Anti ACLU e-mail

I received this e-mail from a friend of mine. I have been receiving a lot of anti-ACLU mail forwards lately. From the headers and footers, this one had been forwarded several times, with copies to hundreds of people. Below the original e-mail is my hurried response



AGREE OR DELETE


This is by a daughter of a murdered couple in Raytown , MO ,
who had a Bible and Bookstore on 63rd street ..

When I had to testify at the murder trial of my parents a week ago, I was asked to raise my right hand... The bailiff started out "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?"

I stood there and waited but she said nothing. She said "Do you?"

I was so stunned I blurted out "What happened to "so help me God'?"
She came back with "Do you?" I replied yes, but I was perplexed.

Then the judge said . "You can say that if you want to."

I stopped, raised my right hand, and finished with "So help me God!"

I told my son and daughter that when it came time for them to testify, they should do the same.

I don't know what can be done about it, but it's time for us to step up and DO something.

NBC this morning had a poll on this question.. They had the highest number of responses that they have ever had for one of their polls, and the percentage was the same as this:

86% to keep the words, 14% against.. That is a pretty 'commanding' public response.

I was asked to send this on if I agreed or delete if I didn't.

Now it is your turn.. It is said that 86% of Americans believe in God.

Therefore, I have a very hard time understanding why there is such a mess about having

"In God We Trust" on our money and having God in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Why is the world catering to this 14%?

If you agree, pass this on, if not, simply delete....
In God We Trust
If You Choose To Delete
Perhaps Then You Are Part Of The Problem
Me? I'm Passing It On.
It seems to get worse daily.



Dear friend. Thank you for your e-mail. I will delete it after I respond. I will respond as a friend, as someone who respects your intellect and your sincerity. But frequently people pass on and forward mail because it strikes a “bumper sticker” chord, but they don’t stop to think what it really says about them that they forward it. So here is my response:




If you were in Turkey as a tourist, and were assaulted, when it came to trial, would you be willing to say "In Allah's name?"

If you were in India would you be willing to swear by Vishnu?

Would you be willing to ask Buddha to judge your truthfulness in Tibet?

In Africa, would you raise your hand to the spirits of the ancestors surrounding you in the court room?

Closer to home: in Lockport, NY would you swear to the Great Spirit of the Forest and testify to the Tortoise who bears up the world?

How can we, a country formed out of many nations, a country which depends on the equality of all individuals and pledges to support the rights of everyone, citizen or alien, force someone else to swear to our personal interpretation of God? Or require that they do so in order to receive justice? What kind of America would that be?

How can you, as a Christian, whose God tells you to honor and respect the alien resident within your walls turn around and get insistent that the court clerk say exactly what you want and how you want it? Whether or not it disrespects and denies the alien in your presence?

I cannot judge you. Judge yourself, as you know you will be judged. And God bless that woman whose parents were murdered. I hope and pray her grief does not damage her soul.

better than a hallelujah

God loves a lullaby in a mother's tears in the dead of night
Better than a Hallelujah sometimes.
God loves a drunkard's cry, the soldier's plea not to let him die
Better than a Hallelujah sometimes.

We pour out our miseries, God just hears a melody.
Beautiful the mess we are, the honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah sometimes.

The woman holding on for life, the dying man giving up the fight
Are better than a Hallelujah sometimes.
The tears of shame for what's been done
The silence when the words won't come
Are better than a Hallelujah sometimes.

(Hymn composed by Sarah Hart and Chapin Hartford, sung by Angie Lenzo and Sam Asher at the "Faith in Action" banquet of the GRCC)

E-Mail joke about immigration

This morning I received an e-mail from a woman who is very nice and kind. It was a piece of propaganda disguised as a joke, and it was the straw that broke my tolerance camel's back. I am going to have to take her out to lunch and ask her to not provoke me any more. Here is the e-mail:

LET ME SEE IF I GOT THIS RIGHT!!!
IF YOU CROSS THE NORTH KOREAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET 12 YEARS HARD LABOR
IF YOU CROSS THE IRANIAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU ARE DETAINED INDEFINITELY.
IF YOU CROSS THE AFGHAN BORDER ILLEGALLY, YOU GET SHOT.
IF YOU CROSS THE SAUDI ARABIAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE JAILED.
IF YOU CROSS THE CHINESE BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU MAY NEVER BE HEARD FROM AGAIN.
IF YOU CROSS THE VENEZUELAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE BRANDED A SPY AND YOUR FATE WILL BE SEALED.
IF YOU CROSS THE CUBAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE THROWN INTO POLITICAL PRISON TO ROT.
IF YOU CROSS THE U.S. BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET
1 - A JOB,
2 - A DRIVERS LICENSE,
3 - SOCIAL SECURITY CARD,
4 - WELFARE,
5 - FOOD STAMPS,
6 - CREDIT CARDS,
7 - SUBSIDIZED RENT OR A LOAN TO BUY A HOUSE,
8 - FREE EDUCATION,
9 - FREE HEALTH CARE,
10 - A LOBBYIST IN WASHINGTON
11 - BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS PRINTED IN YOUR LANGUAGE
12 - AND THE RIGHT TO CARRY YOUR COUNTRY'S FLAG WHILE YOU PROTEST THAT YOU DON'T GET ENOUGH RESPECT.
        I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE I HAD A FIRM GRASP ON THE SITUATION.  Are WE dumb or what ?????

