brown stain ceiling
catholic dying
medjugorje hoax
dolpih poorn
wiggle low
medjugordje fake
sexblog
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feshar sex
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ii. timothy o’donnell uh resigns
went to school and i was very nervous
irration fear of prostitutes
get berserk island cup cakes
poren caren fisher
should single women be allowed to row boats
do i have to obey my husband catholic
what to do when your nipples throbes
is medjugorje a hoax
the bible said woman breastfed your husband very well?
short women’s breasting feed men
why do people say i’ve been so blessed
where does simcha fisher live
moms think i m dad
thrilling sex
frog and toad tomorrow
responsibility and men
what i don’t belong down
medogorje is a fake!! and then some
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Do you have a website? I want to hear your search terms poem! The only rule is you can’t change anything, but you have to use the search terms as they appear on your dashboard. Warning: You will not end up feeling better about your readers.
More poetry composed entirely of search terms that sent people to my site:
Today, it’s my daughter Dora’s turn to be world famous in Poland! Here is her playlist of Halloween music, which certainly reflects her diverse upbringing. It certainly does.
WEREWOLF BAR MITZVAH from 30 Rock:
SPOOKY SCARY SKELETONS (Remix)
(Warning: I’ve never heard this before and it instantly gave me a headache. Argh!)
For reasons I can’t explain, I scrolled down to the comments on YouTube, and this caught my eye:
So you can see that robust discourse is alive and well in America today.
Next, a song I loathed the first time I heard it at age 10. It just pissed me off, and when I finally saw the movie, I was even madder. It ought to be taken out and shot. Yeah, yeah, Bill Murray made it watchable. Oh no, when else will we have a chance to see Bill Murray on fillum? Anyway, sorry, Dora. Here’s your song:
Palate cleanser! WEREWOLVES OF LONDON by Warren Zevon
This one, I endorse. A great antidote, and it shows how a pop song can be catchy and repetitive without being maddening.
Next! More werewolves with this timeless classic from MST3K, WHERE, O WEREWOLF
Okay, I have mixed feelings about Oingo Boingo, but if you had to be around for the 80’s, you could do worse:
The inescapable and inexplicable MONSTER MASH by Bobby Pickett:
Then look what happened. The poor SOB found himself on TV again a few years later with THE MONSTER SWIM. But check it out:
“He always said that he had the best kind of celebrity that there is, since no one really recognized him and he was never really bothered but everyone knew the song,” says Nancy Joy Huus, Pickett’s daughter. Given up for adoption when she was a baby unbeknownst to Pickett, Huus and Pickett later reunited and enjoyed a close relationship preceding his death, with Huus being a fan of the track throughout her life without knowing it was her father who was singing. “When I found him, he was out-of-his-mind thrilled since he thought he was going to grow old alone. I still remember the night I told my kids that Grandpa is the ‘Monster Mash’ singer.”
Aw!
Next, the immortal Cash with GHOST RIDERS IN THE SKY
This video is immensely cheesy, but Corrie insisted this was the version we want:
SCOOBY DOO THEME from 1969, because why not?
She includes SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF SEVEN NATION ARMY. Why? I dunno.
IT’S ALMOST HALLOWEEN by Panic! At the Disco. This is essentially a Wiggles song, but what are you gonna do.
Okay, M1 A1 by Gorillaz. Definitely an acquired taste. This song tests your patience, for sure, but I hear what she’s hearing.
Dora also included DRACULA, which apparently I’m too old for.
PSYCHO KILLER by The Talking Heads
This is, uhm, one of Corrie’s favorite songs.
REMAINS OF THE DAY from Corpse Bride
Tim Burton, which I spell with a capital meh. Still, Danny Elfman. He knows what he’s doing.
Legitimately scary: SILVER by The Pixies
And finally,
DECOMPOSING PUMPKINS by Brainkrieg (via Homestar Runner)
Next up is my mom getting back from book club! So we’ll all need to get out of the way, so she can pull in.
And what’s on your essential listening list for Halloween?
Why is your toddler lying on the sidewalk writhing around like an angry centipede? Or why is she scowling like a gargoyle and refusing to get out of her stroller?
Most likely because it’s Halloween, and we know who the real monster is: It’s you, the mom. You’ve gone to great effort and expense to buy or make the Halloween costume your child asked for repeatedly. You’re going out and doing a fun, special thing, and she likes fun, special things. You’re giving her candy, and she likes candy. People are making a fuss over how cute she is, and she wants people to make a fuss over how cute she is. HOW DARE YOU, MOM.
All of my kids have acted this way for their first several Halloweens. They are dying to go trick-or-treating, and they’re super excited about it for weeks ahead of time; but when they time actually comes . . . forget it, mom. It’s Toddlertown.
If you had asked me a few weeks ago, I would have warned you not to put a lot of time, effort, or money into a toddler costume, because chances are very good that costume will go to waste. Exhibit A: Here is child, age 2.5, who asked repeatedly to be Dashi for Halloween. Then, in the days before Halloween, she insisted on wearing her sister’s Wonder Woman costume morning, noon, and night. Halloween comes, and this is what she actually wore:
This was after she had three tantrums and tried to bite everyone who offered her candy. She is wearing two different shoes. I was fine with this, because I’ve been a mom for 21 years, and I have learned to recognize “she isn’t currently biting anyone” as a howling success. Here is a more typical toddler Halloween experience from a previous year:
I forget what costume it was I painstakingly made for her, but she sure ain’t wearing it. Her face is smeared with Snickers and tears. Happy day!
