Rescuing the non-Lebanese

Last night my Internet news page showed a picture of an American family trapped in Lebanon holding up signs and passports. It was a very moving picture and I feel for the family. Their ordeal must be terrible and frightening. But as I looked, I couldn't help but think, what about all of the innocent Lebanese civilians who are not able to leave? Are they not trapped, too? Trapped with no embassy to appeal to, no government that can intervene and whisk them away.

Are the Lebanese people surely not as innocent and deserving as all of those non-Lebanese nationals holding up their passorts showing the world that they deserve to leave because they are not from that country? Get me out, they seem to be saying. Take me away. I don't deserve this. This isn't my war.

Well, plenty of Lebanese are feeling those same feelings. And we may not be able to do much from far away, but there is one small and easy thing anyone who is reading this right now can and absolutely should do: sign an Internet petition asking--demanding--that the world recognize that hundreds of innocents--innocents who cannot escape the bombing--are being killed and maimed.

Stress dreams

I think I must be reaching some sort of inner peace in my dreamlife. Last night I had stress dreams--I've had them all my life at various, busy times--but for the first time ever, they weren't stressful. Let me explain.

In my younger years, my stress dreams corresponded (loosely) to the stresses in my life at the time:

1)In my thirties, I had car crash dreams in which I died, but my children didn't. I was glad they had survived, but devastated that I wouldn't be there to raise them, that they were all alone. For the first time, I feared my mortality--not for myself, but for those small innocents who depended on me.

2) In my twenties, I was most often chased by an angry, hairy, knife-wielding madman when I was wearing the equivalent of big lead boots. To make matters worse, the dream often ended when I had just about completely wriggled under the fence (i.e. reached safety) and he caught my ankle and yanked me back. Brrr!

3) In my teens, I remember a recurring stress dream that tore me up. I was being followed by a three-legged dog who needed help. I desperately wanted to help him, but I couldn't, so I tried to run away, instead. I would run for a mile, swim a river, scale a mountain, and push through a thick forest only to turn around and there that dog still was, quietly wanting help. It's humorous in the retelling, but the dream was awful.

4) In my even younger years I was usually in school, missing some sort of essential thing...like pants. Miraculously, I had left home, gotten on the bus, walked the halls, and made it to my desk without anyone noticing, but suddenly I knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the minute I stood up, all eyes would be on my naked arse. It was mortifying and maddening. Should I stay seated after the bell and draw attention to myself? Stand, be cool, and hope people continued not to notice? Attempt to strategically place my books? Oh, what to do?

Okay, so my stress dreams have clearly evolved. And last night? I was juggling eggs. Okay, not juggling exactly...rather, carrying eggs. But there were way too many to carry easily, so in effect I was juggling them. And dropping them. (Whoops. Splat! Damn.) But the funniest part of this, and why I feel so calm today, is that in my dream I was coaching myself. I was saying things like, "They're just eggs, Mare. Don't worry about it. They cost, what, ten cents a piece? You could drop a dozen if you wanted. It's okay. You're doing the best you can."

Now. Wasn't that nice of me? To calm my dreaming self, within my dream? Nice to know my subconsious is looking out for me. Today, I am at peace. They really are all just eggs.

What morality is not...

It is not invading a country and killing a hundred thousand of its citizens for something that turns out not to exist.


It is not insisting on the sanctity of a blastula of cells when millions of already born children are starving and dying all over the world.


It is not charging two loving people who happen to be the same sex and want to make a life together with a crime.


It is not hiding behind the flag and never admitting you've made a mistake.


It is not giving tax breaks to the wealthy while you brainwash those who are struggling to make ends meet that it is in their best interests.


It is not controlling the media to spew your particular brand of patriotic religiosity and clogging the airways with hate-mongering extremist views.


It is not calling dissenters unpatriotic for simply wondering if there might not be a better way to do things.


It is not rolling back environmental standards and polluting the earth for the benefit of large corporations.


It is not seeing everything in black and white, regardless of the circumstances.


It is not calling yourself moral when you are anything but.

Christianity—Lite: Fewer carbs for those who don't care to think

Privately, I consider myself a Christian, but I am embarrassed to admit it publicly. I am embarrassed because the modern face of Christianity has changed. Today, the most frequently seen Christians are the religious zealots who wave angry signs in the streets, who cry over burning candles at vigils for people they have never met while television cameras roll, who flock in droves to interfere in the very private, difficult, life-and-death decisions of individuals and who generally clamor for publicity and attention at every turn.

