His body jerked and twitched, and as Ellis pitched forward in a blackout, he could only hope his strike had hit a control node.
Alarms blared in duet with the wet moans of the Inquisitor. Ellis sprawled unconscious across the table, a thin thread of blood oozing off the table edge to spatter on the floor. Not a single drop made its way onto the image of the dog-man and the puppy disciples eagerly awaiting their kibble.
--
To be continued...
28 July 2011
He Will Not Leave
On my travels to and from Virginia, I am always interested by the number of churches I pass on the route I usually take. There are many, of different stripes of Christianity (I have yet to see any synagogues or mosques) in many buildings ranging from modest structures to authentic Colonial-era churches made of brick and slate. One thing that is common is the number of signs I see, sporting religious messages or homilies, announcing intent or proclaiming an aspect of faith. Most are relatively benign, but this past weekend I saw one that gave me pause and made me wonder. It read:
God loves us all, right? He will take care of us, right? So what do you do when you experience things that seem to be evidence that God has left you? Why would anyone trust a god that proclaims unconditional love for you, yet lets life abuse us at times?
Why would I trust a god like that? Especially knowing that even though He proclaims to love me no matter what, He would leave me because I have reasons to mistrust Him. If mistrust is a human trait, one that God created (because He created us, according to some beliefs), why would He leave us for expressing our humanity? Especially when grounded in very real feelings of anxiety and fear?
I shook my head to clear it, and accelerated down the highway to put some distance between me and doubt. Resolving that conflict would have to wait for another day.
God will not leave those that trust Him.The first thing that occurred to me was the implication: That means that God might leave those that do not trust Him. Which seems to me to be a repudiation of what I have been told is true about God.
God loves us all, right? He will take care of us, right? So what do you do when you experience things that seem to be evidence that God has left you? Why would anyone trust a god that proclaims unconditional love for you, yet lets life abuse us at times?
Why would I trust a god like that? Especially knowing that even though He proclaims to love me no matter what, He would leave me because I have reasons to mistrust Him. If mistrust is a human trait, one that God created (because He created us, according to some beliefs), why would He leave us for expressing our humanity? Especially when grounded in very real feelings of anxiety and fear?
I shook my head to clear it, and accelerated down the highway to put some distance between me and doubt. Resolving that conflict would have to wait for another day.
05 April 2011
Overheard In The Temple: A Short Play
Teacher: "It is our attachments to things that cause us anxiety and grief. We must lose our attachments if we want to find peace."
Student: "If that is so, Master, then perhaps I should lose my attachment to God. Only then will I cease being anxious over wondering if He really loves me."
Teacher: (stunned silence)
Student: (blows out candle; exits)
Student: "If that is so, Master, then perhaps I should lose my attachment to God. Only then will I cease being anxious over wondering if He really loves me."
Teacher: (stunned silence)
26 September 2010
Taking Three
Walk in the woods
Escaping from you
yet the trees: my cathedral
not thinking: my Mass
I gave you five minutes
to get out of my head
Should have been three, yes?
You like threes
Threes are nice, but not all the time
Like today, the third day running.
From you, from creation,
because I beseech, unheard.
Green gold light on decayed trees,
lost in beauty undeniable,
a voice on the breeze
asking what's wrong
Startled glance overhead,
searching the gaps between leaves,
saying, the problem is not belief
The problem is faith.
Escaping from you
yet the trees: my cathedral
not thinking: my Mass
I gave you five minutes
to get out of my head
Should have been three, yes?
You like threes
Threes are nice, but not all the time
Like today, the third day running.
From you, from creation,
because I beseech, unheard.
Green gold light on decayed trees,
lost in beauty undeniable,
a voice on the breeze
asking what's wrong
Startled glance overhead,
searching the gaps between leaves,
saying, the problem is not belief
The problem is faith.
26 March 2010
Channeling Ambrose Bierce
Now, when I talked to God I knew he'd understand
He said, "Stick by my side and I'll be your guiding hand
But don't ask me what I think of you
I might not give the answer that you want me to"*
He said, "Stick by my side and I'll be your guiding hand
But don't ask me what I think of you
I might not give the answer that you want me to"*
I take The Devil's Dictionary with a grain of salt, and as intended, knowing full well that Mr. Bierce was engaging in some top-notch satire. Yet I sometimes wonder if the definitions offered therein may be true.
So much to wrap my head around these days, and in a fit of pessimism I thought:
The tragedy here is not that I do not believe in God...
... the tragedy is that I do.
Assuming I have been given some answers (and I am not convinced of that), I haven't been able to make sense of them. Sucks to be me, I guess.
*Lyrics used without permission: "Oh Well" by Fleetwood Mac
*Lyrics used without permission: "Oh Well" by Fleetwood Mac
06 October 2009
1 down, 6 to go...