Here’s one more: The child is wearing a “pink mummy ghost” costume, whatever that is, and it keeps getting caught in the stroller wheels:
and everyone was mad at everyone else. That was our Halloween, while the rest of the country was enjoying a perfect day of cute happy fun cozy pumpkin spice adorable! Or so it seemed.
The first few times toddler Halloween bombed, it was really tough for me. Like, ridiculously tough. So tough that, in retrospect, it was clearly about more than Halloween.
Part of it was because, as a new mom, I was fairly young myself, and it hadn’t been that many years since I was the trick-or-treater. Even though I loved my babies and was glad to be married, I also routinely dealt with a lot of feelings of loss and deprivation, because suddenly I couldn’t eat what I wanted, spend my time how I wanted, eat what I wanted, or even sleep when I wanted. Basically all of my old comforts were gone. That was so much harder than I felt like it ought to be! I wanted to be an excellent wife and mother who was lovin’ every minute of it, and I didn’t cut myself enough slack for learning how to deal with a life that had been turned upside down.
I felt this all the time, but especially on holidays. Heck, here’s one of our trademark cozy happy family Christmas Eves:
Merry and bright indeed.
So. Holidays carry a lot of emotional freight, and it’s very normal to feel like it’s Very Important to do them right, for several reasons:
-so you can recreate the happy times you remember from your own childhood,
-so you can rescue what was unhappy about your childhood, and do it right now that you’re in charge,
-so you can prove to everyone, especially the skeptics, that you are an A#1 mom,
-or even just so you can feel like you get to have some fun for once, in the midst of an endless stream of spit up and poop and cracker crumbs.
Instagram and other platforms just ratchet up all these pressures, because everyone else seems to have it together. For weeks now, moms who are better than you have been sharing gorgeous photos of their little homemade punkin sitting cheerfully on a sanitary bale of hay with plenty of corn stalks and bokeh in the background. And your kid, lest we forget, is writhing around on the sidewalk like a centipede.
Holidays are intense, and you may find yourself really bearing down on your little kids to make special days be what you (maybe subconsciously) want them to be. This leads, of course, to everyone being miserable on a day that’s supposed to be especially pleasant, so you can add guilt to the other stinking pile of unpleasant emotions. What to do?
The best way I know to deal with this: Try to take the long view.
Remind yourself that days are just days. No holiday is an all-or-nothing event that proves anything about yourself or your life. They’re just dates on the calendar. It’s okay to want to have stuff for yourself — the nice picture, the happy experience, the cute occasion. There’s nothing wrong with wishing you can have it, so don’t beat yourself up over wanting it. But remember that you’re in this — parenthood and marriage — for the long haul, and there are very few individual make-or-break days; and they almost never match up with Hallmark’s schedule.
Looking back, I have only a few memories of holidays that were perfect holidays, but many, many happy memories of random Thursdays that happened to go well, or unexpected mornings with floods of sweetness for no particular reason. That’s just how life be. So train yourself to notice and relish and cherish those memories, so that you value them as much as they deserve to be valued.
And for the days when things fall flat? Train yourself to just sort of lean in to saying, “Yeah, this is a disappointment. I am disappointed. But it’s just one day, and there will be many, many other special days to come. My goal today is to try not to completely lose my dignity.”
But what if you’re still feeling those big feelings? How do you manage them? A good first step it is to be honest with yourself about why you’re feeling what you’re feeling. So if you realize (or someone tells you) you’re overwrought, take some time to work out why, exactly, the stakes are so high for you.
Is it because you feel like you’re not as good as your other mom friends? Is is because you think you’re a good mom but you think other people don’t think so? Is it because you’re feeling neglected yourself and could use some fun or a day off? Or what?
These are things you can address — but not if you keep telling yourself it’s really truly only all about this damn bee costume, and if you could just get the wing lace to go on straight, you’d stop crying. It’s probably not about the bee costume! It’s probably about you and your life as a mom, and it’s normal for a new mom to be overwrought. Why should you have it under control? Do you become an instant expert at anything else? Then why should you be an instant expert at being a mom, including an expert at dealing with mom emotions?
Motherhood is hard. Mother emotions are hard. As a mother of toddlers, elementary school kids, high school kids, and college kids, I can tell you that all stages of it are hard (at least so far!); but there are so many hard things about those first few years. If you’re feeling a lot of big feelings, you’re in good company. Motherhood is big, and it takes a long, long time to grow into it. Be patient with yourself. Have a Snickers, take a smeary picture, and let yourself be disappointed for a while. There’s always next year, and all the years to come.
A Catholic New Hampshire parish announced plans to sponsor an anti-vaccine speech, then abruptly cancelled it after protest from parish staff and other laymen.
Ste. Marie in Manchester, NH announced last week they’d be hosting a talk called “Vaccine Inflation” by Jenna Pedone, who describes herself as “a Registered Pharmacist for 20+ years with experience in retail pharmacy and pharmaceutical sales [who] has for over two years vigorously studied and reviewed vaccine science and ingredients as a concerned parent and healthcare professional.”