I consider myself a reasoned, thinking individual, and those Christians--with their angry certainty, with their lack of logic, with their holier-than-thou attitudes--alienate me from my faith.

I imagine this is somewhat like the feeling a moderate Muslim must have for the men who flew planes into the Twin Towers in New York City.

When I read about Christians who lie in wait for a doctor who performs abortions, with the scope of a rifle pointed toward the door of his family home, or who threaten the judge in the Terry Schaivo case with death for simply doing his job—upholding the law of the land—I feel as if I must not be a Christian, because I could not kill to advance the cause of my religion, my religion, whose highest tenet is “Thou shalt not kill.”

God gave us minds. He intended us to use them. Just why are so many Americans adopting issues with a black-and-white mentality that would shame the reasoned, thinking men who founded this great country of ours—founded it with religious freedom as one of its main goals?

More importantly, why are we moderates not speaking out and telling those extreme Christians that they do not follow the teachings of our God? Why are we letting them speak for us, letting them be the mutated faces of modern Christianity? We’ve decried the moderate Muslims who failed to publicly condemn the terrorists, yet we are doing the very same thing in our own country every time we say nothing when an abortion provider dies at the hands of a Christian extremist. These fundamentalist, extremist Christians are stealing my religion. They are taking it and twisting it to their purposes in exactly the same way the Muslim terrorists have twisted the gentle, peace-loving religion of Islam. And it is wrong.

Any time religion turns into war, it is wrong.

Thoughts on Government and Religion

I fear for the future of my country. And I mean this in a sincere, patriotic sense. I may be a die-hard liberal, but I can still love my country, even as I disagree with many of its policies. I can be grateful to the many men and women who have given their lives in service of our country. I, too, have served my country on the home front, as the spouse of a military member. I have seen and lived sacrifice. I believe in democracy.

In order for a true democracy to thrive, it cannot be static. It cannot afford to rest on its laurels, smug in the knowledge that all issues have been debated and solved. The very founding fathers we idolize were themselves questioning men. They were riddled with doubt and concern and knew full well that any document they created would need to be flexible and adaptable if it were to remain relevant.

The sense I get from the current administration, though, is that questioning and soul-searching are signs of weakness. Personally? I believe the opposite: that he who continually questions and seeks answers is strong. It is only the ill-informed, insecure bully who takes a position and then unwaveringly pushes it down the throats of others.

My current fear for my country comes mostly from living under leaders who insist--without question, or even room for discussion--that they are right. Leaders who believe that God has told them what the country needs. Yes, the founding fathers believed in God, but I do not believe that the founding fathers held the radical fundamental view that they could speak directly to God and receive a definitive answer. That requires a level of arrogance that I don't believe they possessed. For our current leadership to refer back to the founding fathers as an example of why God should be in government is faulty logic. It's not apples and apples.

George Bush's God--from whom he openly professes to seek guidance--is not an example of the same God:worshiper relationship that the founding fathers enjoyed. The "personal relationship with God" is a modern Christian construct, and one that I submit would not have gone over well with our Anglican/Episcopal forefathers. Can you imagine George Washington announcing, "I've spoken with God, and I believe I know what He wants me to do"? That is not the language of a statesman. That's the language of a demagogue. That comes from someone who has co-opted the notion of God for his own purposes. Who invokes an all-powerful entity to rationalize decisions that might otherwise prompt questions. It is a way to close discussion: God--via George Bush--has spoken. You are either with God or against Him. End of discussion.

Drawing that sort of politico-religious "line in the sand" demonstrates a level of passionate involvement and certainty of belief that can be very attractive. It can also be very dangerous. I worry every time I see another mammoth, evangelical church sending its scaffolding into the sky. I worry because such places--with their certainty of belief--have come to symbolize a passionate zeal and a lack of reasoned thinking. A "feed me" spiritual mentality that requires no work on the part of the individual, encouraging, instead, a childlike passivity wherein all decisions are made by praying or by rote.