...and your pride is here on earth.
I guess the wages of sin pay pretty good, but how are the benefits?.
I guess the wages of sin pay pretty good, but how are the benefits?.
07 April 2009
We Are Sometimes Lemons
“WHEN LIFE HANDS YOU LEMONS, MAKE LEMONADE.”
You’ve seen that overworked, trite little phrase a million times haven’t you? On bumper stickers, t-shirts, and greeting cards. Plastered on a beat-up photocopy of a photocopy with some irritating little graphic and hanging on the pockmarked tack board that is screwed to the wall in the employee break area, hung there by that overly perky office mate with the truly annoying habit of saying things like “Well, now, someone’s got a case of the Mondays!” in that murderously chirpy voice that makes you want to jam pencils in your ears, or run full speed into a brick wall if only it would make them STOPPPPPP…. Yeah, I’m on it, Chirpy McMoron, here’s a big ol’ glass of bitter and sour, just for you.
“Make lemonade”. Sounds great, ha-ha, gee whiz…but totally ignores reality. The cold, uncaring reality that is life sometimes. More precisely, this platitude ignores pain. When handed lemons, make lemonade. Pffttt. Tell that to the displaced refugee living in a camp, running away from machete-wielding thugs calling themselves an “army” protecting “the rightful government”. Begging your pardon, sir, if I give you this glass of imaginary lemonade, sir, please, could you not rape my sister? Or at least not kill my parents?
Hey, Mr. Terrorist-That-Just-Blew-Up-A-Building-And-Killed-People-Who-Didn’t-Deserve-It-And-Spread-Death-And-Misery, by some chance are you thirsty? Really, really thirsty? Are you? You look thirsty. ‘Cause as the son/daughter/father/mother/sister/brother/child of those victims, by some great fortune I have come into possession of this ginormous sack of mighty fine lookin’ lemons, straight off the tree; after I wash the blood off and dress the wounds, how’s about we share a tall cool glass of the finest lemonade on God’s green earth? Nothing better to wash down the big bolus of Pain that was just rammed down my throat. And, hey, killing innocents is thirsty work.
I remember the day I was away at college, and I received a phone call from home, my dad telling me that my beloved G-maw had finally succumbed to the nasty set of cancers that had been eating away at her for months. I remember being in shock, numb to it, not being able to cry until I was actually standing in the church gazing at her casket. The scene repeated itself a few years later, this time it was my uncle, my mother’s younger brother, who had died from HIV infection. I loved both of them dearly; both of them were relatively optimistic people, somewhat accepting of the crap that life had dealt them. They knew there was nothing they could really do to stave off the inevitable.
But at no point in the downward spiral of the awful diseases that ravaged them, took their lives in such nasty fashion, could I conceive of either of them saying “Wow, this sucks, but I think I’ll make a big glass of lemonade. I may be dying but who doesn’t love a cool summer drink?”
Job loss. Car crash. Divorce. Bankruptcy. Loss of a loved one or loved ones. Sorry, mate, not making the connection to refreshment. Ask yourself: how often in life am I the squeezer or that which is being squeezed? No, ‘squeezed’ is too mild a word. ‘Squeeze’ lacks the necessary violence that is implicit here. Crushed is better. Or flattened. Smashed. Pulverized. Words that connote extreme violence or disruption; these are the ones that offer a better fit. Too often in life we are the lemons, the poor bags of juicy pulp that get mangled by circumstance and random nastiness. The result is a rind crushed into a sheet, lifeless, bereft of juice.
A smashed rind: is that what we really want to be? I think not.
If I am going to endure tremendous pain and disruption, I don’t want to be the leavings of a crushed lemon. That would be pathetic and sad. I have to believe there is something better to be had out of all the misery. Otherwise, all the pain and suffering is for naught.
A lemon rind, no. For my pain and suffering, for being trapped between the hammer and the anvil, I expect to be something better. Something better and stronger, perhaps with strongly defined edges. A scalpel or a shield or finely crafted wrought iron gate. Like this one:
You’ve seen that overworked, trite little phrase a million times haven’t you? On bumper stickers, t-shirts, and greeting cards. Plastered on a beat-up photocopy of a photocopy with some irritating little graphic and hanging on the pockmarked tack board that is screwed to the wall in the employee break area, hung there by that overly perky office mate with the truly annoying habit of saying things like “Well, now, someone’s got a case of the Mondays!” in that murderously chirpy voice that makes you want to jam pencils in your ears, or run full speed into a brick wall if only it would make them STOPPPPPP…. Yeah, I’m on it, Chirpy McMoron, here’s a big ol’ glass of bitter and sour, just for you.