Pedone said she “studied under Dr. Sherry [sic] Tenpenny in her Mastering Vaccine Info course in 2018.”
Dr. Sherri Tenpenny is an osteopath who believes vaccines cause autism, food allergies, and speech impediments. She advocates a total refusal of vaccines and antibiotics. Tenpenny rejects germ theory and has no specialized training in infectious diseases, immunology or microbiology. When Gabrielle Giffords was shot, Tenpenny blamed vaccines.
The “Mastering Vaccine” course she offers, which consists of a series of online “modules,” explicitly promises to train participants to influence others in their churches to reject vaccines.
As a Catholic, I was alarmed to see the church sponsoring what was clearly going to be an anti-vaccine presentation marketed as information for “prolife Catholics.” The graphic Pedone provided for her speech shows pills marked with five-dollar bills.
Although vaccines are not administered in pill form, the image suggests that vaccines are promoted for financial reasons. I contacted Pedone for more information on the content of her speech. She told me:
I want to empower Catholics young and old to do their OWN research, trust their gut, believe in the immune system God have them. I was initially struck by something my pastor said about no boys being ordained this year in our diocese. It prompted me to email him sharing what I have researched about how vaccines are destroying our boys brains and how at the rate we are vaccinating, 1 in 2 boys will be autistic by 2030 so who will run our churches? Who will father our children and grandchildren? I want people to leave the talk feeling empowered that they don’t need a medical degree to learn about vaccines and health for their family and grandparents.
But the rate of autism spectrum disorder diagnoses is not increasing. It has stabilized in recent years in the US, and most researchers believe that the apparent increase in autism in the past decade was due to improvements in diagnoses, and not to an increase in actual cases. In other words, it’s likely that more children do not have autism these days; we have simply become better at understanding what autism is and at recognizing it.
Moreover, boys with autism can and do grow up to father children and become priests.
Pedone said when she proposed making her speech at Ste. Marie, she did not speak to the pastor directly, but she had spoken to his secretary. Pedone said the secretary “was open to people seeing the information of which vaccines contain fetal DNA. People can learn and then make their own determination.”
But even if these vaccines are safe, are they ethical, since they are derived from cell lines obtained through abortion? Pedone said that her speech would include “what to know as a prolife Catholic if you are going to follow the CDC recommended vaccine schedule.”
The Church has issued a statement about what pro-life Catholics need to know before they vaccinate:
One is morally free to use the vaccine regardless of its historical association with abortion. The reason is that the risk to public health, if one chooses not to vaccinate, outweighs the legitimate concern about the origins of the vaccine. This is especially important for parents, who have a moral obligation to protect the life and health of their children and those around them.
[…]
There would seem to be no proper grounds for refusing immunization against dangerous contagious disease, for example, rubella, especially in light of the concern that we should all have for the health of our children, public health, and the common good.
After I talked to Pedone, I contacted Ste. Marie to ask for more information about the speech. On Wednesday, Fr. Moe Larochelle called me to say that the talk had been cancelled, and that the cancellation would be announced in the bulletin and at Mass.
He said that he did authorize the speech, but at the time, he was not aware of how much controversy surrounds vaccines.
“Jenna [Pedone] presented it as if she were just giving information, so people could decide for themselves,” he said.
Once he became aware that the topic was much more controversial than he realized, he decided to simply cancel the speech, since there wasn’t enough time to organize a speaker who could present an opposing point of view. He said the parish did not want to create the impression that they were promoting any particular point of view.
He said that, in the future, if someone proposes giving a presentation on the topic, especially since it involves bioethics, the parish will handle it as they would handle a political presentation. “Now that I know, before I do anything, I’ll call the diocese,” he said.
Tom Bebbington, Director of Communication for the Diocese of Manchester, said that the diocese does not routinely give pastors or parishes guidelines about what kind of talks or presentations can be sponsored by the parish.
Bebbington said “there is no process for those invited by pastors/parish staff to speak in parishes. The concern is that it would too much for us to handle, especially for seasonal missions in parishes (e.g., Lent).”
Our pastors are responsible for keeping abreast of innumerable kinds of information, and they may need our help in understanding how fraught the topic of vaccines is, and how much dangerously flawed information, both medical and ethical, is being circulated about the topic.
The “Vaccine Inflation” talk at Ste. Marie’s was cancelled because staff at the church and a number of concerned parishioners understood how problematic the upcoming speech would be, and they were able to dissuade him from allowing it to appear that the Church sanctions the ideas the talk contained. All educated Catholics who understand the importance of vaccines, for individual health and for the safety of the community, should ready to do the same.
Just as Catholics have an obligation to push for the production of more ethical vaccines and the obligation to protect the vulnerable from preventable diseases, we have an obligation to be vigilant, guarding our local parishes from even the appearance of condoning pseudo-science and pseudo-ethics. We must be well informed about our medical and ethical responsibility surrounding vaccines, and we must be prepared to speak up when dangerously erroneous information makes its way into our communities, especially under the guise of pro-life concerns.
When I sat down to plan my weekly menu, I looked through all my recipe emails, supermarket flyers, my bank account, and my calendar.