Whatever happened to the dictum, "The Lord helps those who help themselves?" Is that no longer true? Must we pray before we take any action, no matter how trivial? Did the Lord not give us brains and a conscience to make a few decisions on our own? Omniscience aside, wouldn't you be more than a little annoyed if your grown children called home several times a day, every day, to ask you to tell them what they should do?

Perhaps I am simply too logical. No matter how I try, I cannot see the logic behind killing a doctor who performs abortions as a way to show respect for life. Neither can I understand the money, time, and energy expended to keep a feeding tube in a long-brain-dead woman when hundreds of children die every day in sub-Saharan Africa for want of food.

A recent article in my local paper showed a photo of 500+ worshipers in a newly constructed mega-church in my area. Worship there is piped from this vast arena into the homes of the faithful across Western New York and the world. A rock band at the altar plays inspirational music and the pastor struts back and forth, handsome, charismatic and CERTAIN and the congregants lift their faces heavenward, features screwed into grimaces of ecstasy--an intense, passionate pain.

And I wonder if this is not the appeal of such a worship service--the heady power of a cavernous space filled with communal zeal.

It is distinctly human to crave a purposeful life, to desire to lose oneself in feeling, to want to touch the divine. Until recently, such venues as art, sports, music, religion, and family served the purpose well enough, and the truly zealous held no more than a fringe appeal for society.

Suddenly, however (after the recent re-election of George Bush, especially) conservative, non-mainstream religious groups have emerged into the sunlight of full acceptance. This level of extreme Christian faith--the kind that launches death threats against a judge who simply follows the law of the land--is to me very much the same as militant Islamists who hold that non-believers must suffer in order to promote Islam, that infidels must die. It's ludicrous--all of it. And I have yet to see how we as a society will manage to work our way through the dogma into understanding, particularly under our current leadership.

And just why are We The People buying into this notion of extreme Christianity? Why do we crave such hollow, feel-good religious transcendence? Have we lost the desire to be transported through creativity? Intellectual stimulation? Philosophical discussion? Why are the higher pursuits of art, architecture, music, opera, literature, dance (and the like) not enough anymore?

Have we too fully embraced a lonely techno-society that serves to keep us from full human interaction under the misnomer of 'greater access'? I wonder. Perhaps the very fact that I am typing this into a computer, alone at my desk, for you, alone at your desk, to read and consider, is answer enough.

Entitlement Rant

What are we entitled to in this world? Well, if American, our constitution entitles us to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and a few additional things added over the years, such as a fair trial (ostensibly), the right to vote (again, suspect after this past election), but I digress...

A recent event, broadcast in the local news has been eating at me for weeks. Here is a brief summary: A bus driver taking a busload of kids home from school, finds that he has a pair of exceptionally rowdy students on board. (Habitual offenders, as it turns out.) When he attempts to stop their fistfight, they turn on him, cursing and hitting, and creating extreme havoc. In response, the harried bus driver kicks them off the bus, leaving them to walk home through the snow, roughly half a mile. The children are aged 11 and 12.

As you may have guessed, the parents of the two children were incensed. They called the school. The principal then officially reprimanded the bus driver. (So far, so good.) The parents then called the television news. After the story aired, the bus driver was fired. Within a week, the firing was not enough, and the parents brought criminal charges of child endangerment against the bus driver. He now faces time in court and up to a year in jail if convicted.

Have you guessed where my loyalties lie by now? Bear in mind, I'm no card-carrying member of the Elmer Fudd Party--no Wight Wing Wadical tendencies here--I'm about as bleeding-heart as they come. And I have children of my own. But child endangerment?? Come on. Yes, he should have been reprimanded, but he didn't strip them naked and make them walk home through a blizzard. They had coats. Plenty of kids in my neighborhood walk a mile to school and back every day. And these kids were being wretched little shits--fighting, using extremely foul language, and threatening the bus driver. Where is their accountability?

Oh, right. I forgot. "Children are our future, Mary."

Well, duh! My point exactly! Who do you want taking care of your country's affairs in your old age? Foul-mouthed kids that think they rule the world and can do no wrong? Kids whose parents overreact and rise to their defense, bailing them out of trouble and crying "unfair!" even when the kids are clearly in the wrong? Have you ever driven a bus full of kids? Been in charge of all those kids, of getting them home safely every single day, being hyper alert at all times? Have you even ridden on such a bus? Well, I can tell you that children turn into wild little beasties on the bus, far away from teachers, restless after a long day of sitting and learning, all-too-aware of the one, lone adult (otherwise occupied) who is in charge of keeping control of 50+ kids--kids who often spit and curse and fight, yell at the top of their lungs and write grafitti on the seats, rip holes in them, press their used gum into them. (Bear in mind that if you are the driver, you are solely responsible for the condition of both the kids and the bus.)