“Make lemonade”. Sounds great, ha-ha, gee whiz…but totally ignores reality. The cold, uncaring reality that is life sometimes. More precisely, this platitude ignores pain. When handed lemons, make lemonade. Pffttt. Tell that to the displaced refugee living in a camp, running away from machete-wielding thugs calling themselves an “army” protecting “the rightful government”. Begging your pardon, sir, if I give you this glass of imaginary lemonade, sir, please, could you not rape my sister? Or at least not kill my parents?
Hey, Mr. Terrorist-That-Just-Blew-Up-A-Building-And-Killed-People-Who-Didn’t-Deserve-It-And-Spread-Death-And-Misery, by some chance are you thirsty? Really, really thirsty? Are you? You look thirsty. ‘Cause as the son/daughter/father/mother/sister/brother/child of those victims, by some great fortune I have come into possession of this ginormous sack of mighty fine lookin’ lemons, straight off the tree; after I wash the blood off and dress the wounds, how’s about we share a tall cool glass of the finest lemonade on God’s green earth? Nothing better to wash down the big bolus of Pain that was just rammed down my throat. And, hey, killing innocents is thirsty work.
I remember the day I was away at college, and I received a phone call from home, my dad telling me that my beloved G-maw had finally succumbed to the nasty set of cancers that had been eating away at her for months. I remember being in shock, numb to it, not being able to cry until I was actually standing in the church gazing at her casket. The scene repeated itself a few years later, this time it was my uncle, my mother’s younger brother, who had died from HIV infection. I loved both of them dearly; both of them were relatively optimistic people, somewhat accepting of the crap that life had dealt them. They knew there was nothing they could really do to stave off the inevitable.
But at no point in the downward spiral of the awful diseases that ravaged them, took their lives in such nasty fashion, could I conceive of either of them saying “Wow, this sucks, but I think I’ll make a big glass of lemonade. I may be dying but who doesn’t love a cool summer drink?”
Job loss. Car crash. Divorce. Bankruptcy. Loss of a loved one or loved ones. Sorry, mate, not making the connection to refreshment. Ask yourself: how often in life am I the squeezer or that which is being squeezed? No, ‘squeezed’ is too mild a word. ‘Squeeze’ lacks the necessary violence that is implicit here. Crushed is better. Or flattened. Smashed. Pulverized. Words that connote extreme violence or disruption; these are the ones that offer a better fit. Too often in life we are the lemons, the poor bags of juicy pulp that get mangled by circumstance and random nastiness. The result is a rind crushed into a sheet, lifeless, bereft of juice.
A smashed rind: is that what we really want to be? I think not.
If I am going to endure tremendous pain and disruption, I don’t want to be the leavings of a crushed lemon. That would be pathetic and sad. I have to believe there is something better to be had out of all the misery. Otherwise, all the pain and suffering is for naught.
A lemon rind, no. For my pain and suffering, for being trapped between the hammer and the anvil, I expect to be something better. Something better and stronger, perhaps with strongly defined edges. A scalpel or a shield or finely crafted wrought iron gate. Like this one:
With all due respect to the Hallmark crowd, lemonade is for pussies. Gimme wrought iron, instead.
15 January 2009
In Motorhead We Trust
Synchronicity. Chaos theory. Strange attractors. And possibly my new favorite theory that I don’t really understand, but may be running my life: Quantum entanglement, which allows for the possibility for objects separated in space to have physical effects on each other with no known mediator of the action (like gravity, as an example). These are all ideas and theories that take on the Herculean task of trying to make sense of the mysterious behaviors and events in the Universe that have such a far-reaching effect on how our lives unfold. From the simple level of “Why did that person say that to me?” up to the complexities of the turbulence at the tip of an airplane wing, the unseen and unknown can and do make our lives interesting. Sometimes, they can make us feel glad to be alive.
Recently I let slip, in a fit of fatigue or unresolved anger or perhaps unleashed honesty, some of my dissatisfactions with the influence that certain Unknowns have had on the course of my life. I look on it as being similar to punching a hole in a gas line that I knew was there, but not in the location I thought. A huge gas leak is an emergency situation with far-reaching implications and must be dealt with immediately to avoid further damage and heartache. Having punched the hole with my own errant backhoe, I immediately switched into ‘hazmat cleanup’ mode scrambling to figure out a way to stop the leak and get the mess cleaned up. In the midst of those efforts I was blessed to receive plenty of advice and suggestions on what to do, from people I have not met or seen in the physical world. Some of these offerings were sympathetic, some practical, some “tough love”, and all were useful in some capacity. I am grateful to have been able to receive it all.