My answer is below:

Thank you for sending me this little humorous piece about Illegal immigrants. Remember I was a welfare worker for almost thirty years, so I feel capable of answering the author from experience. See my responses below. I am trying not to get angry, but this is an example of someone starting a lie and others building it into prejudice, suspicion and discrimination.
And remember, that SOMEONE let illegals stay in this country for years and years, and so now their children, BORN HERE 18 years ago are now in high school and college. But the CHILDREN are citizens because MOM was allowed to stay 18 years ago.

Let me say that again: 18 years ago. That would be President Bush the elder and the Republican congress. and before that was Reagan and the Republican congress and Ford and Nixon and even Eisenhower. This country has had a messed up "ignore it and it will go away" attitude since 1950. So I want Congress (yes the whole bunch of 'em not just the Dems) to get off their backsides and earn the 150K a year we're paying them. Or I will work to get them jobs picking grapes in California.

And I humbly remind you that my forbears came here without "permission" from INS. And instead of erecting fences, we built Ellis Island to screen out the sick and criminal, but not to prevent anyone from coming in because of quotas or the color of their skin. My forbears mined coal and gold, waited tables, picked nuts and vegetables in the miswest. The others sold vegetables from a cart, collected rent for the owners of tenements, waited tables in delicatessens and worked as housemaids in NYC. Except the color of their skins, I come from people JUST LIKE THE ONES YOU WANT TO SHIP HOME. How far back do you want to go to select the evicted ones???

1 - A JOB, picking cotton or strawberries or gutting chickens. You want that job? I'll get it for you
2 - A DRIVERS LICENSE, NOT TRUE
3 - SOCIAL SECURITY CARD, anyone can apply for a social security card, even if they are out of the country
4 - WELFARE, Nope, not a chance
5 - FOOD STAMPS, nope, also a bald lie
6 - CREDIT CARDS, see social security card. and that is private banking's decision, not yours
7 - SUBSIDIZED RENT OR A LOAN TO BUY A HOUSE, subsidy, nope another bald lie; loan see #6, you socialsit
8 - FREE EDUCATION, nope, only citizens.
9 - FREE HEALTH CARE, which we all should have. Please check with someone from Canada, Panama or South Africa
10 - A LOBBYIST IN WASHINGTON who will represent citizens rights even more vehemently than the illegal visitor
11 - BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS PRINTED IN YOUR LANGUAGE really? Spanish is not an AMERICAN language? Says who? We should be speaking GERMAN, but that bill lost by 1 vote in 1789. Seig Heil, Meine freunde!
12 - AND THE RIGHT TO CARRY YOUR COUNTRY'S FLAG WHILE YOU PROTEST THAT YOU DON'T GET ENOUGH RESPECT Just like the Irish the Italians and the Swedes do in states a little to the north. HMMMM

Well, I still haven't learned to stop and take a breath to keep from acting out of anger. Someday I will learn. But what part of America was meant for only the first ones to get here? Doesn't freedom lose a dimention when we deny it to "others"? And where will any curtailment stop? What did all those soldiers and freedom fighters from 1776 to 1976 fight and die for if not to be the BEACON OF LIBERTY??

Welcoming Spring

Saturday, April 10, 2010


As I was trying to compose my essay on Easter for presentation at the Hospital, it occurred to me that I had not deeply connected to the rebirth surrounding me. I have always enjoyed being in the midst of nature. One of my earliest memories is of lying on my back in the meadow behind our house in Harrisville, Michigan. I couldn’t have been more than eight years old. I remember feeling a part of the earth, connected by invisible cords to the growing, never silent but rarely loud life beneath and around me in that meadow. Grass, insects, birds, an occasional toad, mole cat, and the neighbors’ cattle all around me, soaking up the sun as I was, gaining strength and living only in the present.

I decided to regain that connection, and went out to my own tiny meadow, my front yard. Thirty feet by ten, it is the dusty apron of our old woman of a home, anchored by a boulder left by the builders 80 years ago. Curtis and I tore off the scaly-bug-infested Euonymus several years ago, and I dropped pieces of lichen sedum and moss on it to give those colonists a head start. This year, the rock is the centerpiece. I sat next to it for quite a while, until my bones protested the inactivity and chill. But I did begin a quiet return to the joy that 8 year old boy felt.

