Holy Thursday

Holy Thursday already and Easter is actually late this year. It does seem as though the year is flying by. I loved singing for Holy Week when I was young, although I quickly realized that it was a half time job!

Admiration and prayers go out to all of you who sing in choirs this week. Unless you are able take time off the experience will be one of sleep deprivation--and of liminality. The liminality, temporary transcendence from the mundane as it is, may be a good thing. The fact that ordinary routines must go on is too bad though. It would be good to have an economy more attuned to liminality, perhaps?

I notice that Passover is being celebrated this year at the same time as Christians are celebrating Holy Week and Easter. This is good. It reminds us of our relationship to one another. Christianity is after all, rooted in Judaism. The Passover Seder is the root of Holy Thursday. After the institution of the Eucharist, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, the disciples were no longer Jewish in the way they had been before. Today, Christians certainly are no longer Jewish.

I have mixed feelings about the custom, in some Christian communities, about holding a Seder. The intentions were good I think. Mine certainly were when as a young woman I convinced my parents we should move the furniture around so that people could come for the Seder at our house. I learned something more about Judaism and also about community from this experience. I never did it again though. Today, I think I would feel that it would be stealing from someone else's tradtions. Respecting the others is important though, and I hope that more respect will grow in this country.

Last year I wrote about the foot washing command of the Maundy and how I have never been comfortable with it and why. That post is still available, I think, so I will not repeat it, except to say that I have found a kind neighbor who is helping me with washing my hair! What a blessing this is!

Community is fractured and fragmented in our modern world. We need to keep working to build it and to make it less fragmented, more cohesive.

I am reading, not exactly as Lenten reading, although I think it is appropriate, The Moral Measure of the Economy, a book about Catholic social teachings that is also a critique of big capitalism run amok. I would like to see a national discussion. Maybe I will start a group on Facebook to read this book and others that are related to it.

I am grateful for the rain this week, for the reading and for the liturgy even though I can be there only in spirit. (I wish they would do Podcasts!)

One More Day!

Only one more day and then we will see who is elected after all the hoopla and the longest campaign in history. I hope that the next campaign does not go on as long or cost as much.

I voted several weeks ago, so there is an element of anti-climax to the real election day. Wednesday will tell who the new President is and I am looking forward to that day.

I hope that we can all work together to bring about a saner, more stable and more just economy. I believe that we are all made in the image and likeness of God, and therefore that we all have talents, love, gifts and the ability to live productive and virtuous lives. We bring all of that to the table, so to speak; our economy should reflect that. If we think of the economy as the table, then it is a big table with room for all of us at the feast of prosperity and productivity that can be brought to it. There is room for sharing and caring at this table.

Social security disability needs to be overhauled so that we who are disabled have a place at the table; so that our talents and gifts and in some cases, as for people like me, our educations are not put on hold and wasted for a lifetime because of outmoded definitions of a bureaucracy that puts people into institutionalized poverty.

Health care needs to be seriously reformed. I hope that it will be and that no one will be excluded from care, or excluded from economic productivity because of insurance company formulas about who can be included. At the same time, we need to recognize, I believe, that health care is not a right but a need. Like shelter, water, food and clothing care in illness and injury is a necessity to life. We should provide that care. We should also expect to pay something for it and a system that has a sliding scale that makes government's role supplemental and as the re-insurer for catastrophic accident and illness would make sense to me on every level.

We need to put people back to work and we need to repair and rebuild much of our infrastructure, from levees in California and roads all over the country to bridges and perhaps airports as well. A new WPA would be timely and helpful.

We need to carefully and seriously question the profit motive, corporate capitalism and the whole laissez faire idea of the totally free market. We have just seen this run rampant and we are suffering the consequences of it. Even Alan Greenspan recognized there was a flaw. Oh yes, this amateur historian (although I majored in History, I don't make my living as an Historian) can see that flaw and spotted it about thirty-five years ago. (And it doesn't really require that other degree that I hold, the M. Div., to know that the flaw is called greed.)

We need, and I believe religious leaders have a role to play here, to bring the concept of justice to our economy. I have always believed in the motto, "If you want peace, work for justice". Let's make it happen. At the same time I have always believed that an economy based on community rather than competition would be one that was more just, less stressful and made room for every body.

So I am grateful for the right to vote, that the election will take place tomorrow and that on Wednesday, praise God, it will finally be over. We have work ahead of us that cannot not be undertaken too soon. I am grateful and I hope that we will seize the opportunity to truly dig in and do it, making a better world for all of us.

Tempus Fugit!

It's hard to believe it is Tuesday already. The time is going by too fast and this is my favorite time of year. I love the low angle of light in the fall, the sense of a pause after the too long days of summer, the heat and the routines of survival I must go into when heat waves strike. Now it is neither too hot nor too cold. I know that I have survived the summer and I do not yet have to hunker down and worry about how I will manage during the winter.

The house is still cleaned up and therefore friendlier than before I had company, so I am still benefiting from their visit. (The fact that my sister left my fridge and freezer well-stocked is a blessing too.)