They all said in chorus: You will be eating a lot of chips and frozen food this week. And so it came to pass.
SATURDAY
Hamburgers and chips
That is what we had. Not even the pretense of a vegetable.
Oh, I forgot, though, I have a pretty cake to show you! This was Friday, and I was pooped. I had finished two essays, sent off invoices, did an interview, prepped dinner and did not strangle the toddler, even she was super asking for it. Time to go! As I grabbed up my keys to launch into afternoon errands before I could go home and collapse, I suddenly realized . . .
I had to do another interview and make a birthday cake.
The sound that escaped the gates of my teeth was not a happy sound.
But I made my excuses for the interview, filled my pockets with fruit snacks, dragged the toddler where she needed to be dragged, and made all my stops, including buying cake stuff. (Just a box cake and a tub of icing. I am not a masochist.) Got that thing baked, cooled, frosted, and decided it was going to be an autumn tree cake. Not well-thought-out, but look! It’s bright!
The leaves are hard candy that was smashed, melted into thin sheets, cooled, and re-smashed.
I put waxed paper on a pan and sprayed it with cooking spray. Then I put butterscotch and cinnamon hard candies in bags (double bags, because the seams break) and smashed them with a can, because I couldn’t find a hammer. Then I spread the pulverized candy in the pan and put it in a 250 oven for . . . sorry, I don’t know how long. Maybe 20 minutes, until it was melted. I let it cool, then snapped it into jagged little bits for leaves. It would have been better if I had had more colors and had let them mix more. I also sprinkled little red balls and gold sugar over it to give it more texture. This actually works better with Jolly Ranchers, but they weren’t in the colors I wanted.
I have used this technique for a campfire cake
I think I may have shared these cake pictures before, actually. Oh well. I have also made some cakes with sugar glass, which I made from scratch, but now I’m wondering if I could just use those terrible clear minty hard candies and save a lot of work. Anyway, kids are always impressed. Here is a Frozen cake, with sugar “ice”:
and a “broken glass” cake, with food coloring blood:
We also use crushed and melted hard candy for stained glass cookies, very pretty.
and — ooh, this is an old picture! That baby is Benny — for a”make your own lollipop” party activity.
SUNDAY
Sausage subs with onion and pepper, onion rings, ghost pops
Sunday is usually the day I’ll make a more complicated meal, but we went apple picking after Mass. You think I’m going to have a ton of apple recipes now, but no. The apples were kinda spotty and weird. But there was a horse!!!!!!!!!!
Knowing we’d be home late, I opted for an easy and crowd-pleasing dinner. Lot of sweet Italian sausages browned up and cut lengthwise, lots of onions and green peppers sauteéd in olive oil, served on rolls with pasta sauce and parmesan. Frozen onion rings.
I had the older kids supervise the younger kids to make rice krispie ghost pops.
This picture kills me. Look at Benny’s face. Look at Corrie’s ghost’s face.
Hee hee.
It was a kit that came with ghost-shaped molds, icing, and sticks, but it would be pretty easy to make these without a kit, she said while lying on the couch and telling other people what to do. Pretty easy indeed.
MONDAY
Hot dogs and fries
I don’t remember Monday. I never remember Mondays. I think there was a cross country meet. I think it rained and froze and the morning glories died. I think I cleaned out a closet and found what was making that dead mouse smell (a dead mouse).
TUESDAY
Chicken burgers and chips
There was a concert on Tuesday. I liked it, and no one was beatboxing, so I didn’t have to say “boo-urns” under my breath while I clapped.
WEDNESDAY
Greek chicken salad with toasted pita
Wednesday was a bit less busy, so I bestirred myself a bit for supper. I coated some chicken breasts with olive oil, and put on plenty of salt and pepper, garlic powder, and dried basil and oregano so they were really crusty with seasonings, then roasted and sliced them, and served that over salad with various olives, feta cheese, cukes, grape tomatoes, diced red onions, and hummus.
I also made up a batch of yogurt sauce with Greek yogurt, lemon juice, minced garlic, and salt, and I cut pita bread into triangles and toasted it in the oven with olive oil, garlic powder, and salt.
Toasted, salty, garlicky pita bread triangles, with crunchy tips and warm, chewy insides are way more delicious than they have any right to be.
Although if you put olive oil, salt, and garlic powder on dead leaves and toasted them, I’d probably eat that, too.
THURSDAY
Korean beef tacos with kimchi and Sriracha mayo, and rice
Bit of a chance here. I tried a new recipe from Damn Delicious. Much of the family likes the Korean Beef Bowl recipe, and this beef is basically that, but not quite as sweet. I cooked it in the morning and then put it in the crock pot for the rest of the day.
Okay, so, kimchi. I’ve never had kimchi before, but have long enjoyed a sort of low-simmering curiosity about it. I didn’t think most of the family would like it, so it didn’t seem worth making myself; so I bought a jar. I was a little alarmed at the warning on the cap:
Hm, bulge. My mother had always regaled us with horrible stories of people whose cans of lima beans were bulging, but they ate them anyway, and then they had to have their legs amputated or something. If you even smell it, it could kill you! Your eyeballs would go bursting out of your skull with a sickening pop! Or something. I wasn’t really listening, because I didn’t like lima beans at the time. Anyway, this jar was definitely bulging. Sure, it said it was supposed to be, but what if it was intentionally bulging and botulism bulging? How would I know?
