On the march. OK, on the Rally. . .Immigration Reform

Life isn't fair. The world is not a just place.

Efforts to explain the unfairness of it all just lead you into a ridiculous place. I'm reminded of the TV preachers who stated that the tragedy of 9-11-01 came about because of America's tolerance for its LGBTs.

Really? I can only conclude that the god these "evangelists" claim to represent has not the slightest acquaintance with the God I worship. You know - the God about whom we say "God is love." "God so loved the world, that he sent his Son into. . ." She doesn't work like that a'tall a'tall.

Life isn't fair. Elie Wiesel, in Night, describes the hanging of a boy in a Nazi camp. It really doesn't matter how old the boy was - 8? 10? He was hanged beside two adults. The two adults died rather quickly because of their weight. The boy, being slight, strangled to death, slowly.

Why? Where's the justice?

I write all of this fully aware that the circumstances of life have done me favors, not injustices. I wasn't born a Jewish kid in 1930s Europe. I wasn't in the Towers. I'm Anglo (well, I look it; I'm not all Caucasian, although that's not obvious), from an intact, marvelous family right in the middle of the middle class. I've been blessed with good health for most of my life. I married a great wife, and into a great (and great BIG) family. None of my kids has been locked up, and they have become productive citizens in their own right. I have a faith that sustains me, and I have been able to walk away from faith that did not. Life's been good to me.

Still, maybe because I have been so blessed - and because, I hope, I have open eyes and an open heart - I am very aware that not everyone is so lucky. Why do any children die of cancer, and why to parents have to bury their kids and grandkids? Why debilitating illness, for anyone? Why is it that this lucky, lucky guy has a mentally challenged daughter, and two autistic nephews? Great kids, and I love them dearly, but, still, I can't explain. I know, I know - sin, right? I don't know the answer, but the God I believe in doesn't do that. And don't tell me that line that "God must have needed another angel." Horsebleep. God could have made one if She needed one. Leave the kids alone.

Life isn't fair, and I can't change that. In AA we say a prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

I can't make life fair. But I can - I can - work like crazy to make my little corner of this earth a more fair, just place.

Thus, the rally.

In February we had a rally in downtown Davenport for immigration reform. It was by the Irish Memorial - a monument to another group that faced terrible challenges in the immigrant experience. The opening speaker was a young lady. Her family came to the United States when she was three. She has never thought of herself as anything but American, and there was no reason she should have UNTIL. . .

Until she got to the age when all the other kids got a driver's license, and she couldn't.

Until she tried to get a job, but needed a Social Security number and, well. . .good luck with that.

And the message got through, time and time again: You're different. You're inferior. Go back to the shadows - you belong there.

And the God I believe in - the God who became man and was crucified - weeps for her. And us.

On June 29 I will be joining others, not in an illusion that all will be well and just, but only to work on our little corner. We'll be at Schwiebert Park, in Rock Island, from 10-11. How many will there be? We don't know. 20? 1000? Those of us who can will wear white t-shirts as a sign of unity.

I have a hard time beginning to grasp the courage it took for that young lady to speak out as she did. And I do not want to let her down.

Please join us.

The Mississippi and Mother Nature

It has been a while, hasn't it? For a while my computer was on the blink, then I was, then I was busy again. (Last one was really no excuse. I've been that way all the time, for some time.)

I usually take a walk by the Mississippi River. Heck, you could come with, if you're in the area. I leave my workplace at about 2:30 and return about 3:00. The route is pretty unvarying - down LeClaire Park and back. The River - and if you're from these parts you can capitalize that; there aren't any other real rivers - has been a part of my life and my soul since I was a kid.

The River is in flood now. That's not unusual. What is unusual is that this is the second time this year that it has been in flood. On the Illinois side of the River there have been efforts in Rock Island to put up a floodwall, but sooner or later, somewhere or other, the Mississippi will do exactly what it wants to do. There have been efforts by the Corps of Engineers to channel the River. Fuhgeddaboud it. In the eternal battle between human ingenuity and the Mississippi River, the River wins. Every. Single. Time.

