No One's Freedom Is Really Free

I would gladly give up any more years,
If I felt I could give them to another.
I may even insist that they only be given
To my grandchild, child, sister, or brother.

In this life on earth, we must make choices,
Many that we really don't want to make.
In a truly moral society,
We'd make many for justice's sake.

We all have a right to our choices,
But our consequences will be born by someone.
By closing our eyes to this reality,
We, from the inevitable, continue to run.

Many march against life's injustices
Because pain of others is easiest to ignore,
Until the world's many inequities
Come knocking at our own doors.

Children are now given the right to sue
Their parents for neglect and abuse,
But without other families to take them in
Their freedoms are of little use.

We create large organizations
And fund government bureaucracies,
Convincing ourselves that these agencies
Will fill all human needs.

We don't insist that people we support
Live by the values of a just society.
We allow them to continue imposing on us
More generations of irresponsibility.

Corporate heads and government leaders
Are sheltered from liability.
Others are left to carry their burdens,
Because no one's freedom is really free.

Is This Proper Parenting?

I'm tired of parents who don't care what their children will be
As long as their children grow up to be "happy."
They seem to set no standards for behavior
As though the desires of the moment are all there are to savor.
Wouldn't we be better off as a society
If each of us helped our children accept responsibility,
Not only for their happiness, but also for a sense of purpose,
Maybe, something like working to make the world more just?

I encouraged my children to find there own way;
I trusted they could hear what The Spirit had to say.
I told them I want them to be good citizens,
Because I believe that is where good values begin,
Citizens of this world and all of creation,
Inviting others to a fairness celebration.
I believe that they, on their own, have come to see
What their greater life purposes are meant to be.

Anti-Abortion or Pro-Personal Commitment?

As a grandparent, I know it is difficult
To firmly discipline without finding fault.
If I do not discipline myself, first and foremost,
I am, in fact, of sin in my children, a host.
This process seems to start in our genes;
So many pro-creators have no moral means.

I would love to live long enough to see a day
That the word "abortion" we would not ever say.
But, is it really better to procreate
In a starving or abusive amoral state?
I think it may be better to return
Babies to God, before they are by us, spurned.

It is the fact of natural woman and man
To want to add to their own blood clans.
It is also true that babies who are defective
Are often, by adoptive couples, rejected.
In principle, we may want all babies to save,
But, in fact, in facing truth, we must be brave.

There may come a time when all children are wanted
And by the protection of separate clans, we'll be undaunted.
There may be a time when no man will rape,
And from the abuse of power all of us will escape.
There may be a time when we hold in our arms
All the vulnerable, to protect them with our own lives,from harm.

Until there is one committed person to claim
Each child we try, from death, to restrain,
There is no real hope for the children to run
To a community in which we would want them to be one.
A village without personal commitment may be
A holding cell, but it is not a family.

A Litany to Life

As a child, we had many names for The Almighty
In our church, they were referred to in litanies.

Even though I do try to understand
The desire to think of God as a man;
Good men create an aura of protection
For which we feel awe and affection.
But the bodies of men can't contain
The glories of all Creation's reign.

It seems to me that it is better
To, our imaginations, unfetter.
While sitting in the shade of a tree,
That tree feels like God to me.
While watching a baby be baptized,
The glory of Faith makes me want to cry.

The darkening skies above my head
Fill me with awe, not with dread.
The endless blue of the skies above
Are a sign to me of Infinite Love.
The dedication it takes to cure cancer
Is, in the scientists, my God's answer.

The time I spend with a friend on the phone
Is God's love, through me, brought home.
The soup that my aunt makes for me
Is another place, Eternal Love, I see.
In the sweat of my loving husband's brow,
I realize that my Eternity includes now.

I will daily sing songs of Infinite Wonder,
For a child's laugh, lightening and thunder.
The fish that feed us from the deep,
The soft, warm bed on which we sleep.
I will not allow others to reduce and define
The varieties of the faces of God that are mine.