A month from today is the election that seems to have been going on forever. The bailout so much touted and so hurriedly passed, does not seem to be working. The stock that I need to sell to pay my way through the winter is down a frightening amount. At the same time, the worry about finances seems to hang like a heavy mist before a storm, casting a pall of doom over the beautiful fall day. I am determined not to watch the news, for it is all bad. I do hope that Obama is elected in a month and that he does bring the energy, intelligence, hope and common sense that he seems to carry to the actual job of leading this country.

For the decline of the stock market is relative. We don't hold money in our hands that we have in our names on paper only--unless of course it is our savings accounts. I have believed for ten years that the value of our economy is inflated and for twenty years that supply side economics pays out only to the rich. It looks like I was right. (I just wish that I had a little more money in hand at the moment.)

So back to work to see what I can do to earn some. Before I know it time will have flown to November and a new round of bills. I am grateful for the beautiful day, the lovely light and that at least for this month every thing is paid.

We Ate Too Much!

We ate too much, we really did! Last week at this time my house was filled with family and friends. I love all of them dearly starting with the tiny toddler, my grand-nephew who is just starting to walk. (Watch out world, he will soon be running--and climbing.) His Mama is a joy and treasure in my life, too. All the friends who came are dear to me and I felt loved and stuffed and exhilarated with excitement and exhaustion.

Cake, three kinds of ice cream, delicious Champagne, Chinese food, lasagna, steak, cheesecake, blueberry muffins, an incredible, edible fruit arrangement, my sister's delicious tilipio dish with its yummy sauce, more kinds of chips than I knew existed and a wonderfully gooey Midwestern cheese dip that is pure fattening. Oh, and I almost forgot the French bread. (Why is bread almost always served with pasta? They are both carbs and may as well be applied directly to the hips, or the gut, or the seat--depending on where the fat settles on any particular person.) I think I ate a month's worth of calories in ten days.


Watching the food flowing through this house accompanied by all the beverages and the coming and going to the airport, I thought, "How can there be a recession? This family is singlehandedly doing our bit to stave it off?" That may be the key actually to the whole thing of staving off recession. Turn off the television, forget the news and celebrate our lives; live and be happy.

Today my sister and her husband are on the last leg of their journey home. It is time to settle down to work again. I will try to blog more regularly and there is plenty else to do. Cafepress designs need tending, Squidoo lenses need updating and making, and I still need to figure out how to find more ways to sell Mary Kay products to more customers. Anybody with any ideas please leave comments.

Any good diet advice, I could use that too! (Of course, if somebody could just do it for me...) I am happy and grateful.

Monday again

Thanksgiving can't be over so soon! How did this happen? It was, of course, a week early this year. Still it does seem to have gone by too quickly.

I am still reinventing my desktop computer. It came back to me with no anti-virus or free firewall or free anti-spyware software. Hard to believe! Probably they just got tired of it. Still it makes for more work for me... Reinventing the dsl is also turning out to be a pain, but hopefully perseverance will pay off. I am learning more than I ever wanted to know about how the computer works! Not the first time. If only I had known to set a restore point before fooling with the software a few Saturdays ago, I would not be missing the controller for the cd-dvd drive on the laptop. Life would be so much easier! Why can't I make it easier?

I do seem to have a propensity for making things more difficult for myself. It would be good, now that I am officially old, to overcome this. Serious work ahead!

As I watched the news this weekend, I was struck by the incredible waste of energy poured into "Black Friday". Is it really necessary to have everything open, running full steam, lights blazing in the middle of the night in order to have good economic forecasts? We are a nation concerned about global warning. Or are we? The energy blitz of the this shopping frenzy certainly didn't show it. Gasoline is more expensive than ever, so there were people with their headlines on (of course, it was the middle of the night after all) circling the parking lots looking for a space, while helicopters flew overhead documenting it all for the news programs.

The same news programs showed the gridlock on Wednesday of people fleeing the Bay Area to drive somewhere else for Thanksgiving. (These were the people who weren't, presumably, going to shop on Friday. Maybe they shopped elsewhere and brought their bargains back with them, weighing down their vehicles and getting even poorer mileage.) More people than ever flew somewhere for Thanksgiving. Wouldn't it have been more sensible to give thanks in place? Wouldn't the Turkey and the trimmings taste just as good without all the travel?

We are almost six years into a war that most of us do not support, but that is costing us every day. At some point we do have to pay for it. Some effort to truly conserve energy would help a great deal, I think. If everyone would drive less it might show up in the demand at the pump and prices, if they didn't fall, would at least hold steady for a bit. We are paying more for everything that has to be transported, probably even the presents so eagerly purchased last week. We need a national time of reflection on more of this, but instead we are going to have a national spending frenzy to try to bolster a weak economy and stave off recession. In addition, we will have election primaries held too early, so that none of the real reflection and debate will occur--just the cosmetic, surface stuff of the elections as usual.

Well, that is enough rant for one day! Time for another cup of coffee!