I understand the cycle of apparent death, sleep, rebirth and growth in the temperate Northeastern climate. Writings about Easter have all too often used the season as a metaphor. But there is a different message there, too. As the cycle turns, the individual plant, or insect or vole may not return with the spring. We can and do change roles from sprouting spear of green one spring, to the rotting thatch of the next. We are not entitled to be the green; we have to accept being the mulch eventually. But I am having a hard time accepting that. I continue to rage against the dying of the light. I continue to grasp for, continue to crave, an assurance for the future, and for a legacy. My egoism refuses to accept being mulch for a lawn. I must have significance, I must have permanence, I must have assurance. My attachment to these desires only yields for a moment as I sit on the cold ground and feel the sun warming my rock, feeding my crocuses and daffodils. As the week progressed toward Easter, I had to stop frequently to restore that feeling of connection to the cycles, big and small. I am constantly trying to live in the present and to remain observant of those around me and of myself. It is ofttimes hard.

Thursday evening, I was called to the Hospital to attend in the Emergency Department. I sat with the spouse and good friend of a man who had collapsed and died at home. He was 57. The woman pleaded with me to anoint him, even though she knew I was not a priest. The man asked me to “pray him into heaven.” I sat and listened to them tell me about the deceased, and then prayed over the body for them. They were at the stage of asking why their mate and friend had been cut down and taken away so quickly. I listened to them work on it. It didn’t take much talking on my part. After they left, I sat with the body a while longer. I just sat and tried to keep still.

On my way out, I stopped to greet the operators who call me in when needed. It is a good idea to check, so that they know I have been in and they can let me know if any people have been told to wait for the day shift. There had been one, and I went to see him. He has been in and out of the Hospital for several months. He was HIV+ when I first met him. Now he has full blown AIDS, has suffered a stroke and his wife has to be begged to bring in his 4 year old son. I sat with him as he cried and swore to me as his witness that he regretted all his sins, and implored God to relieve him of his pain and sorrow. We cried together a while, and then he told me to go home. I was called again in the wee hours to attend in the MICU, for a man who coded three times during the night, and whose family had decided to change to DNR. While I was barreling up the expressway to get there, he coded again, died and the family went home. I arrived to an apologetic staff including a young resident who was having trouble coping. I stayed with them for a while. I prayed over the body and blessed the staff, and made sure the chart was completed that the patient had received spiritual care as well as medical.

A few hours later I was in the State Correctional Facility, talking to two men in their twenties about what brought them to prison. (Not their crimes, but their lives.) They told about their childhood and youth. As they spoke, I could palpably feel their pain from abandonment, dysfunctional parenting, and poverty and for one, lack of treatment. But I could offer only a listening ear, not solutions. For them, they have already arrived at the destination of criminality. Serving time, I have noticed, does not make one a better person. It will be up to them, and to the other men in the group, to talk, and think, and learn and change habits that at 23 or 26 are already ingrained and will be hard to see, let alone alter. I hope that those two men will find, in the death of their sentences, the time, change and friendship to make a change in how they live in this world. That their lives may re-start in prison, to grow and blossom when they are released.

The promise of summer, of autumn and winter too, and of repeated turnings of the seasons is built into the tiny bud of an ornamental red maple tree. The promise of apparent death and resurrection and the quiet blasting of life out of what we mortals perceive to be a tomb are found there, too. We can only sense ourselves as part of that flow. Any effort to resist, to withstand that onward rush is futile. While I am a green bud, I can strive to be a great green bud. I hope to be great mulch, too.

Dirt

       Sunday, we watched a video about breath at Alan and Sue Dailey's. The video started with a discussion of us as "fragile, divine dirt." The speaker posed the idea that breathing in and breathing out is the equivalent of speaking God's Name. That when we are born the first thing we must do is speak, and as we die, the last thing we do is speak God's name. I went off onto a private tangent, with my breath control for meditation. Breathing, and awareness of our breath as an avenue to peace for meditation and prayer has always been mystical for me. I remember, untrained at the time, sitting in my dormitory room, lights out except for a primitive light board, and concentrating on making my breating regular and calm. My roommate came home 6 hours later to find me in lotus and so quiet it scared him.
     I also remember almost drowning when I traveled to Southern California for Seminarian Summer. I got caught in a rip tide and was being pulled north and out and down. I remember my fear, remember straining, remember being determined not to lose a single breath, and when the surfer came to lift me up, I remember pausing with him holding me to get my breath back. I was overwhelmed by gratitude, and when I got back to shore, I was also overwhelmed by my awareness of my breathing. I lay there for an hour, feeling myself inhale, pause, exhale, pause. The slow pulse of my life.
     Yesterday, I was able to participate in the Ash Wednesday services at Highland Hospital and at Unity Living Center at St. Mary's. Each began days earlier with a flurry of organizing, deciding on what to do, printing flyers and bulletins, arranging for ashes, deciding the  tactics. On the day, both sites held a short service in the chapel. Lay-led at Highland, priest-led at St. Mary's. Then we chaplains took containers of ash to the floors. For rooms with infection alerts, we used medical swabs. But most people I was able to touch. The ash in my little container was so fragile, so ephemeral, but the looks on the faces of the patients family and staff as they received it were stunning. I was exhausted. This morning, that fragile ephemeral ash is still embedded in my thumb pad, under the nail and in the cuticle. Divine dirt.