The Women In My Life

WORDS MEAN THINGS

2011-11-26T10:38:00.000-08:00

I think about words and their meanings quite a bit. I regularly digest political commentary, right and left, and find myself irritated by hyperbole and the perverting of the language for the sake of ideology which is why I was so impressed and moved by Patrick Reardon's comments on Psalm 12 in his book Christ in The Psalms. This and other recent articles on language in the culture at large, prompted me to finally post Reardon's complete essay with his permission.

Note: At about Psalm 9 the Greek Orthodox Bible parts with the Hebrew Scriptures on the numbering of the Psalms. The Western/Protestant Bible is consistent with the Hebrew, therefore, Psalm 12 is actually Psalm 11 in Reardon's book.

Christ In The Psalms

By Patrick Henry Reardon
Psalm 11 (12)

Save Me O God, For There Is Not A Godly Man Left

The idea is now common that the primary purpose of speech is communication, the sharing of ideas, impressions, and feelings with one another. Language is currently considered to be, first of all, social and therefore completely subject to social control. Human speech is widely interpreted as a matter of arbitrary and accepted fashion, subject to the same vagaries as any other fashion. Thus, the senses of words can be changed at will, different meanings being imposed by the same sorts of forces that determine whatever other tastes happen to be in vogue. Words become as alterable as hemlines and hats.

According to this view, words are necessarily taken to mean whatever the present living members of a society say that they mean, so that the study of language really becomes a branch of sociology. In fact, sociology textbooks themselves make this claim explicitly. Moreover, this notion of speech is so taken for granted nowadays as nearly to assume the rank of a self-evident principle. Nonetheless, it is deeply erroneous.

It is also egregiously dangerous to spiritual and mental health, for such a view of language dissolves the relationship of speech to the perception of truth, rendering man the lord of language without affirming the magisterial claims of truth over man. Declared independent of such claims, language submits to no tribunal higher than arbitrary social dictates. Human society, no matter how sinful and deceived, is named the final authority over speech, which is responsible only to those who use it, subject to no standards above the merely social. That is to say, in this view words must mean what people determine them to mean, especially such people as cultural engineers, political activists, feminist reformers, news commentators, talk-show hosts, and other professionals who make their living by fudging the truth.

This current notion of language was well formulated in the declaration of the proud and rebellious in Psalm 11 (Hebrew 12), in a passage manifestly portending the mendacious times in which we live: “With our tongue we will prevail. Our lips are our own; who is lord over us?”

How different is the view of the Bible, where speech is not regarded, first and foremost, as a form of communication among human beings. In fact, Adam was already talking before ever Eve appeared. Human speech, that is to say, appears in Holy Scripture earlier than the creation of the second human being, for we find Adam already naming the animals prior to the arrival of the marvelous creature that God later formed from his rib.

At the beginning, before the Fall, Man was possessed of an accurate perception into reality. He was able to name the animals because he could perceive precisely what they were. His words expressed true insight, a ravishing gaze at glory, a contemplation of real forms, so that the very structure and composition of his mind took on the seal and assumed the formal stamp of truth. Human language then was a reflection of that divine light with which heaven and earth are full. The speech of unfallen man was but the voice of vision.

This primeval human language, the pure progeny of lustrous discernment, flowed forth already from the lips of Adam prior to the creation of Eve, who heard it for the first time when her husband, awaking from his mystic sleep, identified her and told her exactly who she was: “You are bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.” Human speech was already rooted in the vision of truth before it became the expression of human communication.

Moreover, the Fall itself, when it came, derived from that demonic disassociation of speech from truth that we call the Lie: “You will not surely die.” Eve’s acquiescence in that first lie was mankind’s original act of metaphysical rebellion. It had more to do with the garbling of Babel than with the garden of Eden. It was human language’s first declaration of independence: “Our lips are our own; who is lord over us?”

Just as truthful speech streams forth from vision, springing from the font of a pure heart, so lying is conceived in the duplicitous heart before it issues from the mouth. Says Psalm 11: “Each one has spoken follies to his neighbor, deceitful lips have spoken with divided heart.” The situation described here is so bad that one despairs of finding any truths left in human discourse: “Save me, O God, for the godly man has disappeared, because truths are diminished among the sons of men. . . . The wicked prowl on every side.”

In contrast to these varied, seemingly universal lies of men stand the reliable words of God: “The words of the Lord are pure words, smelted silver purged of dross, purified seven times.” In this very unveracious world we yet trust that, though heaven and earth pass away, His words will never pass away.

THIRTY YEARS AGO TODAY

2011-10-20T22:03:00.000-07:00

By the time John and I had settled into our new house in Houston, Texas, I was ready to start a family. It was 1979 and now that our only major expense was our mortgage payment, the road was clear and the quiver needed to be filled. Our first attempt at being fruitful and multiplying had ended in an early miscarriage so I was anxious and insecure about the next pregnancy.

Within a few months I was pregnant, sick, and tired. Very tired. I could eat a good breakfast and reasonable lunch, but by dinner I couldn’t look at food. For some reason the only thing I had a taste for at night was oatmeal. I couldn’t stand the smell or sight of meat as it was cooking, so John dutifully made me a bowl of oatmeal every night after work. I couldn’t even drink a cup of my beloved coffee in the morning. I would carpool with the girls from work, but if I wasn’t the one driving I would fall into a deep, drooling, sleep.

At the third month of pregnancy, I had to quit work. I was exhausted. All of these extreme symptoms seemed to bode well for a healthy pregnancy and I began to pray for twins. I don’t know why, but the Lord laid it on my heart to pray for twins. By the time I was about five months along, I looked to be seven months. Could it be that God was answering my prayers?

My days were spent doing light chores, walking our Irish setter, and taking frequent naps. I was thankful that I had quit my job so that I could follow the rhythms of my body and do what I needed to do for the health of my child. The further along I advanced in the pregnancy the more attention I drew from people who were sure I was about to go into labor. When I informed them that I was only seven months pregnant, they sometimes backed away from me as if I were not in my right mind. A neighbor and experienced mother of twin boys warned me consistently that I was having twins.

My doctor begged to disagree with me and my opinionated lady friends, and conceded the possibility that I was having an “ouch” baby, not twins. After each visit at my obstetrician’s office, I would lie in bed and feel my abdomen for baby parts. By my count there were far too many feet and other lumps.

By the middle of the seventh month I was unable to do much around the house and I was experiencing severe pain in my diaphragm every evening. I couldn’t get the doctors to take this seriously. They thought I was having indigestion. This wasn’t indigestion and I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle my otherwise competent doctor. Finally one morning I couldn’t stand the pain anymore and in anger I told John that if he didn’t get the doctor to figure out what was wrong with me, I would divorce him. John called the office and repeated my threat at which point they made arrangements for me to have one of those new-fangled ultrasounds.

Off we went to a tech center somewhere, into the office of a female technician from India. I only mention her nationality because I find east Indians to be very humorous and the heavier the accent, the better. As she began the process of looking for an unhealthy gall bladder, WHICH IS WHAT MY DOCTOR THOUGHT WAS WRONG and for which he ordered the ultrasound, she asked, “Did they tell you that you were having twins?” To which I replied, “No. They said it was just a big baby.” She began muttering derogatory things about the stupid doctors, but I don’t remember what she said because I wasn’t sure if John was going to faint.

After a few minutes of disbelief, my Indian tech told us that she could see one baby was definitely a girl, but she could not determine the gender of baby number two. As we left the building, John told everyone we met in the elevator that we were having twins. Once home we called my mother who immediately booked a flight to Houston to help me prepare for two babies. That night was the last night of pain. The next morning I could tell that Baby A (Rebekah), head down, had dropped, making room for Baby B (Rachel) whose head had been causing all of my pain.

Four weeks later, I entered the hospital to be induced. My blood pressure was too high and I was full-term. As I lay in bed watching the Yankees in the World Series, my water broke and labor began. My body went right into hard labor with no breaks between contractions. After five hours it was decided that I needed a caesarean section seeing as they could not control my blood pressure. I had made John vow that he would not let them do surgery on me, but by this time in the torture I couldn’t wait to get knocked out. When I came to, I was the mother of two girls, one 6 pounds, the other 4 pounds, 14 ounces. Rachel was the runt and spent the night in the incubator, but was soon placed in a normal crib.

It is said that when we pray, it is not to conform God to our will, hoping to get what we want from Him. We pray so that our will might be conformed to God’s perfect will. There is no reason in the world for me to have suddenly felt compelled to ask God for twins unless the compulsion originated with God first. He knew I needed those girls. In a way they were the visible representation of the salvation that had come to me three years before. A sign and a seal of being born-again in Christ.

Since that morning of October 21, 1981, there has never been a day that Rebekah and Rachel have not blessed me. There has never been a day of strife between my daughters and myself. Life couldn’t be more blessed than when children love their parents as much as their parents love them and demonstrate that love in their trust and obedience.

I am acutely aware that I really don’t deserve the life I have lived and the love I have received from my husband and my children. God’s grace is sufficient for me and sometimes it is overwhelming. Rebekah and Rachel, I love you more than you could know. May you have the joy from your children that I have had from you.

Twenty-five Years Ago Today

2011-10-01T22:03:00.000-07:00

John Danaher has spent a good deal of our marriage on the road visiting customers, usually at gas processing or window manufacturing plants. I could put my finger on a calendar from days gone by and there is a possibility that he would have been on a business trip on that day many years ago. I do know for sure that on October 2, 1986, John was in Louisville, Kentucky, visiting a customer. How can I be so sure? Because he was squeezing in his last business trip before the birth of baby number four, due around October 18th, except baby number four, now known as Matthew John Danaher, decided to arrive early sending all of us into a panic.

Matthew had tried to get out one week earlier, but that proved to be a false alarm and a foreshadowing at the same time. We worried that I might not make it to the end of John’s last, long trip and we didn’t. Rebekah, Rachel, and David were asleep when the pains began. I called my mother to take me to the hospital, my neighbor to babysit the kids, and John to complain about his not being home. We arrived at Christ Hospital where they prepped me for my 3rd C-section because even though the doctors were OK with a normal birth, Matt was breach and not wanting it any other way.

Everything went smoothly. The darkest of my newborns was brought out to his Grandma Marilyn where she exclaimed, “Finally, my Italian baby!” These days when Matt grows out his substantial beard, which takes about two days, my father refers to him as Omar.

So John high-tailed it home to his second son, now part of the rebuilding of the Danahers of Wenona, Illinois. John’s dad, John Sr., had been the last of the descendents of the men who had migrated from County Limerick, Ireland. But John had married Rosemary Cassidy and in no time they had 5 boys and 5 girls. Those five boys have begotten 10 grandsons, thereby continuing the Danaher name, so all is well.

Matt has been one of the most low-maintenance kids I have ever met. He loved his family, but all he cared about was being with his brother. By the time he was two, he would wake in the morning, come running into the kitchen and ask, “Where’s David?” This was the beginning of the contrast between the two brothers. David, like me, was always up and moving early while Matt, like John, could, according to my father, “Sleep on a picket fence.”

One day he came in from outside and proceeded to gather a paperclip, rubber band, the dislodged trigger from his toy gun and some other odds and ends. I asked what he was doing and he announced that he was going to fix his broken rifle. Pretty impressive for a 3 year old.

At the end of each year, John would have to tally our healthcare costs for each child, and although Matt always seemed to have a perpetual runny nose, we hardly ever had any bills for him. He never seemed to ask for much. He and David loved their Legos, but as long as he had his brother he was content. Matt also displayed a streak of stubborn loyalty. In 1992, this 6 year old, from the back seat of the car, rebuked me when he found out I was supporting Pat Buchanan against President George H. W. Bush in the Republican primary.

All of the kids had to take piano lessons, but by the time Matt was being instructed he had already become familiar with the pieces of music from listening to his sisters and brother practice. Our piano teacher was slightly frustrated because he wasn’t really reading any notes. He just picked it up aurally. He then proceeded to learn the mandolin, guitar, and Scottish snare drum for the bagpipe band in which his sister and brother were members. Over the years Matt has proved to be quite the musician. If I had let him, he might have eschewed higher education in favor of trying to make it in the music industry, but I had spent his childhood hammering home the rule that he had to complete a college degree and so he did.

My fourth child, my second son, is making his way in this world and his dad and I couldn’t be more thankful that at the age of 25 he holds fast to the faith of his fathers and seeks to serve Christ. My only prayer is that God will teach him that the Chicago Bears are not worth the torture he allows them to inflict every Sunday.

We love you Matthew. Happy 25th Birthday.

ANNIE GET YOUR GUN

2011-08-17T18:46:00.000-07:00

Very few national and international events in my life have captured my attention enough to justify my interrupting my schedule to sit down in front of the TV to watch events unfold in real time. So few that I can remember most of them. The assassinations of the Kennedys would have been the earliest in my memory. More recently, the storming of the Koresh compound in Texas in 1993, the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building by Tim McVeigh in 1995, and of course 9/11. Sandwiched in between the Kennedy murders and Waco were the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992. Watching the complete disintegration of law and order was unnerving and instructive at the same time.

I think of those riots often and have had a nagging feeling that I should write down my thoughts on what I learned by watching the news coverage of the mob violence. The convictions I have in favor of an armed citizenry were solidified during the Rodney King riots. As usual life gets in the way of chronicling until something else occurs that washes over me like ice cold water. That something was the terrifying events in London this past week. Watching England’s complete breakdown of law and order brought me back to the L.A. riots. Now I have to formulate my argument.

We all know that if the United States Government wanted to send troops and tanks into our streets to subdue the population, suspend the Constitution, and establish a tyranny, it could. Most of us were around when the ATF decided it had no other option than to invade David Koresh’s compound in Texas for the purpose of releasing women and children who the Attorney General believed were being abused at the hands of the Koresh cult. It doesn’t matter how many shotguns, rifles, and handguns you own, they are no match for the power of the federal government, assuming the feds could convince the military to go along with the plan.

No president, left or right wants to be the One who dispenses with the most profound document on human rights ever written by men for the sake of every individual created in the image of God. No one wants that historical legacy. So, if you were of the persuasion that citizens don’t seem to be as capable of self-government as our founders believed they could be, and therefore you believed the citizenry needed greater control by a massive central government, you would want the consolidation of that control to be the result not of a bold power grab, but a benevolent response to the citizenry’s cry for help due to desperate circumstances.

Now if the citizens are individually well-armed, such an outcry for a suspension of rights would be a long time coming. The illustration of this is exactly the vivid memory I have of watching one news report of the Rodney King riots in L.A. The video clip showed a business owner (if my memory serves me right, he was the owner of a gas station) being brutally beaten on the street by a gang of thugs. As this was happening, a police car drove past the gang and victim, but the officers DID NOT STOP to assist the man. The police car was not traveling at a high rate of speed and the officers were well aware of what was happening.

Why didn’t the police stop? Maybe they were overwhelmed by all of the violence and were required to proceed to another more desperate situation. I don’t know for sure, but anyone who remembers those days of rage remembers that the L.A. police were overwhelmed and unable to defend the citizens.

The only people who avoided a violent beating and the loss of their property were those who WERE armed and willing to shoot at the barbarians. Contrast the above scene with the more rewarding scene of the Korean gun shop owners who were loaded for bear and ready to shoot to kill. And they did. And they survived. And if I remember correctly, they were dragged into court for their actions. Ultimately, I believe they were exonerated of any wrongdoing, but the mere fact that they were considered lawbreakers at all is a travesty.

Who would be more likely to beg for military intervention in our neighborhoods during an uprising of the “feral” children as they have been called by British journalists? The well armed and trained self-governing citizens or the disarmed and neutered citizens, trained only in dependency on the paternal government, the creator of the “feral” underclass to begin with. Freedom comes with responsibility and responsibility preserves freedom. I may have come to the end of my trust in the ability or even the intention of the local, state, and federal authorities to protect me and my family.

England’s recent riots were more disturbing than any so far in the Western world. The people of England are indeed neutered, impotent, and therefore, at the mercy of the feral youth on one side and the dazed and confused authorities on the other. The politicians in England are already talking about being more concerned for these poor youths and the frustration that caused all this violence. After several generations of government chasing God from the public square, promoting sexual libertinism, purposely eroding the institution of marriage and then funding the consequences through social programs, the members of the Ruling Class in England seem to want to throw more fuel on the fire by throwing more money at the same social programs that have created this permanent underclass.

Here at home it is only a matter of time before the political propaganda of the Obama Administration, the Democrat Party, and the liberal media has its intended effect on the underclass in America. Constantly beating the drum of how the Tea Party Terrorists want to take from the poor to give to the rich will eventually foment violence toward, not the truly rich , but the middle class business owners, who in comparison to the average unemployed welfare recipient, look to be wealthy. When it comes to coveting your neighbor’s goods, everything is relative.

In conclusion, when push comes to shove, and the pot boils over onto the streets, and the already lawless juveniles just down the road from my middle class neighborhood decide to help themselves to my “wealth,” I intend to be prepared so I won’t have to depend on an overwhelmed police force and forfeit my rights for peace and safety.

THE FIRST THIRTY-THREE YEARS ARE THE HARDEST

2011-07-22T05:41:00.000-07:00

On July 22, 1978, Father Robert Verstynen married John Danaher and Gina Moran at St. Bernadette Church in Rockford, Illinois. That was 33 yrs. ago and we haven’t looked back, mostly because we haven’t had the time to look back.

John and I had dated for about 18 months when we started discussing marriage. The one sticking point was my intention to become a Chicago Police officer. I had taken the civil service exam several years before and had recently completed interviews and a physical exam. I was scheduled to report to the Academy in the fall. John wasn’t so sure he wanted his wife to be a police officer. I wasn’t so sure we could survive on his salary as a Catholic school teacher and football coach. He compromised by agreeing to look for a job in industry.

It didn’t take very long for him to land a job with Union Carbide. Now it was my turn to compromise. We would have to move to Tarrytown, New York, in order for John to spend one year training to be a specialty chemical salesman. He needed to be in Tarrytown in six weeks. The dilemma was whether to marry quickly or after his year of training.

John’s proposition was to go ahead to New York to train and I would stay behind to plan the wedding. He reminded me that “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” I reminded him that from my perspective, “out of sight, out of mind.” He compromised.

So, we never formally engaged since I did not want him to spend money on a diamond ring. I didn’t see the point. We had limited resources and a wedding to put together in six weeks.

Right off the bat, my parents suggested the wedding be held in Rockford, home base of the Danaher clan. Since there were so many of them (John has nine siblings) and so few of us (I have two), it made more sense for the Moran clan to do the traveling. That meant John and I made all of the wedding arrangements on weekend trips to his parents’ home.

We paid for the cake, the flowers, and the photographer. We kept the guest list to immediate family and a couple of best friends. The wedding would take place at the Danaher’s parish church of St. Bernadette, with their favorite priest Fr. Bob Verstynen officiating. Fr. V also did some counseling with us on the weekends. The hall of choice was the Knights of Columbus and we ordered the prime rib dinner at $7.50 per plate with an open bar.

I wore my prom dress which was white and my sister, the maid of honor, wore one of her dresses from a dance she had attended. John and his brother, the best man, wore suits. There was no agony over the music for the ceremony. In 1978 you just went along with the program already established by the church’s musicians. It wasn’t particularly memorable, but it was stress free.

Finally, once dinner was over, the entertainment was provided by the Danaher siblings who never met a gathering for which they didn’t want to sing something. A good time was had by all and when my father paid the bill of $496.00, he looked at my sister and brother and said, “You two are getting married just like this.”

Our life together has taken us to New York, Texas, and back to Chicago. We have raised and homeschooled five blessed children and are now enjoying the role of grandparents in the lives of our four grandchildren. It has been a time consuming and expensive enterprise that has left little for those finer things in life, but John and I have never swayed from the understanding that our children are a blessing from the Lord and our treasures are in heaven. This makes deprivation of those so-called “finer things” barely noticeable.

Whenever John is engaged in a conversation about marriage and family he loves to make the joke (at my expense) that “the first 33 years are the hardest” and “I married her for better or for worse and I know those good days are coming.”

In truth there have been skirmishes, but never difficult times. It has been said that the best thing a man can do for his kids is love his wife. This is true. Conversely, the best thing a man can do for his wife is disciple their children and teach them to respect their mother. John is the best husband because he is the best father and believes every word God has given us in the Scriptures by which we must live. He took seriously St. Paul’s admonition in Ephesians 5 to “…love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” Every night after work he spent the entire evening playing with the kids. After baths he would spend another hour reading or telling them stories, just like his grandfather Cassidy had done for him.

Our life has been blessed. Marriage and raising children is an endeavor that succeeds best on a rock solid foundation in Christ with a good dose of humor added on a daily basis. I hope the next thirty-three years are just as "hard" as the last.

"LOOK AT ALL THIS JUNK!"

2011-07-19T19:31:00.000-07:00

“Look at all this junk!” Those were the words of my 3year old grandson, Ryan, as he walked past the open door of our garage. As they say, “Out of the mouths of babes”…

I can’t remember the last time we could fit a car in there. The overstuffed packrat garage is a common phenomenon in America, but it’s especially bad in our case, due to our not having a basement to absorb much of the college stuff that comes and goes each year.

Then there is the stuff that is valuable, but can’t quite fit into the graduate’s new apartment. I have to patiently wait for the adult child to marry and move into a real house before I can dump the plastic bins full of college textbooks, notebooks and papers. I also contribute at least one bin per kid of childhood memorabilia, school papers, art work, and special toys.

We are in a holding pattern right now. The two oldest are married, living in their own homes, and now have their respective bins in their basements. The middle son is getting married, but it will be some time before they are able to purchase a house. The next one down is in his own apartment, but I still have his stuff, including an annoyingly large water gun that keeps getting thrown around the garage. Finally, in terms of children, my college student daughter with the pile of dorm junk that grows each year.

My husband is a major contributor to the packrat problem, but I won’t talk behind his back. After all, he finances this operation.

You would think that I would have a positive attitude toward the existence of a light at the end of the tunnel. There is no light as far as the garage goes – only more junk – because I have a growing tribe of grandchildren and twice in the last month I stumbled upon neighborhood garage sales. Now I also have two bikes for the kids to ride when they visit, an extra stroller, and courtesy of my sister, who never believed in buying a gift that weighed less than the child, we have an electric car with which they can run over each other.

My family room is not the smartly furnished, cozy den that I envisioned having when all the kids were grown. The furniture is the same only more worn and stained and now I have a plastic kitchen in the corner with all of the related plastic pans, a tub of blocks, tubs of Legos, and a pile of puzzles.

In the words of Yogi Berra, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

Yes, “Look at all this junk!”

HANGING WITH THE IRISH

2011-05-29T14:21:00.001-07:00

Maggie and Kristen were headed to Gaelic Park after church to play with the Irish Musicians Association at noon. I knew I should go to support the cause, but I desperately wanted to work in the garden. The weather was supposed to have cleared today, but instead a new line of drenching storms were headed this way. That meant neither the garden nor Irish Fest were a good idea. The only other option was to stay inside and that would make me crazy. Once the warm, or in this year’s case, less cold weather arrives, I can barely stand to even sleep inside.

While trying to make the decision, the TV weather alerts caught my attention and I realized I would have to go to Gaelic Park just in case I had to save Maggie from the storm. I don’t have new and funky wellies so I put on my garden wellies (which don’t look very cool, but they do the job) and a rain jacket, and headed out with Jeanne (Kristen’s mom), hoping to beat the storm.

We got to the tent in time and as we approached, the strains of the music changed my soaking wet attitude toward life. It’s hard to be in a melancholy mood surrounded by happy people listening to happy music and watching happy step dancers. The musicians were just about done when the deluge began, accompanied by lightening, thunder, and a fair amount of wind. This is where my wellies came in handy as the tent began to fill with water. Not having to care or tiptoe through the rushing water was quite liberating. I think I’ll buy myself a fancy pair especially since all of the old Irish guys kept complementing me for being smart. At 56 yrs. old, I’ll take smart.

During the thick of the storm Jeanne and I began to get a little nervous, but as we looked around it appeared that the guys with the brogues were nonplussed. At one point, one of the Irish ladies sitting with us, became concerned for the 20 or so Irish dancers getting ready to take the stage after the musicians and asked one of the gents in charge, “Do you think it is possible for this tent to come down?” His response – “Yes, it could.” Still, no one seemed worried and the dance parents shepherded their kids through the rushing water and onto the stage. Ok then.

The musicians scooted out of the tent over to the tent next door which was the Tea Room. And there we sat having tea and scones and I never would have guessed that this wet and soggy day would turn out to be so delightful.

Hostas, Hostas, and Hostas

2011-05-16T21:28:00.000-07:00

I think I have to admit that I have an obsession with hostas. Until I moved to Palos Heights and experienced shade from real trees, I never knew what a hosta was. My obsession with these plants began slowly. My yard was surrounded by trees and we could barely get anything to grow. My children’s piano teacher, Carol Miller, had a beautiful garden that she and her husband tended to religiously. It was in that garden, while waiting for the lessons to be over, that I became acquainted with hostas. Just like most folks in Palos, the Millers had quite a few trees and had to cultivate their garden with that in mind. Carol had some monster hostas under her trees and when they had reached the size of small bushes, she and her husband dug them up and split them in thirds. The extras were sitting in her yard in plastic bags. She practically begged me to take them if I could find a place for them. And thus it began.

I lined the back of my lot with these beauties, the proper names of which, I do not know. They quickly doubled in size and I was proud that I could finally grow something in the shade. Little did I know that my hostas represented just one cultivar of maybe hundreds.

As time went by, the trees that lined the back of my property were cut down (scrub trees – nothing worth saving) to make way for new houses. This left me with something entirely unfamiliar – sunshine. I spent that summer digging out my hostas and moving them to the still shady corners of my lot. I replaced them with coneflowers, wild phlox, gloriosa daisy, and lilies from a catalog. What fun. I also ordered some fancy-looking hostas from Spring Hill for those still grassless places under the oaks

As my penchant for gardening increased, I was no longer satisfied with grooming – in a wild sort of way – my own property and then began expanding out into the adjacent, city-owned lot which was a tangle of every invasive European plant known to frustrated forest-preservers in the area. My neighbor on the other side of this lot, which was intended to be a side-street way back in 1954, was also grooming this thicket now that our children were growing and not interested in building “forts” and exploring. Slowly, fern by fern, hosta by hosta, lily by lily, we pushed back against the invasive buckthorn and mustard garlic. We had almost met in the middle when our city offered the lot for sale to each of us for $1 per square foot. Louise and I were so excited. Our husbands – not so much. This meant we were now the proud owners of 12 oak, 1 ash, and 3 mulberry/cherry trees between us.

Undaunted, Louise and I plowed full steam ahead. We have since eliminated the weeds and undergrowth. We spend an ungodly amount of time moving plants around in order to get just the right plant in the right spot to take advantage of what little sun gets through the canopy. Which brings me back to hostas. After a visit to my sister-in- law’s heavenly garden in Rockford, I discovered that there is a whole world of hosta varieties out there that I had never imagined. I had never seen such odd and beautiful types of plaintains before and since I could not be traveling up to the Rockford area nurseries to buy these, I started looking online and guess what I found? I found http://www.bridgewoodgardens.com/.