Down south they've been a little smarter about this. The system of spillways is a concession to physics and fluid flow being what they are, and at New Orleans the River's channel is cut so wide and deep that our biggest floods don't have much impact down there. (A Category 3 hurricane, however. . .)

A building I walk by used to be a hot dog shack. It's been closed for years. On a corner of the building there are markers, showing what the high-water marks were for some of the great historic floods. A good two feet above any of the other markers, and fully three inches above my head there's a marker that just says "65". The shack is probably 50-75 feet from the shore, and there's a slope going down to the shore. So, 50 feet from shore the water was over six feet deep.

I remember the '65 flood. We'd moved from Davenport to East Moline a little over a year earlier. Our family drove over to see what we could see. What we saw - lots and lots of water.

The Mississippi wins. Every time.

'93 was pretty impressive, too, but the Mississippi River flood that's referred to as The Great Flood was the flood of 1927. It affected the lower Mississippi more than the upper Mississippi. There were torrential rains for much of the winter of '26-'27, and the flood reached a level of force such that levees all down the River were breaking. (The Mississippi wins - but you knew that.) The floods peaked in April, '27, and two months passed before it had subsided. At one point, 36 of Arkansas' 75 counties were flooded, some to a depth of 30 feet. 6600 square miles - underwater. It spawned cultural changes. It was the setting for Faulkner's Old Man (Old Man was a nickname for the Mississippi.) You should read it, assuming that it wasn't ruined for you in the class in which you had to read it.

Back to The River tomorrow. Meantime, thanks for hanging out.

Sex and stuff

Jason Collins is gay. And the really sad part is that the reaction is anything but, "So?"

I have often wondered about why some people are so absolutely certain that the presence of LGBT folks in society presages the destruction of that society. I think I have a (kind of) answer.

Some years ago Eugene Robinson became the first openly gay Episcopal bishop. One of the local radio blowhards announced that this makes this generation of Episcopalians the last generation of Episcopalians. I guess he thought that, given permission to be gay, ALL guys would be gay and thus the end. . .

The last time I checked, the Episcopalian Church was just fine, thanks. The UCC, which has been far more open to the LGBT community than most others, is also doing all right. Neither denomination had a rush of men running to other men's beds, and that didn't happen among the women, either.

So, I think that the reason that our radio bloviator, and some of the out-there right wingers, are so determined that opening society to LGBT will be our destruction is -

I don't know, but could it be that they are, themselves, gay? Closeted, to be sure, but still, gay? Could the reason that they are so certain that all would be gay be that this is exactly what THEY would do? They have no clue what anyone else would do, but they are so certain of this because. . .Just wondering.

Jason Collins is gay. The only decent response would be no response. Maybe a shrug and, "So?" Who he, or any other LGBT person, loves is their own business, no one else's. Society allows me the privilege of maintaining the privacy of my sex life. Why would we not extend that courtesy to the LGBT community?

It took a lot of courage for Jason Collins to come out as he did, and that is, in itself, a sad, sad statement, not about him, but about the rest of us.

I have been married to the love of my life for 38 years. If you allow same-sex marriage, it will not harm me a'tall, a'tall. I will awaken in the morning, when I am old, next to the person I wanted to grow old with. Why should an LGBT person not have the same privilege? If you can encourage someone else's happiness, and at no cost to yourself, why would you not?

Why must we act like our biggest fear is that somebody, somewhere, is having a good time?

I am a person of faith, specifically Roman Catholic. My own church has been trying to deal with the issue. One time at which this became an issue was at the onset of the AIDS epidemic. AIDS was, at first, identified as a gay issue; it was "their" disease. The question was, is a church obligated to provide its loving care to gays? The answer now is a resounding "YES!" The question was that much louder in parishes in, say, San Francisco, where some of the parishes may be 3/4 gay.