Some of the correspondences I have had began to stand out in particular, as they relate to my efforts to get some peace of mind. And in some ways, they seemed almost accidental as to how I came across them in my search for information. I call it a search for information, but in some cases in was more of a search for non-information, more a search for relief and distraction. I tell you, my head hurt, I was stressing out so much. One of the items I came across in my fevered trips through the electron cloud that is the internet was a post by my new friend The Mister, entitled “Contradictions” (click it, read it, it’s good) in which he offers up three contradictions he encountered in a single day, that made him think deeply about the state of things. It made me think deeply about the state of things too, especially Contradiction #3, which I will quote from:
“How can it be that I love Jesus and Motörhead too?”
There is much more to it than that sentence alone, but it knocked my hand out from under my chin, leaving me to smack my face on the table. How indeed? Well, it got me to thinking (will I ever learn?) so I went back and reread the comments on the post that had generated all of this navel gazing, wherein I realized there was another gem from The Mister:
“I wish your path had run in a different direction. But if it had, would I have ever read your words?”
Another gobsmack in a week full of them. I should also point out that The Mister’s other half, The Missus, had left a comment that dovetailed nicely with what I just read. All of this had the effect of making me realize that I was indeed, a very fortunate man, and I had no idea. Here I was agonizing over God or the lack thereof, and the confusion and betrayal I had felt, realizing the sheer difficulty I had with trying to understand the what and the why.
Remember what I said about strange attractors and quantum entanglement? I didn’t realize it, but I was already experimenting with those concepts. I hemmed and hawed, turning those remarks over and over in my head. Finally, after a lot of hesitation, I sent Mister and Missus and e-mail with some thoughts about what had been said. I don’t often do that, but in this case it felt like it made sense.* The replies I received dispelled any misgivings I had about a cold contact like that, and I was very glad I had decided to reach out.
Recently I let slip, in a fit of fatigue or unresolved anger or perhaps unleashed honesty, some of my dissatisfactions with the influence that certain Unknowns have had on the course of my life. I look on it as being similar to punching a hole in a gas line that I knew was there, but not in the location I thought. A huge gas leak is an emergency situation with far-reaching implications and must be dealt with immediately to avoid further damage and heartache. Having punched the hole with my own errant backhoe, I immediately switched into ‘hazmat cleanup’ mode scrambling to figure out a way to stop the leak and get the mess cleaned up. In the midst of those efforts I was blessed to receive plenty of advice and suggestions on what to do, from people I have not met or seen in the physical world. Some of these offerings were sympathetic, some practical, some “tough love”, and all were useful in some capacity. I am grateful to have been able to receive it all.
Some of the correspondences I have had began to stand out in particular, as they relate to my efforts to get some peace of mind. And in some ways, they seemed almost accidental as to how I came across them in my search for information. I call it a search for information, but in some cases in was more of a search for non-information, more a search for relief and distraction. I tell you, my head hurt, I was stressing out so much. One of the items I came across in my fevered trips through the electron cloud that is the internet was a post by my new friend The Mister, entitled “Contradictions” (click it, read it, it’s good) in which he offers up three contradictions he encountered in a single day, that made him think deeply about the state of things. It made me think deeply about the state of things too, especially Contradiction #3, which I will quote from:
“How can it be that I love Jesus and Motörhead too?”
There is much more to it than that sentence alone, but it knocked my hand out from under my chin, leaving me to smack my face on the table. How indeed? Well, it got me to thinking (will I ever learn?) so I went back and reread the comments on the post that had generated all of this navel gazing, wherein I realized there was another gem from The Mister:
“I wish your path had run in a different direction. But if it had, would I have ever read your words?”
Another gobsmack in a week full of them. I should also point out that The Mister’s other half, The Missus, had left a comment that dovetailed nicely with what I just read. All of this had the effect of making me realize that I was indeed, a very fortunate man, and I had no idea. Here I was agonizing over God or the lack thereof, and the confusion and betrayal I had felt, realizing the sheer difficulty I had with trying to understand the what and the why.
Remember what I said about strange attractors and quantum entanglement? I didn’t realize it, but I was already experimenting with those concepts. I hemmed and hawed, turning those remarks over and over in my head. Finally, after a lot of hesitation, I sent Mister and Missus and e-mail with some thoughts about what had been said. I don’t often do that, but in this case it felt like it made sense.* The replies I received dispelled any misgivings I had about a cold contact like that, and I was very glad I had decided to reach out.
We covered a lot of ground in that exchange, far too much to discuss in this post. But one of the things that really grabbed me was related to the Motorhead quote above, and it was about music. The music that we listened to at various times in our lives and what it means given the context of our circumstances. It turns out Mister and I both have a penchant for driving home blasting the music LOUD and singing (shouting) the lyrics, just because we feel the need. I recalled something similar in my Braino post from November, and I had been wondering, just like Mister, how do I reconcile that with trying to be close to God, knowing that the two things seemed to be at odds with one another? Traditional takes on religion don’t look favorably on folks who like to sing ‘Face Pollution’ or ‘All Gone to Hell’. I never was comfortable with that gap myself, so I stayed on one side of it.