Listening to the Enlightened

A soul sister with whom I discuss family life, theology, and spirituality has pointed out that today, in her religion, is honored as the Feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus. This feast honors the tradition that Jesus, at one time in his walk on this earth, was seen by several of his followers as shining with a holy light, speaking with Moses and the prophet Elijah. Her religious tradition holds the belief that the voice of God was heard saying, “This is My Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased. Listen to Him!”

Bishop Iraneus of the second century Christian church is quoted as saying about the transfiguration, "the glory of God is a live human being and a truly human life is the vision of God."

Would that we believed that we are all capable of being transfigured by Grace and that the glory of this Grace would lead us to live truly human lives, shining with this vision of Grace and Glory. Perhaps then all will hear a voice saying, "These are my children in whom I am well pleased. Listen to them."

Suffering vs Celebration

My older sister received a pacemaker yesterday, and I feel that my heart is breaking. My mother's religion has been killing my sister since the day she was born. My mother gave all decisions over to the clergy, even those having to do with procreation. When my mother died and was then revived, having ruptured an artery while giving birth to her second child and first daughter. The doctors told her that she could never carry another child. Her vascular system was too weak.

My mother didn't accept that this may have been the hand of her god giving her a very strong message. She refused to defer to the wishes of my father and the rest of her support network, even though they shared her religion. My mother deferred to her clergy, who was in the business of encouraging married women to produce legions of "soldiers of Christ."

According to our mother, our sister was other-worldly from the date of her birth, scaring our older brother when he was a toddler. Photos and stories show her as an adorable little curly-haired doll that could repeat verbatim anything that was said to her. Both she and my brother were sickly children, which required many trips to the hospitals. The way to keep them quiet was by reading to them, fairy tales and stories of the saints, all gory morality tales at that time.

Before my sister was two, our mother was pregnant for me, and our family had moved far away from any family who could help with the babies. My mother clung even more strongly to her religion, as our father was away most of the time on oil exploration trips to support his family.

By the time I was born, my mother's body was literally turning itself inside out. Once again, the doctors advised her to have surgery to prevent more procreation. Once again, her husband pleaded that, if not sterilization, they use birth control. He was only home sporadically, almost guaranteeing pregnancy on every visit. The clergy insisted on continued opportunities to procreate or complete celibacy. Our mother, once again, deferred to the men of the cloth as she carried on with three babies in a strange land.

Mama and daddy needed each others' loving arms whenever he came home to her. They were only twenty-four years old, and both physically beautiful. Their shared arms should have been their reward and incentive for maintaining monogamy while separated from each other, but it became our father's shame in his inability to control his desire for his beautiful wife. They lost the ability to bring each other physical comfort.

When our mother found out she had become pregnant a fourth time, she was put to bed rather than risk losing this baby. She could not function. Her children were removed from her and taken to various relatives. She was left alone with nothing but her thoughts of a god that visited pain upon those who displeased him. When she finally rose from her hell, she had decided that she would give her life completely over to serving her god through her church. She became obsessed with purifying herself and her children.

We lost our mother, other than in body, when my brother was five, my sister was three, and I was still a infant in arms. My sister has embraced suffering as a way to purification of her spirit, memorizing and repeating litanies and prayers prescribed by the clergy. My sister's marriage to the same religion that took my mother from me, I have divorced.

This divorce has caused me to be estranged from my sister as her heart begins to weaken in her old age. I cannot go to her because she struggles with embracing suffering and death, while I struggle to continue embracing celebration and life.

Gender

I would love for my mate to not be threatened by me,
But I don’t expect that he can see what I see.
His was a world that was universally protected
By the male god that was then usually projected.
I don’t blame him for the mistakes of our nations,
That were the guiding values for many generations.

I hope that he can accept my pain of process, and then,
Perhaps we, as men and women, can begin again.
At least, he accepts that his mother didn’t love him;
I hope that, with further conversation, things won’t seem so grim.
Fathers used to feel no compunction to fill the empty gaps
In which many mothers of children so clearly had a lack.

I celebrate the opportunity to make family decisions
That, hopefully, will not bring on society’s derision.
If we all free ourselves from prejudice of gender,
Families may be freed to, in this world, enter
A culture where individual gifts are accepted,
Rather than, because of gender, rejected.