First, let me explain the back story for this project.
I conceived the idea for this blog last year, after I returned from Switzerland. I'd been blogging my life and times there, where I had the great pleasure and blessing to live with and share in the monastic life of the Fraternité Eucharistein for a year. I blogged primarily for the edification and amusement of my friends and family around the world, to keep them abreast of things there.
I tired to keep it light and amusing, and avoided talking too much about any of the intimate details of the lives of the people I was living with, or the work that I was doing there, which had some confidential aspects. I also decided not to talk too much about religion in the abstract sense (though it was naturally a part of the blog in that Catholicism was a major part of the organic ebb and flow of my experience there) or politics. I broke that resolution a few times, but overall I think I kept it pretty focused on my experiences.
When I returned to the States, I ended up living in Florida for a year. I hadn't expected to have to remain there so long. I'd initially thought that I would be moving up to Washington D.C., but my work circumstances changed, and I ended up stuck in the South. Initially, I was bemused by it: my parents and two of my uncles (one from each side of my family) live there in the Villages.. If you click on that link, and then on the one to the Frat's website, I think you'll see how the two communities are rather different from each other.
Through May or June, I was considering buying property in Florida, maybe even in the Villages themselves.
Then came the summer.
The heat and humidity and the daily afternoon thunderstorms.
It's tropical. It's brutal. And this year it lasted from May through to the end of September.
Five months of misery. I'm from Maine, and I am not made for that sort of weather. I like the cold, I love the snow. In the winter in New England, all you need to escape the cold is proper clothing and a well heated home. It's not hard to feel snug, and feeling snug in the cold is one of the very greatest things in the entire world. You lay in bed in your freezing room, all tucked in under three or four blankets, two down pillows and a snug hat about your head.. And the great vast cold is impotent, it can do nothing.
You are a little pouch of warmth in the great frozen fastness. And it is a sublime feeling. There is nothing more pleasurable than that.
The Florida heat though, that's another thing. If it weren't air conditioning and swimming pools (and the ocean, if you are so blessed as to live on or near it, which I was not - no, instead I was smack dab in the middle of the peninsula) are the only reprieves from that heat. Without air conditioning, it would be simply impossible for me to live there, at all.
At the end of the summer, I was done. It had slowly frazzled me senseless, left my frayed and depleted, emotionally and physically spent.
The heat though was coupled by constant contact with people at social gatherings and in the media, who barraged me with talk of politics. 90% of the time it was Republican, libertarian, anti- Obama, even pro- Bush, anti- immigrant, anti- Muslim, pro- business, anti- "socialist" rhetoric. Usually it was all beery and blasé, but sometimes it veered into anger and vitriol.
In the beginning - the first six to eight months or so - I was magnanimous, unflappable. I would usually simply listen and keep my gob shut, smile, nod, and grab myself a quick hamburger before making a bee line to the exit, to return home to work and read or else watch Free Speech/Link T.V., PBS, BYU TV, the History Channel or something. I was on a Mormon kick for a a few months, and had loads of reading to do about the LDS, which was very interesting.
After a while though, I started to unhinge. Between the heat and the politics, I just couldn't keep it together. By the time the fall rolled around, I'd flipped the light fandango, and started to go a little nuts.
And that bled out onto the blog. Which gave me a bad conscience, because I knew that there were some 20 people either RSS'ing or being emailed the the thing, and most of them weren't reading it for my rants about politics. Or religion, for that matter. And that's all I had, or wanted, to write about.
I felt like I was losing perspective, losing my sense of humor. I was becoming brittle and bitter. I ended up picking a few fights, and insulting a few people.. Snarling, and tossing around vulgarities.
It was time to escape. So, at Thanksgiving, I did. I came north, and rented an apartment in Northern Vermont, right up on the Quebec border. I used to live in Vermont, when I was in grad school, and my hometown in Maine is also on the border with Quebec. This is home. There's snow on the ground, French on the radio, a lumber mill down the road, and some of the best skiing in the North East 20 minutes away.
I'm so very blissed out. I've been here nearly 2 months, and everything has returned to normal. I've regained my equilibrium and sanity. It feels very good.
I blogged the move on my old spot, and idly thought about launching a new project. This last week, I finally resolved to do it, most especially because there were a few posts on the old blog that were about people back in Switzerland that were still getting an undue amount of attention. My blog analytics told me that there were a few posts with details concerning other people's lives there that were still getting dozens of hits a week. That was not good. It was time to shut it down.
On Saturday, I started to write a final post that I was intending to post on both blogs as a conceptual bridge. I began farting around with the template here (criticisms of the results, please! I'd be very appreciative) and vetting a few ideas.. I was planning on making the shift on Sunday or today.
When the assassin struck.
It was one of those crystalline moments you know you won't forget. Like when Reagan was shot, the Challenger blew up.. Or 9/11.
In my shock I compulsively typed out a blog that had a few snide remarks about Palin in it, and posted it. 6 people dead, 14 wounded.. Federal Judge, U.S. Congresswoman, a few elderly people, and a little girl.. I was in an emotional warp, and not thinking straight.
I sat there trying to absorb the news, reading whatever I could find online..
When I found her photo, name.. And learned that she'd been born on September 11th, 2001.