We haven't stopped thinking about this. Phil Donahue once noted that there are two groups within the Church to whom the Church will need to apologize one day: gays and the divorced. It won't be easy - it can't be easy - but we can't quit thinking about this. I don't think Mr. Donahue was wrong.

I have a lot of friends - co-workers - classmates that are gay. To them: you are my brothers and sisters. I have lost two friends to AIDS. To them: I pray daily that God may be good to you - better than we were.

Lots of stuff tossing around in my head about this. Thanks for hanging out while a spilled some of it.

Bad Guy Fascination

Someone asked an author during an interview on C-SPAN how they could write about someone that they didn't like.

Some subjects of biographies that I've read recently: Stalin. Himmler. Hitler. Stalin's Jewish Doctors' Plot was the subject of a monograph that I read. I've read a couple of works on the Gulag system. And then there was Wiesel's Night.

I promise you, I am not fond of Himmler. I have no love for the Gulag. And yet, authors write these, and I read them. I am forever haunted by the closing lines of Night. After the war is over, after the liberation from the camps that cost the lives of both of Wiesel's parents, this kid who never got to be a kid, reflected:

One day I was able to get up, , after gathering all my stength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myelf since the ghetto.

From the depths of the mirror a corpse gazed back at me.

The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.

Thomas Merton wrote about some psychological testing done with some Nazi guards. There was no psychopathy, nothing that would suggest that they were anything but normal. They were normal, human beings functioning within their society.

And that's why I read the bios of the bad guys. I don't like or admire them; I have no desire to emulate them. My heroes are, I think, much more worthy of emulation: Merton, Mother Theresa, Philip Berrigan, Cardinal Bernardin. But I read about the despicable ones because I take the mantra with utter seriousness:

NEVER AGAIN!!

And, thus the fascination with the Boston Bombers. Never again.

So somebody's got to write those books. And I will read. I hope you do too. The guy in me who got his BA in history knows that you can't know where you should go if you don't know where you've been.

Thanks for hanging out.

Prison stories

I used to work at one. From 1981 to '83 I was a correctional officer at the Joliet Correctional Center, on Collins Street. It was the oldest prison in the state at the time, and one of the oldest in the country. It was a maximum security adult joint. It has since closed, but even at the time I worked there people in Joliet thought it was already closed.

Actually, only half of the prison was really a maximum-security facility. The other half was a reception and classification facility. Inmates entered the state system at our center, and waited while it was determined in which sort of facility they'd take up permanent residence. We had plenty of business. The inmates going into the state system from Cook County - Chicago - came through our place. Inmates would arrive - from most counties, in a sheriff's car, from Cook County on a bus - dressed in street clothes which would reflect some degree of individuality. They would enter a building like that, and exit the building all wearing blue jumpsuits. Individuality - gone. No one paid much attention to whether the jumpsuits fit or not.

Then, after some weeks, they would be shipped on a bus to their destination. For a time I worked on thitd shift, and we had the job of getting the inmates up who were to be transported that day. We'd get them up and send them to the dining hall for what passed for breakfast in such a place, and we were done.

One morning I was engaged in this task. We got the inmates up, had them grab the stuff that was going with them, and sent them over to eat. One fellow was moving rather slowly. He had barely gotten going when we had the others on the walk to chow, and he was still sitting on his bunk.

I said to him, "C'mon, man, let's go."

And he got up. And kept getting up. And getting up - to his full six feet eight inches. And I started getting a little nervous. He was indignant.

"As long as you live, don't you ever call me "Man" again. I'm a woman!"

Twenty minutes later, after he was long gone, I was still standing outside his cell, door open, pointing my finger and shaking my head.

Yeah, there are stories. Obviously, not all was fun and games. None of it was. There was the morning I went home after my shift and had my wife scream at me, "Blood on your shirt!!!! How did you get BLOOD on your shirt!?!?!?"