As it turns out, there does not have to be a gap. What I learned, as The Mister and The Missus so eloquently explained to me, is that you can have God in you and you can listen to the music you like, just because you like it**. Doing so is not incompatible with the idea of belief in God. This is a simplification of what we discussed; the music is really just a stand in for a set of larger issues that speak to personality, attitude and (most importantly) what is in your heart. Belief does not equate with repudiation of what you are or were. It matters greatly in how you look at it, what you choose to do with it.
I cannot say that I had some great ‘conversion’, that I was flooded with Grace and ended up dancing down the street singing praises at the top of my lungs. As The Mister said to me, it isn’t that simple, and these things happen bit by bit. I believe he is right. This is good advice. I may not be a convert now and maybe never, but it is getting me closer to understanding what I want to know about God. As my friend cIII at The Goat and Tater said:
“…every time you're really down, you know, really deep in the fucking Weeds, folk will sometimes give advice. and they give this Advice a definition. Defining a solution to a problem makes it an Availability.”
True dat. Availability to a solution. This is what I am looking for, and I am getting it. Of course, I don’t have the total solution, not yet, maybe never will. It is the search that is crucial. I don’t mind searching, I’ve been doing it all my life, and I’m good at it.
Strange attractors. Quantum entanglement. Unseen forces acting on me at a distance. That sounds suspiciously like…God? Maybe. More likely, it is those chance encounters, those songs heard in passing, those voices that you hear when you decide to quit building walls and start opening doors: These are the things that allow for the possibility of grace. One day, it may happen to me. In the meantime, I’ll crank up the radio, stick my head out the window and shout the songs to my heart’s content. I’ll be cruising the highway and flying my freak flag, emblazoned with a guitar and the words “IN MOTORHEAD WE TRUST”.
*I also sent e-mails to a number of other folks on the same topics. For the record they all have been forthright, honest, and extremely generous with their time. Another debt that I am scratching my head as to how to repay. Special blessings to Braja and ChurchPunkMom!
** I also had this insight from my discussions with the aforementioned CPM.
12 January 2009
You Say Your Last Name Isn't Damnit?
Mr. God
Suite #∞
Everywhere, Universe
Dear God/Allah/Yhwh, etc.:
Do you mind if I call you just ‘God’? Seems easier that way, plus it’s all Judeo-Christian and stuff. Yeah, that’ll do, seeing as I have to go with what I know, and what I know is a lot of stuff I have forgotten about being a Christian. Plus, who spells their name without any vowels at all? Huh? Who does that?
Oh. That’s right. You do. Another example of something that is supposed to be deep, but really just doesn’t make sense at all. Jeez, talk about the name fitting the thing being named.
Writing this letter seems nonsensical too, so I guess were even in some way. After all, I don’t believe in You, do I? I don’t think I do. No, I am confused about whether I do. Believe in You, that is. I believe I am writing to You, I can tell because I am hitting the keys right now. Hitting the keys is one if the indisputable facts of my existence. I can hear the clickclickclicketyclick and I can see the words forming on the screen. So there.
I don’t really know why I am writing to you. It isn’t like you have paid attention to me before whenever I have asked you for some of your time or a blessing. I won’t count praying for you to pleasepleasePLEASE get the prettiest girl at Portsmouth Catholic to dance with me, or letting Ravens win the Super Bowl. (For the record, G-money, she DID dance with me. But seven years between Super Bowls? Not cool, dude). Praying for stuff like that now, well, that seems a bit like masturbation: great fun for the person involved but ultimately it doesn’t produce life.
Life. I don’t quite understand it. And the one entity in this effed up multiverse who I thought could help me figure it out doesn’t return my calls. Yeah, You are a busy dude, I know. Don’t you have assistants for this stuff? You are omniscient and omnipotent and you can’t take FIVE minutes and give me a hollaback? My local DMV looks like a textbook on customer service compared to You. People keep telling me to give you a shout out, good things will happen, but even You have to admit, it ain’t looking great.
“Either He doesn’t exist, or He is unimaginably cruel” I heard that on a television show, one of those one hour hospital dramas, and it has stuck in my head ever since. I love a good joke, I’m sure you do as well. Knowing that I have heard some of the most profound statements ever from something as mundane as television makes me laugh like a hyena. Funny, yes?
So which is it, Mr. God? Non-existent or unimaginably cruel?