I figured I would taste a little bit, and if I died, well, at least I would die knowing what kimchi tastes like. So I leaned carefully over the sink, draped a napkin over the lid as suggested, and twisted as hard as I could . . .
even harder . . .
sheesh, hard lid to get off . . .
. . . GRRRRRRRRR . . . . .
. . . RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
–and then KABLAMMO! The cabbage came surging out like a living thing! Like the violent urgency of life itself! I’m telling you, this kimchi needed a Rite of Spring soundtrack!
It also got on my shirt, bleh.
So I sauteéd it up with some sugar in a pan, and we had tortillas with beef, caramelized (okay, it didn’t really caramelize. It never really caramelizes) kimchi, mayonnaise with Sriracha stirred in, and a bunch of cilantro and fresh limes. It was . . . a little challenging. It was sort of like when an Afro-Cuban bembé comes on the radio and you’re like, “Oh, this is neat! This is so — wait — it’s — what? — help!” because you really want to dance to it, but you’re just too damn white. What I’m trying to say is, I liked it, but I also only ate one.
Actually, I made a bunch of rice, and I had extra rice with lime juice and kimchi. I’m like Area Grandmother. Very familiar with rice, thanks.
FRIDAY
Tuna boats
So I went to my new spiritual director and he asked how I was, and I said I was pretty good, and he said, “Oh, we won’t be needing these today!” and he jokingly took the tissues away, but then I cried anyway. And that’s what kind of food blog this is. Natural bubbling and pressure. Just lay a napkin over the top, it’s fine.
The internet will teach you how to turn a “no” into a “yes.” The phrase appears in tutorials designed for salespeople, but also in more sinister contexts. In militant men’s rights groups, there are forums and even study guides that teach men how to manipulate women and extract the sexual goodies they want from them.
They understand that, in these whacky times, women may pursue legal prosecution for rape or assault if you don’t listen to their “no;” so men who consider sex a right coach each other on how to pressure, manipulate, disorient, confuse, and guilt women into yielding a reluctant but legally watertight “yes.” Rather than being ashamed of this gross display of inhumanity, these men preen themselves on their skills. They know that, if they are challenged for their behavior, they can point to their victim’s coerced consent, and then she will be blamed for what happened to her.
Healthy men would vomit at the very idea of approaching a woman this way. No man enjoys rejection, but they do understand that women are human, and shouldn’t be treated like an object whose body and will can be forced into whatever position you like. No means no. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to accept it.
I’ve heard this approach before, in an entirely different context. I’ve heard this refrain of “I hear your ‘no,’ but I refuse to accept it, and I even feel proud of my persistence. So I’m going to keep chipping away at you with everything I’ve got in hopes that you’ll give in and let me have what I think I’m entitled to.”
Here’s what I hear:
“All the other churches go along with this stuff, so why won’t you? What’s wrong with you? Why are you so uptight?”
“Of course I love you, Catholicism! That’s why I want to see you change.”
“No one can possibly love you, you Catholic Church, if you keep on acting this way. I’m the only one who could put up with you, and you better give in, or I’ll leave, too.”
It’s the language of Catholic dissenters — including myself, at times, to my shame. It’s the language of people who have heard her say “no” very clearly — “no” to contraception, “no” to women priests, “no” to gay sex. But they love her, they say, so they just keep chipping away, threatening, negging, pressuring and wheedling, priding themselves on their persistence in trying to wear her defenses down, to turn her “no” into a “yes.”
When we hear pressure and threats from a would-be rapist who clearly despises women as much as he craves their companionship, it’s easy to see these tactics for what they are: Abuse. An abuser allows himself to speak this way because he doesn’t really recognize the humanity of his victim. He sees her primarily as something that could potentially deliver what he wants, if only she would know her place and cooperate with his demands. He sees her primarily as a thing, and not as a person.
I am here to tell you that the Catholic Church is a person. It is the Body of Christ. And the Body of Christ has a right to her bodily autonomy. She is not here to assume whatever position will satisfy our current appetites, whether they’re intellectual or spiritual or psychological or social. The Church is Someone, not something, and she has the right to say “no.”
Now let me make some disclaimers, because I know I’ve said something tough to hear.
When I talk about people pressuring the Church to change, I’m not talking about people who are sincerely struggling, even angrily struggling, bitterly struggling, fearfully struggling with some of the hard teachings of the faith. Healthy relationships have struggles. I struggle, sometimes angrily or bitterly or fearfully, with some fundamental teachings of the Church, just as my own beloved husband almost certainly struggles with some of the things that make me fundamentally me. It’s not always easy being in love. So I’m not saying that struggling with doctrine is abuse. Struggle is normal, and struggling with the Church does not make us abusers.
And more importantly, I’m not saying that the Church is not in need of change. God knows it is badly in need. Sometimes there are things about your beloved that ought to change, and insisting on that change sometimes truly is an act of love. Many loving spouses will eventually find occasion to hold their beloved to account for intolerable behaviors which must be changed if the marriage can survive; and so it it is with faithful Catholics and the Church. Wanting to reform what is wrong in the Church does not make us abusers.