This website is for me what seed catalogs are for gardeners who have sunlight.

Their Home Page carries a warning which I think was written with me in mind:

A warning to casual Hosta users:

Many of us, when we first started using Hostas, thought we could stop whenever we wanted. What begins as casual experimentation can quickly develop into a serious addiction. If you find that you actually want to know the differences between ‘Inniswood’ and ‘Paul’s Glory’, if you tell your spouse that you paid less than you really did for a new introduction, but brag to other gardeners that you paid more, or if you no longer care what your spouse thinks, you need help.

Help is available from Bridgewood Gardens, a nursery that specializes in caring for gardeners afflicted with Hostas.

In 2007 I ordered my first batch of different varieties which means those 24 plants are now almost fully mature. All survived and I have just received my second shipment. It is the middle of May, it's still cold and rainy, and just as soon as the warmth returns, I will lose myself in my garden, arranging and rearranging my hostas.

EASTER EGGS AND MUD PUDDLES

2011-04-24T22:23:00.000-07:00

We aren’t getting any younger. No one is. But as we age, so do our grandchildren, which means we get to be distracted by them as they discover the world even if we have long since ceased to be excited by the effect of splattered mud on our clean clothes. John and I had a very full and satisfying Easter weekend this year. Usually we have Easter Sunday dinner with all of our children, their spouses, and the grandchildren. This year we switched the gathering to Easter Saturday in order to spare my daughters the torture of dragging tired, crabby toddlers and babies from one event to another – from church, to Grandma’s house, and maybe a late afternoon visit with the in-laws. By having the festivities on Saturday, they would have nothing to do but visit with us and relax.

Since Ryan and his cousin Caleb will be turning three this coming summer, it follows that now is the time to start planning adventures with the little guys. This Saturday’s adventure involved Grandpa, the Dads, and a posse of other family members, taking the boys to Lake Katherine Nature Preserve to see the variety of birds who have taken up nesting there. The moms stayed behind. Me to do the cooking and my daughters to try to get the babies down for naps. The adventure at Lake Katherine was more successful than the naptime attempt.

Knowing that the abundance of rain would have left mud puddles along the path, I warned the girls to bring the boys’ wellies and extra clothes.

If you think about it, running and stomping through puddles is a lost art. Most kids don’t have the time to indulge in mud puddles and if they did have the inclination, getting physically dirty is a rare happening on the streets of America. Keeping kids in front of the TV or on the computer doesn’t do anything for their brains, but it does keep them clean.

TWENTY YEARS AGO TODAY

2011-02-23T21:03:00.000-08:00

Twenty years ago today, I was three weeks away from my due date for delivery of my fifth child. She had already spent the last month trying to kick her way out of my womb and I was looking forward to letting her loose. This was going to be an anxious delivery because the past three deliveries had been by Cesarean section. This time there were no complications, so my doctor was willing to let me give it a try. The downside was that it would have to be without anesthesia. My OB didn’t want the drugs masking any complications during the birth process.

My good friends, Chuck and Jeanne Bern, joined John and I for an afternoon date to see Mel Gibson’s Hamlet. We left all seven of the other kids at home with a sitter and took off for the movie theater. On the way there I began to feel cramping, but wasn’t sure what to think of it. I was determined to see this movie and figured I could hang in there for a couple of hours. The labor pains became more regular and slightly more intense during the course of the movie. My other thoughts turned to the first Gulf War, at which time we were waiting for the ground war to begin. For some reason I linked my own birth pains with the start of the ground invasion of Iraq. I was right. As we sat there watching Mel Gibson lose his mind, for pretend, General Schwarzkopf was plowing through Kuwait and into Iraq.

By the time we left the theater, John and I knew we were only going home to collect our overnight bag and head to Palos Hospital. We left the kids with the Berns and checked in at the hospital around 8:00 p.m. By 2:00 a.m. Margaret Elizabeth Danaher was finally released into the world. It was my first REAL delivery and at least once during the worst of it, I begged the doctor not to let me die “because I have four other kids at home!” The nurse tried not to laugh and replied, “Mrs. Danaher, we’ve never let anyone die.”

My little Maggie became the biggest personality in the family by the time she was two years old. Her determination to keep up with her siblings sometimes brought them to tears even as teenagers. Eventually she mellowed and became the talented young woman that she is today. She is my best friend and intellectually I live vicariously through her now that the student has surpassed the teacher in wisdom and knowledge by being a stellar student at Hillsdale College.

Happy Birthday Maggie! God Bless You.

YOUR EARS COULD KILL YOU

2011-02-12T08:26:00.000-08:00

The other night I had the local news on while doing some bookwork. I was only half paying attention to a report on the technological advances in prenatal testing of fetuses for birth defects. The reporter was very impressed by the ability of these medical "advances" to ferret out the slightest oddities, the most detrimental being Down Syndrome. Slowly, I began to pay attention and then I started to get sick as the piece featured a young couple, parents of one toddler and currently pregnant with baby #2, who availed themselves of a less invasive procedure, which measured the angle of the ear on the fetus via ultrasound. Here I sat, watching an expert in the field of prenatal testing, showing the viewers how the ear of a very developed baby is measured.

“Dr. Norman Ginsberg with Reproductive Genetics Institute did a detailed exam of the angle of the fetus' ear. ‘We know that Down syndrome children have low set ears and they're posteriorly rotated, which means they are turned back,’ Ginsberg said.”

How does any human being, staring at the very vivid ultrasound, determine that if that child’s ear is set wrong, he should be aborted? Yet, this man and woman, very calmly went through the process of all the testing.

“For the Jemseks, the ear screen offered an extra level of comfort early in the pregnancy but they still decided to go forward with more traditional definitive tests. The Jemseks learned everything is fine.”

Fine for whom? I was chilled to the bone knowing that the test could have resulted in a death sentence for that baby. This brings me to the inspiration for this post. The first link is to this story of prenatal testing. The second link is to a story about a young man who is living a quality life in spite of his “birth defect” providing us with the reminder that no one is perfect. Everyone should have the opportunity to reach for the highest level of accomplishment possible according to the gifts with which they have been blessed.

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/health&id=7952321

http://ncaabasketball.fanhouse.com/2011/01/31/one-armed-kevin-laue-an-ncaa-basketball-inspiration-to-all/

REGISTER DOGS. REGISTER SEX OFFENDERS. LEAVE US ALONE.

2011-02-12T06:51:00.000-08:00

This coming Tuesday I will, for the second consecutive week, be heading down to Springfield, Illinois, to lodge my objection to Senate Bill 136, which will require home educators to “register” with the state or local school districts in order to prevent truancy. This might seem reasonable until one takes the time to ask just how making responsible parents register their children will prevent truancy? That question was asked of several legislators, but was never answered. The concern of home school parents is that registering with the state will open the door to control of the curriculum and general interference from a bureaucracy that really does not understand the various philosophies of home education. That too was evident to me as we conversed with several Senators.

I was pregnant with my twin daughters and living in Texas when I decided that I wanted to home school my children. That was 30 yrs. ago. I spent the first 5 yrs. of their lives preparing to be their teacher by reading books on education philosophy and methods and attending workshops. I can’t imagine any parent embarking on such a task with anything but the goal of honestly educating the children for whom they are responsible. The largest segment of the home school population is actively Christian and the primary reason for choosing home education is based in faith.

For the past 25 yrs. I have bragged to friends in other states that Illinois is the most liberal state in the nation for home education. In 1951 the Illinois State Supreme Court essentially ruled that home schools are to be given the same status as private/parochial schools. We parents have had very little interaction with the local school districts and therefore very little stress outside of what we put on ourselves. We have always appreciated that liberty more than we could express and therefore, we knew we could not squander such a blessing. And I believe we home school parents have proven ourselves to be worthy of that liberty.

Therefore, this requirement to register our children, with an institution we have chosen NOT to be a part of, is blatantly unjust and is rightfully suspect. Adding to that suspicion is the fact that the Senate Education Committee, having overlooked the ruling in 1951, is now rewriting the bill to separate the home schools from the parochial schools and apply the registration requirement to home school children only. They appear to being going through a great deal of trouble to monitor and possibly control this small but very independent group.

Illinois’ troubles are legion. The graduation rate for the Chicago Public School System is dismal, somewhere between 50 and 60%. One must wonder why registering home school children is so important to the bill’s author, State Senator Ed Maloney. The opposition to SB136 has been passionate and yet Senator Maloney is refusing to table the bill.

Regardless of truancy, the fundamental issue is this – To whom do the children belong? The philosophical difference between the politicians and the objects of their control is that we parents are absolute in our conviction that our children are blessings from God and we have been given primary stewardship over them. It is only when we fail in our stewardship that the state has any right to exercise authority over the children in our place. And in America we have the right to fail.

Given that, according to my faith, I believe I derive my rights from God and not the State, I and my daughters have already determined that we will not register my grandchildren when we officially begin the education process. What has not been determined, because it had not been thought through by the powers-that-be, is what the penalty will be for refusing to comply with SB136. Our punishment remains to be seen.

CHRISTMAS IS FINALLY OVER

2011-01-25T18:18:00.001-08:00

It is almost the end of January and today I finally began dismantling the Christmas trees. I think they have been up since December 11^th. I am still dragging my feet, not wanting to say goodbye to all of my beautiful ornaments that each have such nostalgic value to me. First, I took down and carefully packed my childhood ornaments, many of which are beautiful Italian blown glass. They could be 40 to 50 years old. Some are getting weak and breaking without much encouragement. This year though, I noticed how my "new" ornaments, those that I have been buying since my children were young, are much older than I had thought. I am odd in that I mark the year of the ornament's purchase on the bottom with a marker. As I was wrapping them up for storage, I would look at the date and it would jolt me for a minute to realize that my "new" ornaments are 20 to 30 yrs. old. Each of those ornaments represents another year in the growth toward the gradual independence of my children. I feel a little melancholy right now.

As for the trees, they kept sucking water up to the very end when I hastened their demise by denying them any more over the last three days. I don't want water all over my floors as we carry them out with their stands tomorrow. While I was removing the ornaments on the more thirsty of the two Fraser Firs, I noticed that it had started to sprout baby pinecones at the very top. Now I feel really sad knowing that the trees could have made it a couple of more weeks. I could have put red and pink hearts and ribbons on them for Valentine's Day. It's too late now and I will spend the rest of this evening untangling the lights.

No season brings back memories of 29 years of motherhood as the Christmas season does. No other time during the year causes me to think so much about my childhood as the Christmas season does. It's as if time stands still for a few weeks and then I have to wake from a dream and get back to the present. The melancholy will dissipate once I have cleaned the mess and put away all of the seasonal decorations. Then I will feel renewed and ready to prepare for the coming spring. Instead of reading my Bible in the early morning under the lights of the Christmas tree, it won't be long before I am reading it outside on the patio listening to the birds in the early quiet.

MENTAL ILLNESS AND MURDER

2011-01-12T07:17:00.001-08:00

Twenty-some years ago, somewhere in the 80's, I heard an interesting interview with a man, who had worked for the Legal Services Corporation of the U.S. government. He talked at length about how the LSC, in conjunction with the ACLU, went state by state across the country and sued each state government to make it illegal to incarcerate any person who was not homicidal or suicidal. The result was an opening of the floodgates, allowing thousands of people onto the streets who were mentally ill and incapable, in most cases, of being self-sufficient. These folks became, and still are, the homeless of America. Now, it was this gentleman's opinion that this coordinated action between the lawyers at the LSC and the ACLU was intended to create an "Achilles heel" with which to highlight the failings of American capitalism. He talked about the broken hearted families of these now wandering homeless men and women who were desperate but powerless to corral their mentally ill fathers, mothers, children, brothers, and sisters, in an institution where they would be protected and monitored so that appropriate medications could be administrated to curb the excesses of their illnesses.

This was a rude awakening for me who like so many others was naïvely swayed by, believe it or not, the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Not being one to jump on any bandwagon, I didn't exactly cheer like other members of the audience when the persecuted patients of the mental institution broke free – to become the homeless on the streets begging and sometimes intimidating passers-by. However, I was at that point prejudiced against the concept of mental institutions and opposed to the idea that people could be "committed" by family members. After all, isn't that what the communists in Russia did to their political enemies? Yes. But there has to be a happy medium. Someone like our latest schizophrenic murderer in Arizona, who not only has taken life and permanently impaired others, has brought great sorrow to his own family who may (or may not) have been trying to control him. Without the power to do so, they were unable to prevent the inevitable.

This article in the Wall Street Journal today addresses this issue with the knowledge and expertise that I do not have.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703779704576073973345594508.html?mod=ITP_opinion_0

Christmas 2010 Update by Maggie Danaher

2011-01-09T13:08:00.001-08:00

Hello there!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from the Danaher family (and while we're at it, Happy Saint Patrick's Day). Once again we have a blessed and busy year. God has guided us through this year and, as we look forward to 2011, we reflect on His gracious provisions during 2010.

Last year saw the birth of two new grandchildren. On April 6, Sean Michael Holler was born to Rachel and Joel. Ever since then, Sean has charmed the whole family with his bright blue eyes, red button nose, and contagious smile. Sean's big brother Ryan, who turned two in June, regales the family in his own right through his newfound vocabulary. Ryan's observations and tendency to joke at such an early age remind us of Uncle Dave and great Grandpa Bugs. But, sweet as Grandma's Christmas cookies, Ryan makes any gathering a blast. Joel continues to work for the Chicago Police Department while Rachel picks up the occasional shift at the hospital.

Rebekah and Elliott also added to their family this year when Eden Rose was born in July. Serene (and plump) as a sugarplum, Eden watches everything, including her big brother Caleb. Caleb does eat his carrots because Mom and Dad tell him vegetables will make him run faster. Caleb shows that he takes after Dad, toddling through the snow in the backyard even in the coldest of weather. Rebekah continues her role as a stay at home mom, quite a job given Caleb's energy. Elliott continues to work for

John still works at UOP. While he has spent many years with the company, John also started something new this year--fantasy football. John finally realized that the best way to actually support in winning team is to create one himself. Though the Bears gave him much less cause for grief this season, John still enjoys the distraction that his fantasy team provides from the woes and disheartening losses present in every Bears season. John also enjoys his role as Grandpa. From taking Ryan to see fire trucks to singing little Eden to sleep, John has taken his role as grandpa almost as seriously as his position as leader of his very own football team.

Gina thought that an empty house would give her more time to catch up on her reading. Instead, she has spent the past year on the run after her four grandkids. Gina willingly lends a helping hand whenever Rachel and Rebekah need a babysitter, ready to drop everything in order to help her daughters. Gina also invests herself her new hobby –facebook. Mom puts all her kids to shame by the amount of time she spends updating her status, sharing links, and keeping up with family members. When her children express frustration at her for not informing them of important events within the extended family, Gina simply replies, "Well, it was on facebook!"

David reached a milestone this year when he finished and defended his physics thesis in August. He passed with flying colors, or at least the Ph.D's at Northern thought so. At home, we just nod our heads and smile…and ask David to please remember to put his dishes in the dishwasher. For the time being, Dave lives at home while teaching Science and Math courses at Moraine Valley Community College. Along with Matt, he continues to rehearse and practice with his rock band, which has been a work in progress for almost as long as David has been writing incoherent lines about electrons spins. However, while the physics rabble has earned him a degree, the band has yielded no returns thus far. Yet mom and dad are not sure whether said "returns" would be kind to their eardrums anyway.

Matt has been blessed with a job change this year. While he started out 2010 working for a basement waterproofing company, he finished the year as an employee at Costco. Matt's hard work has already earned him a few promotions. It also caused him to leave the nest for the second time. Though he began working part time at a store on the South Side and consequently lived at home, Matt transferred to a fulltime position at a new Costco in Lake Forest and moved in with bandmate Dustin. It seems that on the second try, Mom has finally succeeded in pushing the fourth duckling out of the nest. What she plans to do about his science-spouting older brother remains to be seen.

Maggie is a sophomore at Hillsdale College. After much deep internal reflection, she finally chose American Studies, (a combination of American history, American literature, and Political Science) as her major. This past semester, she worked as an RA in the freshmen dorm, traveled to Washington D.C. for Constitution Day (September 17), and joined a country band – Pickled Beats. In the most recent developments at home, Maggie has, due to Mom's urging, persistently endeavored to keep her bedroom clean. However, her parents have finally come to the conclusion that, while you can take a girl out of a messy dorm room…let's just say, it's a lost cause.

As you can see, a lot has been going on in the Danaher family throughout the past year. God watched over us without fail in 2010 and we are confident that He will continue to work in our lives throughout the next year. We wish you just such a New Year in 2011!

Cheers,

The Danaher Family

And The Award Goes To.....

2011-01-04T09:49:00.000-08:00

http://www.worldmag.com/articles/17401

I don't like television. It robs people of their imaginations and squanders precious time. In Psalm 101:3, David says, "I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless." I think of that verse often when I find myself staring at the nonsense on the tube. The most annoying shows are the annual strokefests known as award shows featuring one celebrity after another talking about how "amazing" so and so is for his/her performance in a movie/show. Or how "great" some musician is for his/her new album - all highly produced of course.

But out there in the real world of poverty, pain, oppression, and suffering, toil the real heros on this earth. They give their all to heal the sick and along with that, they hope to "bring good news to the poor; ... to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to open the prison to those who are bound;" (Isaiah 61:1)

When all is said and done, these servants of Jesus will enter the gates of the Kingdom of Christ hoping that they have been a blessing to the people they have served in this life and hoping to hear Jesus say, "Well done good and faithful servant!"

For a look at the world of the award winning accomplishments of a few of these truly talented people, check out the link above.

A Very Marilyn Christmas - Part 2

2010-12-30T20:53:00.000-08:00

My sister graciously searched the family photos to find every picture taken during our Christmas celebrations. Even though I thought we had a million photos of trees, toys, and cookie trays, there weren't near as many pictures as we are accustomed to taking these days with our digital cameras.

This was one of my mother's best Christmas trees, in 1963(?). Many of the ornaments on this tree are also on mine and my sister's trees today.

Gina and Christine in their new Christmas pajamas.

My mother's good friend, Barbara Kiessling, often visited on Christmas Eve or day. It was the Kiessling family that my mother hosted for a party after Midnight Mass for two years. Being up so late made it hard for Marilyn to cook the big dinner on Christmas Day so that was a short-lived tradition.

My little brother, Richard Jr., known as Angelo to the Irish side of the family.

My grandfather Joseph Patrick Moran holding my baby sister Christine in 1958. That's me with the vino.

Richard, Grandma, and Christine

Clan Moran with Tinker Grandma and Grandpa.

A VERY MARILYN CHRISTMAS

2010-12-07T18:55:00.001-08:00

My mother Marilyn Mazziotti Moran was an extraordinary woman. The youngest of three children, born in 1929, she was a depression child in a family of second generation Italians who lived about a hair above the poverty level. Her mother, my grandmother, was not happy in her marriage to my grandfather Anthony Mazziotti, whom I never knew. The stress my grandmother experienced tended to spill over onto my mom and she carried those unpleasant memories into her adulthood. Because her early years lacked the enrichment she so desperately desired, my mother determined that her children would have and experience what she had only dreamed of. Although she did not realize or appreciate it at the time, her Italian familial customs gave her the palate for appreciating those finer things in life. However poor they were, their genes were programmed to recognize and indulge in the best tastes in food, clothing, and the arts.

Marilyn married my father, a bricklayer and then a Chicago police officer, who did what many husbands do on payday. He kept aside a little spending money for himself and handed the whole paycheck over to his wife. With his meager salary she made sure that we attended Catholic school, ballet lessons, and had a basic but high quality wardrobe from Marshall Field's or Bonwit Teller. She tended toward tartan kilt skirts and argyle knee socks – a foreshadowing of the predisposition my own family would have toward all things Scottish.

Marilyn was careful with her budget, but she did not hold back when it came to the dinner table. My mother was the best cook I will ever know. When I look back on the effort she put into her meals I realize just how grateful I am for the legacy we have. Although she left the Italian cooking to my grandmother, her meals were always tasty and the vegetables were always fresh. Except for corn, I have never bought canned vegetables of any kind. We rarely ate at restaurants because what little income we had for entertainment could not be wasted on a meal that could not compare to what we ate every night at home.

Her commitment to great food reached a crescendo at Christmas. Cookies have always been an important part of the Christmas celebration, but Marilyn was a one-woman cookie factory at Christmas. The preparation for her grand cookie trays began well before Thanksgiving. In early November she began the baking of some of the most beautifully delicate and delicious cookies anyone has ever made. She did this before cooks had access to the gadgets we have today. There were no food processors, so all nuts, and there were many recipes with nuts, had to be finely chopped by hand. She had no cookie press, so all spritz cookies were made with a pastry bag and tip. They were small and finely decorated with an artistic flair. Tray upon tray of cookies was wrapped in plastic and taken down to a very cool basement utility closet where they were stored until it was time to distribute them to neighbors and friends. There was also date nut bread baked in tin cans and fruitcake soaked in brandy.

Somewhere in all of this my mother found time to meticulously decorate the tree. It was a serious matter. Her ornaments were primarily European mouth-blown glass figurines, some of which my sister and I still have on our own trees. When I was very young she used the standard vari-colored lights and tinsel, but when Italian lights came on the market, they suited her style and became the illumination of choice. One of my favorite childhood memories, before the days of the sophisticated Italian lights, was reading books by the light of the tree while lying under the branches. The books were very often paperbacks from Scholastic Books and could be ordered from a monthly (?) catalog at St. Denis school. On my coffee table is the most read of these books – A Treasury of Christmas Stories. It is probably 45 years old and precipitously close to falling apart with age. I read it year after year and dusted it off when my own children were old enough to appreciate the stories and poems.

We kids would spend Christmas Eve staring out our picture window at the sky, hoping to see Santa approaching. Most years we went to bed for the night and woke in the morning to a treasure trove of gifts mostly purchased by Mom at Toyland in Marshall Field's – the original downtown store. Our evening was spent devouring Mom's hot hors d'oveures, chip dip made with diced shrimp, eggnog, sherbert punch and of course, the cookies. There were two Christmases where my mother decided to have close friends over for drinks and hors d'oveures after Midnight Mass. On those two occasions we went to bed early, but were woken up by the arrival of the guests and discovered that Santa had already visited our house. After opening the gifts I remember indulging in what was left of the cocktails in the glasses on the counter in the kitchen. That was probably the last time I ever tasted a whiskey sour. Being up so late on Christmas Eve made it difficult for Mom to put together our Christmas dinner, so that was a short- lived tradition.

Speaking of Christmas dinner, it began with homemade meat and/or cheese ravioli prepared by my grandmother Josephine in her tiny kitchen in her tiny home in the old Italian neighborhood on 69^th street. That would have been good enough for me but then there was the prime rib roast with double-baked potatoes, a vegetable, salad and rolls. Most likely there was a home baked pie or pies, but I was probably content with the cookies and cannot recall if I ever bothered with pie. Sometimes our dinner was preceded by a visit from my Uncle Pepi Mazziotti. I used to laugh myself silly at my uncle. For some reason he was the designated deliverer of the wine for our dinner and on one occasion, when I was 13, he gave this here niece just a little too much Chianti so that I laughed myself even sillier than usual and was pretty much useless after dinner. My father was not amused.

By Christmas night the magic was diminishing and we kids were curled up on the couch in our new pajamas, robes and slippers (our usual Christmas gifts from my paternal grandparents), hugging our dolls and stuffed toys. My mother would barely function for the next couple days until it was time to pull herself together for the New Year's celebration. I have tried to follow in Marilyn's footsteps with a slight modification of her perfectionist tendencies, which drove her to be quite high-strung during the holidays. As a child I was aware of the tension that erupted periodically as Christmas approached. The good always outweighed the bad and I swept it all aside, preferring to focus on the positive. Somewhere in my subconscious I determined that I would not make myself that nutty during the holidays. The tension is hard to avoid when hustling and bustling, but my resolution to only do what I can do and not obsess over the minutiae has kept me from the same very Italian meltdowns that punctuated my childhood Advent season.

This year, December 12, 2010, will mark the 22^nd anniversary of Marilyn's passing. She was 59. Her death was unexpected and crushing for my father, sister, brother and me. We counted on her to create many more Merry Christmases for the grandchildren before passing the baton to us. Only 12 days after her death, we managed to take the baton and run with it in spite of our grief. And so it has gone every Christmas since 1988. The pain we felt that first Christmas is gone, but we think of her always - especially in December.

THE VISITING PROFESSOR

2010-08-15T21:35:00.001-07:00

Last Thursday I had the privilege of listening to my son David present his thesis for a Master's Degree in Physics. David graduated with a degree in physics from Monmouth College and then attended Northern Illinois University for the Master's program. The last two years have been spent working part time while doing the research necessary for his thesis (he might have had this all done sooner if he had not been compelled by circumstances to pay his bills simultaneously). I did not understand one word of the research he presented in the conference room at NIU before an assembly of PHDs, but I could tell that the composure I had prayed for was present as he spoke confidently about his work.
When his presentation was done, the observers were given an opportunity to ask questions and then we were all ushered out of the room so that the committee of professors could ask David questions related to his research, make comments about his observations, and pass final judgment on his paper. While this took place, my family and I joined a visiting physics professor and researcher from Sweden in an adjoining room. This gentleman, originally from Germany, had already visited a national lab out west, was at NIU for a few days, and finishing his U.S. visit at the Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee. I am not sure what the nature of his visit was because we talked chiefly about his various travels and work experiences in Europe. He was, as most Europeans are, very interesting due to their exposure to different countries bordering their own. This man, Klaus, had traveled extensively aside from his having worked in Switzerland and now Sweden, and he spoke five languages. He had not however been to Ireland, so he until makes that trip he won't know what fun really is.
After I shared my pitiful little travel experiences overseas, I asked him how he liked Sweden. He began to describe Swedish culture by sharing that the women in Sweden are emancipated because they all work. I began biting my tongue. He went on to explain that the government of Sweden provides day care, preschool, and public schools free of charge. He did admit however that the 50% tax burden on every worker made it impossible for a woman to do anything other than work since no one can survive on one salary. This is where I released my tongue and gently explained that from my perspective being forced into the workplace by excessive taxes was not my idea of emancipation. I told Klaus that I had stayed home to care for my children and my two daughters were staying home to raise their children. And then I dropped the bomb. I explained that I had homeschooled that grad student in the other room and that he had not attended school until he was 16. This very interesting and kind gentleman was stunned and then asked, "You can do that here?" I said we could. Klaus then asked if there was some test we had to take to prove that we were capable, to which I replied, "No. Not in the state of Illinois." He was still in disbelief, but very polite. Perfectly, at this point, one of the committee members, who had been questioning David, came into the room to announce that they were done. He turned to John and I and said that they were very impressed with David, that they thought he was very intelligent and believe he should be in their PHD program. The good Dr. thought David could pull off a PHD in one more year. So much for state schools and tests determining parental capabilities.
We really liked talking with Klaus. I could not stop thinking about his astonished reaction to the concept of homeschooling. I really hadn't expected it, but the moment was very instructive for me as well as Klaus. Europeans have long ago given up their rights as parents. They truly believe that children belong to the state and parents are merely the nighttime babysitters. Klaus was surprised by my disclosure because he cannot fathom this kind of control and influence by parents over the state's children. That is how far Europe has come from the Biblical model of the family.