There is no shortage of reasons to believe you don’t exist. All I have to do is read the daily news to see all the misery and carnage going on in the world. And no, you don’t get off the hook by blaming it all on the bloody-mindedness of human beings. If You did create us in Your image (which may have been a huge mistake) and You created all things, then You created evil and pain and war and sickness. You created the Ebola virus, for God’s sa--, for PETE’S sake! What a hoot, dying by having your insides liquefy and shooting out of every orifice. Of course, if You don’t exist, then that just falls under the heading of Random Bad Shit That Happens. There are some advantages for not having You exist, I see. No Judgement Day, no being lorded over by the All-Powerful Father, and a huge laugh when certain religious extremists go to Meet Their Maker only to find the house is empty and nobody was ever home. Exquisite irony, don’t you think? Your nonexistence also confers upon me some security. I no longer have to worry about all the times I took Your name in vain. I no longer have to worry about all those bad things I said about you. Friends and family can sit near me without fear of being caught in the blast radius should finally decide to extract the ol’ Divine Vengeance (‘vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord, blah, yadda, blah..’) on me the blasphemer. Good, no penalties for having called you a liar and a hypocrite and a bastard. I guess that takes the sting out of being told You love me; it was never true because You were never true.
Maybe what really bothers me about Your apparent non-existence is all the wasted energy and effort I put forth in praying to You. All that crying I did. The frantic prayers for help as we drove to the hospital the night my daughter died. The down on my knees, pounding the floor in the NICU hallway BEGGING you to please let my son live when his lungs started to fail. All for nought, as You must know. Led me to believe that all the praying I did, when their Mom was so sick and pre-eclampsic, was just a palliative, that it ended up being dumb luck after all. I could have used all the energy I burned to better keep from losing my shit.
I did lose my shit. You know that, assuming You exist and that You care.
Which brings us to unimaginable cruelty. Oh my G--, I mean, wow look at all the reasons to believe this! You give us brains and heart and feelings and then cancer and war and good people dying of horrible causes, and You expect me to believe in Your infinite goodness? As we used to say back in the day, what kinda bullshit is THAT? Yes, here my Son, take this most precious gift of life…PSYCH! (HaHaHaHa). What is the point of all that? I cannot believe, do not want to believe it was simply to teach me a lesson and make me appreciate the good things that do exist in life. I DO NOT NEED A BRANDING IRON ON THE ASS TO MAKE ME REALIZE THAT FLOWERS ARE BEAUTIFUL. Remember those brains and reason you gave me? Well, I am many things but I am not stupid. Allowing my wife to become dangerously ill, forcing my kids into emergency delivery, letting them live an existence of days only to have them die, and then expecting me to believe it was all part of a PLAN? A PLAN? You sick fuck. The Almighty Father. Pffffttt. If my earthly father had treated me the way You have treated me, I don’t think there is a jury in the world that wouldn’t have convicted him of child abuse and mental cruelty.
I know what You are thinking. Well, I can guess, anyway. A short time later, I was graced with the presence of my Wee Lass. A more beautiful child I have never seen, and that proves God loves me. See, He answered my prayers. Right?
Wrong. A little secret You probably already know: when I found out The Spouse was preggers with Wee Lass, my mind went blank. I kept it that way until the day she was born. I avoided praying, asking for anything, as long as I could because I couldn’t have borne the crushing pain if something had gone wrong. I couldn’t have taken having asked for help a second time only to be denied yet again. I had no energy to put faith in an entity that was just going to severely fuck with my head. In that case, I don’t know if I can give you credit for anything. My little way of sticking my finger in your eye for being so abusive.
Here’s a quote from a famous Italian dude, name of Galileo, perhaps you have heard of him:
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” Amen to that, brother! (amen. That’s a little sarcastic humor for You. Thought You’d appreciate that). See, the problem is, I have been trying to use my sense, reason and intellect to understand You. But nothing is making all that much sense, no matter how hard I try.
It reminds me of the miniature train set my brother and I had when we were kids. It was one of those little tiny ones. Cool looking engines about the size of a Snickers bar, tiny tracks, the whole bit. I loved watching that train go around the track. Big Bro and I even staged the occasional train wreck with Matchbox cars. Good times. But my big headed self was mighty curious: just how did something so small do what it did? How did it work? I really wanted to know. So one day, I raided Dad’s tool boxes and got a tiny little screwdriver. I sat down and disassembled that miniature engine, one tiny bit at a time. I was fascinated. The screws and wires and gears were so small and compact. Everything fit together and it all worked. I was delighted to see the mystery revealed!
The real problem came when I went to put it back together: I couldn’t do it. In my wonder I hadn’t thought to keep track of all the screws and wires and how they all fit. I ruined that engine. And as you may know, Dad was pretty pissed. Those engines weren’t cheap, and as the old man kept reminding me “Do you think I shit twenty-dollar bills?”. So I learned a valuable lesson.
Life is like that train set to me. Amazing, intricate, complex, beautiful. But unlike life, the train parts were all there in front of me. There really was no mystery, I just failed to keep track of all the parts. You are a different story. Put You together? I don’t even know how to take You apart! Where do I start, where’s my screwdriver?
