What Happened

I am a Presbyterian minister so I had Biblical texts, that to my mind, speak explicitly against masks, "we all with unveiled faces," "man lives by the lip of his neighbor" (Yup, that's what says literally) and a plethora of texts about the face and how one day, "the covering over the face of the nations would be removed." (Isaiah 25) I was encouraged by my husband and other mentors and teachers never to mask in front of my congregations and to continue to sing. At yet, for me it was still extremely hard to resist and to do what was right. It took a lot of prayer and everyday the Holy Spirit had to help me combat anxiety and stress. He always came through, at just the right time. There was another front on which I was fighting though. My mother was ill. I had helped to take care of her for two years but she had returned to her own beloved home and my sister was helping her. In March 2020 right after a trip that Mom and I and my stepfather had taken to Kansas for an alternative treatment plan, everything changed. My mom, realizing that I did not mask, and that I visited the sick and was with crowds (George Floyd and Open Up Rallies) decided to distance herself and not allow me to visit. I certainly understood. It was the beginning of the hysteria and I was certainly not immune to anxiety about spreading the disease and possibly hurting my mom. I got IV vitamin C and took oral vitamin C everyday because I knew studies had shown that these measures can combat viruses. I didn't want to kill my mom or any grandmas! I was in thrall to the narrative of fear too. Unfortunately in June of 2020 my mom took a turn for the worse. She went to a doctor in Chicago who gave her a megadose of chemo. This doctor had a very different idea of what my elderly mother could take when it came to chemo. But my mom wanted the treatment, she was having a terrible side effect from the immunotherapy she had received in Minnesota and higher blasts in her bones and she and I thought that her leukemia had returned. It was only in the summer of 2022 that my husband mentioned to me that my mom had not died of leukemia but of the chemo. But back to 2020, at this point, my sister, was, I think, beside herself. Sometimes it really is easier to be mad than sad, and she was "furious." She wanted me to be around and help with my mom. I had always done so in the past. Even in my childhood I had always functioned as kind of therapist, calming my mom and talking her down from the edge. My sister wanted me to be there and asked if I couldn't mask in my congregations, refrain from shaking hands, not touch surfaces and not visit or gather in crowds. I couldn't say yes. My conscience did not allow it. It did help that my mom had professional care day and night but the things that my sister said to me...I don't know if I can forget or forgive. I want to do both but I am not going to lie, sometimes anger rises up in me to this day. But it wasn't my sister's invective that hurt me the most, it was that she stopped talking to me and as my mom went in and out of consciousness what that meant is that I essentially had no news of my mother. My sister was my one source of finding out how things were going and that was cut off now. I had always taken care of my mom and now that was gone. I felt not only like I had been cut off from my mom but also like I had been cut off almost from my child. I know that is not a correct way to feel, I know that parentification is a bad deal but I want to admit that even as an adult I fell into the trap of parentifying my mom. Neither my mom or I could shake the habit when she got sick. I tried but it was so hard and I failed a lot. Moreover, at this point my congregations were in turmoil. We had people who were dying, not from covid but from lack of care. We had people who needed to see a face, who need to feel the touch of a hand. This was my call. When God broke into my life, he raised me up from the dead. I became a new creature. I completely identify with others like Rosaria Butterfield and Becket Cook who have had this kind of overwhelming experience. I did not choose God. He chose me. I kept the doors of church unlocked and had Sunday service even if only two people showed up. Finally in July my husband brokered a deal where I could come and visit my mom and sit outside her window and so this is what we did. We set up our chairs in the dirt and we sang hymns and we wept and I put my hand on the window and wanted to be so badly with my mom. My husband watched new caregivers went in and out and how other family members were allowed unmasked around my mom. They were "clean" and his wife was not clean. He wept with me on the other side of that window. Sometimes, I would go in and hug my mom but my sister had set up a "plague station," in the second bathroom. I was not only to be masked and visored, I was to be gloved as well. There were no towels because my sister didn't want me to touch anything. So, I wore a mask in the end. I gave in, even though I knew (I had read all the studies, all the RCTs by this point) that masks did nothing. However, I couldn't really mask. I had realized sometime in March that I was not breathing properly in a mask. And when I say not breathing properly I mean that the masks caused some sort of attack. After wearing a mask I was not able to think properly. It became dangerous for me to drive. I remember not being able to make left hand turns. Most frightening to me was how once I looked at the shoes I had put in my mom's foyer and wasn't sure what they were for. Now, that's a very weird thought. Of course, not many people believed me when I told them what was happening, so I stopped. I started, of course, to doubt myself. Maybe I was just making things up. But I wasn't. For me, the hardest battle during 2020-'22 was fighting the battle inside myself. I so wanted to go along with the crowd. In a way, I wanted to believe what my friends and family were telling me. So, I would go into the house for a few minutes and then rush out and breath air properly and then go back to sitting on my lawn chair. July, August, September...just as I was thinking of buying an outdoor tent so that I could sit outside in the rain and snow, my mom died. I remember that last Sunday. I could tell through the window that Mom was thirsty and so Tom my stepfather gave her a little sip of sparkling water. A nurse came and tried to press some kind of drug and my mom didn't want it. I raised my voice (I had too, because I was outside) and said, "My mom doesn't want that." And the horrible icky nurse said in her sticky icky voice, "Is that true Suuusan?" I wanted to slap that nurse's face there and then, but then my mom essentially did it for me, my mom knows how to tell people off and she told that nurse off. She rallied the last of her strength and told that nurse off of what cliff she could throw herself (not in those words of course). Then the nurse came over to me and loudly told me (and my mom) that Mom was going to die very soon so there was really no reason not to give the drug. I repeated in my politest professional tones that my mom still didn't want the drug. I smiled and hoped this crazy lady would take herself far away. When I left for the day one of the last things my mom told me was, "I love you!" Here again she rallied all her strength. She lifted up her voice to tell me that. Sometime in the night my mother died. My husband drove me down. My mother had wanted a kind of Jewish funeral and wanted people to be with her before her cremation. My stepfather sat with her in the funeral home until we came. The funeral director made us wear masks but when no one was around (except my mom and I assumed that now in the arms of Jesus she did NOT want us wearing our masks) we took them off. We read the Bible, we sang, but I have to tell what I did when I first came and saw my mom and when Tom had been taken away by my sister who did not come into the funeral home but waited for Tom in the car. When it was just me and my husband and my mom, I screamed. I wailed to see my mom dead. I wailed because I would never again see her in the land of the living. I cried out for the injustice of not being able to touch her hand with my hand. In the last days when I would come in to see my mother in my mask and visor and gloves, my mom hated it. She was so annoyed that I was in the mask. She was so crabby. She couldn't understand why her daughter was in mask and visor. She couldn't understand what I was saying. In a few moments I always went back outside where I could tell my mom that I loved her and she could understand my words. When I was with my mom in the funeral home, I lifted up my voice to God who had allowed this shit to happen. I regret the use of the word, "shit" because it gives a bad name to shit, which is actually very helpful. I wailed because I wanted to touch my mom's hand when she was alive. In church the other day, we heard the testimony of a woman who had been in a terrible car accident in 2006, as she told her story about how God had healed her and how her family had gathered round in the hospital and at home for her long recovery, how her children had been able to use essential oils on her wounded feet and legs, I felt something come over me, something that was very much like rage. I only realized later that it was jealousy. I am very rarely jealous. Both my parents gave me the understanding that I was very privileged that every day I had something to be highly grateful for. I have never been envious of looks, station in life, educational accomplishments, professional accomplishments or really anything else. But yesterday, for maybe the first time in my life I was jealous, because this woman's family got to be with her. I was jealous of her daughters and grandkids. They got to be with their mom and grandma. They got to touch her. They got to sit around her bedside. They got to read aloud to one another (my mom read aloud to me from childhood on), they got that and I did not and I was green envious, raging envious. Then the woman came back to the pew (she her family were right in front of us) and I saw all the love they had. As the woman gave her testimony her husband was crying the whole time and when they turned around after church and we all chatted I could actually, physically feel the love in her family and a weird thing happened, I wasn't jealous anymore, somehow I got caught up in that love and envy melted away. I don't have a tidy end to this story. It's really not over. My sister talks to me now, I had a lot of good therapist who taught me about keeping the door open. You send cards, you send birthday gifts, you do what you can and you don't overdo, but I am not allright. I am still wounded and that's okay. Lots of folks are wounded. Lots of people suffered. I will say one thing about God though, he's put me in pleasant places nowadays. He has sat me down in green grass beside some very beautiful waters. He was with me during the troubled times in ways that I can only characterize as ways of power. Miracles happened. My congregations disbanded, shut down---covid was too much for them and they were older congregations. My husband and I felt that they should remain open and shared that with the congregations but as Presbyterians us ministers don't even get a vote (except to break a tie). I am happier than I have ever been in my life at this point. I am preaching regularly and working on getting another degree. I have a research project that is very near and dear to my heart and very important to my husband and father (my dad lives with us). It is such a joy to be able to live with my Dad and see him everyday. He has aspergers and that discovery has been a relief for all of us. We now understand that austism is a disease but it's also a gift. We have a lot of fun. It's not always a bowl of cherries but we have fun. God is good.