UP NORTH 2010 – Wednesday, August 4th

2010-08-10T16:54:00.001-07:00

One of the annual treks we have taken with the kids has been kayaking down the Platte River near Empire, Michigan. We broke the tradition today by signing up for a 2 hour sail from Traverse City on the Tall Ship Manitou. A good time was had by all. The crew was very engaging and enlisted volunteers to hoist the sail. This gave John and Bill the opportunity to hoist and ham. At the first shout-out by the crew to "haul away", Bill and John couldn't resist following orders and adding a song. They jumped right into a rendition of Haul Away Joe. I am sure the other passengers thought that they were paid entertainment.

The cruise was a little more docile than we expected due to the fact that we stayed within the confines of Grand Traverse Bay, but it was well worth the time and money. Especially since Bill and John got to play "crewmember" whenever there was a call for volunteers.

This is where Bill and John, with the help of the rest of our family, sang The Gypsy Rover to our crew girl from Poland.

The crew receives more help from Bill and John who apparently wanted to be pirates when they were growing up.

UP NORTH 2010 – Monday, August 2nd

2010-08-09T20:10:00.001-07:00

NOTE: The date setting on my camera was off by one day.

Monday -
By the time we were sick of lollygagging in the kitchen and on the deck, it didn't look like the cloud cover was going to burn off so we decided it was a day for shopping in Sutton's Bay. Even when it's cloudy or raining at Cathead Bay, it could be hot and sunny in Sutton's. And it was. It's a good thing we took that into consideration and wore cooler clothing.

I absolutely HATE to shop in chain stores at a mall. I absolutely LOVE to shop in small stores owned by independent proprietors featuring locally crafted goods. I could get lost forever on the main street in Sutton's Bay. We have our favorite stores. There's the Front Porch, offering kitchen gadgets, tablecloths, napkins, runners, etc. There are seasonal decorations, candles, and interesting odds and ends that I never see elsewhere. I controled myself, but am ruminating about a few things I might pick up later this week. Another favorite is Bay Wear offering T-shirts, sweatshirts, and hats with clever sentiments printed on the front all touting the superiority of a Michigan vacation. The BEST, BEST, BEST, store in the whole world is located here and it is called Enerdyne. It offers high quality educational toys and activities for kids and some of us who just can't resist the newest Klutz invention. There are great puzzles and books, many of these featuring the natural discoveries of Michigan. Also available is locally crafted jewelry made from the abundance of Petoskey stones harvested on the shoreline. Fifty bucks later I had two children's song books with accompanying CD's and a pair of earrings for myself.

We made a couple of new discoveries before we even started the shopping. Korner Kottage is a relatively new Bed and Breakfast on the main strip, coming into the town. It caught our eye because of the lovely garden in the backyard and the meticulous window boxes all around the house. In an effort to obtain some information on the business, we met and were escorted through the lovely, lovely house by the owner. Just maybe we'll make use of this reasonably priced B&B if we ever come up this far, apart from the week we usually pick for vacation. I keep saying I'd like to hang out up here in autumn.

The second new discovery was North Country Grill and Pub. The menu is limited and therefore well prepared. It is here that I experienced the best thing since garlic. Michigan Buckwheat Honey. It was poured over an appetizer of Wisconsin blue cheese slices. Oh my! I asked where I could buy some, but apparently it's not available to the general public. You have to order it in barrels or something from some farmer. I'll take a barrel. No problem. It was heavenly and I can taste it already on morning oatmeal or homemade yogurt.

UP NORTH 2010 – Sunday, August 1st

2010-08-08T20:36:00.001-07:00

Today began like all our days do in Michigan. Some wake earlier than others, but by 10:00 everyone has trickled into the kitchen for coffee and breakfast. I am usually one of the earlier risers, although I have been known to sleep late on occasion. No one is in a hurry to do anything. Conversations are constant and as is the familial trait of the Danahers, either Bill or John will break out in song if someone says something that triggers a tune in their heads. Before long the deck of cards are out and a game is underway. I usually have to replenish the coffee in the carafe for a second round. During the very loud card game, some of us may slip away to take refuge on the deck for morning devotions. There are always a couple of Bibles and devotional guides lying around in the great room.

Theresa and I made the trip to Northport for the week's groceries and a stop at the newly renovated coffee shop at the old mill. It used to be an ice cream shop with an old peanut grinder that produced the best peanut butter ever. After a couple years of being dormant, the ice cream parlor has been resurrected as a coffee shop with a small banquet hall attached. It would be a fun place to have a wedding.

Back to the cabin and a few hours on the beach. I don't really like lying in the sun, but the cool Lake Michigan breezes and occasional light cloud cover make it endurable. Back to the cabin and a 7:30 dinner of Fajitas and a salad. The guys cleanup and the girls take our regular 3 mile walk along the peninsula. As the sun was setting on the lake we heard the pack of coyotes yipping and howling in the woods on the dunes. It wasn't so intimidating tonight because of their more distant proximity to human habitation. Actually it's a nice reminder of just how removed we are from the hustle and bustle of the city.

UP NORTH 2010 – Saturday, July 31st

2010-08-07T20:23:00.001-07:00

The silence is truly golden. After a seven hour trip, one hour longer than usual due to a traffic jam right out of the gate on 294, we caught up with the Ohio Danahers and friends in Sutton's Bay, northwest of Traverse City. We had dinner and continued the pilgrimage to the Cathead Bay peninsula for our annual vacation courtesy of the Hass family whose cabin is our destination. Tonight for the first time in thirteen or so years, we were serenaded by a pack of coyotes at bedtime. They have finally quieted down. It wasn't quite as creepy as the pack I once heard a few blocks from my suburban home. The north woods are a more natural habitat for a pack of coyotes and the three bobcats just spotted by one of our house guests.

Northern Michigan offers my family and me the honest to goodness break from the daily grind that is truly a time of rest and relaxation. I don't like to do much on vacation. I appreciate the opportunity to do absolutely nothing. The stillness of the north woods has a healing effect that I could not have at Disney World or even a beach in Mexico. We are secluded here. No phones, no computer access, no congestion. Just woods and dunes and a sky full of stars. The only thing missing tonight as I prepare for bed is the sound of Lake Michigan waves lapping the shore. It is very still.

I love this place and fantasize about being snowed in here during the winter. When I say that, John objects that the snow could get so deep, we might not be able to get in or out for a spell. My point exactly. Of course now that I have grandchildren I don't really want to be separated from them for any extended period of time. I miss them so much already. But, I hate the city these days. The traffic, the noise, and the crazy pace of life are fatiguing to me. I will have to be content with one week to heal and slow my heart rate…unless I run into the three bobcats that just emerged from the woods at the end of the road.

CHOICE AND CHURCHES

2010-07-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

America is a country of many choices. Choice is good - if you have the discipline to apply the privilege. Sometimes it seems like it can cause an onset of ADD. There are certain clothing stores I can't walk into because the volume of available stuff is overwhelming. The opportunity to exercise choice when it comes to goods and services is a valuable right. It is what drives our economy. One area where choice is now being exercised as if people were at a smorgasbord is with regard to places of worship. Ever since the Christian world has migrated from the Roman Catholic Church, to Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Presbyterianism, various Reformed churches of northern Europe, Baptist, etc, people have usually remained faithful to the church into which they were born and baptized. With the advent of the modern evangelical movement, the subsequent explosion of “seeker” churches, and the diminishing belief in covenantal relationships, including the covenant of marriage, people have begun to church hop in the same way that they choose which grocery store to frequent. It’s a trend that will continue for some time, although I believe it is the cause of the tiny but significant trend of a migration back “across the Tiber.” And now may I introduce the following guest post by Jason Helopoulos at Justin Taylor’s Gospel Coalition blog.

No judgment here, just food for thought.

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevindeyoung/2010/07/23/good-reasons-for-moving-on/

ANOTHER SESSION AT CHIEF O’NEILL’S – Sunday, July 25, 2010

2010-07-26T06:54:00.001-07:00

The young students of the Irish Music School of Chicago have spent all their energy, have run out of memorized tunes, and now they are slipping away from the music session. As they abandon their chairs the older musicians move in to take over. This results in an acceleration of the pace of the tunes. It is 8:40 and only the most accomplished students and seasoned adults are left in the circle. The tunes not only become faster, they become more complicated – as complicated as Irish music can be. Right now the musicians are rockin'. We have 6 fiddlers, 2 button accordions, and a guitarist. The energy is at its best. At the bar are two Mexican gentlemen and a young boy who clearly has the rhythm in his system. He taps his feet and moves with the time signature as if he has been exposed to the music from birth. I mention to his grandfather (?) that he has a natural rhythm and maybe they should consider lessons. His grandfather (?) jumps at the chance for some information about lessons. Another disciple recruited.

Earlier we arrived late for the session due to one motorcycle wipe-out on the Dan Ryan and Cubs traffic on the Kennedy. When we finally parked down the block from Chief O'Neill's we met John's niece Lisa, her husband Jay, and two beautiful daughters Hannah and Grace on the way in to the pub. This is their first exposure to Irish music and the Irish tradition of including their children in these activities. As we eat, the little girls make friends with Maeve, a beginner concertina player and Irish dancer. They recruit for their circle of make believe, Kate, the daughter of a British co-worker of John's. For the next hour, they run and skip through the beer garden with several other children and not a care in the world. This is the atmosphere that accompanies most traditional music gatherings, but is even more particular to the Irish. This is how traditional music is passed from generation to generation. It is organic. It is not formal. It is not about concert quality performances for big money in front of large audiences. Rather it is a fellowship. It is a circle of lovers. Lovers of music and the dancers for whom the music was created. Tonight is a little special because a certain gentleman from Ireland, a button accordion player, has made an appearance. We all know him, but he is not a regular. His presence is special because he plays odd tunes or familiar tunes in a different key. I, of course, don't know the difference, but when he starts a tune the other musicians are literally all ears. They stop playing and listen intently to this man. Eventually they join in, but they are learning something new. Something different. Organically.

My mother listened to opera and I was trained to be a ballerina in one of Chicago's best dance schools. It was a very formal education for which I am thankful. But I am inclined toward the vulgar (of, pertaining to, or constituting the ordinary people in a society: the vulgar masses). I very much value and believe in the foundational benefits of ballet and classical music training. Those disciplines provide the dancer or musician with the fundamentals necessary for a better grasp of whatever they branch off into later in their artistic adventures. But, as an end to themselves, they do not interest me. They lack the fellowship of the vulgar.

HELPING HANDS by Rebekah Danaher Anderson

2010-07-22T12:06:00.001-07:00

So, I thought I needed help two years ago when I brought home my firstborn son, Caleb. He made his entrance into this world difficult and I was more than uncomfortable – really, I was injured – after delivery. As I labored in love for eight hours, two women stood in the shadows of the quiet birthing room, anxious as I was for the boy to be born. It was my mom, Gina, and my mother-in-law, Beth. I remember their comforting presence there and felt them praying and rooting for me as I went. That was only the beginning of the support they would lend for me and little Caleb as our life together began. My mom stayed for a week after we came home from the hospital. I thought it was the most difficult time in my life. I was in pain physically, overwhelmed emotionally and scared practically as to how I was going to handle this tiny little life. I felt so helpless and vulnerable when my mom finally packed up and moved back home to attend to her own house and responsibilities. But I was far from abandoned. Beth was on-call at any time to rescue me when those insecurities seemed too much to bear in the weeks after Caleb was born. She would drive an hour any time I was feeling desperate, even just desperate for a nap. In Caleb's first two years of life, the moms have been available to me for any help I need.

And I thought I needed help with one baby in the house. Now I have two. Those feelings of utter helplessness and inadequacy have come rushing back… times two. Eden Rose was born three days ago and my mom is here again. She leaves tomorrow and the thought of chasing a toddler and still keeping a fragile newborn safe and sound is almost terrifying. God will give me strength, but I'm so grateful to Him for equipping the mothers in my life with the wisdom and strong hands to help me. I think about how the world in which we live is changing. I feel blessed to have been born in a generation raised predominantly by stay-at-home moms. My husband values that lifestyle because Beth put aside her college degree to raise him and his siblings. My mom never worked, nor did she act like we kids inconvenienced her by forcing her to give up any career dreams. No judgment here. Plenty of my friends were raised by working moms and are working moms, good moms. But I feel specially blessed that the women who are now supporting me are so wise in the ways of homemaking and able to help me become a good mom. Because they sacrificed the lure of the working world and the luxuries that go with it, it is second nature to them now help me as I grow as a mom. Their examples are greater than any parenting book I could read or Super Nanny episode I could watch. They know what it is like to put together dinner while still making time for priorities like reading books and building blocks. Moms who turned all that over to a daycare sitter or nanny can't possibly pass on such valuable advice to a daughter who is trying to navigate the uncertain and exhausting world of motherhood. I only pray for the patience God granted my mother and mother-in-law as well as the commitment to make the long haul until my own daughter someday reaches this point. I think I really need help now. I can only imagine what life will be like if and when I bring home another baby. Hopefully, with time, and the guidance of the mothers in my life, my assuredness will increase. And I'll be forever grateful to them for still making sacrifices even now by changing diapers, washing dishes and holding babies with their skilled hands, their praying hands, their helping hands.

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL - Thursday, July 15, 2010

2010-07-20T19:33:00.000-07:00

Today was very enjoyable. I was surrounded by my two daughters and their respective toddlers and newborns. It was a relaxing day. I made breakfast, cleaned the refrigerator, visited with Rebekah’s in-laws, made lunch, finished cleaning the refrigerator, closed my eyes briefly while the moms and kids took a nap, made dinner, helped Rachel load Ryan and Sean in the car amidst two toddler meltdowns and cleaned up from dinner. Taking a break from the air conditioning, I am sitting outside enjoying the evening, in spite of the fruit flies in my wine.

I was very thankful that Dick and Beth, Elliot’s parents, came to Rockford to see baby Eden Rose. Beth had stopped by on Tuesday, but this was Dick’s first opportunity to see his new granddaughter. He ended up taking Caleb on a much needed walk for at least an hour despite the hot weather. Caleb reminds me of a collie we once had. If you were to let Laddie off his leash, he would walk away from the yard and he would keep walking never to be seen again. He tended to head toward the Cal Sag channel and only the intervention of astute neighbors kept him from becoming a runaway. If we were to open the gate to the yard, Caleb would head straight for the Rock River a few blocks away and I shudder to think what could happen if a neighbor didn’t stop him along the way. Elliot and his dad are outdoorsman. They hunt, they fish, they camp, and civilization is for the birds. This, I now believe, is a genetic predisposition. Caleb has a big yard to play in, but he yearns for the open range like his father and grandfather. I used to hate all of Elliot’s talk of moving to Montana. Now I think it might be the compassionate thing to do for the sake of his child’s dislike of being penned up in the big city of Rockford. Heck, I wouldn’t mind spending extended periods of time in Montana visiting with the kids. For now though, Rockford is far enough away for this grandma’s ability to be available to help out with emergencies.

So, I am tired in a good way. It is the tiredness that comes with a job well done. It is the tiredness that is offset by the joy of having such close relationships with my daughters and having the joy of watching the grandchildren grow. Joy grows from contentment and I think that contentment comes from resolving to bloom where you’re planted. And that I did.

THE 2010 GATHERING OF THE DANAHER CLAN AND A TRIBUTE TO ROSEMARY

2010-07-18T19:27:00.000-07:00

It’s 12:30 a.m. and David has finally decided to venture into the circle of musicians to join Matthew in a song by Brand New. The music has been going strong for two hours with one Danaher after another taking the helm, singing songs to a cadre of guitars and one fiddler. Tim Danaher is on the piano and has decided he is in the mood for Over the Rainbow. This is the highlight of every evening. After all of the hugs, kisses, and catching up - the impromptu concert tops off the day nicely. We parents marvel at the talent of the grandchildren of John and Rosemary Danaher especially since none of us can play any instruments. Mostly the Danaher siblings and their spouses are known for their singing. The two exceptions being Sheila’s husband, Bill Mautino, who takes the lead in playing guitar, and then there is me, the anti-Danaher, who couldn’t sing to save my life. When John Sr. was still alive, any gathering on Glenwood Avenue included many rounds of traditional songs especially if Jim Roddy, John’s favorite neighbor, joined us for the afternoon.

The grandchildren have evolved past the barbershop-type sing along. Tom’s son, Michael, has a band called Rabbit Children and they are as good as any I have heard coming out of IPods around the house. My boys have a band that has spent the better part of a year recording original material. Work and school have delayed their unveiling in concert. Aside from contemporary music, Dave is a bagpiper and Matt has mastered Scottish snare drumming and bluegrass mandolin. Rachel and Rebekah are musically gifted, one a bagpiper and guitarist. The other dabbled in Irish fiddle, but can play the hammered dulcimer. Someday soon I hope she’ll drag it out from the basement. Maggie of course is the clan fiddler, having started her competition career with a 120 yr. old fiddle belonging to ancestor Patrick Danaher, son of Irish immigrants in Leeds, Illinois. Sheila’s daughter, Mara Mautino Hayes, is ½ of Just Jade, keeping busy gigging in and around Phoenix. Mara’s voice is exceptional. All four Mautino children are talented singers and musicians, but only Mara takes it to the stage and studio. Bill Danaher’s son Tim is devoted to music and has even written the score for a musical performed in Steubenville, Ohio along with many of his high school classmates. Daughter, Katie Danaher, is a vocalist. Jim’s son, Joey, plays guitar and sings. Mary’s daughter, Kaylyn, although only 11 yrs. old, is a serious vocalist and doesn’t hesitate to belt out a Disney show tune when we all get together.

These reunions usually begin with a Friday night gathering at Tom’s house for snacks, pizza, salad, beer, wine and sweets. It is almost overwhelming trying to catch up with everyone. I do believe Facebook has been a big help in keeping the clan informed of general activities, making it possible to avoid the obvious “What’s been going on all year?” and getting right down to specifics. Tom and Trish’s house is perfectly suited for the group with a large yard to accommodate badminton, croquet, and a sandbox for the babies. Mostly we gather on the deck, but the kids tend to spread out to play various games. After all the eating, games, and talking, the music begins and continues well into the night. The twenty and thirty something cousins will stick it out for as long as they can, hating the thought of parting - even to sleep.

On Saturday we gather in the breakfast area of the hotel with the male cousins meandering into the room last of all, looking very tired. Matt looks more than tired. Disheveled would aptly describe him. Little ones head for the pool. Older ones head for miniature golf or stay at the hotel playing cards. This year our Saturday gathering began several hours earlier in consideration of the elderly cousins of John Sr. who made the trip to celebrate, not only the reunion, but Rosemary’s 90th birthday this year. June (Smithberger) and Maury Miller drove in from Dwight, Ill. Maxine (Smithberger) and Joe Gilbert made the trip from Madison, Wisconsin. Most importantly was the presence of Aunt Gert (Danaher) and Chuck Howell. Gert is John Danaher’s younger sister and the family historian. She has spent the better part of her retirement researching the family tree. Not only has she sifted through records in central Illinois to validate what oral history has given witness to over the decades, she and Chuck have traveled Ireland and Bavaria to sift through their records, making sure that the family line and history was properly chronicled.

Due to 2010 being Rosemary Danaher’s 90th year on God’s green earth, all of the children and grandchildren made an effort to be here for the family reunion. Everyone of them made the trip. The atmosphere was lively as everyone conversed and enjoyed watching the great-grandchildren form the bonds with their age mates that their parents have formed with theirs. A scan of the photos will show that most of the great-grandchildren are girls. What fun it was to watch them dashing through the large garden, never experiencing a dull moment. Well into the dark night, while the older cousins sang and strummed guitars on the deck, the little girls (and Noah) were flitting around the house and garden immersed in games only they could explain. This is the 2010 version of the gatherings that occurred in Rosemary’s house on Glenwood Ave. when John and I were just having our children. (See the Feb. 2010 post – John’s Irish Rose) The focus here though was different. Instead of simply reconnecting, we were on a mission to pay tribute to the daughter of Irish immigrant Bridget Higgins, wife of John Danaher, the mother of ten children, the last Catholic in America, and according to my husband’s power point production, the most Conservative Woman in the World. Loved, admired, and respected, her children and her children’s children still rise up and call her blessed. She is the model for all we do and the reason we are steadfast in our faith.

THE BABY BOOM ON LINCOLN AVENUE

2010-07-17T20:14:00.000-07:00

There appears to be a baby boom on Lincoln Avenue in Chicago. I haven’t been there for a couple of years, but people have been busy while I was away. Every year the Old Town School of Folk Music sponsors a Folk and Roots Festival the second weekend of July which includes several fiddle contests. We have participated in these contests on some level for the last six years at least. For some reason we could not participate last year and nearly forgot to sign up this year. Contests were an important part of the musical development of my kids for the last 15 years, but once they go off to college, bagpipe or fiddle contests are not high on the list of priorities.

We happily made the annoying trek up north in rush hour traffic, parked at the Old Town School and made our way over to Giddings Plaza in Lincoln Square. As is usually the case with these gatherings of traditional musicians, it turns into Old Home Week. More than a contest, it is an opportunity to reconnect with fellow musicians from past contests and/or festivals. Tonight was no different. Maggie, Kristen, Jeanne (Kristen’s mom) and I were happy to see our friends the Baimans. Rachel Baiman has been competing in the same contests as Mags and Kris for about 10 yrs. It was a regular circuit of bluegrass competitions that included the Illinois State Fiddle Championship, the winner of which was either, a Bern, Danaher, or Baiman fiddler. Katie Bern was the state champion in 2003 & 2004. Maggie was state champion in 2005 & 2006 and was thwarted in her 2007 attempt at a threepeat by Rachel Baiman. I thought maybe they would face off again in 2008, but Maggie was preparing for the competition in Ireland and Rachel was preparing for her freshman year at Vanderbilt University, so the rivalry ended there. Until tonight, when Rachel’s band of Old Timey musicians triumphed over Maggie and Kristen’s smaller, less vocal band of Irish musicians. Out of 16 bands (2 to 5 musicians), Maggie, Kristen and guitarist Andrew Serb finished 3rd, and Rachel Baiman’s group including another female fiddler, an upright bass player, and a guitarist finished 1st. I couldn’t argue with the results. Rachel’s band was awesome! They not only displayed some great fiddle work, they sang too! I loved it. In between these two groups was a trio of young men who were competent musicians with some interesting instruments and good looks. Very charming these guys were. Kind of like the Jonas brothers with fiddles and a wash tub.

Back to the baby boom. There were toddlers and babies everywhere. The DINKS (Dual Income No Kids) have been busy over the last two years and are no longer DINKS. They are now parents of barely spaced children. The best thing about this contest is its location. Unless is rains, it is held outside in Giddings Plaza where the whole neighborhood comes out with blankets and lawn chairs to watch the show. The kids can run freely in the plaza and make noise or play in the dirt or the fountain and no one cares. I love this atmosphere. It’s the best way to evangelize future musicians. I was encouraged by how many little disciples were skipping around the musicians and I am very grateful for the efforts of Paul Tyler, his group The Fiddle Club of the World, and the folks at the Old Town School of Folk Music for their devotion to preserving traditional American and ethnic music. It’s a rewarding job and someone has to do it.

Hillsdale College - 2010 Resolution of the Board of Trustees

2010-07-07T18:17:00.000-07:00

https://www.hillsdale.edu/images/userImages/whadra/Page_6951/ResolutionTrustees5-10.pdf

WHEREAS the Board of Trustees and Administration of Hillsdale College have been entrusted with, and are determined to uphold, the original and great principles and mission of the College as set down over 165 years ago by its founders; and

WHEREAS those principles and that mission require the College to provide “sound learning” to all willing students, and to do so in a way that perpetuates the “blessings of civil and religious liberty” and “intelligent piety” in the land; and

WHEREAS the entanglement of the federal government in the financing of colleges and universities, and the consequent regulation of these institutions by federal agencies, violate the idea of limited government embodied in the Constitution; and

WHEREAS such violations are inherently corrupt, as seen in attempts of the Department of Education to compel Hillsdale College to count its students by race, in direct violation of the noblest principles of the College and of America; and

WHEREAS the Obama Administration and Congress today appear, even more than the worst of their predecessors, bent on extending federal control over American higher education and other areas of American life; now therefore be it

RESOLVED that Hillsdale College will continue zealously to defend and uphold, against all threats and inducements, its independence from federal government financing and federal government regulation; and be it further

RESOLVED that the Administration of Hillsdale College, with the support of the Board of Trustees, will continue to provide not only the finest liberal arts education, but also national leadership in promoting the principles of liberty across the land, and to pursue these aims in strict avoidance of all subsidy from the federal taxpayer.

Adopted this 7th Day of May, 2010

William J. Brodbeck

Chairman, Board of Trustees

____________________________

Larry P. Arnn

President, Hillsdale College

____________________________

ALEXANDRA'S WEDDING

2010-07-06T13:44:00.000-07:00

Saturday, July 3rd, was my father’s 82nd birthday. In order to insure his availability for her wedding, my niece Alexandra, scheduled the festivities to coordinate with his annual trek to Chicago from Florida to celebrate his birthday. To make the double event even more fun, my sister Christine and her husband Tom, agreed to have the wedding reception at their not- very-big house. Thankfully the weather cooperated which made the outdoor event a success. We all held our collective breath, hoping that some freakish storm like those we have had recently, would not drive all 120 people into my sister’s house.

The day started with a lovely ceremony at the home church of Danny, the groom in this story. Our Lady of the Woods Catholic Church is 26 yrs. old and one of the most beautifully constructed churches I have ever seen. In keeping with my niece’s unconventional style, we left the bridal party to their photo session, dispensing with the traditional rice or bird seed or bubbles, and the guests proceeded to my sister’s backyard complete with two tents, tables, chairs, and a large above-ground pool. There was also a baby pool for all of Richard Moran’s great-grandchildren who had made the trip with their families from Iowa and Rockford, Illinois.