Does the Church need reform? Oh literally sweet Jesus, yes. The hierarchy and much of its pastoral authority is deformed almost beyond recognition. They don’t even seem to realize that they have lost our trust and need to work to regain it. There are abusers in power. There are structures in place that make it impossible to hold abusers and their enablers to account. There are too many ways to keep horrible secrets; too many places for abusers to hide. God’s word is used to shout down victims and their defenders and to amplify hypocrites, opportunists, and predators. This is the state of the Church today. These are the things that must, please God, change.
But these grotesqueries, these deformations, are not who the Church herself is. They are like parasites living off the Body of Christ. They fight like mad to preserve their host, not because they love her, but because they need their daily feeds. They must be scoured away so that the body of Christ can be pure again. I don’t know how, but I see it must be done.
But there is change, and there is change. If we want to preserve our loving relationship with the Body of Christ and not unwittingly fall into patterns of abuse against her, we must learn to make the distinction between who the Church is, and what her members and her representatives do — what they have done, in fact, to her. The latter must often be changed; the former is inviolable.
We can learn who the Church is by what she teaches, what she says. And sometimes, what she says is “no.” This is inviolable. She is inviolable.
Lately, we have perhaps become used to thinking of the Church as the abuser. So many people have been maligned, mistreated, guilted, shamed, or literally raped by those who call themselves the Church. But we must see clearly. Those who abuse and enable abuse in the name of Christ are not the Church; they are to the Church as a pimp is to a sex slave. They will defend her, not because they love her, but because she brings them power and money. They are the ones who must repent and reform, not her. She is the victim. She is not the one who needs to change. The Church is a person, and she has the right to say “no,” both to those who abuse her outright, and to those who want to blame her for being abused.
We will not purify the Body of Christ by attacking what and who she is, and that includes what she says. No means no. Like anyone whose demands have been rejected, we don’t have to like it, but we do have to accept it, especially if we say you love the Church. She is someone, not something. When she says “no,” she means “no.”
That seems to be my daughter’s goal with every game she plays. Everything needs to end up right where it belongs: baby cheetah with mama cheetah, dragon husband with dragon wife, all back in bed together where they belong. Barbie needs Ken, and Ken must have his mate, that no four-year-old can deny.
We drove past the ravished corn fields with their crowds of Canada geese, busily taking what they needed from between the rows. I half-turned my head to the back seat, where my little girl was gazing out the window, and I said, “Those are geese. See all their long, black necks? They are eating the corn that is left on the ground, and then they will fly up together and go somewhere warmer to live for the winter.” It was as it should be. The geese knew where to go. She nodded her little corn-golden head, taking the information in and filing it away where it needed to go.
What an immense delight to pour out knowledge into the ear a willing child. It’s one of the few times you can think, “This is exactly what I need to be doing. I did it right. She wanted to know, and I told her.” Key in lock. Fill up the glass. A purely satisfying moment.
It’s not childishness that makes us delight in putting things to rights, in bringing them home where they belong. Even in the midst of turmoil, we find a primal if fleeting satisfaction in finishing a task, turning chaos into order, making a jumble come out even. The most “adult” of activities is terribly, terribly basic in this regard. It’s stunningly simple: This is made to go inside that. Ever ask yourself, “But why does it somehow seem good, true, or beautiful to fit one thing inside another? What does that even mean?”
It means that, for once, things are where they belong. And that’s not nothing. It’s actually everything. It’s what we’re made to long for. It’s what we were made to do.
For many years, I was hung up on the idea that Heaven would be boring. The only interesting things I’d ever encountered were wobbly, wounded, fascinatingly warped. It was hard enough to conceive of any state of being for eternity, but maddening to imagine that it would be a dull state of being. I thought, with my untidy brain, that perfection meant utter tidiness.
It’s the old Ned Flanders heresy: that the Lord God of Hosts took on flesh in a blaze of glory, shook Jerusalem to its foundations with his words, was torn apart by whips and nails and bled dry; that he harrowed the deadlands and then in the morning came shooting out of the grave like a geyser of light, upending the armies of Hell with a flick of His resurrected finger, striding forth to establish the Church and then to ascend with unspeakable joy to the right hand of his Father, and now He calls upon us, His children, saying “BE YE . . .
. . . tidy.” With a tucked-in shirt and a clean part in our hair. You know, perfect.
No. That can’t be it. He wants us to be perfect, but perfect means complete. Perfect means that everything is where it is supposed to be — not with mere tidiness, like a paperclip in a paperclip holder, but back where it was created to belong, like a lost child coming home, like the fulfillment of a lifelong promise, like the flesh of two made one. That kind of completion.
If that sounds boring to you, then you’re doing it wrong.
What we catch now, in rare moments of respite, is a reminder of who we are and for what we were made. A reminder, as we drive by the ravished fields, that we can glean what’s left between the rows of corn, but it’s only a stop along the way. We were made to go home. Find out what you were made to do, and go home.
One winter vacation when I was in college, I went with my mother to a charismatic healing Mass. You could say that I had been “struggling” with depression, but that’s not really the word. I lived there. I was being swallowed whole by it, day after day, and I could not get out. Wherever people led me, I would go, whether they liked or loved me, hated me, or just found me useful. So I went with her to ask for healing, not with hope, but just because it couldn’t hurt.