Ah, enough. I have taken up too much of Your time already. All I can say is this:
I hate You for what happened to us.
I love You because You are the only place I have to turn.
The problem is I don’t know if I believe in You. What am I supposed to do with that?
Suite #∞
Everywhere, Universe
Dear God/Allah/Yhwh, etc.:
Do you mind if I call you just ‘God’? Seems easier that way, plus it’s all Judeo-Christian and stuff. Yeah, that’ll do, seeing as I have to go with what I know, and what I know is a lot of stuff I have forgotten about being a Christian. Plus, who spells their name without any vowels at all? Huh? Who does that?
Oh. That’s right. You do. Another example of something that is supposed to be deep, but really just doesn’t make sense at all. Jeez, talk about the name fitting the thing being named.
Writing this letter seems nonsensical too, so I guess were even in some way. After all, I don’t believe in You, do I? I don’t think I do. No, I am confused about whether I do. Believe in You, that is. I believe I am writing to You, I can tell because I am hitting the keys right now. Hitting the keys is one if the indisputable facts of my existence. I can hear the clickclickclicketyclick and I can see the words forming on the screen. So there.
I don’t really know why I am writing to you. It isn’t like you have paid attention to me before whenever I have asked you for some of your time or a blessing. I won’t count praying for you to pleasepleasePLEASE get the prettiest girl at Portsmouth Catholic to dance with me, or letting Ravens win the Super Bowl. (For the record, G-money, she DID dance with me. But seven years between Super Bowls? Not cool, dude). Praying for stuff like that now, well, that seems a bit like masturbation: great fun for the person involved but ultimately it doesn’t produce life.
Life. I don’t quite understand it. And the one entity in this effed up multiverse who I thought could help me figure it out doesn’t return my calls. Yeah, You are a busy dude, I know. Don’t you have assistants for this stuff? You are omniscient and omnipotent and you can’t take FIVE minutes and give me a hollaback? My local DMV looks like a textbook on customer service compared to You. People keep telling me to give you a shout out, good things will happen, but even You have to admit, it ain’t looking great.
“Either He doesn’t exist, or He is unimaginably cruel” I heard that on a television show, one of those one hour hospital dramas, and it has stuck in my head ever since. I love a good joke, I’m sure you do as well. Knowing that I have heard some of the most profound statements ever from something as mundane as television makes me laugh like a hyena. Funny, yes?
So which is it, Mr. God? Non-existent or unimaginably cruel?
There is no shortage of reasons to believe you don’t exist. All I have to do is read the daily news to see all the misery and carnage going on in the world. And no, you don’t get off the hook by blaming it all on the bloody-mindedness of human beings. If You did create us in Your image (which may have been a huge mistake) and You created all things, then You created evil and pain and war and sickness. You created the Ebola virus, for God’s sa--, for PETE’S sake! What a hoot, dying by having your insides liquefy and shooting out of every orifice. Of course, if You don’t exist, then that just falls under the heading of Random Bad Shit That Happens. There are some advantages for not having You exist, I see. No Judgement Day, no being lorded over by the All-Powerful Father, and a huge laugh when certain religious extremists go to Meet Their Maker only to find the house is empty and nobody was ever home. Exquisite irony, don’t you think? Your nonexistence also confers upon me some security. I no longer have to worry about all the times I took Your name in vain. I no longer have to worry about all those bad things I said about you. Friends and family can sit near me without fear of being caught in the blast radius should finally decide to extract the ol’ Divine Vengeance (‘vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord, blah, yadda, blah..’) on me the blasphemer. Good, no penalties for having called you a liar and a hypocrite and a bastard. I guess that takes the sting out of being told You love me; it was never true because You were never true.
Maybe what really bothers me about Your apparent non-existence is all the wasted energy and effort I put forth in praying to You. All that crying I did. The frantic prayers for help as we drove to the hospital the night my daughter died. The down on my knees, pounding the floor in the NICU hallway BEGGING you to please let my son live when his lungs started to fail. All for nought, as You must know. Led me to believe that all the praying I did, when their Mom was so sick and pre-eclampsic, was just a palliative, that it ended up being dumb luck after all. I could have used all the energy I burned to better keep from losing my shit.
I did lose my shit. You know that, assuming You exist and that You care.