I am not sure what the deciding factor was for having this wedding in a backyard instead of a hall with all of the special formalities, but I think it may become a tradition amongst some of the Moran grandchildren. It may have its root in the wedding my parents gave my sister Christine all the way back in 1981. This was before weddings were large productions for overindulged daddy’s girls. Christine, like Alexandra, had an afternoon ceremony at St. Denis Catholic Church in our old neighborhood. The small group of relatives and close friends made their way to a restaurant for a dignified luncheon. And then the fun began. From the luncheon we all proceeded to our house where the entire backyard was set up with tables, chairs and a keg. The real party began when more friends and neighbors joined us for the celebration. My dad’s buddy, Nick Perino, owner of Home Run Inn Pizza, sent us several giant lasagnas. These were doled out to neighbors’ ovens to be cooked and kept warm. My mom oven fried a boat load of Italian sausage (probably from Sarli’s) and assembled loaves of garlic bread and a giant salad. The beer was in the backyard and the food was set out in the basement for the 100 or so well-wishers to help themselves. And that was the most fun we had ever had at a wedding.

I didn’t think my MS stricken sister should put herself through the aggravation of readying her house for such a large gathering, but she charged full speed ahead in her scooter to make it happen. I loved sitting outside with the freedom to move about as opposed to being captive at one table trying to talk to folks you don’t know while shouting over the very loud music. I certainly didn’t miss the over enthusiastic introductions of the families, the bridal party, and the newlyweds to the roar of the Chicago Bull’s lineup intro music. The obligatory speeches were short. One sweet and one not-so-sweet, but we won’t get into that. The DJ, a neighbor and friend of my niece, played tasteful and moderate music so that the predominate sounds were of the younger kids having fun in the pool. The only disturbance came when I tried to line up all of Richard Moran’s great-grandchildren for a photo, causing MY 3 grandkids to break down into tears thereby ruining the process. My brother’s 3 grandchildren were perfectly patient, though they were more interested in staring at the screaming cousins than taking a picture. I’ll never do that again.

As for the food - It was catered by Buca di Beppo’s and consisted of marinara pasta, meatballs, Italian sausage, Chicken Limone, a cream sauce pasta, 2 types of salad and bread. Desserts included cannoli from Buca’s, macaroon cookies made by a friend of Alex’s which were so outstanding I ate close to a dozen. I am not a sweet eater so that says something about how lip-smackin’ good they were. I never even made it to the wedding cakes. These were works of art from a bakery in the Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago. I wish I could tell you how they tasted, but I took a pass on them. Alex treats us to this bakery’s outstanding cakes at family gatherings, so I know they were special. The garage contained the coolers with beer, pop, water, and my recommendation - San Pellegrino Limonata or lemon soda. It’s the best. There was also an assortment of wine. To make this all easier on the family, my sister hired two women who run a business for just such an occasion. They continually clean up, make sure there is enough ice in the coolers and served the wine.

All in all it was a great wedding, for a fraction of the cost these days, and none of us missed the ambiance of a large hall with covered chairs sporting big bows in the back. Being barefoot was worth the trade off.

THE CLOTHESLINE

2010-07-05T21:21:00.000-07:00

I have had a clothesline in my yard for many years, but mostly for hanging out those large items that don’t fit in or do well in a dryer. Rubber-backed area rugs, sleeping bags, washable comforters, all benefit from not being toasted unevenly in a dryer. Over the last few years I have been hanging out more of my regular laundry. At first I was a little nervous since neighboring suburbs have prohibited residents from hanging laundry out to dry. Such a contrast to the city streets in Italy. There, it seems that drying underwear and blouses, strung between apartment buildings, have become somewhat of an artistic statement and the subject of creative photography.

David's trip to Venice in 2005

As I hung the sheets to dry today, my mind wandered back to those days in my neighborhood when I was young and hanging clothes on the line was the only way to dry the laundry. It was one of those chores that also served the purpose of being a brief social encounter for neighbors. Our city houses were situated close together and it was impossible not to have a conversation with the neighbors, if you happened to be in the backyard at the same time. When women were out hanging laundry, they were also having a chat. Once everything was on the line, the chatting might continue over the chain link fence. There were no privacy fences back then.

I also thought of how adept these women were at clipping the articles of clothing to the line with barely a break in the action. My neighbor ladies would grab a handful of clothespins and another handful of clothing and in what seemed to be one smooth movement, would skim down the line, clipping each piece without stopping. I, in contrast, am all fumble fingers. If I try to grab more than 4 clothespins and maybe two pieces of clothing, I end up dropping pins on the ground and then maybe the clothes fall off the line as I try to recover the pins. I have started this practice too late in life to have any talent at this art form.

The fact is homemaking is an art form. With the advent of modern feminism, the art of homemaking diminished in esteem and popularity. Feminism succeeded in characterizing homemaking as the boring domain of those whose conscience had yet to be raised. I have always seen misogyny behind that so-called progressive philosophy. Only a misogynist would view the work of a woman in the home as lacking value. And yet we women, who were supposedly roaring, fell for the lie and joined in the disparaging.

It seems though that there has been a reawakening among young women who are now making up for lost time by indulging in those domestic duties of the past that were responsible for the domestic arts of today. Whether they are baking bread, sewing, quilting, knitting, spinning, raising chickens, goats, or cows, this renaissance comes just in time to save these skills from forever being lost. While the production of goods for a world of 6 billion people must include large corporate entities, it should not become the exclusive domain of far away factories and impersonal agri-businesses. This renaissance will not only preserve ancient skills, it will keep alive the social and cultural atmosphere that almost always accompanied a woman’s domestic life. Nothing can substitute for the pleasure of participation in the creation of goods and the satisfaction that comes with the work of one’s own hands. If you haven’t caught the bug yourself, let me recommend a luscious book that I read every summer. It is MaryJanes Lifebook, Ideabook, Cookbook. The author, MaryJane Butters, elevates the domestic arts to the status to which they belong. She believes we women should receive honor for the beautiful work of our hands in service to our families and communities. And to that I say "Amen!"

SIMPLE PLEASURES

2010-05-30T21:40:00.000-07:00

It’s 11:00 in the evening and John and I are still sitting outside in the (finally) cool air. The house is closed up because of the heat, and the air conditioning is on, but we can’t stand the thought of going inside. So, here we sit on our newly constructed deck, under our trees. John built it to hold our “coup”, a 12x12 screened-in room that unfolds for the summer and folds up to be put away in storage for the winter. It has a vinyl top which keeps out the rain and allows us to enjoy the summer without the bother of bugs. Usually it is up by now, but John determined to us the old wood from our deconstructed family room and “repurpose” it for a platform to make the coup more stable. I was tired of seeing the pile of old beams in our yard (since 2008) and didn’t think they would really ever find a home. I planned to give John a deadline for doing something with the eyesore, but much to my delight he came up with this idea.

So, here we sit with lightening flashing and a raccoon coming down the tree, not 5 feet from me. I think he was tired of waiting for the old folks to go to bed. As John and I talk we affirm to each other that we are truly blessed and content. Our house is small and still needs some work, which will happen in due time as we put aside the money. But all in all, we are thankful for what we have. Our children are our best friends and our grandchildren have brought us the delight of reliving the experience of raising our own children. Yesterday, John and Ryan spent ½ hour throwing rocks into our local creek which probably meant as much to John as he recalled his own childhood throwing rocks into creeks and rivers and delighting in every splash. It’s funny how having grandchildren triggers memories of one’s own childhood more that parenthood does. It must be a luxury of sorts. We grandparents do not live under the tyranny of the urgent, but can step back and enjoy the process of watching childhood unfold.

And now I have to end this and head inside. The lightening is getting closer and John has left me to blow out the candles. Tomorrow, Lord willing, we will erect the coup. And tomorrow night Lord willing, I hope to spend the night sleeping under the vinyl and enjoying the evening breeze.

POPE PIUS XI ON ATHEISTIC COMMUNISM

2010-05-27T21:22:00.000-07:00

Shrewd and Widespread Propaganda

17. There is another explanation for the rapid diffusion of the Communistic ideas now seeping into every nation, great and small, advanced and backward, so that no corner of the earth is free from them. This explanation is to be found in a propaganda so truly diabolical that the world has perhaps never witnessed its like before. It is directed from one common center. It is shrewdly adapted to the varying conditions of diverse peoples. It has at its disposal great financial resources, gigantic organizations, international congresses, and countless trained workers. It makes use of pamphlets and reviews, of cinema, theater and radio, of schools and even universities. Little by little it penetrates into all classes of the people and even reaches the better-minded groups of the community, with the result that few are aware of the poison which increasingly pervades their minds and hearts

Silence of the Press

18. A third powerful factor in the diffusion of Communism is the conspiracy of silence on the part of a large section of the non-Catholic press of the world. We say conspiracy, because it is impossible otherwise to explain how a press usually so eager to exploit even the little daily incidents of life has been able to remain silent for so long about the horrors perpetrated in Russia, in Mexico and even in a great part of Spain; and that it should have relatively so little to say concerning a world organization as vast as Russian Communism. This silence is due in part to shortsighted political policy, and is favored by various occult forces which for a long time have been working for the overthrow of the Christian Social Order.

SAD CONSEQUENCES

Russia and Mexico

19. Meanwhile the sorry effects of this propaganda are before our eyes. Where Communism has been able to assert its power - and here We are thinking with special affection of the people of Russia and Mexico - it has striven by every possible means, as its champions openly boast, to destroy Christian civilization and the Christian religion by banishing every remembrance of them from the hearts of men, especially of the young. Bishops and priests were exiled, condemned to forced labor, shot and done to death in inhuman fashion; laymen suspected of defending their religion were vexed, persecuted, dragged off to trial and thrown into prison.

Horrors of Communism in Spain

20. Even where the scourge of Communism has not yet had time enough to exercise to the full its logical effects, as witness Our beloved Spain, it has, alas, found compensation in the fiercer violence of its attack. Not only this or that church or isolated monastery was sacked, but as far as possible every church and every monastery was destroyed. Every vestige of the Christian religion was eradicated, even though intimately linked with the rarest monuments of art and science. The fury of Communism has not confined itself to the indiscriminate slaughter of Bishops, of thousands of priests and religious of both sexes; it searches out above all those who have been devoting their lives to the welfare of the working classes and the poor. But the majority of its victims have been laymen of all conditions and classes. Even up to the present moment, masses of them are slain almost daily for no other offense than the fact that they are good Christians or at least opposed to atheistic Communism. And this fearful destruction has been carried out with a hatred and a savage barbarity one would not have believed possible in our age. No man of good sense, nor any statesman conscious of his responsibility can fail to shudder at the thought that what is happening today in Spain may perhaps be repeated tomorrow in other civilized countries.

POPE PIUS XI ON ATHEISTIC COMMUNISM

2010-05-15T20:09:00.000-07:00

SPREAD OF COMMUNISM EXPLAINED

Alluring Promises

15. How is it possible that such a system, long since rejected scientifically and now proved erroneous by experience, how is it, We ask, that such a system could spread so rapidly in all parts of the world? The explanation lies in the fact that too few have been able to grasp the nature of Communism. The majority instead succumb to its deception, skillfully concealed by the most extravagant promises. By pretending to desire only the betterment of the condition of the working classes, by urging the removal of the very real abuses chargeable to the liberalistic economic order, and by demanding a more equitable distribution of this world's goods (objectives entirely and undoubtedly legitimate), the Communist takes advantage of the present world-wide economic crisis to draw into the sphere of his influence even those sections of the populace which on principle reject all forms of materialism and terrorism. And as every error contains its element of truth, the partial truths to which We have referred are astutely presented according to the needs of time and place, to conceal, when convenient, the repulsive crudity and inhumanity of Communistic principles and tactics. Thus the Communist ideal wins over many of the better minded members of the community. These in turn become the apostles of the movement among the younger intelligentsia who are still too immature to recognize the intrinsic errors of the system. The preachers of Communism are also proficient in exploiting racial antagonisms and political divisions and oppositions. They take advantage of the lack of orientation characteristic of modern agnostic science in order to burrow into the universities, where they bolster up the principles of their doctrine with pseudo-scientific arguments.

16. If we would explain the blind acceptance of Communism by so many thousands of workmen, we must remember that the way had been already prepared for it by the religious and moral destitution in which wage-earners had been left by liberal economics. Even on Sundays and holy days, labor-shifts were given no time to attend to their essential religious duties. No one thought of building churches within convenient distance of factories, nor of facilitating the work of the priest. On the contrary, laicism was actively and persistently promoted, with the result that we are now reaping the fruits of the errors so often denounced by Our Predecessors and by Ourselves. It can surprise no one that the Communistic fallacy should be spreading in a world already to a large extent de-Christianized

I AM TRULY BLESSED

2010-05-09T22:12:00.000-07:00

Mother’s Day isn’t that big a deal to me and I try to keep it all simple for the sake of my kids. I don’t want anyone spending more money than they can afford. Since this is the time of year when I tend to splurge on flowers for the garden, I usually tell John NOT to buy me anything. I would rather indulge myself at a nursery. In the last few years I have told the kids to each buy me one flat of white impatiens. This makes it easy and cheap for everyone and just about covers what I will need for the various beds. John couldn’t resist, and bought me an IPod. I have been talking about getting one for two years in order to access all of my music more easily. I was thrilled and relieved to finally have one.

Today my girls each spent the day with their in-laws, with my encouragement, since I see them all the time. John, David, Matt, Maggie and I attended church, went out for lunch, and the boys picked up the flats for themselves and my older girls. Maggie didn’t contribute this year because she had chosen a gift for me prior to returning from college. She is gaining a reputation within the family for being a very thoughtful gift-giver and today she surprised me with I think the most memorable gift I have ever received. One thing that characterizes most of the students at Hillsdale College is their respect and even love for their professors. Many of the textbooks used at Hillsdale are written by faculty members. For my Mother’s Day gift, Maggie presented me with a signed copy of American Cicero: the Life of Charles Carroll, authored by her history professor Bradley Birzer. Charles Carroll was the only Catholic signer of The Declaration of Independence and Birzer’s book “rescues Carroll from unjust neglect.” Even more special is the fact that Maggie asked Professor Birzer to sign my copy and he did so in a most special way – making this mother very proud of her daughter.

I have always been, and continue to be, thankful to Jesus for my family and the life we have all been so blessed to have together.

POPE PIUS XI ON ATHEISTIC COMMUNISM

2010-05-06T22:01:00.000-07:00

COMMUNIST SOCIETY

12.What would be the condition of a human society based on such materialistic tenets? It would be a collectivity with no other hierarchy than that of the economic system. It would have only one mission: the production of material things by means of collective labor, so that the goods of this world might be enjoyed in a paradise where each would "give according to his powers" and would "receive according to his needs." Communism recognizes in the collectivity the right, or rather, unlimited discretion, to draft individuals for the labor of the collectivity with no regard for their personal welfare; so that even violence could be legitimately exercised to dragoon the recalcitrant against their wills. In the Communistic commonwealth morality and law would be nothing but a derivation of the existing economic order, purely earthly in origin and unstable in character. In a word, the Communists claim to inaugurate a new era and a new civilization which is the result of blind evolutionary forces culminating in a “humanity without God”.

13. When all men have finally acquired the collectivist mentality in this Utopia of a really classless society, the political State, which is now conceived by Communists merely as the instrument by which the proletariat is oppressed by the capitalists, will have lost all reason for its existence and will "wither away." However, until that happy consummation is realized, the State and the powers of the State furnish Communism with the most efficacious and most extensive means for the achievement of its goal.

14. Such, Venerable Brethren, is the new gospel which bolshevistic and atheistic Communism offers the world as the glad tidings of deliverance and salvation! It is a system full of errors and sophisms. It is in opposition both to reason and to Divine Revelation. It subverts the social order, because it means the destruction of its foundations; because it ignores the true origin and purpose of the State; because it denies the rights, dignity and liberty of human personality.

I HAVE BECOME MY GRANDMOTHER

2010-05-04T22:12:00.000-07:00

Last week I made my usual Friday trek up to my daughter’s home to babysit toddler Ryan so that Rachel could attend her Bible study at church. The weather was good, so grandson and I went outside for some sunshine and fresh air. I opened up his plastic sandbox and turned on the hose for him to occupy himself while I started weeding and planning a rearrangement of Rachel’s garden.

As I began attacking Rachel’s Lilies of the Valley – it seems to be my main gardening task these days – I noticed that Ryan preferred to follow me around with the gardening spade imitating my every move. It wasn’t long before his hands were fully immersed in the dirt. This was progress for Ryan who, up to now, has been a little fussy about getting slimed by organic elements.

I was thoroughly enjoying the morning when I started to get that déjà vu feeling. I thought of those years of my childhood when I would spend the weekends at my grandmother Josephine’s home. The summer days were very much like my day at Rachel’s. My grandmother would have her shovel in hand as she moved plants or pulled weeds. I would be playing in a sandbox or the wading pool in her very long front yard. It was long because her small two bedroom house, actually her parent’s house, was built all the way at the back of the lot. There was no back yard.

As I recalled the few photos we have of me toddling around the Brucellaria yard at 6757 S. Hermitage, I realized how much I now resemble my grandmother. In some of the photos, soon to be retrieved from my sister, I recall her in her black “peddle-pushers” which we now call Capri pants. Her hair was salt and pepper and at about the same length of semi-curls that mine is now.

When I was a young woman I could not imagine being a middle aged grandmother. Most twenty-something women are too busy enjoying the combination of youth and adulthood to think about the stage of life when one’s body begins to experience the wear and tear of life. I knew I did not want to “let myself go” like so many of the moms of my childhood, but I also knew that I loved and admired my grandmother so much, I would want to be to my grandchildren what she was to me.

Pope Pius XI on Atheistic Communism

2010-05-03T19:51:00.000-07:00

MAN AND FAMILY UNDER COMMUNISM

10. Communism, moreover, strips man of his liberty, robs human personality of all its dignity, and removes all the moral restraints that check the eruptions of blind impulse. There is no recognition of any right of the individual in his relations to the collectivity; no natural right is accorded to human personality, which is a mere cog-wheel in the Communist system. In man's relations with other individuals, besides, Communists hold the principle of absolute equality, rejecting all hierarchy and divinely-constituted authority, including the authority of parents. What men call authority and subordination is derived from the community as its first and only font. Nor is the individual granted any property rights over material goods or the means of production, for inasmuch as these are the source of further wealth, their possession would give one man power over another. Precisely on this score, all forms of private property must be eradicated, for they are at the origin of all economic enslavement .

11. Refusing to human life any sacred or spiritual character, such a doctrine logically makes of marriage and the family a purely artificial and civil institution, the outcome of a specific economic system. There exists no matrimonial bond of a juridico-moral nature that is not subject to the whim of the individual or of the collectivity. Naturally, therefore, the notion of an indissoluble marriage-tie is scouted. Communism is particularly characterized by the rejection of any link that binds woman to the family and the home, and her emancipation is proclaimed as a basic principle. She is withdrawn from the family and the care of her children, to be thrust instead into public life and collective production under the same conditions as man. The care of home and children then devolves upon the collectivity. Finally, the right of education is denied to parents, for it is conceived as the exclusive prerogative of the community, in whose name and by whose mandate alone parents may exercise this right.

THE BATTLE CONTINUES

2010-04-28T20:22:00.000-07:00

My mother, Marilyn Mazziotti Moran, lived, ate, and breathed politics. Not politics for the sport of the game, but politics focused on repairing the worm damage to the foundations of America. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 offered her the hope that not only could the assault on Constitutional principles be stopped, but that President Reagan could reverse the trend toward the complete subversion of our founding principles. It was a brief moment in time and in December 1988, just after the election of George H.W. Bush, my mother passed away. At least in the years before she died, she was blessed by the knowledge that the man she had touted for decades as a great American patriot, was her President and champion for American democracy against the Soviet Union.

When she died she left behind a file cabinet full of political material that she referred to constantly whether she was writing letters, campaign material, or preparing for a debate. I inherited those papers, but after several years I determined that the information had lost its significance. In stages I disposed of all books, papers, and pamphlets except for two small booklets which have sat on my shelves for about 18 years. Week after week (or less), I have dusted around these booklets as they lay apart from the books to keep from getting lost. The first is the Encyclical Letter of Pope Paul VI, Humanae Vitae or Of Human Life. Humanae Vitae is famous for its reinforcement of the Catholic Church’s teaching, on the regulation of birth. It sounds archaic to the modern ear, but there is a feast of food for thought in its 23 pages. The second booklet is The Encyclical Letter of Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptorus (Divine Redeemer) on Atheistic Communism. It is only recently that I decided it was time I actually read the two Encyclicals since my mother, a non-practicing Catholic, thought they were worth keeping amongst her papers. I am sorry I waited till now to become acquainted with what is the wisdom of those elders who sit at the gates of the city.

I found the well thought out and comprehensive writing of Pope Pius XI to be most interesting. A Wikipedia biography of the Pontiff who led the Catholic Church from 1922 to 1939, gave me most of what I needed to know about the author of a treatise on Communism during the very era of its march toward dominion in Europe and Asia. What my mother and Pius XI knew was that there can be no peaceful co-existence between Communism and Christianity. The former cannot bear to share the stage with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Like Herod’s insecurity over the existence of another King of the Jews, the State is the only god and there will be no other gods before it. It will not tolerate Christianity and the freedom of spirit, mind, and body that flows from a personal relationship with the Creator through His Son who emptied Himself for us. So, while Christianity cannot have full expression under Communism, it is ironic that communism can be practiced within Christianity precisely because the conviction of Christ should and does inspire Christians to practice community according the principles of the Gospel. Community is therefore a legitimate outgrowth of Gospel living and is a natural expression within Christianity. However, Communism must always be imposed from the top down because it is an artificial faith in an artificial god. It is the religion of the control freak. Christianity blooms from the individual under the inspiration of the Spirit.

I propose to post several paragraphs at a time of Pope Pius XI’s encyclical for digestion, bite by bite. The first thought I had when reading it was, “There is nothing new under the sun.” Yet, I remember an issue of Moody Monthly Magazine from 20 some years ago titled, “New Age, Old Lie” and that is precisely what the world faces today – a new age founded on an old lie. Therefore, the lessons and warnings of Atheistic Communism are as pertinent today as they were on March 19th, 1937 when this encyclical was published. It may be unpopular to call today’s political spirit Atheistic Communism, but it truly is the old lie in the new age. See if you don’t agree after reading this 73 yr. old document.

The first chapter of Atheistic Communism is introductory in nature so I will begin with -

Chapter II: COMMUNISM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE – Doctrine.

False Ideal

8. The Communism of today, more emphatically than similar movements in the past, conceals in itself a false messianic idea. A pseudo-ideal of justice, of equality and fraternity in labor impregnates all its doctrine and activity with a deceptive mysticism, which communicates a zealous and contagious enthusiasm to the multitudes entrapped by delusive promises. This is especially true in an age like ours, when unusual misery has resulted from the unequal distribution of the goods of this world. This pseudo-ideal is even boastfully advanced as if it were responsible for a certain economic progress. As a matter of fact, when such progress is at all real, its true causes are quite different, as for instance the intensification of industrialism in countries which were formerly almost without it, the exploitation of immense natural resources, and the use of the most brutal methods to insure the achievement of gigantic projects with a minimum of expense.

Marxist Evolutionary Materialism

9. The doctrine of modern Communism, which is often concealed under the most seductive trappings, is in substance based on the principles of dialectical and historical materialism previously advocated by Marx, of which the theoricians of bolshevism claim to possess the only genuine interpretation. According to this doctrine there is in the world only one reality, matter, the blind forces of which evolve into plant, animal and man. Even human society is nothing but a phenomenon and form of matter, evolving in the same way. By a law of inexorable necessity and through a perpetual conflict of forces, matter moves towards the final synthesis of a classless society. In such a doctrine, as is evident, there is no room for the idea of God; there is no difference between matter and spirit, between soul and body; there is neither survival of the soul after death nor any hope in a future life. Insisting on the dialectical aspect of their materialism, the Communists claim that the conflict which carries the world towards its final synthesis can be accelerated by man. Hence they endeavor to sharpen the antagonisms which arise between the various classes of society. Thus the class struggle with its consequent violent hate and destruction takes on the aspects of a crusade for the progress of humanity. On the other hand, all other forces whatever, as long as they resist such systematic violence, must be annihilated as hostile to the human race.

A GREAT NEIGHBORHOOD

2010-04-21T21:19:00.000-07:00

When my daughter Rachel married her husband Joel, he already owned a condominium on the north side of Chicago. They spent the first year of their marriage living there, but soon began looking for a house. They were limited by the fact that as a Chicago police officer, Joel is required to reside within the city limits. Now, I was born and bred on the Southside (notice that Southside is one word and is a proper noun) of Chicago as were my parents and grandparents. Though I became familiar with the downtown area of Chicago, known as the Loop, I never ventured north of that center of the city until I was an adult. Even then the occurrences were few and far between. Chicago’s north side was a foreign country to me and I had no inclination to visit. I never laid eyes on Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs, until I was 52 yrs. old. I kid you not.

My son-in-law is a north suburban native so his desire was to remain in Cub’s territory. He made an honest attempt to consider houses on the Southside of the city, but was not content with what was available for the price. I said nothing since it was none of my business, but I have an old-fashioned belief that family members should never be more than a few blocks from one another or at most a few miles. My mother grew up at 67th and Hermitage within a few blocks of her grandparents and all of her cousins. At various times during her childhood my grandmother and her sisters had to supplement their family incomes with part-time jobs. Childcare was never an issue as long as one of the aunts was available to babysit which wasn’t really like babysitting since the cousins were always playing together anyway. My plans for being an active grandmother, always available to help my daughters, were made more difficult by the separation of a 50 minute drive

Once Joel and Rachel moved into their quaint Georgian on the northwest side of Chicago, I had to admit they made a good choice of home and neighborhood. I have been a frequent visitor of course, but this last week I camped out in their basement to help Rachel take care of newborn son Sean and 21 month old Ryan. Each day has been spent outdoors enjoying the sunshine and taking long walks with my grandson in this old but well kept neighborhood just east of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. I must admit I am a little jealous of my daughter. Her neighborhood is a neighborhood in the best and most traditional sense of the word. As I strolled up and down each block, I was impressed by the well maintained homes and nicely landscaped yards. These are all small Georgians and yet it seems that each homeowner makes the most of this limited space in the most thoughtful and creative way. The warmer weather afforded many of the neighbors an opportunity to tend to their gardens and this gave me the opportunity to meet the neighbors. I watched as other moms and grandmas walked by with toddlers in strollers, stopping to talk to someone over a fence along the way. I had micro seconds of déjà vu knowing that my mind was recalling those same moments when I was a child in the Italian neighborhood on 69th street. Simple middle class folks, content with middle class homes, taking pride in maintaining their property and caring enough about their community to look after their neighbors who might be in need. Rachel has no shortage of willing neighbors always offering to help her with the kids.

After John and I had lived for 4 ½ years in Houston, we were offered a transfer back to Chicago. Apparently no one else in his company wanted to move to the frozen northland. I loved Texas and the people there, but I do not tolerate hot weather very well. Rebekah and Rachel were 2 yrs. old and could no longer fly for free which was going to limit their exposure to Grandma, Grandpa, and the extended family. This was an answer to fervent prayer on my part and within 3 months of the offer, our house was sold and we had moved in with my parents. While saving the 20% needed for a down payment, we visited suburban neighborhoods looking for our dream home. Of course my dream home was the house in which I had been raised in the city. It was a three bedroom raised ranch with a full basement and that was good enough for me. John on the other hand was more practical and worried that the Chicago neighborhood would not hold its value in the face of a changing racial makeup.