The service was emotional—tacky, to be honest— and while the priest was fervid, the scattered congregation sounded sheepish and forced as they softly hooted and called “Amen!” into the chilly air of the church.
We lined up and the priest recited some words of healing—I forget them utterly—over each of us. Then he gave every forehead a firm shove, to put us off balance in case the Holy Spirit wanted to overcome anyone. A few people crumpled and passed out, snow melting quietly off their boots onto the tiled floor. Most of us just staggered a bit under the pressure, recovered, stepped around the fallen, and went back to our seats.
Well, I thought, another dead encounter with dead people in a dead world. I slid into my pew. Nothing had changed because nothing could change. I was dead, and everyone else was allowed to be alive. Why? Who knows? Someone had been sent for help, but help would not come. Help was not for me.
And then I heard these words in my head, “You made Me wait. Now you can wait for a while.” They were not my words. The tone was warm, a little sad, with a small vein of humor. I think I was being teased, chided for taking so long to send for help. You like games, talitha? All right, I will play. Now, wait.
Then I went home. Nothing happened, that I could see.
Years later, I thought of that day as I read Tomie dePaola’s The Miracles of Jesus with my four-year-old daughter. She listened attentively, but I could see that most of the wonders didn’t impress her much. In these short narratives, some kind of grown-up problem is introduced—and then poof, God solves it, The End.
I think she saw Jesus acting more or less like all adults act: making good things appear arbitrarily, making sick people feel better, occasionally being cranky and strange, and wishing people would say “thank you” more often. It was cool, but it didn’t mean much to her. They were miracles, not the kind of thing that happen in real life.
Jairus’ daughter, however, really got her attention—probably because it was about a child, and also because it was a full story, with suspense, despair, and a happy ending, plus the hint of a full life to come.
Jesus hears the news that the girl was sick, but He isn’t teleported to her bed. He walks, one foot in front of the other, on His way to her. And when He gets there, it’s too late. Her family is weeping; the girl, the poor little thing who wanted to be healed, is already dead.
My daughter got very quiet at this point. We read on:
“But Jesus said, ‘Do not weep. She is not dead. She is asleep.’
And the people only laughed at him, knowing that she was dead.
She looked at me with big eyes. They laughed at Jesus!
Jesus took her by the hand and said, ‘Child, arise.’
And her spirit returned and she got up at once. Then Jesus told them to give her something to eat.”
At this point, my daughter hurled herself at me and gave me a big, squeezing hug. She got that part! She knows about being sad, needing help, waiting far too long, being rescued, and then having something to eat, because all these ups and downs make you hungry. And then life goes on, once you have been saved. Here was a miracle she could appreciate—the kind that’s part of a story.
I got it, too, because I knew that story. I had been that girl. And I had heard that voice. It was a long time, and a lot of steps, before my slow rescue from the dead came up to the speed where it was recognizably healing, recognizably a wonder. But I never forgot the words I heard, telling me that help was on the way. That I wasn’t really dead; I was waiting.
If you have ever lived inside a black hole; if you have moved about the world enclosed in a dome of sound proof glass, with no voices but your own voice, which you hate above all other sounds in the world; if you have felt so bad for so long that you don’t even want life to get better, you just want it to be over—then you will understand that it was very, very good to hear this voice that simply said, “You are not dead. You are only sleeping. And I am on my way.”
I was not merely sitting in that cold pew, it told me. I was sitting and waiting. Someone was with me; or at least, someone was on the way. I was happy to wait. I was happy! This was new.
That was how I began to be healed, more than twenty years ago. It was a long road of waiting, after I began to be healed. It is a long road. I’ve been in therapy for over three years, and now I’ve started spiritual direction. I don’t know what is next. The road keeps getting longer, to be honest, and every time I think I am finally healed, I see that I am not, not yet. But I can see Christ better and better as He approaches, step by step. My healing started when I asked Him, without hope, for healing.
That is what our breath is for: To call out for help. As long as we still have breath in us, we are not dead, we are only sleeping. We are not alone; we are waiting for Christ to arrive.
Can you wait a little longer? You are not dead. You are waiting.
Why wait to report rape? All you have to do is report it, and then the bad guy will be punished, the good girl will be protected, and justice will be served. Here’s one American expressing a typical point of view on the topic this morning:
And here’s a short essay from the loving parent of a teenage girl who was raped — not thirty-five years ago, but last December. They did report it as soon as they possibly could, and now they are living through the very typical aftermath of what very often happens next.
Spoiler: Justice was not served. The author is my friend of twenty years.
***
I spent the weekend sitting in the emergency room with my teenage daughter. I do mean the whole weekend, 48 hours of it. She was inching towards suicidal plans again, Googling ways to overdose.
She’s been an inpatient before, twice, after a previous suicide attempt. Her father and I confronted her about her plans and asked her if she needed to go back into a psychiatric hospital to be safe and get help. She asked if she could think about it. Two hours later she told us, yes, she felt like she needed to go back. So we went to the emergency room to wait for a bed on a unit somewhere. After the emergency room, she spent the next five days in an inpatient mental health facility.
Here is what led up to this day:
In December she was at an event with friends and started to feel sick. A male acquaintance of hers offered to take her home. But before he brought her home, he turned off into a dark parking lot and raped her.