Moby Dick, Sailing Around The World

From Creation and Fall, p.14, Collier Books Macmillan Publishing Company New York, 1959 Thinking cannot answer its own las “why,” because an answer would again produce a “why.” The “why” is much more the expression for the beginning-less thinking par excellence. (Κατ’ εξοχαν) in German)))) note 1 Our thinking, that is, the thinking of the hose who must go to Christ to know of God, the thinking of fallen man has no beginning because it is a circle. We think in a circle. We feel and will in a circle. We exist in a circle. We might then say that in the case there is beginning everywhere. We could equally well say that there is no beginning at all.”

The Stars Are Not Indifferent

The stars are not indifferent. From NT Wright’s The Kingdom New Testament. Then Herod called the wise men to him in secret. He found out from them precisely when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem. “Off you go,” he said” and make a thorough search for the child. When you find him, report back to me, so that I can come and worship him too.” When they heard what the king said, they set off. There was the star, the one they had seen rising in the east, going ahead of them! It went and stood still over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were beside themselves with joy and excitement. They went into the house and saw the child, with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him. They opened their treasure-chests and gave him presents: gold frankincense and myrrh. The stars, the כוכבים cocovim, fought from heaven. From their courses they fought against Sizer. From heaven they fought, the stars from their courses fought with Sisera (meaning against) Contra In Creation and Fall, p.30 Collier Books MacMillan Publishing Company New York, 1959 In accordance with eternal, unchangeable law the days, yeas and seasons come into being in the firmament. Here number rules and its inflexible law. What does it have to do with our existence? Nothing—the stars go their way, whether man is suffering, guilty or happy. And in their fixedness they praise the Creator. The stars do not look down upon man, they do not accuse, nor do they comfort. They are totally themselves in unapproachable remoteness. They shine by day and by night, but they do it without concern for us. The stars do not take part in man’s existence

On Samuel Getting Upset

Samuel is emotional.  He gets upset.  I think this is because he is so loved, and because he has been "established" (AMN-Heb) by God.