We continued driving through different suburbs, the most popular of which was Naperville. It was the up and coming town for people moving west of Chicago. I sat in the back of the realtor’s car as John fantasized about owning a bigger house in a suburb seemingly insulated from the problems of the big city. While he oohed and aahhed, I began crying. I hated the atmosphere of the suburbs. I told him I’d rather live in a Mexican neighborhood where people actually sat on their porches at night and talked to each other. His hopes were dashed and we compromised by investigating the suburbs closer to the Southside of Chicago. We discovered the best kept secret in real estate when we happened to drive through Palos Heights, only 20 minutes from my parents. We chose a simple 3 bedroom ranch in a wooded area with large oak trees everywhere.

We have been residing in Palos Heights for 26 yrs. It has been a great place to raise kids and was indeed a little more insulated from the problems facing not only inner city gangs, but all those upper income kids in Naperville with maybe a little too much money at their disposal. Our neighbors have been very good to us and we have developed good friendships. Still, it never took the place of the city in the sense that I missed sitting on my porch during the summer with all of the neighbors, listening to the Chicago White Sox and maybe being allowed to take a “midnight swim” in our above ground pool. I suspect the television has more to do with the lack of neighborly interaction than suburban living, but I do see a little more of that interaction in Rachel’s neighborhood than any other I have visited. I hope it stays that way for her family’s sake.

History and Lousy Weather

2010-04-19T20:17:00.000-07:00

I do not have even the slightest grasp on the science of global warming and the overwhelming amount of information that makes for the overwhelming amount of scholarly- or not so scholarly - articles requires more than just a cursory reading. What I do know is from 30 years of reading history, which if I have learned anything, is that weather is one of the main factors in the course of human history. Long before there was media attention being paid to "global warming" I spent a great deal of time studying the Vikings with the kids. While they would read age appropriate books, I would read more detailed books for better background. One of the books about Viking incursions into Europe and the British Isles gave some attention to the theory behind why they had suddenly become so active. One accepted theory had to do with the global warming of the Middle Ages which resulted in a population explosion in the North which then resulted in a shortage of farm land to be handed down to sons for their livelihood. Whether or not this is the primary reason for Viking robbing and pillaging, we can’t be sure. However, we are sure of the warming of the earth at that time due to these very changes in lifestyle/farming although there are no statistics to give us the minutiae for actual contrast and comparison. Of course this period of global warming was then followed by global cooling that lasted for several centuries and resulted in the Vikings having to abandon their settlements in Greenland.

In Chapter 1 of Simon Schama’s A History of Britain, the subject is the surprise discovery in the 1850’s of a perfectly preserved domestic hamlet called Skara Brae on the Orkney Islands. It was determined to have been settled 5,000 years before. Schama writes, “Its original settlers probably migrated across the Pentland Firth from Caithness on the Scottish mainland. The sea and the air were a little warmer than they are now, and once they had established themselves…” and “On land that is now thought unfit for any kind of food crops, the Skara Brae villagers managed to grow barley and even wheat.” He goes on to describe a rather peaceful well-developed community. Later – “Life at Skara Brae must have continued in much the same way for centuries. New houses were built on the midden dumps of their predecessors, and the little colony gradually rose above sea-level. But around 2500BC the island climate seems to have got colder and wetter. The red bream disappeared, and so did the stable environment the Orcadians had enjoyed for countless generations.” This chapter goes onto describe the same problems that occurred regarding the shortage of farm land.

A standard reading series for our curriculum was The Little House Series which should not be discounted as a source of information about pioneer America and the weather that caused so much heartbreak for settlers. It was even more interesting for me because I researched the Wilder/Ingalls clans in books that were very often the result of someone’s thesis on westward expansion. It was because of this extracurricular reading that I came to the conclusion that Laura’s daughter, Rose, had actually crafted the books from Laura’s notes and amateur writing. Those books give witness to the extreme weather that characterized the Great Plains. There was never any shortage of drought, locusts, flooding, excessive snowfall, extreme cold, fantastic tornadoes that in one account landed a Puffin (?) in one of Pa’s fields, hot weather in January, the brutal winters of the 1880’s and the brutal heat of those same summers which eventually sent Laura and Almanzo to Missouri. All of this was taken in stride by the gypsy pioneers of the 1800’s because weather was always unpredictable and extreme. They were often discouraged, but never alarmed and of course they didn’t have the media circus to broadcast natural disasters in real-time making it seem as if the sky was truly falling.

If The Little House books lack the intellectual weight that is a prerequisite for consideration, I would suggest The Children’s Blizzard by David Laskin. This is a book on meteorology disguised as a story about one of the worst blizzards in the 1880’s. This is the synopsis – “January 12, 1888, began as an unseasonably warm morning across Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, the weather so mild that children walked to school without coats and gloves. But that afternoon, without warning, the atmosphere suddenly, violently changed. One moment the air was calm; the next the sky exploded in a raging chaos of horizontal snow and hurricane-force winds. Temperatures plunged as an unprecedented cold front ripped through the center of the continent. By Friday morning, January 13, some five hundred people lay dead on the drifted prairie, many of them children who had perished on their way home from country schools. In a few terrifying hours, the hopes of the pioneers had been blasted by the bitter realities of their harsh environment. Recent immigrants from Germany, Norway, Denmark, and the Ukraine learned that their free homestead was not a paradise but a hard, unforgiving place governed by natural forces they neither understood nor controlled.” I believe the weather stations were reporting temperatures of 70 degrees on the morning of January 12th. The stories were heartbreaking.

The stories giving witness to unusual weather are too numerous to chronicle here, but the last I’ll mention had to do with the War for Independence. George Rogers Clark with 180 volunteers set out from Kentucky to route the British in what is now Illinois. They set out on February 7, 1779, marching on snow, but due to an unusual bout of mild weather, they ended up marching in chest deep water having to carry their guns and powder above their heads for hours. Again this is the kind of activity that was understood to be a hard fact of life, but today would be met with the question, “What are we doing to our earth?” The idea that we can create weather, if it were true, would be a fantastic opportunity to produce an environment something akin to the weather in Camelot. Perfect seasons with perfect rainfall and just enough sun/overcast ratio. The seasonal temperatures would be characterized by steady inclines and declines. I myself would put in an order for lots of snow at regular intervals to keep it white and pretty with a gradual melt to prevent flooding and supply my garden with the moisture to produce healthy plants without me having to water in the spring. Unfortunately that has never been a reality and it never will.

While this article ( http://www.gcrio.org/CONSEQUENCES/winter96/sunclimate.html) from a friend is impressive in its comprehensive research data, we all know from the recent scandal at Britain’s Climate Research Unit that data can be manipulated (or buried), http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125883405294859215.html particularly if you begin your research with a particular outcome in mind. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-ambler/mr-gore-apology-accepted_b_154982.html

Science is corruptible. Whether that corruption will be taken into consideration by the adherents of Environmentalism remains to be seen

MOTHERS BEARING GIFTS

2010-04-19T08:17:00.000-07:00

After getting married in 1978, John and I spent almost one year living in Tarrytown, N.Y., before being transferred to Houston, Texas in 1979. The first time my mother, Marilyn, came to visit me in Houston, she emerged from the plane looking like she was just arriving at Ellis Island with several shopping bags of food. We appreciated her concern for us, but it was hard not to laugh. She was correct in assuming there would not be a decent Italian butcher shop from which to purchase properly made Italian sausage and so we were delighted with the several pounds of sausage from Sarli’s Market in Chicago. I can’t remember what the other provisions were, but we were really amused by the several boxes of Uncle Ben’s Rice because the main plant for Uncle Ben’s was right down the road from us.

Over the years my father, my husband, and I, have had a good laugh about Marilyn’s Italian genes which compelled her to always be ready to provide the quality of food we were used to eating. This memory was inspired by my own actions this morning as I prepared to visit my two daughters for a couple of days. I have filled a huge canvass beach bag with two loaves of homemade bread, the remaining cookies from Easter, Bertolli olive oil (from Sam’s where it is considerably cheaper and will be a treat for Rebekah who can only afford to shop at Aldi), Romano cheese(also from Sam’s), and the ingredients for a wheat berry salad. I am my mother’s daughter and for that I am thankful.

JOHN'S IRISH ROSE

2010-02-11T21:00:00.000-08:00

Last October my mother-in-law, Rosemary Cassidy Danaher, turned 89 – a testimony to the commandment to “honor your father and mother that it may go well with you on this earth and that you may have a long life.” Rosemary’s mother Bridget (Della) Higgins Cassidy and her father Harold Patrick Cassidy lived well into their 90s and from all accounts were also a testimony to the fifth commandment. Then I wonder, is it just genetics, or is it generational blessings, or both? Or are the genetics the result of the generational blessings? Bridget could sometimes be a little “nervous” (Harry’s adjective), or “cross” (Tom and John’s adjective), but Harry was a joy all the time. We all called him Happy Harry.

When the Danaher children were young, Harry would tell story after story to the grandchildren. John and his brother Tom would visit overnight with Harry and Della. Harry would lie on the bed between them telling his tales and would begin to doze off mid story. Tom, the eldest of the boys, would shake him, getting Harry to resume the story just where he left off. Della on the other hand had no patience for storytelling. By the time I met her she had developed the habit of shushing Harry everytime he launched into one of his real-life tomes. Of course she had heard these stories repeatedly over the decades and she assumed that even though I had never heard them before, that I was sick of them too.

Della will be remembered for serving the boys ham sandwiches on bakery bread for lunch while they watched TV. She also let them drink tea while visiting - a secret they kept from their dad who did not approve. Harry and Della were good parents and grandparents in spite of the fact they had very little to model themselves after. Harry‘s father was a boilermaker who was seldom home. His mother died when he was a toddler and he was farmed out to his elder siblings for rearing. Della’s home life in Ardgulen, Ireland, as far as we know was without strife, but the Higgins’ were literally dirt poor. In those days in the hamlets of the Emerald Isle, the kids would carry their shoes wherever they went to avoid wearing out the soles. They only put them on when they reached town or church or school. Della left Ireland when she was 16 to join a relative in Chicago. She never saw her parents again. Despite the difficulties of their formative years, I can’t imagine that either one of them had a dishonest bone in their body.

My mother-in-law was the product of these two salt-of-the-earth people. Both were faithful Catholics committed to obeying God and government, but it is Harry from whom she gets her patience and humor. She also inherited enough faith to trust God to fill the quiver of John Danaher of Wenona, Illinois. Rosemary was raised on the north side of Chicago with her younger brother Harold Patrick Cassidy, Jr. Before I go on, I should mention that Uncle Bud is one of the funniest guys I have ever met. I think a “chip off the old block” but with a saucier sense of humor that probably benefited from being in the Navy during WWII. His quiver was almost as crowded as his sister Rosemary’s and from him there are quite a few Cassidys running around Chicago’s south suburbs.

Harry was a streetcar driver for the Chicago Transit Authority and made enough money to support his family and provide for a Catholic Education for Rosemary and Bud. Rosemary attended St. Angela Catholic grammar school, Providence (St. Mel) high school, and finally St. Elizabeth Nursing school. Now one of Della’s aunts, Bridget, had preceded her to the green fields of America from Ireland and here she met and married a man named Patrick Melody. It just so happened that they lived on a farm near Wenona, Illinois where Rosemary would travel from Chicago to visit with her cousins. In 1941, while hanging out with the cousins, Rosemary Cassidy was introduced to local farmer boy, John Danaher. The courtship began and continued on after his swearing in for the Navy on August 28, 1941 and his subsequent training in St. Louis and Louisiana. They were married on October 31, 1942.

After an interlude of 2 weeks, they left for Norfolk, Virginia, which began an odyssey of moving from training base to base over the next two years. Rosemary joined John on all of these adventures until January 1945 when John was assigned to Hawaii and then finally Saipan in March 1945. At this point Rosemary returned to Chicago to stay with her parents and pray fervently for her husband’s safe return. John spent the duration of the war piloting sea planes used to rescue stranded airman who had ditched their own disabled planes in the ocean during bombing attacks on Japan. He returned to Chicago in late September to rejoin his beloved Rosemary and meet their first child, Maureen Therese Danaher, born on September 8, 1945. Nine more children would follow over the years.

Before WWII John had been attending college with the goal of becoming a teacher and more importantly, a coach. But when he returned from the war, to a wife and baby, he needed to get right down to the business of business. He worked for a time at IBM, but not wanting to leave Illinois he refused a transfer to the east and began working for Mars Candy. An opportunity arose to return to farming - a friend’s farm - but after 5 or 6 years John decided that he was not meant to be a farmer. The same friend who owned the farm recommended that John Danaher, with his ability to converse with everybody and anybody, take a job working for Country Companies which meant moving the ever expanding family first to Ottawa and finally to Rockford.

In 1976 I first met my future mother-in-law. The youngest Danaher, Mary, was still in high school. I can remember a discussion between Mary and her mom about whether or not Mary should be allowed to watch Happy Days. As far as Rosemary was concerned no Danaher child would be watching a sitcom in which the children were smarter, wiser and cooler than their bumbling parents. The Fonz was Public Enemy #1. At the time it may have seemed unreasonable to me, but eventually I applied the same standards to my own children. The most vivid memory of Rosemary’s household was the small abode in Rockford, filled with running, yelling, laughing grandchildren at every family gathering. If you had listed the logistics of these visits, they would have never made sense on paper – one small house with a tiny kitchen and at least seven out of 10 adult children with their spouses and numerous children. Card games were held at the kitchen table while little boys ran back and forth through the house with hats, masks, capes and plastic weapons. Many times the entire tribe would descend into the unfinished basement to play Hide and Seek amongst the treasures. Nobody’s socks survived the hours of running on an old cement floor. Every once in awhile my father-in-law would jokingly say, "If I knew we were going to have 10 kids, I would have run out of the church."

These chaotic family gatherings were important to my development as a mother. I came from a home with a well-organized mother who provided many valuable lessons for me, but she did not tolerate disorder of any kind. Marilyn was a high maintenance Italian. Rosemary reflected an easy-going Irish attitude that never sees children as a bother. She never let the winds of change blow through her windows. While the rest of the western world began to see children as a burden to be unloaded, Rosemary steadfastly believed that children truly are a gift of the Lord. While society adopted the worldview that children get in the way of life, she never let life get in the way of children. This example helped me learn not to sweat the small stuff and let kids be kids. It is the reason that I do my best to facilitate family gatherings regardless of the effort.

The Danaher Clan is scattered far and wide these days. In Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado, Arizona, Washington, California, and Hawaii the combined characteristics of Danaher amiability and Cassidy optimism, live on in the 28 grandchildren. The annual family reunion in Rockford is a blessed event and is an opportunity for all of us to honor Rosemary for the legacy of steadfast faith she and John have given their children and grandchildren. As 2010 approaches we will prepare to celebrate Rosemary’s 90th birthday. I can’t imagine life without her.

The Secret in the Barn

2009-12-21T09:02:00.000-08:00

For the last two nights I have been working on an entry about my memories of the Christmases of my childhood. Within that soon to be posted essay, was a mention of a book I loved to read at Christmas. It was called Treasury of Christmas Stories published by Scholastic Books. The printing I have is from 1965 and I bought it through my grammar school of St. Denis. I remember periodically our nun would pass out a thin catalog of the book offerings from Scholastic, and we could buy whatever books interested us. Of course most of the books I bought had to do with either a dog or a horse. I am somewhat surprised that I even ordered this book of Christmas stories and poems. Luckily for me the very first entry was a poem about a girl and her horse. I searched unsuccessfully on the internet for a copy of this poem so I could link to it, but I could not find it. So, I had to sit down and type it and I typed it as it was in the book in order to stay true to the cadence. If I had shortened it up, it would not have read as well.
I have a new printer, scanner, copier and if I had some time I could have figured out how to copy and reproduce this since the little sketchings on the pages add humor and charm to the poem.

Other Scholastic offerings in 1965 were:
Born to Race by Blanche Perrin
Brighty of Grand Canyon by Marguerite Henry
El Blanco - The Legend of the White Stallion by Rutherford Montgomery
Skip by Aileer Fisher (Skip was a dog of course)
The Children Who Stayed Alone (Sod House Adventure) by Bonnie Bess Worline
            Ironically this book is about humans and was my favorite - aside from the Christmas stories.

SECRET IN THE BARN
                  By Anne Wood

It’s nearly Christmas – it’s Christmas Eve!
And it’s snowing all over the place,
The roof of the barn is sugary white –
Its eaves are lined with lace. Our cornfield looks like a polar bear rug –
The silos wear marshmallow hats,
The kittens are into snow to their chins
And the cows all sport white spats.

Dad cut a pine –
From our own backwoods –
Where it stood all heavy with snow,
And we’ve decked it with lights
And tinsel trim
Till you can’t see the tree for the glow!

My mom’s in the kitchen,
She’s baking mince pies
And gingerbread boys
With raisins for eyes.

And Grandma’s in charge
Of other
Things
Like hanging the stockings, and
Mending mittens, and
Scolding my brothers for
Stealing raisins, and
Feeding the kitten, and
Pouring tea
When the
Kettle
Sings…

                 Snowflake white
                 Snowflake bright –
                 Who’ll grant us
                  the wishes
                     we wish
                         tonight?

My brother Ben wants a collie pup;
Bill hopes for a three-geared bike –
Jim dreams of a lo-ong electric train
with –
double switches,
and tunnels and bridges
for hills and ditches –
A train that’ll run
without any hitches
at any speed you like.
I’m twelve
I’m Louise –
And a girl, or course.
I’m hardest to please
‘Cause I’ve begged
On my knees
All
Year
-for a horse…

                 Snowflake bright, snowflake white –
                  First snowflake I ask tonight –
                               I beg with all y main and might –
                               Give me the wish I wish tonight!

Last night I was thinking of…well…of horses
And, oh, it was hard to sleep!
“Louise, my child,” said Grandma at last,
“Have you tried counting sheep?”

So – I tried and tried to imagine sheep
But what did I see instead?
Horses!! – Black, brown, chestnut, bay,
Palomino, pint, roan and gray,
Strawberry sorrels with manes of red,
Galloping, galloping past my bed!

“Still no luck?” said Mom.
“Then I’ll teach you a game.
You know, everyone’s Christmas
Isn’t the same.

If we think of people whose Christmas must be
Different from Christmas in our family –
And you think of a few
       and I think of a few
             you’ll feel pretty sleepy
                      before we are through!”

“My turn?” I asked. “Well, the boys and I
Spend every Christmas here,
But an Army Captain’s children
Have to move most every year.
They’ve Christmas first in Oregon –
And next in North Dakota,
Or Iowa or Idaho,
Or Maine and Minnesota…
And Mom, think of the astronauts
Whose children know that soon
Their fathers may be celebrating
Christmas on the moon!”

Said Mom, “When the Cannonball Special goes by
To the city and back again,
I like to think of the engineer
At the throttle of that train.
Does a sprig of mistletoe hang in his cab
As he roars down the rails like a rocket?
Is a note saying ‘Wish you were with us, Dad!’
Tucked in his work-shirt pocket?

“And think, Louise, of your Uncle,” she mused,
“Who works on the telephone truck!
Why, every blessed Christmas day
It seems to be his luck
To be perched like a jay on a telephone pole
Making a line repair,
So folks can phone to faraway friends
And say, ‘How’s your Christmas there?”

…I was getting pretty sleepy now,
But I tried to keep on with the game….
“It’s Christmas at all the hospitals,
But the nurses work, just the same….
They put holly bouquets
on the dinner trays,
and there’s
turkey to eat,
of course,
and…
Mother…will I
won’t I…
will I…
get my…
horse…………….?

                 Snowflake, snowflake, snowflake white –
                 Making magic in the night –
                 I hope it’s so – I hope I’m right –
                 I hope my wish comes true tonight!

All day I’ve been told “You’re imagining things!
Calm down! It’s not what it seems!”
But I can’t help believing, from clues all around,
That the barn hides the steed of my dreams!
I am certain, for instance, a horse passed our yard
In the darkness a few nights ago.
Who’d ever mistake the thumpety thump
Of the hoofs of a horse in the snow?

When I heard it, I ran like a deer to the door –
But Mom suddenly started to scold me!
“Shut the door, silly girl!” (That’s not like her at all!)
And the very next morning Dad told me:
“The barn has been made out of bounds now, Louise,
For you and the boys – and I mean it.”
Since then we can hear there is something alive
In the barn – though no one has seen it.

Of course, Ben believes it’s a dog, and it’s true
Dad said he could have one some day.
But let me ask this: Would a collie munch oats?
Would he whinny? Or stamp? Or need hay?
Bill thinks they are putting together his bike
With its gears and its searchlight and bell.
(Hush! Did you hear it? I did! A horse sneezed.
Well it did – I can certainly tell!)

Funny Grandma
Declares:
“Goodness gracious! What airs!
But a horse! I must say – we are not
Millionaires!”
(But she knows – I can tell by the smile that
she wears.)

And why do my brothers all grin when I peek
At the package that’s under the tree?
It’s a package that’s HUGE and lumpy and odd
And it seems to be marked for me.
(Jim says it isn’t – he says it’s the box,
From the model-train company,
just crammed with –
miles of tracks
and a modern station,
glass-domed chair-cars
for observation
tank cars, gondolas
freighters
for mail,
sleepers, cabooses,
in perfect detail,
twin signal towers
with remote-control powers
and a thing that blows back
real smoke from the stack….)

Well, I really don’t care to argue, but as sure as you were born

The bump on the package is just the shape of a Western saddle horn.

                 Snowflake, Snowflake,

The night has descended
On all of our world
Of white.
The time
Of waiting
Will soon be ended….

                  I’m shutting my eyes up tight!
                  And I’m wishing with all my might!

Let Bill have his bicycle
Ben have his collie,
And astronauts find
Their moon decked in holly –
Let the engineer’ Christmas
Be jolly as Jim’s –
As he roars down the track
May he hum Christmas hymns!
Let my Grandma feel young
And let nobody dare
Ask my Uncle tomorrow
To make a repair.
To the nurses, I hope
Many patients will say,
“I am feeling so well –
Let me help you today!”
May the Army Post children
Rejoice in each home,
And their Christmas be merry
Wherever they roam.

A big hug-and-squeeze
I would give Mom and Dad
To remind them I’m theirs
And to show that I’m glad.

And last but not least,
If a wish works at all –
O beautiful snowflake
As softly you fall –
Keep my horse warm and safe for me
Out in his stall.

CULTURAL SCHIZOPHRENIA

2009-12-18T22:11:00.000-08:00

In one week we Christians, genuine and cultural, will celebrate the birth of the Christ Child. For cultural Christians the celebration is traditional, festive and nostalgic. For genuine Christians it is all that, and more importantly the recognition that, “…the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

God chose Mary, full of grace, to be the vessel through whom the Messiah would come. This girl of 14, 15 or 16 responded to the Father, by way of Gabriel, by saying,

“Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

At a point in space and time this girl, pregnant, but not by her betrothed, very well could have suffered death by stoning for such a sin. Yet she demonstrated the faith of the mightiest of God’s saints by accepting whatever God had planned for her, not yet knowing that Gabriel would also be visiting Joseph to instruct him in what his response to her pregnancy should be. Later during Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth, their conversation became a poetic expression of how acutely aware each woman was of the baby that already lived within her womb.

“In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord (Luke 1: 39-45).’”

For Mary and Elizabeth there is no doubt of the humanity of the unborn.

In contrast, we have come to a point in these post modern times where, despite the advances in technology which allow us to see the developing baby inside the womb, and to observe him sleeping, sucking or responding to noises in the outside world, we have hardened our hearts and we refuse to credit the developing child with humanity

And that leads me to the whole point of this post. According to the following story, a woman in Virginia gave birth to a full term baby in her home and then strangled the child while it was still attached to the umbilical cord. According to Virginia law this precludes the authorities from charging the woman with any crime since the child was technically still part of her body.

The second link is a pertinent commentary on this story.

http://www2.newsadvance.com/lna/news/local/article/mother_wont_be_charged_in_newborn_babys_death/22371/e
http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary

The birth of Jesus was pivotal in history and the first step toward the ultimate restoration of the shattered relationship between God and man. The angelic proclamation on the night of the birth in Bethlehem saying “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will!” (Luke 2:14), is the official announcement that now there will be peace on Earth. Not peace between men, but peace between God and man because of the arrival at the appointed time of the Father’s only Son as the mediator between God and man. Thankfully Mary’s embrace of this untimely (for her) arrival has made it possible for the salvation that came to the Jew first and then the Gentiles.

PRACTICING PATIENCE AND TOLERATING TEDIUM

2009-11-27T21:25:00.000-08:00

When John and I were married in July 1978, we did so in a hurry with barely six weeks to get the wedding organized before we had to leave for Tarrytown, New York where he was scheduled to start training as a sales rep for Union Carbide. I was leaving behind a future as a Chicago Police Officer, having just been called to report for training. I had taken the civil service exam several years before and now, after passing some subsequent testing, the department was ready to hire. Instead I transferred from the Chicago office of Options Clearing Corp. to the New York office in the same capacity. After ten months in New York, we were transferred to Houston, Texas, officially ending any chance that I could take the job with CPD.

Shortly after moving to Houston I became pregnant, and since I had not yet found a job, I began to settle in as a homemaker. Unfortunately I miscarried after only three months. Even after I recovered from the loss of the baby, I continued to enjoy being able to keep up on household chores and cooking decent dinners for John. At one point, though, John hinted that maybe I should get back to work so that we could save some money for a down payment on a house. In 1979 you actually had to have 20% of the total price of the home as a down payment before you could qualify for the loan to purchase the object of your desire. So, back to work I went at a brokerage firm in downtown Houston. By 1980 we had the house and I had used my salary to pay off our car so that the mortgage was our only debt. Those were the days.

The next logical step of course was to start a family and so we did. I loved my job but there was no doubt in my mind that I would stay home to care for our children. My mother had stayed home and provided us with a wonderful environment filled with great food, arts and culture, discussions about history and constant political activity. I intended on carrying on with my job until the eighth month just like most women, but by the third month I was so exhausted I couldn’t continue. Little did I know I was carrying twins and, unlike most women, I didn’t find that out until the eighth month. On October 21st of 1981 my daughters Rebekah and Rachel were born by cesarean section and my life as a mother and homemaker began in earnest.

I left the world of careers and salaries to stay home with my girls at the same time that many women had decided to institutionalize their babies and toddlers in order to be Career Women. The feminist movement was very effective at preaching the gospel of self-fulfillment, which according to them could not be achieved as the primary nurturer of one’s offspring. Self-fulfillment had to be realized within the context of a career outside of any domestic scenario. I had heard all of this swirling around in the media, and I knew the indoctrination was especially intense in academia, but none of it even made a dent in my determination to be the best steward I could be of the children entrusted to me by the Lord. I never even felt a twinge of insecurity or doubt. My heart went out to those women who became trapped in the two- income economy that developed from the Great Lie.