She told him no. She did her best to physically resist. There was no confusion about consent there.
Then he brought her home where she began the dark spiral of self-blame. She had flirted with him in the past, they had texted. There may have even been some talk of “getting together.” So she did her best to just push it away and move on.
Trauma doesn’t work like that, though. Her body responded violently. Over the next two months, she would vomit multiple times a day, often going days at a time without holding down any substantial food. We sought every medical solution we could find to help her, but with only limited success. Because we were just putting a band-aid on a broken leg.
In June, we started observing her even more closely and discovered some concerning information about how she’d been spending her time. Together, her dad and I talked to her about it. She told us that on top of all we found, she had been raped back in December. There was a whirlwind of trying to get her every kind of help we could at this point, but that is not what this is about. My own self-doubt and distress having to think of my child going through this or memories of my own traumatic experiences are not what this is about either, but those were extreme too.
It took two more months before she felt like she was ready to make a police report. In August, she made the report. It took two more weeks for the detective to finally make an appointment for her to come in and make a statement.
I knew that would be hard for her. She would have to talk through the whole story, which she had only done with her therapist to this point. But it was much worse than I imagined. It shattered her all over again.
The detective was a friendly, young guy. He talked to me first and asked me all about what I knew. He asked why we had waited so long to report this. I told him that we found out well after it had happened, and since there wasn’t any physical proof, our first priority was to get her some help and try to get her a little bit stabilized.
Then he talked to her. It took a very long time. He called me back in when she was trying to pull herself back together in the bathroom. He asked me if I knew about her other experiences with boys. I did. He asked me if I knew what kind of pictures and texts she had, at one point, had on her phone. I did. When she came back into the room he told us that he would interview the boy she was accusing, but if he asked for a lawyer, they would drop the case. Because it was her word against his.
The detective talked to him the next day. He asked for a lawyer. The police dropped the case.
So while this boy carried on with his senior year, playing football, hanging out with friends, my daughter ended up sitting in a locked room feeling violated all over again when she was told that for her own safety, she couldn’t have her bra. Or her sweatshirt. Or her journal or any writing utensil but crayons. For her safety.
While this family goes on with life as usual, we are buried under medical bills. His father gets to go watch his son’s games. I pick my daughter up from school after another major panic attack.
While he stayed at school with his friends, she switched schools so that she wouldn’t have to face the trauma of seeing him every day. While he gets by without having to say a word, she is questioned extensively and in graphic detail about what really happened and about her mental health and sexual history.
Last week, I criticized Pope Francis and got a passel of new ultra traditionalist followers. This week, I wrote about rape culture and have garnered a ton of new follows from, like, women’s studies academics. Next week: sad surprises all around!
But seriously, hello to all my new readers. I’m very glad you’re here, and I’m grateful for the shares. But if you’re going to stick around, you should know that I am a deeply silly person. And so I have elected to tell the story of how my speeding ticket was dismissed this week. But I’m going to tell it the stupid way.
This past summer, I was driving home from a concert in Worcester with my two oldest kids and their friend. At first we were all
But I powered through. We’re halfway home and one kid really has to pee, so we stop at the only gas station on that lonely, lonely strip of road. I pull up, she hops out. Nope, it’s closed. She hops in, away we go.
except with a badge and a gun. So he decides I was speeding, and also had a headlight out, and also a license plate light out. Real reason he stopped me: I was driving a black SUV around midnight with out-of-state plates, and had popped in and out of a deserted gas station for no apparent reason. He obviously figures:
Which, okay, fine, a reasonable guess. But after we chat and he runs my plates and all, and finds out I have a clean record just like I said I did, and we showed him the ticket stubs from the goony concert we were at, he still comes back with a big ol’ ticket for $105, and lectures me about how it could have been much higher, but he was giving me a break.
Fine. Whatever. I just want to get home. I actually got stopped a second time on the way home but whatever! I’m not on trial here! Not today, anyway.
So we finally made it home, and the next day, I started getting mad. What do I have to pay a stupid fine for? I’m respectable. I pay taxes. I mow my lawn, not like some slob. Plus I didn’t have $105. So I contested the ticket, and got a court date.
Fast forward a month, and now, well, I am on trial. I show up at the court house forty minutes away looking fresh and fine and alert
I go through security and hand over the dangerous arsenal secreted in my purse, including a Schick razor, a pair of tweezers for my goaty goaty face, and a fork
And also a woman who, with her daughter, had lost her job as a waitress in the diner, was exceedingly proud of having wiped her ass with her unemployment check, and then apparently wiled away the lonely hours going back to said diner and giving her former employers the unemployment check treatment, on three different occasions, and also virtually on social media, which led them to take out a restraining order on her because THEY’RE ALL CORRUPT.
And the whole time, she had a bunch of theories about the judicial system which she voices loudly and repeatedly and they can be summed up thusly:
At this point I stop being nervous, because I have heard enough to realize that the worst possible thing that could happen to me that day was that I would have to pay $105; and compared to the prospects of everyone else in that room, that was actually
So what happened was, finally they called my name, I go in, they read the terrible report that Office Dipshit has written up using his left elbow. My speed was estimated, not clocked; the officer didn’t even write his name down, and he certainly didn’t show up.