Christina. She's nine. She'd just received her first communion.
I can't handle that. Typing this, I ..
It just wrecks me.
There's really nothing that can be said. The attacks upon the Congresswoman, the federal judge, the citizens who had come to meet their representative..
All of it is a direct attack by a madman upon our democracy. Upon the institutions of the Republic. We all should stand as one against those who have created the climate for this act of anti- social extremism. Those who have fanned these flames - such as Sarah Palin and her cretinous friends - need to be condemned and scorned for their cynical stoking of such people's madness.
[I've been criticized for saying Sarah Palin is particularly responsible - I'll stand by that assertion, and defend it with an example of the type of speech I'm talking about; this capture of her fund-raising site's web page, which was taken down Sunday afternoon, directly after the attack:
This strikes me as a physical threat and an incitement to violence. Notice how one of the gun sites is directly over Tuscon, Arizona? That's a gun site trained on Gabrielle Gifford. On Sunday, Jared Loughner pulled the trigger. She needs to apologize publicly, at the very, very least.. It's shameful and uncalled for, extremist, and I say maybe even criminal..
I just read someone else make an excellent point about Sarah's gun sites: Imagine if a Muslim had done that. If say, it had been Keith Ellison, the first and only Muslim member of Congress - and incidentally a black man - who had put gun sites on the districts of Republican lawmakers? Stop, and imagine that. What do you think Fox New's reaction would be to that, even without any violence? And then what if there were violence in response to such an image? Seriously. There would be blood. The offending Muslim would be in deep, deep trouble. Probably under prosecution.
Sarah, though, she's white Pentecostal and a so called "conservative" Republican. So implicit threats of violence from her are cool. Par for the course, in America, these days.
But enough.. I'm done.)
I don't care if you agree. Just like I don't care what fascists think. If you flame violence, it is unacceptable and reprehensible. That's all. I'll say no more about it.
Christina, though.. Her killing has no possible political pretext or meaning.
It isn't political, it's apocalyptic. The "coincidence" of her birth date doesn't seem accidental at all, even though there's no possible way that the killer could have known.
Look at his eyes.
As I post this, the impropriety of putting his face on the same page as hers strikes me.
I'll leave it there, because the evil shrivels before her goodness. Nothing he can do can hurt her now. She's beyond him.
When I cry for her, I initially began accusing myself of crocodile tears, of mere sentiment.
But that's not completely it.
Sure, I am crying because she - a little girl I've never met - is gone. I cry for her family, for her parents.
But I'm also crying for the rest of us, for myself.
Because I'm complicit in this mess, I've participated in the shouting, the anger. I've called names, and been offensive. So I'm not keeping the faith, and in far more ways than that. I'm not innocent, not even close.
"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not cry for me. Cry for yourselves and for your children.."
Because the assassin is also one of us.. A creature of our culture. What is good amongst us has been torn away, and the evil sneers.
Like on 9/11, there is a pure flash of malice there.
This was not a "normal" crime. It is something worse. It is something demonic.
There is something prophetic in this. We should all pay attention. We are being warned.
We need to repent of our anger, of our dissension. We need to calm down, to listen to each other, to reach out to one another, to forgive one another.
I've posted the Beatitudes in the sidebar, because that is one of the things that I want this blog to be about.
I am a Catholic Christian for many reasons. I want to talk about that, to explain myself to anyone who will listen. I have many things that I think I need to say, many thoughts I want to share, many problems I want to open for your collective critique and consideration. I am going to tell some stories, to explain why I am who I am, why I think what I do, and why I believe.
In this country. In the Church Universal. In the sanctity of every human being, in the dignity of each person's individual conscience.
Even Jared Loughner's. Especially Jared Lee Loughner.
Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who hate and seek to destroy you. Love your enemies.
This is the emphatic charge that every single one of us who professes Jesus Christ as our master must embrace.
That is the meaning of the Crucifixion. It is the undoing of Jared Loughner's hatred and rampage.
There is no other answer, no other solution, I think. I believe the only response to such evil is love. Love that transcends all sin and death, and undoes it.
I was planning on starting this blog with a positive proof* for the Faith. Instead, I have a negative one.
[*by proof I don't mean verification, only strong substantiation.]
For know this: evil, death, sin and suffering demand a resolution. Some say that the existence of such suffering is proof that no merciful God can exist.
Rather, I say to you that to the contrary, if there is no merciful God, then annihilation is all that we can expect.
Not only is suffering and death expunging all of us, destroying even the smallest most innocent amongst us like Christina Taylor Greene, but there is no recourse..
Without the transcendent mercy that Christ promises us.
I know that's a hard saying, but I am utterly sure that it is so.
And that, paradoxically, is the greatest and most hopeful thing of all.
These are the victims:
Christina with her father.
Federal District Judge John Roll
Dorthy Morris
Dorwin Stoddard. He died lying over his wife, protecting her.
Phyllis Schneck
And a member of Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford's staff, Gabe Zimmerman, who was only 30.
There were 14 others wounded, including Gabrielle. Let's all pray for all of them. Pray for our country, for the world. That we may all seek reconciliation and peace.
And pray for the killer, Jared Lee Loughner, that he may repent and be forgiven.
May God forgive and keep us all.
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