The work of the woman in the home is vital to the health and well being of her family. Aside from the obvious need for an orderly and clean environment, there is the daily meal planning, and the never ending organizing of rooms, closets, drawers, etc. And these duties are less vital than the spiritual, emotional and psychological needs of children through every stage of their lives – although I believe that good food, lovingly prepared, goes a long way toward ministering to those same spiritual, emotional, and psychological needs. Along with all of the obvious tasks, there are also the responsibilities regarding the child’s education. Of all the things I did in as a homemaker, home schooling was the most intimidating but also the most enjoyable.

Housekeeping duties like any other duties can be rewarding, but can also be tedious. I was one of those kids growing up who liked to clean. Every Saturday I took it upon myself to help my mother with the chores. All the neighbors thought I was such a good kid, but the fact is, I just liked housework. When my kids were small and most of my day was spent teaching phonics, math, and doing puzzles with the toddlers, I trained my kids to do some of the housekeeping. Everyone had a chore to do which freed me up for the more important stuff. Now that everyone is grown it is I and I alone with all of the cleaning and organizing. I never seem to get ahead and I find myself suffering through some tasks that I avoided when the kids were around. One task that I hate is folding the white clothes. Nothing is worse than folding underwear and matching socks. I will stare at the basket for two days before I finally force myself to attend to it. Every career, every job, every vocation has its undesirable tasks and negative elements. In our culture today we operate at a breakneck speed and resent anything that is not immediate. We want what we want now and not later. We want our food prepared for us and available immediately. We eat it within 15 minutes many times while traveling between activities. We have no patience for slow foods prepared from scratch and even less patience for an extended meal at a table with family discussing the day’s activities or sharing opinions about the world. Every convenience designed to give us more time only allows us to fill that time with more activities. As hard as I tried to keep us from running to and fro all the time, eventually we found ourselves on the hamster wheel like everyone else. We did manage to be true to home cooking and family meals most days, but did our share of running to activities albeit later in each child’s life than most folks.

To keep myself focused I tapped into the lives of famous women who, even though they were always swimming against the current, were less exhausted than all of those women who went with the flow but really were being washed out to sea. I remember reading a book about my favorite illustrator and author, Tasha Tudor. She spent her entire life living in a log cabin without electricity or running water. She relished the life of a 19th century woman. She grew her own vegetables, raised and slaughtered her own chickens and goats and did just about everything, as it would have been done 100 years before. It wasn’t that she was afraid of or opposed to modernity. She simply desired a slower pace and took great pleasure in the details of the Art of Homemaking. I remember her writing that she liked to make her own preserves because she could read Shakespeare while she stirred the jam. This remarkable woman recently died at the age of 92.

Edith Schaeffer, who founded L’Abri with her husband Francis Schaeffer, wrote a book in 1983 called Common Sense Christian Living. She too encouraged women to simplify their lives by slowing down the pace of their family activities. Having raised her children in Switzerland where the European pace had not yet taken off like ours in the U.S., Edith did her best to share her ideas for keeping things in perspective. Her daughter Susan Schaeffer MacCauley’s book, For the Children’s Sake, was instrumental in shaping my approach to homeschooling. It was less about curriculum and teaching and more about an environment of learning. She introduced Americans to the 19th century British educator Charlotte Mason and her philosophy for instructing children. Both mother and daughter advocated for a more home based life style with plenty of roses for smelling.

The most humbling testimony was that of Mother Theresa. A woman who found herself in the most difficult of circumstances often with very few resources. I have a vivid memory of a PBS report in the 1980’s detailing the Siege of Beirut, which resulted in the exodus of most of the population from the city and standoff between the PLO in Beirut and the Israeli army. Beirut had been almost completely destroyed and even the U. N. did not know where to begin picking up the pieces. A United Nations ambassador asked Mother Theresa and her Missionaries of Charity to come to Beirut to rescue some orphan children caught in the crossfire. The sisters set up operations in the least damaged building in the area. None of the utility services were functioning so the task seemed impossible. While the officials were talking the nuns began to scurry around as they attempted to set up in the primitive surroundings. The camera focused on Mother Theresa as she determined to fill a glass bottle with water from a barely functioning faucet. For what seemed like an eternity she held the bottle under the spigot catching one drip at a time as the activity swirled around her. Every time I find myself ready to jump out of my skin at the tediousness of some task, that picture of Mother Theresa patiently holding a bottle under a faucet, filling it over the course of what probably took ½ hour, convicts me in any irritability that wells up inside. That picture comes to me as I fold the laundry. As I sit in traffic tolerating the undecided elderly driver in front of me. As I listen to the solicitor at my door attempting to sell me something that I don’t need. As I approach my local grocery store only to be greeted by someone who needs a donation for a cause. As I provide a listening ear to someone who needs to vent. The least I can do is be thankful that I am not doing what I do in the midst of a bloody civil war. Patience is indeed a virtue, but it doesn’t always come naturally

The Manhattan Declaration

2009-11-20T12:57:00.000-08:00

Preamble 
Christians are heirs of a 2,000-year tradition of proclaiming God's word, seeking justice in our societies, resisting tyranny, and reaching out with compassion to the poor, oppressed and suffering. While fully acknowledging the imperfections and shortcomings of Christian institutions and communities in all ages, we claim the heritage of those Christians who defended innocent life by rescuing discarded babies from trash heaps in Roman cities and publicly denouncing the Empire's sanctioning of infanticide. We remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord. After the barbarian tribes overran Europe, Christian monasteries preserved not only the Bible but also the literature and art of Western culture. It was Christians who combated the evil of slavery: Papal edicts in the 16th and 17th centuries decried the practice of slavery and first excommunicated anyone involved in the slave trade; evangelical Christians in England, led by John Wesley and William Wilberforce, put an end to the slave trade in that country. Christians under Wilberforce's leadership also formed hundreds of societies for helping the poor, the imprisoned, and child laborers chained to machines.In Europe, Christians challenged the divine claims of kings and successfully fought to establish the rule of law and balance of governmental powers, which made modern democracy possible. And in America, Christian women stood at the vanguard of the suffrage movement. The great civil rights crusades of the 1950s and 60s were led by Christians claiming the Scriptures and asserting the glory of the image of God in every human being regardless of race, religion, age or class. This same devotion to human dignity has led Christians in the last decade to work to end the dehumanizing scourge of human trafficking and sexual slavery, bring compassionate care to AIDS sufferers in Africa, and assist in a myriad of other human rights causes - from providing clean water in developing nations to providing homes for tens of thousands of children orphaned by war, disease and gender discrimination.Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace, to protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good. In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.

Declaration
We, as Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Christians, have gathered, beginning in New York on September 28, 2009, to make the following declaration, which we sign as individuals, not on behalf of our organizations, but speaking to and from our communities. We act together in obedience to the one true God, the triune God of holiness and love, who has laid total claim on our lives and by that claim calls us with believers in all ages and all nations to seek and defend the good of all who bear his image. We set forth this declaration in light of the truth that is grounded in Holy Scripture, in natural human reason (which is itself, in our view, the gift of a beneficent God), and in the very nature of the human person. We call upon all people of goodwill, believers and non-believers alike, to consider carefully and reflect critically on the issues we here address as we, with St. Paul, commend this appeal to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. While the whole scope of Christian moral concern, including a special concern for the poor and vulnerable, claims our attention, we are especially troubled that in our nation today the lives of the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly are severely threatened; that the institution of marriage, already buffeted by promiscuity, infidelity and divorce, is in jeopardy of being redefined to accommodate fashionable ideologies; that freedom of religion and the rights of conscience are gravely jeopardized by those who would use the instruments of coercion to compel persons of faith to compromise their deepest convictions. Because the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as a union of husband and wife, and the freedom of conscience and religion are foundational principles of justice and the common good, we are compelled by our Christian faith to speak and act in their defense. In this declaration we affirm: 1) the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every human being as a creature fashioned in the very image of God, possessing inherent rights of equal dignity and life; 2) marriage as a conjugal union of man and woman, ordained by God from the creation, and historically understood by believers and non-believers alike, to be the most basic institution in society and; 3) religious liberty, which is grounded in the character of God, the example of Christ, and the inherent freedom and dignity of human beings created in the divine image.We are Christians who have joined together across historic lines of ecclesial differences to affirm our right - and, more importantly, to embrace our obligation - to speak and act in defense of these truths. We pledge to each other, and to our fellow believers, that no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence. It is our duty to proclaim the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season. May God help us not to fail in that duty.
LifeSo God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:27 I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10 Although public sentiment has moved in a pro-life direction, we note with sadness that pro-abortion ideology prevails today in our government. The present administration is led and staffed by those who want to make abortions legal at any stage of fetal development, and who want to provide abortions at taxpayer expense. Majorities in both houses of Congress hold pro-abortion views. The Supreme Court, whose infamous 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade stripped the unborn of legal protection, continues to treat elective abortion as a fundamental constitutional right, though it has upheld as constitutionally permissible some limited restrictions on abortion. The President says that he wants to reduce the "need" for abortion - a commendable goal. But he has also pledged to make abortion more easily and widely available by eliminating laws prohibiting government funding, requiring waiting periods for women seeking abortions, and parental notification for abortions performed on minors. The elimination of these important and effective pro-life laws cannot reasonably be expected to do other than significantly increase the number of elective abortions by which the lives of countless children are snuffed out prior to birth. Our commitment to the sanctity of life is not a matter of partisan loyalty, for we recognize that in the thirty-six years since Roe v. Wade, elected officials and appointees of both major political parties have been complicit in giving legal sanction to what Pope John Paul II described as "the culture of death." We call on all officials in our country, elected and appointed, to protect and serve every member of our society, including the most marginalized, voiceless, and vulnerable among us.A culture of death inevitably cheapens life in all its stages and conditions by promoting the belief that lives that are imperfect, immature or inconvenient are discardable. As predicted by many prescient persons, the cheapening of life that began with abortion has now metastasized. For example, human embryo-destructive research and its public funding are promoted in the name of science and in the cause of developing treatments and cures for diseases and injuries. The President and many in Congress favor the expansion of embryo-research to include the taxpayer funding of so-called "therapeutic cloning." This would result in the industrial mass production of human embryos to be killed for the purpose of producing genetically customized stem cell lines and tissues. At the other end of life, an increasingly powerful movement to promote assisted suicide and "voluntary" euthanasia threatens the lives of vulnerable elderly and disabled persons. Eugenic notions such as the doctrine of lebensunwertes Leben ("life unworthy of life") were first advanced in the 1920s by intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe. Long buried in ignominy after the horrors of the mid-20th century, they have returned from the grave. The only difference is that now the doctrines of the eugenicists are dressed up in the language of "liberty," "autonomy," and "choice."We will be united and untiring in our efforts to roll back the license to kill that began with the abandonment of the unborn to abortion. We will work, as we have always worked, to bring assistance, comfort, and care to pregnant women in need and to those who have been victimized by abortion, even as we stand resolutely against the corrupt and degrading notion that it can somehow be in the best interests of women to submit to the deliberate killing of their unborn children. Our message is, and ever shall be, that the just, humane, and truly Christian answer to problem pregnancies is for all of us to love and care for mother and child alike.A truly prophetic Christian witness will insistently call on those who have been entrusted with temporal power to fulfill the first responsibility of government: to protect the weak and vulnerable against violent attack, and to do so with no favoritism, partiality, or discrimination. The Bible enjoins us to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to speak for those who cannot themselves speak. And so we defend and speak for the unborn, the disabled, and the dependent. What the Bible and the light of reason make clear, we must make clear. We must be willing to defend, even at risk and cost to ourselves and our institutions, the lives of our brothers and sisters at every stage of development and in every condition.Our concern is not confined to our own nation. Around the globe, we are witnessing cases of genocide and "ethnic cleansing," the failure to assist those who are suffering as innocent victims of war, the neglect and abuse of children, the exploitation of vulnerable laborers, the sexual trafficking of girls and young women, the abandonment of the aged, racial oppression and discrimination, the persecution of believers of all faiths, and the failure to take steps necessary to halt the spread of preventable diseases like AIDS. We see these travesties as flowing from the same loss of the sense of the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life that drives the abortion industry and the movements for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and human cloning for biomedical research. And so ours is, as it must be, a truly consistent ethic of love and life for all humans in all circumstances.
MarriageThe man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. Genesis 2:23-24
This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. Ephesians 5:32-33
In Scripture, the creation of man and woman, and their one-flesh union as husband and wife, is the crowning achievement of God’s creation. In the transmission of life and the nurturing of children, men and women joined as spouses are given the great honor of being partners with God Himself. Marriage then, is the first institution of human society - indeed it is the institution on which all other human institutions have their foundation. In the Christian tradition we refer to marriage as "holy matrimony" to signal the fact that it is an institution ordained by God, and blessed by Christ in his participation at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. In the Bible, God Himself blesses and holds marriage in the highest esteem.Vast human experience confirms that marriage is the original and most important institution for sustaining the health, education, and welfare of all persons in a society. Where marriage is honored, and where there is a flourishing marriage culture, everyone benefits - the spouses themselves, their children, the communities and societies in which they live. Where the marriage culture begins to erode, social pathologies of every sort quickly manifest themselves. Unfortunately, we have witnessed over the course of the past several decades a serious erosion of the marriage culture in our own country. Perhaps the most telling - and alarming - indicator is the out-of-wedlock birth rate. Less than fifty years ago, it was under 5 percent. Today it is over 40 percent. Our society - and particularly its poorest and most vulnerable sectors, where the out-of-wedlock birth rate is much higher even than the national average - is paying a huge price in delinquency, drug abuse, crime, incarceration, hopelessness, and despair. Other indicators are widespread non-marital sexual cohabitation and a devastatingly high rate of divorce.We confess with sadness that Christians and our institutions have too often scandalously failed to uphold the institution of marriage and to model for the world the true meaning of marriage. Insofar as we have too easily embraced the culture of divorce and remained silent about social practices that undermine the dignity of marriage we repent, and call upon all Christians to do the same. To strengthen families, we must stop glamorizing promiscuity and infidelity and restore among our people a sense of the profound beauty, mystery, and holiness of faithful marital love. We must reform ill-advised policies that contribute to the weakening of the institution of marriage, including the discredited idea of unilateral divorce. We must work in the legal, cultural, and religious domains to instill in young people a sound understanding of what marriage is, what it requires, and why it is worth the commitment and sacrifices that faithful spouses make.The impulse to redefine marriage in order to recognize same-sex and multiple partner relationships is a symptom, rather than the cause, of the erosion of the marriage culture. It reflects a loss of understanding of the meaning of marriage as embodied in our civil and religious law and in the philosophical tradition that contributed to shaping the law. Yet it is critical that the impulse be resisted, for yielding to it would mean abandoning the possibility of restoring a sound understanding of marriage and, with it, the hope of rebuilding a healthy marriage culture. It would lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life. In spousal communion and the rearing of children (who, as gifts of God, are the fruit of their parents’ marital love), we discover the profound reasons for and benefits of the marriage covenant.We acknowledge that there are those who are disposed towards homosexual and polyamorous conduct and relationships, just as there are those who are disposed towards other forms of immoral conduct. We have compassion for those so disposed; we respect them as human beings possessing profound, inherent, and equal dignity; and we pay tribute to the men and women who strive, often with little assistance, to resist the temptation to yield to desires that they, no less than we, regard as wayward. We stand with them, even when they falter. We, no less than they, are sinners who have fallen short of God's intention for our lives. We, no less than they, are in constant need of God’s patience, love and forgiveness. We call on the entire Christian community to resist sexual immorality, and at the same time refrain from disdainful condemnation of those who yield to it. Our rejection of sin, though resolute, must never become the rejection of sinners. For every sinner, regardless of the sin, is loved by God, who seeks not our destruction but rather the conversion of our hearts. Jesus calls all who wander from the path of virtue to "a more excellent way." As his disciples we will reach out in love to assist all who hear the call and wish to answer it.We further acknowledge that there are sincere people who disagree with us, and with the teaching of the Bible and Christian tradition, on questions of sexual morality and the nature of marriage. Some who enter into same-sex and polyamorous relationships no doubt regard their unions as truly marital. They fail to understand, however, that marriage is made possible by the sexual complementarity of man and woman, and that the comprehensive, multi-level sharing of life that marriage is includes bodily unity of the sort that unites husband and wife biologically as a reproductive unit. This is because the body is no mere extrinsic instrument of the human person, but truly part of the personal reality of the human being. Human beings are not merely centers of consciousness or emotion, or minds, or spirits, inhabiting non-personal bodies. The human person is a dynamic unity of body, mind, and spirit. Marriage is what one man and one woman establish when, forsaking all others and pledging lifelong commitment, they found a sharing of life at every level of being - the biological, the emotional, the dispositional, the rational, the spiritual - on a commitment that is sealed, completed and actualized by loving sexual intercourse in which the spouses become one flesh, not in some merely metaphorical sense, but by fulfilling together the behavioral conditions of procreation. That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility, even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation.We understand that many of our fellow citizens, including some Christians, believe that the historic definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is a denial of equality or civil rights. They wonder what to say in reply to the argument that asserts that no harm would be done to them or to anyone if the law of the community were to confer upon two men or two women who are living together in a sexual partnership the status of being "married." It would not, after all, affect their own marriages, would it? On inspection, however, the argument that laws governing one kind of marriage will not affect another cannot stand. Were it to prove anything, it would prove far too much: the assumption that the legal status of one set of marriage relationships affects no other would not only argue for same sex partnerships; it could be asserted with equal validity for polyamorous partnerships, polygamous households, even adult brothers, sisters, or brothers and sisters living in incestuous relationships. Should these, as a matter of equality or civil rights, be recognized as lawful marriages, and would they have no effects on other relationships? No. The truth is that marriage is not something abstract or neutral that the law may legitimately define and re-define to please those who are powerful and influential. No one has a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage. Marriage is an objective reality - a covenantal union of husband and wife - that it is the duty of the law to recognize and support for the sake of justice and the common good. If it fails to do so, genuine social harms follow. First, the religious liberty of those for whom this is a matter of conscience is jeopardized. Second, the rights of parents are abused as family life and sex education programs in schools are used to teach children that an enlightened understanding recognizes as "marriages" sexual partnerships that many parents believe are intrinsically non-marital and immoral. Third, the common good of civil society is damaged when the law itself, in its critical pedagogical function, becomes a tool for eroding a sound understanding of marriage on which the flourishing of the marriage culture in any society vitally depends. Sadly, we are today far from having a thriving marriage culture. But if we are to begin the critically important process of reforming our laws and mores to rebuild such a culture, the last thing we can afford to do is to re-define marriage in such a way as to embody in our laws a false proclamation about what marriage is.And so it is out of love (not "animus") and prudent concern for the common good (not "prejudice"), that we pledge to labor ceaselessly to preserve the legal definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and to rebuild the marriage culture. How could we, as Christians, do otherwise? The Bible teaches us that marriage is a central part of God's creation covenant. Indeed, the union of husband and wife mirrors the bond between Christ and his church. And so just as Christ was willing, out of love, to give Himself up for the church in a complete sacrifice, we are willing, lovingly, to make whatever sacrifices are required of us for the sake of the inestimable treasure that is marriage.
Religious LibertyThe Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Isaiah 61:1 Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. Matthew 22:21The struggle for religious liberty across the centuries has been long and arduous, but it is not a novel idea or recent development. The nature of religious liberty is grounded in the character of God Himself, the God who is most fully known in the life and work of Jesus Christ. Determined to follow Jesus faithfully in life and death, the early Christians appealed to the manner in which the Incarnation had taken place: "Did God send Christ, as some suppose, as a tyrant brandishing fear and terror? Not so, but in gentleness and meekness..., for compulsion is no attribute of God" (Epistle to Diognetus 7.3-4). Thus the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the example of Christ Himself and in the very dignity of the human person created in the image of God - a dignity, as our founders proclaimed, inherent in every human, and knowable by all in the exercise of right reason. Christians confess that God alone is Lord of the conscience. Immunity from religious coercion is the cornerstone of an unconstrained conscience. No one should be compelled to embrace any religion against his will, nor should persons of faith be forbidden to worship God according to the dictates of conscience or to express freely and publicly their deeply held religious convictions. What is true for individuals applies to religious communities as well.It is ironic that those who today assert a right to kill the unborn, aged and disabled and also a right to engage in immoral sexual practices, and even a right to have relationships integrated around these practices be recognized and blessed by law - such persons claiming these "rights" are very often in the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife.We see this, for example, in the effort to weaken or eliminate conscience clauses, and therefore to compel pro-life institutions (including religiously affiliated hospitals and clinics), and pro-life physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other health care professionals, to refer for abortions and, in certain cases, even to perform or participate in abortions. We see it in the use of anti-discrimination statutes to force religious institutions, businesses, and service providers of various sorts to comply with activities they judge to be deeply immoral or go out of business. After the judicial imposition of "same-sex marriage" in Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities chose with great reluctance to end its century-long work of helping to place orphaned children in good homes rather than comply with a legal mandate that it place children in same-sex households in violation of Catholic moral teaching. In New Jersey, after the establishment of a quasi-marital "civil unions" scheme, a Methodist institution was stripped of its tax exempt status when it declined, as a matter of religious conscience, to permit a facility it owned and operated to be used for ceremonies blessing homosexual unions. In Canada and some European nations, Christian clergy have been prosecuted for preaching Biblical norms against the practice of homosexuality. New hate-crime laws in America raise the specter of the same practice here.In recent decades a growing body of case law has paralleled the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership, resulting in restrictions on the free exercise of religion. We view this as an ominous development, not only because of its threat to the individual liberty guaranteed to every person, regardless of his or her faith, but because the trend also threatens the common welfare and the culture of freedom on which our system of republican government is founded. Restrictions on the freedom of conscience or the ability to hire people of one's own faith or conscientious moral convictions for religious institutions, for example, undermines the viability of the intermediate structures of society, the essential buffer against the overweening authority of the state, resulting in the soft despotism Tocqueville so prophetically warned of.1 Disintegration of civil society is a prelude to tyranny.As Christians, we take seriously the Biblical admonition to respect and obey those in authority. We believe in law and in the rule of law. We recognize the duty to comply with laws whether we happen to like them or not, unless the laws are gravely unjust or require those subject to them to do something unjust or otherwise immoral. The biblical purpose of law is to preserve order and serve justice and the common good; yet laws that are unjust - and especially laws that purport to compel citizens to do what is unjust - undermine the common good, rather than serve it. Going back to the earliest days of the church, Christians have refused to compromise their proclamation of the gospel. In Acts 4, Peter and John were ordered to stop preaching. Their answer was, "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard." Through the centuries, Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required. There is no more eloquent defense of the rights and duties of religious conscience than the one offered by Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Writing from an explicitly Christian perspective, and citing Christian writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, King taught that just laws elevate and ennoble human beings because they are rooted in the moral law whose ultimate source is God Himself. Unjust laws degrade human beings. Inasmuch as they can claim no authority beyond sheer human will, they lack any power to bind in conscience. King's willingness to go to jail, rather than comply with legal injustice, was exemplary and inspiring. Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar's. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God's.
1Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Thankfulness

2009-11-19T08:30:00.000-08:00

Several of my friends have chosen this month of Thanksgiving to embark on an informal program of 30 Days of Thankfulness. Everyday on Facebook they post something that they are thankful for thereby giving witness of their faith and encouraging the rest of us. I intended to do the same, but I find myself getting hung up on just where to start. I am flooded with simultaneous thoughts and am stymied as to how to order them or how to catagorize the things for which I am so grateful. Suffice it to say - there is not an hour in the day when I am not thankful for what God has provided for my family. And if I had to list those things in order of importance, the material possessions would be far down the list.

When I do find myself grumbling within my own head, I am quickly reminded (Holy Spirit?) that if I think things are bad now there is plenty of room for things to deteriorate even further. This applies whether I am pondering the economy or the present condition of my driveway. I pray that if I suffer loss or persecution or heartbreak that I will continue to be thankful knowing that Christ is ever present. I will close with two passages from St. Paul's letter to the Philippians, written while he was imprisoned for two years in Rome waiting for his case to be heard by Nero.

Philippians 1:3 - 11

Thanksgiving and Prayer

" I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.
For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God."

If St. Paul could have this attitude while in Roman custody waiting on Nero, certainly I can have at least this attitude in modern day America no matter who is president, or governor, or senator, or dog catcher.

Finally - Philippians 4:4 - 9

Exhortation, Encouragement, and Prayer

" Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you."

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

30 Years Ago Today: How God Called John Piper to Become a Pastor

2009-10-19T07:37:00.001-07:00

30 Years Ago Today: How God Called John Piper to Become a Pastor

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NOBODY DOES IT BETTER: HOSPITALITY AND COMPASSION IRISH STYLE

2009-10-05T20:59:00.000-07:00

From the moment I stepped off the plane at Shannon Airport on August 12, 2006 it became apparent that the people of Ireland are the most hospitable people I have ever met. That may not say much when you consider that I have not traveled extensively throughout the world. I did my share of girlfriend vacations before I was married – a cruise in the Caribbean and a week in Acapulco- which bring back only fond and fun memories… and those memories did not include any negative encounters. More recently in 2003, I traveled to Bobbio, Italy with my daughter Rebekah. Though the people were generally accommodating there were instances of impatient responses and rudeness. Most of those occurred in Florence, our destination for Rebekah’s second half of her semester abroad. I chose to give the Italians there the benefit of the doubt and regard it as the difference between the countryside and the big city. Still nothing compares to our two weeks in Ireland. Others I know have also said the same about their time on the Emerald Isle.

I have always wanted to visit Ireland, but I never would have spent the money had it not been for the Fleadh Cheoil or All-Ireland Music Competition. To qualify for this prestigious event, you must place first or second in your regional Fleadh Cheoil. Maggie has qualified every year for the last 5 years in one event or another; whether it was solo slow aires or duets or a larger group such as the Grupai Cheoil (music group). Qualifying in the solos or duet was exciting for her but it did not justify the expense of going to Ireland. In 2006 not only did she and Monica Severance place second in duets, the 15 to 18 group won at the Midwest Fleadh Cheoil. It was decided by the parents, many of whose children also qualified in multiple categories, to bite the bullet and make the trip. There was no guarantee that we would ever win again.

I almost didn’t make the trip. Like most mothers I decided John should go and I should hold down the fort. John insisted that I make the trip because he said, "It will be the most fun you will ever have." He had been to Ireland and he spoke from experience. And so I went with a busload of young musicians and their parents. I laughed for two weeks straight. With each Bed and Breakfast we inhabited on our way from Shannon to Donegal, we were treated like family. This was not a good- for- tourism façade. It was a genuine character of hospitality that comes from the heart. Honestly, I always felt like I was in the home of relatives.