What do you think these children learned from this experience? I think they've learned that they can fight and swear and be disrespectful, and if anyone tries to rein them in or make them accountable, they will get their story put on the television, they will get excessive sympathy that negates the issue of their own bad behavior, they will get a grown man fired (such power!), possibly even put in jail, and their parents will defend them and pick up the pieces, no matter what they do. What will these kids be doing with this knowledge five years from now? I wonder.

I have an ongoing struggle with our current society's attempts to foster a feel-good attitude among our nation's children. Posters throughout the schools promise: "YOU'RE SPECIAL! JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE YOU!" Well, I hate to break it to you, but you aren't. You may be special to your mom just because you're you, but you ain't special to the world just because you're you. You can become special, by leaving the world a better place than you found it, you can bring enlightenment, or peace, or understanding to people around you or the world, and thereby become special, but I'm sorry, you ain't special without at least a little effort on your part.

And all of us, every one of us, should think about that bus driver's side of the story. We should remind our children how to behave on a bus and how to be respectful to those in charge of their safety and security, and we should hold them to it when they fail. We should put ourselves in that bus driver's shoes, and we should walk a mile.

Sunshine

The sun is out in upstate New York--a rare occurrence this time of year. With all the snow we've had, it's a bit dazzling following so many days of bleakness. And I'm feeling rather shell-shocked, actually, stepping out into all that glittery brightness. But despite the last few months of sadness and uncertainty, as well as the services still before us, it feels like a new day of hope, of an end to the suffering. So I am throwing myself back into the details of daily life and making the choice to keep moving forward.

She's in the news again

Andrea Yates.

What to make of this woman?

A mother who methodically drowns her own children. Horrible. Inconceivable. She must be a terrible person. And yet for some reason, I can't reconcile that, can't quite get there in my mind. I want to hate her, but I just end up feeling confused. She has lost everything, everything a mother lives for. Five children, drowned at her own hand. Five children whom she nursed and clothed and fed and nurtured for so many years. I keep reiterating these things because her final act of mothering is so inconceivable. She must have loved them. So, how, then? And why?

Well, raising children is damn hard work. And I have three, not five. And I don't homeschool them. And mine are out of diapers, and were spaced two or more years apart. The fact is, when I think about her trying to keep everything together, with this smugly smiling, god-fearing husband who refuses to acknowlede anything but her many blessings, well, I have to say, I can almost go there. I adore my children. I can't imagine life without them. They delight and inspire me in so many ways--they are incredible individuals. And yet, there were times--when my husband was deployed, when we were stationed far from home, with no help, no family, and children 24 hours a day--well, let's just say I wasn't sure which ones of us would make it to adulthood.

I want so desperately to blame someone and move on, smug in my ability to categorize this, to "that-type-of-woman" this. And yet I can't. And when I try to place the blame squarely on her shoulders, I keep coming back to other questions, such as: Where was her husband when she was having post-partum depression and attempting suicide? Why did he continue to think it would be best to homeschool five children, to keep giving this troubled woman more and more children, rapid-fire? Where is his accountability? And what of the doctors, the medical professionals who treated her for her ailments? And what about religion? I'm talking about the sort of no-name, slightly off-kilter evangelical born-again religion that she and her husband practiced. A religion that tells a woman to be subservient, to be the longsuffering helpmeet, to put everyone's needs before her own, that preaches happiness and contentment in every aspect of motherhood, that it is a woman's godly duty, that she is blessed if she bears a multitude of children, that obedience, above all, is to be practiced.

Obedience is the cornerstone of such narrow religions. So much so that Andrea Yates told her attorney she wanted it clarified: Contrary to the news reports, her eldest son, Noah, did not have to be chased around the house when she was ready to drown him. She wanted it known that he came when she called.

And at her trial, Andrea Yates testified that a higher power had instructed her to drown her children. All she did was what she had been repeatedly taught. She obeyed.