Which brings us to unimaginable cruelty. Oh my G--, I mean, wow look at all the reasons to believe this! You give us brains and heart and feelings and then cancer and war and good people dying of horrible causes, and You expect me to believe in Your infinite goodness? As we used to say back in the day, what kinda bullshit is THAT? Yes, here my Son, take this most precious gift of life…PSYCH! (HaHaHaHa). What is the point of all that? I cannot believe, do not want to believe it was simply to teach me a lesson and make me appreciate the good things that do exist in life. I DO NOT NEED A BRANDING IRON ON THE ASS TO MAKE ME REALIZE THAT FLOWERS ARE BEAUTIFUL. Remember those brains and reason you gave me? Well, I am many things but I am not stupid. Allowing my wife to become dangerously ill, forcing my kids into emergency delivery, letting them live an existence of days only to have them die, and then expecting me to believe it was all part of a PLAN? A PLAN? You sick fuck. The Almighty Father. Pffffttt. If my earthly father had treated me the way You have treated me, I don’t think there is a jury in the world that wouldn’t have convicted him of child abuse and mental cruelty.
I know what You are thinking. Well, I can guess, anyway. A short time later, I was graced with the presence of my Wee Lass. A more beautiful child I have never seen, and that proves God loves me. See, He answered my prayers. Right?
Wrong. A little secret You probably already know: when I found out The Spouse was preggers with Wee Lass, my mind went blank. I kept it that way until the day she was born. I avoided praying, asking for anything, as long as I could because I couldn’t have borne the crushing pain if something had gone wrong. I couldn’t have taken having asked for help a second time only to be denied yet again. I had no energy to put faith in an entity that was just going to severely fuck with my head. In that case, I don’t know if I can give you credit for anything. My little way of sticking my finger in your eye for being so abusive.
Here’s a quote from a famous Italian dude, name of Galileo, perhaps you have heard of him:
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” Amen to that, brother! (amen. That’s a little sarcastic humor for You. Thought You’d appreciate that). See, the problem is, I have been trying to use my sense, reason and intellect to understand You. But nothing is making all that much sense, no matter how hard I try.
It reminds me of the miniature train set my brother and I had when we were kids. It was one of those little tiny ones. Cool looking engines about the size of a Snickers bar, tiny tracks, the whole bit. I loved watching that train go around the track. Big Bro and I even staged the occasional train wreck with Matchbox cars. Good times. But my big headed self was mighty curious: just how did something so small do what it did? How did it work? I really wanted to know. So one day, I raided Dad’s tool boxes and got a tiny little screwdriver. I sat down and disassembled that miniature engine, one tiny bit at a time. I was fascinated. The screws and wires and gears were so small and compact. Everything fit together and it all worked. I was delighted to see the mystery revealed!
The real problem came when I went to put it back together: I couldn’t do it. In my wonder I hadn’t thought to keep track of all the screws and wires and how they all fit. I ruined that engine. And as you may know, Dad was pretty pissed. Those engines weren’t cheap, and as the old man kept reminding me “Do you think I shit twenty-dollar bills?”. So I learned a valuable lesson.
Life is like that train set to me. Amazing, intricate, complex, beautiful. But unlike life, the train parts were all there in front of me. There really was no mystery, I just failed to keep track of all the parts. You are a different story. Put You together? I don’t even know how to take You apart! Where do I start, where’s my screwdriver?
Ah, enough. I have taken up too much of Your time already. All I can say is this:
I hate You for what happened to us.
I love You because You are the only place I have to turn.
The problem is I don’t know if I believe in You. What am I supposed to do with that?
I look forward to your response.
Peace,
Me
(So there it is: my 100th post in 100 days. Can you believe it? I can barely get my head around it. I am exhausted. I know the rule of thumb is to do a “100 Things About Me” on this occasion, but anyone who read my post of yesterday will probably understand why I didn’t do it that way. Perhaps later.
I cannot let this pass without mentioning the earthly impetus behind this post. The idea of it has been in my head for a long time, on the order of years. But it took some lovely ladies to kick me in the rear and get the boulder rolling. So I’d like to especially thank Charmaine (for the gentle encouragement), ChurchPunkMom (for making me really think about it) and Heather (for giving my Cúchulainn plenty of reasons to keep getting in the chariot). What can I say? I am a sucker for pretty Irish lasses. Thank you all so much, from the bottom of my heart.)
Peace,
Me
(So there it is: my 100th post in 100 days. Can you believe it? I can barely get my head around it. I am exhausted. I know the rule of thumb is to do a “100 Things About Me” on this occasion, but anyone who read my post of yesterday will probably understand why I didn’t do it that way. Perhaps later.
I cannot let this pass without mentioning the earthly impetus behind this post. The idea of it has been in my head for a long time, on the order of years. But it took some lovely ladies to kick me in the rear and get the boulder rolling. So I’d like to especially thank Charmaine (for the gentle encouragement), ChurchPunkMom (for making me really think about it) and Heather (for giving my Cúchulainn plenty of reasons to keep getting in the chariot). What can I say? I am a sucker for pretty Irish lasses. Thank you all so much, from the bottom of my heart.)
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