I said, "Oh - it's not mine." That didn't make it better.

It was during that time that my drinking - my alcoholism - reached the depths. It was during that time that I saw what a waste of mental energy any show of arrogant self-righteousness is, and I came to realize the truth that "ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God." I found myself treating my wife and kids like they, too, were inmates, and may everlasting shame be on me for that. I knw what stress is. I know what a thin line it is that divides me from the very worst.

And stories. I do have stories.

Stay tuned.

Some pictures are just too heartbreaking for words.

 

 

Martin Richard was 8 years old before this year's Boston marathon. I'm sure the punk-ass coward who set off the bomb is taking delight in his work even now.

 

Two of my grandsons are nine. I so see them in this picture.

 

 

 

Hadiyah Pendleton. Great kid, All-American kid, a highly intelligent kid, a kid of great character. She would make any family proud. She and her band played at the President's inaugural. It had to have been a highlight of her young life. I'm glad she got to experience that, because days later she was shot dead. Someone thought she was in a rival gang.

 

And the pic is just too heartbreaking.

 

What have we all missed, when we lose a boy who chose his message to any and all: "No more hurting people." What have we lost when we lose a young lady about whom Michelle Obama would say, "I was Hadiyeh, and Hadiyeh was me"?

 

What are we losing?

 

Chicago police confirm 'tragic number' of 500 homicides

December 28, 2012|By Jeremy Gorner and Peter Nickeas | Tribune reporters

 

What are we doing to ourselves? Hadiyeh, Martin, Newtown - kids. Kids. May God be good to all of you. And may She have mercy on us.

 

Do you have answers? I'd love to hear them. I know I surely don't.

 

Do you have an answer?

Does God not exist?

I can look through my blog and see how may people have looked at each posting. I can't see who looked but I can see how many. The only way I know who read the posts is if you comment, and I'd love to have you do just that. Those who know me know that you can disagree with me and still be a dear friend to me.

I asked my students in my Christian Ed class if I'm really that scary a guy. They hesitated - which scared me - hen said, "Well, if someone dosn't know you. . ." OK, true enough, I guess.

The most-read posting was "Perpathy," the posting about a peculiar American illness, our incomprehensible sympathy for the perpetrators of horrific crimes. I had some help from a niece on that one. She loved my new word. (So do I.) The second most-read was "Does God Exist?"

Interesting thing about that one. I posted it on Facebook. Suddenly, in the "People You May Know" section, I'm seeing all sorts of names of people whose only cnnecting theme with each other is their professed atheism. Now, mind you, one's atheism is no barrier to a warm relationship with me, and don't see atheism as a barrier to having a strong conscience, a real sense of morality. You can't prove to me that you're right, and I can't prove to you that I am right, so let's make our peace with that and just - you lnow - relate. If you are not my brother or sister in the faith, you are still very much my brother or sister in this wonderful family called Humanity. I treasure that fellowship. (And the invitation to join in that family of faith is very much there - invittion, not command.)

But, why would anyone think that, because I ask the question, I must necessarily be atheist? What software at Facebook assumed otherwise? I respect atheists, but it is not my position. I thought that was pretty clear from the posting. So, tonight Iask the question in reverse.

But, we are brothers and sisters all. If you are in favor of finding a more humane and just system of immigration and of dealing with the people who have  been working and contributing here for years, you are my brother or sister. If you are angered by the arrogance of those who forget that they, too, are descended from immigrants, you are my brother or sister.

If trafficking kids 12 - and younger - for sex sickens you, too - you are my sister or brother.

If wage theft makes you boiling mad, you are my brother or sister. If the concentrated effort to deny labor the right to organize makes you see red - you are my brother or sister. People are also trafficked ino forced labor. Mad yet?

And if the fact that one person can do so little about it all frustrates you to no end - you are my sister. Or brother.

Somehow we'll find a way to join hands. Even if I believe and you don't.

Thanks for hanging out!