Our evenings were spent in local pubs, participating in a traditional music session with some very amusing elderly people – the keepers of the tunes. The best pub session of the three days on the road to Donegal was in the town of Ballinacarow. We arrived at this long and narrow hole-in-the-wall called Durkin’s at about 9:00p.m. There were only a couple of patrons and not a musician in sight and I’m thinking, "We need to get this session rolling, because I’m ready for bed." At about 10:00 musicians began to arrive and look suspiciously at the 15 or so youngsters huddled in the corner of the pub, waiting for the elder statesmen to signal the start of the session. We did not presume the right to commandeer their weekly music fellowship and so the kids waited and deferred to the adults- a protocol one learns in traditional music. Finally the locals, after getting their first pint of the night, sat themselves down and rosined up their bows. They seemed guarded at first - probably concerned that such young children would compromise the quality and pace of an adult session. It wasn’t long before they were pleasantly surprised and the hornpipes, jigs and reels began to pick up steam.

Now by this time we parents had decided the Guinness in Ballinacarow was the best pint of Guinness we had ever had and so it was time to have a second pint, even if it was midnight and we were sleep deprived. After all, we were under the watchful guidance of our wonderful bus driver Peter O’Brien who was having so much fun with us he took a room at each B&B instead of heading home. Before we could make our way through the now packed-out pub to get a second round, trays of food began to appear through the back door, apparently from a building across the lot. Just a note here – I don’t think there are fire marshals in Ireland. Since we Yanks were closest to the door we took it upon ourselves to serve the free snacks of local cheeses, olives, pizza, barbecued ribs, quiche and more. The music was rockin and we parents were laughing ourselves silly again. I think we called it a night at about 1:00 even though the locals, many of whom were well into their seventies and eighties, were just getting started. We still talk about that lovely evening watching our young musicians prove themselves to the elders and hold their own for three hours of music. By the time we left, they were part of the family of local Irish musicians.

We made our way to Letterkenny, but not before Peter showed us his farm neighborhood in the wilds of Donegal. We visited his home and met his wife, children and various animals. His daughter is a champion Gaelic singer and she sang a lovely song for us (we couldn’t understand it, but it was beautiful just the same). We continued the detour around the "neighborhood" for several hours so that one of our parents, who turned out to be a boyhood friend of bus driver Peter, could see some of their old buddies. When we finally arrived at our apartments in Letterkenny, it was midnight and we were four hours late. That didn’t matter to Noel McGinley our host. He and his staff were waiting for us in front of the building, ready to help us with our luggage and get us settled in. After three days on a bus singing Eagles songs, we were ready to stay in one place. Noel and his staff continued to check in on us for the entire week that we stayed in his apartment complex.

Week two of this adventure consisted of the kids all attending the Scoil Eigse, which is the week of Irish music instruction recommended for all attendees of the All-Ireland. In Lettekenny it was being held in a Catholic school building. We would walk the kids to the school in the morning and be free for the day. This was the first time in all my years as a mom that I had dropped my child off at school and could do as I pleased. While the men in the group chummed around exploring surrounding areas and Letterkenny itself, we women would do the grocery shopping and we all took turns preparing a community meal for the whole group. Only a couple of the parents had actually rented a car, so we walked everywhere we went (excepting a day trip to Galway City). At 2:15 each day the men would all meet in a pub close to the school for their afternoon pint and would then proceed to the school to pick up the whole group of kids and walk them home. By 5:00 all 30 or so members of the group gathered, dishes and silverware in hand, at the host apartment for a community dinner prepared by one or two of the moms. You would think that would be the end of a long day. After a little relaxation, it was off to the pub in the big hotel for some monster sessions. In every nook and cranny of the hotel there would be groups of musicians completely engrossed in their music, playing off each other, picking up on each other’s leads as if by osmosis. The tunes are automatic, having been learned by ear and as one set ends someone else begins with just a few notes of a tune that most can pick up. If you don’t know the tune, you can record it with a small digital recorder and learn it later. If the session becomes too big or loses steam, you just pick up your instrument and find another group of musicians whose tunes and momentum suit you. Musicians will wander and play and wander and play until the wee hours of the morning. We rarely lasted past 1:00 because the kids would tire, but the rest of the town was just getting started with the crowds at the pubs spilling out onto the main street to listen to any street musicians that had found a spot to play. We would fall asleep to the choruses of songs being sung by intoxicated crowds of men and sometimes wake up early in the morning to the same crowds still singing songs. I had never experienced a festival like this.

Finally the day of the competition arrived and although we knew we couldn’t win, the kids from Chicago performed well and received many complements worth noting. The most enthusiastic complement came from a woman I met at a small music store on the main street of the town later in the day. I was waiting outside the store when she introduced herself as Eileen Hughes, the mother of a musician from – if I remember correctly – the Dublin group. She was very gracious about what she thought was a better performance by Chicago than the judges acknowledged. She went on to explain that she and her son were not just in town for the All-Ireland, the day before they had also attended the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the hunger strike conducted by Irish prisoners in a Northern Ireland prison. The Irish prisoners, all jailed for Irish Republican Army terrorist activities, were insisting that they be considered prisoners of war and not revolutionaries. The Thatcher government rejected their position and so 23 men covenanted to go on a hunger strike on that principle. Of the original group, 10 men refused food to their death. Eileen Hughes’ brother-in-law, Francis Hughes, was the second prisoner to die of starvation.

I was somewhat stunned silent, which does not happen often with me. But I was even more stunned at what happened during that conversation. Maggie, who had been roaming around with the other kids, approached me with a dreadful nosebleed. I had no experience with gushing nosebleeds and for a few seconds tried to remember what the latest advice was for stemming the bloody tide. Without missing a word, Eileen Hughes took Maggie’s chin in her one hand, to lift her head slightly back, and began to pinch the bridge of her nose with her other hand. She sent the kids off to find some napkins and explained that she had to deal frequently with her son’s nosebleeds. When the kids returned with the napkins she said it was time to pull out the clot. Clot? Before I could step in and resume my role as mother, Eileen began to pull a clot the size of a child’s liver right out of Maggie’s nose. She folded it into the napkin and sent the kids for more as she continued to pinch the bridge of the nose just in case. With her free hand she would clean up Maggie’s face. All I could do was take the bloody napkins and toss them in a nearby garbage can. She never missed a beat. She continued to carry on with our conversation about music and hunger strikers and never once hesitating to minister to a stranger even when it involved cleaning up that stranger’s bloody mess. Her hands were covered with dried blood and I wondered how many people in America, with their phobias about germs and AIDS, would have gone that extra mile. And I thought of Jesus and so many saints through the centuries who never hesitated to care for lepers and disease stricken people at their own peril. This was as close as I have ever come to that kind of faithful disregard for one’s own safety and well being. I thanked her profoundly and was nearly in tears at this last act of authentic hospitality on our day before departing Ireland.

We stayed out very late that night for one last session with the great gathering of Irish musicians who had descended on Letterkenny from Ireland, Scotland, England, and the U. S. After four hours of sleep we boarded Peter’s bus and headed for Dublin and the airport – all of us wishing we didn’t have to go. It was indeed the best time I had ever had. I may never see Eileen Hughes again, but she should know what a testimony she was to her countrymen and women. A representative of a people with an irrepressible sense of humor in spite of being one of the poorer countries in Europe and despite suffering a Diaspora reminiscent of the Hebrews. May God Bless Them All.

GOD'S SOVEREIGNTY AND MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY

2009-09-29T06:38:00.000-07:00

The following is a note to my Sunday school teacher regarding our discussions on Open Theism which we believe to be the greatest threat to orthodox Christianity in general. The discussion centers around our study of Erwin Lutzer's book Ten Lies About God. Last week's dialogue tended to focus on God's abosolute control of all things. Since the pendulum has swung wildly in Christian history and there is a tendancy toward overcorrections, I had the following concerns.

As promised, I have a general question about the consequence of an overemphasis on the sovereignty of God to the detriment of man’s responsibility.I know that God is absolutely sovereign over the universe from its smallest quark to its most mammoth star. Studying our solar system alone is enough to cause us to marvel at the precise order which makes it possible for life to exist here on Earth and only here – for now. God’s sovereignty is also obvious in the disorder because we know that even when we can view asteroids darting across the sky and sometimes crashing into the earth, God is in control. So, I do believe God is sovereign in all. The order and the disorder; the good as well as the evil. However, if all we focus on is God’s absolute sovereignty without discussing the obvious Scriptures relating to man’s responsibility, we are creating the atmosphere, which I believe, leads to a sort of pessimism about the relevance of our actions in response to God.

In the interest of a defense against open theism I do understand the necessity of making sure that we all comprehend just how in control God is. Nothing in this existence is left to chance with our God. However, I have always been taught, in Bible believing churches, that while God is sovereign, man is responsible. For whatever reason, God has given us a measure of freedom to make decisions that we hope are consistent with his desired will and even when they are not, they are consistent with His determined will. My concern is this – In an effort to defend the Biblical witness about God’s complete knowledge of all things past, present and future are we emphasizing His sovereignty/control to the exclusion of the necessity of a response on our part? Will this cause a certain fatalism on the part of believers that is similar to the fatalism seen in Islam where believers accept death and destruction as a part of God’s will as if any attempt to avoid the consequence of evil is useless since this is what Allah desires? Does religious fatalism create a malaise on the part of believers who lose any enthusiasm for participating in God’s plan since He will work it out according to His plan anyway and really doesn’t require our participation? How do we acknowledge God’s complete control without allowing our faith to atrophy and our works to disappear?

The Scriptures give equal time to God’s complete sovereignty and man’s responsibility, but ultimately, from God’s perspective, He is in absolute control. However, there is a psychological aspect to all of this at the human level. By God’s grace we are given a measure of free will to accept God’s plan and participate with Him or reject God’s plan and do what is right in our own eyes. I hope I have made some sense.

Motherhood and the Tame Tongue

2009-09-11T19:37:00.000-07:00

Last week I was standing outside my friend Kelly's house as we huddled together with a fellow neighbor discussing an episode of the night before that had involved a crazed, drunken, knife-wielding woman ramming her car into a house on our street. This had occurred as Kelly and her husband had watched from their window, praying the nut wouldn’t turn her vehicle on their home. The day-after gossip revealed that it had been a domestic dispute (involving lesbians?!?) that ended pretty raucously with a magnificent wrestling match between perpetrator and the man of the house (again, not sure how the lesbians fit into the scene) and cops with guns drawn. Kelly, I and our retired neighbor were lamenting our changing community on the west side of Rockford. Break-ins, domestic disputes, etc. If troublemakers intended to run amok in our happy ‘hood, we wouldn’t stand for it. In her indignation, Kelly apparently mumbled a very bad word under her breath. I didn’t hear her say it but later at home Kelly called me almost in tears asking that I forgive her for saying that ‘flipping’ (I edit) curse word. I accepted her apology. She was most mortified that her six-year-old son had been in earshot and she hoped he hadn’t heard the expletive. I comforted her, reminding her of how ever-careful she is in the presence of her children to set a good example and have pure language. When our conversation ended, I laughed to myself, thinking of the one time my own mom uttered the mother of all swear words.

We were at our piano recital – the event each year that made our instructor Mrs. Miller proud as a peacock as her students plunked through the pieces we’d all been working on for months. Our brother Matthew arrived late from another obligation and entered the concert hall. He sauntered nonchalantly up the aisle and directly past a young man on the grand piano who was earnestly trying to concentrate through a concerto. The boy faltered, looked up and then shakily resumed his playing as Matthew shuffled to a seat. We Danahers sucked our breath in horror at Matthew’s rude interruption but our heads snapped around as we heard Gina behind us hiss the unthinkable. “F---ing idiot!” My sister Rachel and I exchanged nervous glances wondering through twin telepathy if we had indeed heard her correctly. Next to me, David sank a few inches lower in his seat, hoping mom wouldn't hit him since she couldn't reach Matthew. My mother was so incensed and angry that to this day she has no memory of even saying those words. But we kids won’t let her forget it. For as hard as my Italian/Irish mother worked to keep her temper and language in check, we held her accountable – though playfully – for the one time she lost control of her tongue.

It’s a good lesson for me now that I’m a mom. For all that millions of good mothering moments my mom had and I hope to have, it’s those few less-than-perfect moments that seem to stand out. However, it’s not those moments that define my mom. It’s because she held herself to such a high standard of conduct that the time she failed is so readily recalled. I can sit on my front porch on a summer Saturday morning and observe the neighbors across the street relaxing on their front lawn. It makes me sad to hear the parents shouting rudely at the kids with regular profanity. Those little ears are accustomed to their parents speaking in such a way, so it’s no wonder I hear them using that same bad language as they breeze by on their bikes.

I know how to be a mom because I have my mom’s example to follow. I understand that my children will do as I do and say as I say. It’s a big responsibility, this parenting job. I pray for self-restraint as I search for the right words to say, even when I’m frustrated and angry. Of course, I expect to make mistakes along the way and that’s when I will have to rely on grace, forgiveness and perhaps a little humor.

THE TEACHING SISTERS OF ST. DENIS

2009-09-11T18:38:00.000-07:00

What would make a woman, pregnant with twins, want to homeschool her children even before they were born? For me it started as a conviction that I did not want to have my children’s Christian faith neutralized by instruction that might be contrary to what we believed as a family. The family, after all, is the very first and most fundamental form of government. Its spiritual, psychological, and physical health is the most important factor in the general health of civilization.

Since I determined to embark on this journey when my daughters were yet in the womb, I had plenty of time to prepare by reading and investigating the best way to approach education on such a personal level. I read many books on development and investigated different methods of instruction. It was important to decide what my own philosophy of education would be. Did I want to have a structured home school or did I want to adopt the unschooling method? Did I want to use conventional reading programs or did I want to use a pure phonics method? Those are important determinations to make before the journey. I never doubted that I could do the job at least in the early years. I resolved to take it "one year at a time" thereby giving myself the option of enrolling my children in school if my limitations became a hindrance. "What could those limitations be?" you ask. Actually no one asked that question. In spite of all the obvious questions people might ask about the decision to keep one’s children in a home school, the most common question was "What about socialization"? Who knew that the public education system was developed for kids to socialize? From the beginning of time socialization seemed to come naturally on the sandlots of the world. I thought school was instituted to educate children so they could reach their full potential as adults.

Beyond the socialization question there was the occasional inquiry as to whether I was a teacher. No, I am not trained as a teacher and in fact, now that my children are all grown and have proven that they are not half-wits, I am free to tell people that my children are the products of a mother with an eighth grade education. It’s not that I didn’t attend high school; I did attend and graduated in 1972. It’s just that I don’t remember paying attention to any one class and I certainly don’t know how I actually passed out of any of my classes. I don’t really remember enjoying my education at Bogan High School in Chicago. I could blame my teachers, but that would be unfair. The teachers were very good with maybe a couple of exceptions and some of them tried very hard with knuckleheads like me. I liked high school because I had a whole new world of friends thus proving the point that conventional education systems exist for the socialization of the students at least in the minds of the students.

I didn’t always dislike school. In fact some of my fondest memories are of my grammar school years at St. Denis. That was a time in my life when I didn’t benefit from socialization; but I loved to learn and the Dominican nuns facilitated that learning wonderfully. My first nun, Sister Marie Rita, taught second grade and had a fierce reputation as a disciplinarian. She lived up to her reputation and I became the recipient of her discipline at least twice during the second grade. Sister Marie Rita accurately assessed that I was a "scatterbrain" as she told my parents. That stayed with me all of my life and as an adult I think back and realize that I was indeed a scatterbrain. Many decades latter I encountered my third grade teacher at a local restaurant and when our conversation turned to St. Denis, this teacher, Miss Halper, mentioned that all of the children that were passed on to her from Sister Marie Rita were excellently prepared for third grade and she was very grateful that her job had been made so much easier thanks to the Sister. Miss Halper herself was one of the best teachers ever employed in the Catholic Diocese. I loved having her as a teacher and remember her to be dedicated, energetic and organized. The third grade is a very memorable grade for me thanks to her.

In fourth grade I had Sister Jane Loretta. I remember her being very sweet and patient. I must have learned how to listen with both ears and apply myself to my subjects because I don’t remember any negative comments from her and certainly no disciplinary action. In sixth grade my nun was Sister Claret Marie. I have to say that I felt sorry for this sister because by sixth grade all of the potential troublemakers were perfecting their harassment techniques and she didn’t seem to handle it very well. I vividly recall sitting in class watching Sister Claret Marie's face change from slightly flushed to bright red as her anger grew while she tried to control the shenanigans. If I remember correctly, she left St. Denis midway through the school year and was replaced by Sister Thomasita. I have to admit my memory is a somewhat foggy on this.

My favorite nun was my eighth grade teacher Sister Maria Goretti. She was patient and soft-spoken yet always seemed to have control of the class. A very traditional nun at a time when Orders everywhere were shedding their traditional habits, she once explained to us in class that she preferred to keep the traditional habit in order to distinguish herself as someone who is married to Christ. I appreciated that she took the time to answer our questions about what it meant to be a Catholic nun. I also appreciated that she gave me her copy of Walter Farley’s fictional biography of Man o’ War. I was horse crazy my whole life and had a collection of Farley’s Black Stallion books except for Man o’ War. I still have that book and have never seen another one since.

My report cards from St. Denis testify to my being a B student with the potential for better grades with a little effort. I never did apply myself to academics consistent with my abilities. I was easily distracted and proof that Sister Marie Rita was very perceptive when it came to diagnosing her student’s gifts or disabilities. Yet the dedicated lay teachers and nuns of St. Denis must have been some of the best teachers that any school system had to offer because I was perfectly able to instruct my own children armed with the education they had given me. The Dominican sisters of St. Denis were a credit to their order and are sorely missed in today’s private education system.

JOSEPH AND HIS AMAZING ATTITUDE OF FORGIVENESS

2009-08-29T21:42:00.000-07:00

I am a lifelong lover of history. I come by it genetically. My parents, Richard and Marilyn Moran, both read history, almost exclusively. My father, the Irishman, tended toward Roman and Italian history, while my mother, the Italian, tended toward British and Scottish history. In fact, her love of all things Scottish spilled over into other areas of family life. Throughout my childhood, I was never without a kilt skirt and matching argyle knee socks. Additionally, although my mother’s music preferences were Italian opera and music typical of the ballet, she had an affinity for the Scottish highland bagpipes, recordings of which were few and far between at that time. In 1976, to celebrate the American Bicentennial, she took all of us to see a performance of the Queen’s Royal Marines and the Black Watch Highland Pipeband--complete with the regimental dancers
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Before my parents, there was my grandmother Rosalie Rice Moran. Rosalie did graduate from Lindbloom High School, unlike my grandmother Josephine who ended her education at the 8th grade. College for Rosalie meant reading just about every book in the local library. She devoured history book after history book and when she had read all the history books available, she started on the astronomy books. My father recalls having to make the trip to the library for her because she could not carry all of the books that she wanted to read. Every book would be consumed before the next trip. Rosalie was knowledgeable on just about any era of political and/or church history. She was the only devout Catholic ever to say, and I quote, "Martin Luther was right."

I suspect the history gene went back beyond Rosalie. The Irish are great storytellers and those stories come from deep within a subconscious store of historical knowledge, now written but originally part of a great oral tradition. And so I have read my share of history, but much to my frustration it is only a fraction of what I would have liked to have covered by now. Just when I was reaching a point in life where I thought I would have more time to catch up on my dusty library I also find that I cannot retain the information like I used to. The facts may be fuzzy but general principles have stayed with me. Principles tend to reside in the heart rather than the head. One principle that I cannot seem to forget is that every race, nationality or belief system has been persecuted at some time in the past. I also know that those same races, nationalities and religions have had blood on their hands. No one is innocent of murder and all have experienced years, decades or centuries of oppression. It is the story of man’s existence ever since God cautioned Cain that "…sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it."

My own ancestors left Ireland when they were on the verge of starvation at the time of the Great Famine. The potato blight itself was no man’s fault, but the response of the British overlords was no response at all. They cared little for the Irish and the fewer there were of them, the better. From the time the British first conquered the clans, they would have preferred to eliminate them. It was said that Oliver Cromwell had a Philistine policy toward the Irish. And this is where the conflict lies for me: Cromwell was also responsible for challenging the age old belief in the divine right of kings by deposing the Stuarts and setting one of the foundational stones for the Declaration of Independence. Cromwell the genius had a blind spot.
So, still alive but barely existing, my ancestors left their families behind and were herded into the hulls of "coffin ships" headed for America or Canada or Australia. The conditions they endured while on those ships were not much better than the conditions of the slave ships before them. Just as many of the slaves died during the voyage, many of the starving Irish did also. The history is heartbreaking.

Those who survived and established roots in America began to do well. They weren’t lazy and they certainly weren’t stupid. America has proven that no group of people is lazy or stupid. Given the opportunity, the Irish worked hard and became productive in spite of scorn and discrimination by the Protestant establishment. That didn’t bother the Irish. There was plenty of room in America to spread out and circumvent the system. Eventually, in cities like Boston and Chicago, they became the establishment and controlled the system. Most importantly, these working class folks began to send money home to Ireland and that money kept their families alive. And that brings me to Joseph.

The account of Joseph is told in Genesis, chapters 37 through 50 – the very last book of Genesis. Here was a young man who did nothing wrong, but was threatened with death and sold by his brothers to traders who then sold him as a slave in Egypt. He was put in charge of a household, accused of rape, thrown in jail, freed from prison after 13 years, and set over all the land of Egypt, second in command only to Pharaoh. The Scriptures tell us "And whatever he did, the Lord made it succeed." (Gen. 39:23) It was as governor that Joseph used his authority for seven years to set aside one-fifth of the produce of the land in anticipation of a famine. When it did arrive, the famine extended far beyond Egypt and caused people from all over to flock to Egypt to buy food…including the sons of Jacob. Joseph recognized them, but they did not recognize him. So he used their blindness to test his brothers to see if they had changed, if Benjamin (Rachel’s only other son) had survived, and if Jacob was still alive. The brothers passed the test and Joseph was reunited with Jacob and Benjamin. The children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob took refuge in Egypt and were well fed and protected by the most powerful man in all the land.

However, the brothers’ felt less secure when Jacob died as recorded in Genesis 50:"When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, ‘It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him.’ So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, ‘Your father gave this command before he died, "Say to Joseph, Please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you." And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.’ Joseph wept when they spoke to him. His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, ‘Behold, we are your servants.’ But Joseph said to them, ‘Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.’ Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them." (Gen. 50:15 – 21)

I have never been able to read through this without crying. Not even at this moment. I feel Joseph’s sadness at the words of his father and the mistrust of his brothers. I know I am obligated before the Lord to see His hand in the bad in order to appreciate the good. Whenever I hear people in this country demanding more than what they have already been blessed with because they are unwilling to forgive—always using the crimes of the past to justify the extortion of the present—I am reminded of Joseph’s amazing attitude of forgiveness. His relationship with God gave him the insight to know that while his brothers meant it for evil, God meant it for good.
While I have always been moved by the account of Joseph, I would never want anyone to misinterpret my view of injustice and suffering. Injustice should be opposed at every turn and once defeated those responsible for the misery should be brought to justice and punished accordingly. The children and grandchildren of those who have suffered should always be taught of those trying times in history much like the children of Israel were taught of their ancestors’ slavery in Egypt through the Passover celebration.
I want my Evangelical children to know the history of their Catholic forebears and what they suffered under the tyranny of Protestant Reformers with whom we have more in common doctrinally. We are Americans because of that tyranny, and that is the goodness of God in spite of their evil intentions.

WHY MARRIAGE IS ESSENTIAL FOR WORLD PEACE

2009-08-23T19:53:00.000-07:00

Once again I have found myself being harassed by some thoughts in my subconscious that I have ignored in the past but cannot ignore anymore. I was at my daughter Rebekah’s on Sunday celebrating the first birthday of grandson #2. As is the case with all children just turning one year old, Caleb just kept staring at the adoring crowd wondering when they were going to go home and leave him in peace. I stood on the deck just behind the confused guest of honor, cutting the cake and scooping ice cream as Rebekah opened the gifts. I too could look out at the adoring crowd of about thirty, and it hit me just as it has hit me several times now since my daughters have married; that is my family out there in the yard. It is a Swedish crowd. I did not have much contact with the Swedish culture growing up so I have had to learn to be accepting. All of the Nordics tend to be very clean and well organized and thanks to their Protestant upbringings, they lack those outbursts of anger so characteristic of what I am used to. Coming from the South Side of Chicago, I am more inclined toward Irish, Italians, Greeks, Mexicans, African-Americans and a sprinkling of Jews. In my old age I find myself having to expand my horizons due to the institution of marriage.

Seriously though, the people who now make up my extended family were once just strangers. I had no cause to like or dislike them had I crossed their path for any reason. Now though, I am obligated by God’s design to give them a special regard I would never have considered had my daughter not married. I myself am related through marriage to nine other Danahers, their spouses, children, stepchildren, grandchildren and even their new sons and daughters-in-law. And through their new sons and daughters-in-law, I get to meet their extended families on occasion. When all of these extended members are considered, I have sixty-one family members through marriage on my husband’s side. All of the Danaher grandchildren are just getting started on their families so there is still a great expansion to occur in that clan. My daughter Rachel has married into a family of six siblings (including her husband) which has provided her with four in-law spouses, eight nieces and nephews, a widowed mother-in-law and her second husband. When I attend Rachel’s family gatherings I am again impressed by the fact that I probably never would have crossed paths with these very nice folks from a western suburbs and now they are part of my extended family. I am obligated by God’s design to regard them differently because they are the grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins of my grandson, Ryan. Obviously the ties that really bind are the offspring of these marriages.

To me, marriage gives everything a different perspective. By marriage, I am drawn into a new circle of relations. For the sake of family unity I am required to put myself aside and, in the words of St. Paul, "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be conceited. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all." (Romans 12:15 – 18) Of course these instructions were meant to be applied to all people, not just family. But the best training ground for life in general is the family. We can walk away from casual acquaintances that may be annoying or for whom we do not want to make time, but it is in the best interest of family harmony to heed St. Paul’s instruction. Hopefully, from the center of my family, this practice of sympathy, empathy, cooperation, humility, and patience will spread like a great web and those that are now my extended family will also apply these principles to their greater clan. To be clear, it is I who have learned from them and not the reverse.

I know that world history is littered with the bones of the victims of clan warfare, but none of those clans ever had the benefit of a national Constitution, written by men who had the full benefit of biblical literacy, both Hebrew and Greek. They also had the benefit of a classical education, which concentrated on the western cannon of history, literature, science and philosophy and were able to come to the logical application of those learned principles within the structure of a representative republic. Our Constitution is not perfect, but it goes a long way in discouraging clan warfare with the possible exception of the Hatfields and McCoys. Even when the clans of Europe were playing "steal the head off the enemy," they very often relied on intermarriage between their children to bring peace between their tribes.

Fast forward to Chicago’s recent 46th Ward "Run Amok Party," with the resident hoodlums battling on the streets in the neighborhood for all to see and some to record on video cameras. This evidence of the deterioration in the 46th Ward prompted residents to contact Alderman Helen Shiller’s ward office to beg for help in controlling rival roving gangs of young men. Ms. Shiller did not respond to her residents, so they showed up at a meeting she was attending for Chicago 2016. Their frustration with the neighborhood crime and Ald. Shiller’s perceived lack of concern boiled over into angry demands and she then scooted out and never responded to them or the media. It may be time for Ms. Shiller to retire to Vladimir’s Home for Retired Bolsheviks. But I digress.

My reason for mentioning this Chicago melee is because it is the latest example of what happens when young men have no immediate family responsibilities from which they inherit extended family responsibilities, which in turn encourage a young man to be a productive member of a community. How many of those young men seen running and fighting in broad daylight do you think were married? How many were married with children? I’m sure everyone of them have children somewhere being "raised" by the young women who allowed them into their beds, but not one of these men is married. They don’t have to be. Today’s relationships are fluid and always changing. Marriage is passe. Sex is something to be enjoyed between two or three or more people. It’s kind of like going out to lunch. Take from it what you can get and then go home. As long as our politicians continue to advocate rewarding the irresponsible with the hard earned money of the responsible, the deconstruction of the Constitutional principles of self-government will continue to bring about the kind of chaos seen in that video of the 46th Ward. The consequences of the deconstruction of the Judeo-Christian worldview by the media and the intellegensia of academia are playing out in pockets of society; but those pockets are getting larger and pretty soon they will be interlocking with each other until there will only be small pockets of Judeo-Christian advocates trying to keep the barbarians from breaking through the gate to play "steal the head off the enemy".

We can continue to preach the gospel of condoms and birth control to each generation, but none of those consequence thwarters really get to the heart of the matter and certainly they do nothing for the principle that young men are better men when they are married and gainfully employed supporting a wife and their children. I am proud to say that one of my favorite books of all time earned its author the award of Male Chauvinist Pig of the Year by the National Organization for Women. His name was George Gilder and the book was Men and Marriage. I read it maybe twenty years ago and need to read it again. At the time, however, it seemed to hit the nail on the head with every chapter.

My opinion will instigate many to protest that marriage hasn’t always served women well, which is partially true. The world is comprised of sinful human beings for whom oppression is the favorite pastime. No one should settle for a life of subjection to one’s own personal tyrant. But the answer is not the eradication of marriage or the redefining of marriage (which is really the eradication of marriage). All one has to do is view the video of young men running rampant through a neighborhood of women and children to realize that the alternative to monogamous marriage is no alternative at all.

MRS. MORAN AND MRS. THURSTON

2009-08-16T21:12:00.000-07:00

Marilyn Moran was a stay-at-home mom for her entire life which gave her the freedom to be the political activist she was meant to be. I do not remember a time when we weren’t involved in some political campaign or protest and it all seemed to revolve around keeping the way of life that we believed was the logical extension of "unalienable rights". Rights which could only be granted or taken away by God and seemed to always be under assault by some government entity trying to do good to us whether we liked it or not. My first job in a campaign was when I was nine years old and my mother had my friends and me passing out literature for Barry Goldwater. It was 1964 and she paid us by taking us to see the Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night. Later that year we stood outside at the airport with signs welcoming Goldwater to Chicago. In between the rallies and meetings we stuffed envelopes for candidates.

In 1967 my Dad ran for alderman of the 13th Ward in Chicago. We were Republicans but the local Republican organization had their roster of candidates and they were not ready to let someone come in off the street and upset the guys waiting for their own nod from the party. Besides we are a somewhat independent family of conservatives and so Richard J. Moran ran as an Independent. When I think of the effort it took to organize and run a campaign I have nothing but admiration for the efforts of family and friends at that time. Out of a field of about 11 candidates in the primary, the Republican came in behind the Democrat and my dad was only 330 votes behind him. The Republican eventually won the general election and then ended up going to prison. So much for the party choice. That was the end of his political career and it was the end of my dad’s also. Lacking the support of a party and the money that comes with it, my father decided once was enough. My mother would continue to fight the good fight including two or three stints debating Jesse Jackson on Irv Kupcinet’s local late night talk show.

In the late 1960’s and early 70’s I was attending Bogan High School on the South Side of Chicago. Bogan was one of only two high schools in the Chicago system that was completely white, reflecting of course the racial makeup of the community. The Chicago Board of Education had been keeping itself busy desegregating their schools in accordance with the Supreme Court decision of 1954 which ordered school districts nationwide to bus students to schools outside of their communities in order to achieve racial integration. When all of the schools except Bogan and Taft were obediently exporting and importing students in order to do something that had nothing to do with education, the Chicago Board of Education turned its attention to lily white Bogan High School and that’s when the educrats met Marilyn Moran and the Bogan Broads.
Every Wednesday throughout the school year, I knew I would find my grandmother Josephine at my house when I returned from school because Marilyn and the Bogan Broads were downtown at the Board of Education keeping a watchful eye on the board members and opposing them at every turn as they tried to implement a desegregation plan for Bogan. This effort to keep their kids in the school that was closest to home and reflected the culture of their community earned them the opportunistic scorn of every prostituted politician in Chicago. And of course they were labeled racists. These fierce mothers believed in the concept of neighborhood schools. They didn’t care what color the students in the other neighborhood schools were; they wanted their children to attend school in their community. There would be time for learning how to get along with people of other cultural backgrounds after high school. The Bogan Broads weren’t the only parents who held to this conviction. Their allies at these Wednesday gatherings included African-American parents living in the neighborhoods from which we would be trading lab rats. They also preferred that their children attend school close to home. They were a minority within a minority and were rarely heard above the activists that characterized the desegregation movement.

The student body of Bogan may have been 100% white, but its teaching staff had started to change color and no one I knew objected. Teachers were teachers and it didn’t matter what color they were because they were - teachers. That was the annoying part. Some of the white teachers were disliked and some of the black teachers were disliked. Some of the white teachers were very popular and some of the black teachers were very popular. No black teacher was as popular as Mrs. Thurston; our physical education teacher. She was the female version of General Patton and we loved her. When she spoke we all listened. She had a unique way of explaining certain "facts" in our health class that made us laugh uproariously. I never intended on giving Mrs. Thurston any trouble but I was very lax about bringing my gym suit home on Fridays to be laundered. I ignored her general warnings about suffering consequences if we did not do so.
Since we had the newfangled permanent press uniforms my friends and I could get away with not bringing the suit home every week. Mrs. Thurston regarded this as dismissive of her authority and she would have none of that. As tough as she could be with us kids, I think she was concerned about how a black teacher should or could approach the white parents of her students. Being true to her bold nature, she mustered the courage to call Mrs. Marilyn Moran, one of the Bogan Broads, who could be seen occasionally on Irv Kupcinet’s show going nose to nose with Jesse Jackson. I don’t know if Mrs. Thurston was even aware of my mom’s part-time preoccupation. I do know that when she called, my mom thought she sounded a little sheepish. And that made my mom angry. When Mrs. Thurston was done explaining what my infraction was and how she hoped that my mom could talk to me about my lack of personal hygiene, my mom began to lecture this minority teacher. And this is how it went – "Mrs. Thurston. Just because you are a black teacher in an all white high school doesn’t mean that you should be intimidated or afraid to discipline your students if they do not obey you. From now on you have my permission to kick my daughter’s ass if she gives you any trouble whatsoever". That’s pretty much how my parents viewed the village raising a child.

I don’t know where I was when this conversation took place, but when I returned my mother and father let me know that Mrs. Thurston had their permission to do to me whatever she needed to do to get my attention. And when I arrived at gym class on Monday, Mrs. Thurston began bossing me around with a renewed enthusiasm. I took that gym suit home every week after that.

DOES THIS MAKE ANYONE ELSE DEPRESSED?

2009-08-14T20:31:00.000-07:00

I did my weekly grocery shopping yesterday and it was as uneventful as always. This time though I took note of something that occurs every week, but usually remains in my subconscious. I don’t hate grocery shopping but I don’t love it either. I enter the store in my usual good mood which then begins to dissipate as I make my way up and down the aisles and I begin to face the fact that I am not going to get out of there for anything less than $200. My serotonin level really begins to crash when I take one of those turns around the aisles at the front of the store near the checkout lines. It happens every week, but I usually do what I always do when I feel depressed - I ignore it. Works like a charm. This week however the melancholy was particularly heavy which forced me to stop and consider the cause. Are you ready for this? It is the presence of the gossip rags that highlight and broadcast every dysfunction of every current entertainment sensation and I use the word sensation very lightly. This time it was some publication giving Jon Gosselin an opportunity to proclaim his innocence in the demise of his marriage. I don’t want to see or hear this stuff anymore. Who are these people and why do they command our attention? They’re losers because if they had any true intelligence, talent, or extraordinary ministry to people, they wouldn’t have the time or need for excessive public attention. The most I credit these exhibitionists with is being shrewd.The saddest thing about the Gosselin story is not the self-absorbed parents; it is the tragedy of what this is doing to eight children who are living the Truman Show.

When the headlines aren’t about Jon and Kate, they’re about someone’s battle with eating too much or not eating at all. Again self-absorption. But the most disturbing headlines have to do with young women who seem to have it all, but continue to be very needy and desperate which then causes them to make foolish choices in men. The men eventually respond to the neediness by being unfaithful which causes the women to spin out of control until another poor decision is made to fill the need. And the cycle continues to be unbroken. Women consistently selling themselves short in the name of love and premarital intimacy. Occasionally a magazine article or a segment on Oprah will try to paint one of these women as strong and independent; not needing a husband because marriage isn’t necessary. It isn’t long before TMZ catches her stalking her ex boyfriend.

When Rachel and Rebekah were approaching their teen years, I made a decision that there would be no teen magazines in our house. I felt every angle of these magazines set a young girl up for failure. Even though they talked about feminism and independence, they still spent too much ink on the need to impress the guys. I didn’t want my girls to get sucked into the mentality that one’s significance came from being attached to a boy. My mantra was "You can have a boyfriend or you can have a life, but you can’t have both." When I see maybe 4 or 5 magazines at the checkout focused on who got dumped and who the dumpee is going to date next, I get depressed. I know that most young girls are caught up in all of this nonsense and I can’t imagine that their own relationships are healthy if their model in life is a shallow, stunted blonde with puffy lips and a huge chest. My advice to all of the young girls out there; when you’re at the checkout, read the gardening magazines.

MEMORIES OF JOSEPHINE - Part 1

2009-08-09T12:40:00.000-07:00

My grandmother, Josephine Brucellaria Mazziotti was the last grandmother in America. After she died in 1983 I noticed a decline in the number of grandmothers. I think they all went out into the workforce. Some because of a legitimate need for supplemental income and others because they thought that by virtue of the generation into which they had been born, they had missed something. So, the grandmas ventured out to find whatever it was that modern women were supposed to experience. Others simply let grandpa talk them into moving to warmer weather. Not so Josephine. Because of her dedication to her grandchildren, I have only ever wanted to emulate her. Ever since my five children were small, people have asked me what I planned on doing when they were all out of the house and on their own. The pressure I felt to come up with an answer was sort of like what children feel when someone asks them what they want to be when they grow up. I would reach inward to my very simple mind and always come up with the same answer: I wanted to be the kind of grandmother that Josephine was. How unfeminist of me.

By all accounts, as they trickle in from the few remaining Italians in our family, Josephine had an unhappy marriage to Anthony Mazziotti. My mother never had many warm recollections of her childhood. She was the third of three children and there were ten years separating her and her next sibling, my Aunt Lorraine. She was born a few months before the crash of 1929 and by then her mother, Josephine, was feeling the strain of being married to a man who fancied himself an entrepreneur. He left a job working as an airplane mechanic to do who-knows-what, creating a financially unstable condition at home. All hope was eventually dashed by the Great Depression. My mom recalled one incident of coming home from school with a piece of art work only to have my grandmother slap her in the face when my mom approached her for approval of her creation. She never forgot the shock and hurt she felt, but as an adult she understood that Josephine suffered under the yoke of marriage to Anthony. My grandfather died seven years before I was born, leaving my grandmother and mother, age 17, to fend for themselves. My grandmother worked for awhile to support them and eventually things got better, but generally speaking, Josephine never had much in life. She and my mother moved in with my great-grandparents, Baldassare and Clementina Brucellaria, and when they died soon after my grandfather, Josephine occupied the home at 6757 S. Hermitage in the Englewood area of Chicago permanently. When I was born in 1954 my parents were living in a rented apartment across the street. From the moment I was born my grandmother was a constant presence in my life. She was there when I was a baby and even after my parents bought a house in the Ashburn neighborhood farther south and west, I spent my weekends at Grandma’s keeping her company.
Actually, my fondest childhood memories are of my Grandmother’s house in the old Italian neighborhood known as 69th street. The original inhabitants of that area were Dutch and Swedish. As those ethnic groups began to prosper, they moved to the suburbs and were replaced by Italian immigrants who had spilled over the borders of their original neighborhoods closer to the downtown area of Chicago. My great grandparents had lived in one of those neighborhoods but soon bought the home that I knew as my Grandmother’s house. They owned two lots – one for their house and one that became a saloon that my Grandfather Anthony operated. Eventually they sold off the extra lot and building and it was bought by the Schuba family who continued to run a saloon known as Lefty’s – my father’s favorite watering hole.

On Friday nights my father would head back to the "old" neighborhood to have a few beers with his buddies. He would bring me along so that I could spend the weekend with Grandma. He would get there in time to listen to the ball game and I would get there in time to have a bowl of Cornflakes with Josephine before we went to bed. I would wake on Saturday morning to the smell of fresh perked coffee and toasted Italian bread. My grandmother would make soft-boiled eggs for me to accompany the 10 pieces of toast I would eat. It was a treat to have toast at her house because she didn’t have Wonder Bread; she had bread from Naples Bakery on 69th Street. The day would be spent following her around as she tended her garden, hung laundry, or made pies. She had an old wringer washer in her basement, never owned a dryer and she made the best pies ever. Blueberry, Lemon Meringue, Coconut Custard, Banana Custard. To this day I rarely ever eat pie in a restaurant because they can’t compare to hers. Often she would spend the day making spaghetti sauce with meatballs or neckbones or sausage. Saturday evening I would wait patiently on my Grandmother’s front porch for my Dad to arrive at Lefty’s for the evening. As soon as I saw his car I would run next door to the saloon. This was the highlight of the weekend. My Dad would sit me on a stool and he would buy me pop and a box of pretzels: the stick kind in that little flat box. I would enjoy being with the guys, but it wasn’t long before it was time for the kid to get out of the bar and head back to Grandma’s. I don’t know how serious the law was about 6 year olds in bars, but my father was very serious about me not picking up any bad language, which would flow in proportion to the beer. So, back to Josephine’s for Cornflakes and Lawrence Welk.
Sunday morning consisted of the usual breakfast and yes, I drank coffee. Josephine did not have a problem with kids indulging in caffeine. At the corner of Hermitage and 67th street, the bells would be ringing at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Church. I would head off to Mass by myself since the Italian side of the family rarely graced the inside of a church. My poor mother had to walk down to the church when she was nine years old and ask the priest if he would baptize her. Happily, I was not without family at church. Sitting in the back I could usually see my Irish grandparents in the front. Joseph and Rosalie Moran lived just three blocks west of Josephine in the same neighborhood. As soon as church was over I would touch base with my Grandma and then walk over to the Irish side and spend the afternoon eating Oreos and hard candy with my other grandparents. This is where I was able to indulge my love of dogs because Joe and Rosalie owned a little black dog named Tinker. And that is why my Irish grandparents were always known to us kids as Tinker Grandpa and Grandma. I loved that little house on Wolcott too. Tinker Grandma decorated in an early American style and although my mother thought it tacky, I never understood what the problem was.

When the visit was over I headed back to Josephine’s where my Dad would retrieve me to go home. Many times Josephine would also be retrieved along with the spaghetti sauce and pies. The weekend would culminate in a huge Sunday dinner complete with beer or pop as a treat and yes, I drank beer. My father did not have a problem with kids becoming accustomed to drinking alcohol as part of a meal. When the meal was over I would beg my grandmother to stay overnight with us. I hated to part with her. Since she rarely had anywhere to go she usually stayed with us for a couple of days before my dad took her back home.

I loved that Italian neighborhood more than I cared for my own. The "old" neighbor hood had trees lining the street and the yards all had trees and flowers. In contrast my new neighborhood had just been constructed on prairie and farmland. There wasn’t a tree to be found and for some reason my parents’ generation preferred that sterile barberry bush look with manicured lawns. But in the old neighborhood I could sleep outside at night on the porch rattan lounge chair and listen to the breeze blowing through the great pear tree that hung over the house. This was a real fruit-bearing pear tree and when the pears were ready to be harvested, the slightest breeze would cause them to fall from the branches hitting the house with a loud thud. I remember nights trying to fall asleep with the constant thudding of the pears as the wind brought them down. The next morning Josephine would head outside to see what kind of harvest she had only to find that the squirrels had helped themselves to one or two bites of each pear. This is when I was privileged to hear my grandmother curse and swear in Italian through the garden, as she would pick up pear after pear only to find it contaminated by the squirrels.

I live in a suburb of Chicago that has huge oak trees. When I relax outside in the summer I close my eyes and am transported back to that neighborhood as I listen to the sound of the wind in the trees and the barking of a dog in the distance. I have a garden, which contains the very peony bushes, and forget-me-nots that grew in that yard on Hermitage Ave. Clementina Brucellaria planted the peonies, and the forget-me-nots were a Mother’s Day gift to Clementina from my mother. Soon, my grandchildren will be old enough to stay with grandma and grandpa for the weekend. They will follow me around as I garden, hang the laundry and make pies.

Interesting blurb on the subject of idolatry

2009-08-07T07:21:00.000-07:00

I sat down this morning to finally catch up on the latest issue of Touchstone Magazine and found this little blurb by Peter Leithart in the Quodlibet section that I thought coincided with what Lutzer is discussing Ten Lies About God.

Leithart says -

"The other day, the Dow went above 8000 for the first time in months. I've got almost nothing invested, but my first thought was, 'Whew! We're going to be okay.'
My second thought was a self-castigating one: What is it but idolatry of mammon to feel relief and hope at a 100-point rise in the Dow? Have I been so deeply corrupted that I put my hope in a purely nominal increase in value? Have I been so thoroughly taken in by the evangelists of mammon that we call our "major media"?

MEMORABLE MOTHERING MOMENTS: Ballet, Blueberry Pie and Sensitivity

2009-08-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

In the last 30 years of the 20th century a new malady has developed that afflicts mostly women. It causes heartbreak for many parents and serious concern for many more. That malady is anorexia and every mother with teenage daughters was on alert for this and other eating disorders that might do serious physical and emotional damage to their daughters. I paid attention to media discussions on the subject and kept a sharp eye on my girls, especially Rebekah because she was in ballet where eating disorders go with the territory. And by the way, those Italian genes which craved pizza and pasta, along with the Irish genes which craved beer, are what sunk any hope for me of ever having a career in ballet when I was younger. All the other ballerinas headed home after class to eat some carrot sticks while I was planning on meeting my girlfriends for beer and pizza. I was hopeless.

I learned to cook from my Italian mother and, with a little tweaking to accommodate updated health and well being information, we had decent eating habits. My kids were all physically active so none of them was overweight. Still I was always keeping tabs of any changes in their diets. The dilemma occurs when your happy healthy daughter is starting to maybe eat more than she should and you, the Mom, has to figure a way to curb her enthusiasm for food without sending her over to the dark side. One day while Rebekah was helping herself to a second slice of blueberry pie at dinner, I realized that I was going to have to stop this without trashing her self-esteem. I watched her and I pondered this for about 30 seconds before I said, "You know, you’re past the point where you are growing up. From now on you’ll just grow out. So, if I were you, I’d quit eating a second piece of dessert." How’s that for sensitivity? Stellar isn’t it.

That is one of those Mommy moments that haunts me although 13 years later I have not seen any damage. In fact I wonder if Rebekah even remembers me ever saying anything to her. Ironically there is one incident that she and Rachel do remember vividly and I have no recollection. It was another great moment in mothering history. I think I will let them have the privilege of telling that story sometime soon.

A Simple Story of Self-Reliance and Self-Esteem

2009-07-31T17:14:00.001-07:00

Everyday I thank the Lord that John's salary through the decades has been substantial enough to support our family of seven. I had no intention of working outside of the home while my kids were still school age and since I was homeschooling them, there was just no question that John's salary had to suffice. We were always on a budget that allowed for lessons in music, dance, sports and art, but my kids didn't have a lot of the gadgets and toys that were popular. I considered music most important and if I was going to sink money into a guitar, fiddle, mandolin, etc. then there wasn't anything left for Nintendo. No one complained especially since they all learned to love music and appreciated a good instrument.

One of the areas where we had to be careful was the wardrobe department. We only had the budget to buy what was needed a couple of times a year. Once for the Autumn/Winter and once for Spring/Summer. I don't like going to the mall and I was determined to not have to argue with the girls over clothing that was inappropriate for their age. Actually Rachel and Rebekah never argued with me at all, but at the time I knew that the trendsetter for their peers was Madonna and that was not going to happen in my house. The solution came in the form of the Lands' End children's catalog.

The kids and I would clean out the drawers and closets and determine what still fit and what needed to be passed on to someone else. We would make a list of what each one needed for the coming season and then I would let them pick the pants/skirts/shirts/jackets from the catalog. It was a great system . The kids loved looking through the catalog and choosing the colors that they wanted in the clothes that they needed.

One year when Rachel and Rebekah were about 13, Rebekah spotted an outfit in the catalog that she liked and sheepishly asked me if we could get it. I felt terrible, but I had to stick to the budget and just could not afford it. Rebekah wanted to pay for the extra clothes with her babysitting money and I agreed she could do that. When the day came for me to place the order I felt like a loser mom because most parents just buy their kids what they want and her request was not something extravagant. It was just a cute wool skirt and sweater. How could I make this kid pay for this? At that exact moment Rebekah came bounding out of her bedroom, plopped a handful of money onto the table and said "You have no idea how good it feels for me to be able to buy my own clothes with my own money!"

Lesson learned by mother and child.

Marilyn and Edna

2009-07-29T19:11:00.000-07:00

There is never a shortage of great quotes by great and not so great people, which can best express one’s feelings or worldview. Most great quotes are timeless: even if it was uttered centuries ago, a certain quote can still apply to life, love, war, civics, politics, etc. as fittingly today as when it was first coined. I am not one for reinventing the wheel. I am too lazy and I lack imagination. So when I read a book or a magazine and come across something that captures my own thoughts in far fewer words than I am known for, I employ it shamelessly. Having said that though, I have decided that my favorite quote came from the sharp tongue of my dear departed mother.
Marilyn Mazziotti Moran was also a sharp wit. My mother was born in 1929 just before the Crash and her family never seemed able to lift itself out of poverty. They always had food and I have a picture of my grandfather in his Model T Ford, but it didn’t seem that there was much else. My mom always recalled that she never had a dresser or a closet in which to put her few clothes and she had to lay them on her bed. Still, she had class. As she grew into adulthood and became employed she purchased her own very smart and classy clothes and explored the world of art and culture which included studying ballet for adult learners at the Edna McRae School of Dance in the Fine Arts Building in downtown Chicago. Later when she married my father and I was born she determined that I would have what she didn’t. Of course that included a dresser and closet but, most importantly, that meant ballet.
When I was about six years old she brought me downtown to the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Ave. to have my first lesson with Miss Edna McRae. Of all of my teachers she stands out in my memory as literally the most colorful. She was plump by then but always looked beautiful. Her fully gray hair was always soft and pretty around her face and her dresses were colorful and chiffony with matching ballet shoes. She would also wear a coordinating necklace. This was the early 1960’s and ballet was still a very prim, proper and formal class. The cultural deterioration had started to eat away at the foundations but the damage was not yet visible. By 1968 there would be drastic changes.
In the beginning though, ballet at a school of this caliber was more, much more, than just a dance class. My mother could have marched me into any neighborhood dance school, but she made no bones about the fact that those schools were inferior. The neighborhood schools tended to concentrate less on true ballet technique and more on sequins and tiaras. She couldn’t stand it and she passed this prejudice right down to me. In some areas of life I wear the badge of SNOB proudly thanks to Marilyn. In Miss McRae’s class we were required to wear a uniform that was age appropriate because Madonna had not yet been born. We addressed her as Miss McRae and we did not dare display any signs of ADD because she carried a wooden cane and pounded the floor if your eyes happened to look in the wrong direction. The cane was also used for slight raps on bent knees but I don’t remember ever actually being hit by it. And did I mention that the better schools never had classes for preschool children? They did not believe that children younger than six had the physical or mental ability for this discipline. At that time they did not believe in wasting their time and your money. Ballet was not yet a racket. One day a young mother brought her preschool child into Miss McRae’s office, insisting that she was talented enough to be enrolled. Miss McRae told her to take the girl home and put her in the sandbox. Now that is wisdom.
Those first four years of ballet I was scared to death of Miss McRae. During one class I had to go to the bathroom but was afraid to raise my hand and ask for permission to leave the room. I went down into a grand plie and promptly peed all over the dance floor. Miss McRae was very understanding and after my embarrassed mother cleaned up the mess I resumed the class with the tendu exercise. My mother confessed that she was scared to death of her too. In those days no hover mother dared challenge Edna on her classroom scoldings and discipline of flaky little ballerinas. You see, a parent or grandparent was required to sit in the class and take notes of the exercises dictated by Miss McRae. Then the parent was required to watch us practice at home everyday according to the notes. We had to learn French. All terms and phrases in class were French and by the time we were nine or ten we took our own notes. We spent a great deal of the class sitting on the floor with our pencils and notebooks copying down the new dance steps and bar routines and recording the new terms in French with their English translations. We also had to buy the piano sheet music for the end of the year recital and spent a good deal of the class time on the floor marking the music according to the adjustments being made for the recital. I still have that music. Aside from the dance instruction we were taught discipline and propriety in all areas of life. Regularly Miss McRae would walk into the dressing room and instruct us on how to keep it clean and tidy. She would say, "if you see something on the floor, stop and pick it up." Another great quote. I used it with my own kids regularly.
My mother was unlike most mothers. She had faith in my ability but she was realistic about what it took to be a ballerina. She was willing to make the financial sacrifice of paying for classes and toe shoes and she dedicated her time to driving me downtown first one, then two and three days per week until I learned to take a bus. But she never made any predictions. One day she sat outside the classroom, in the company of several very well dressed and coifed mothers from the affluent areas of Chicago’s north shore. As usual they were going on and on about why each one thought her daughter had the talent to be the next Margot Fonteyn. Finally Marilyn could not take the boasting anymore. She interjected and the conversation came to a halt. She said, "I put my daughter in ballet so that when the Russians take over, they won’t shoot her." Now that is wisdom.