What's That You Say?

     I used to watch “All My Children” on TV when I was in my twenties. The plots were convoluted and even a touch ludicrous, but they did make me want to see what would happen next. Then one day, a story made some glaring lights come on. A young woman was married to a much older man. Through some contrivance, she and a handsome young man were stranded together overnight. They “comforted” each other.

     When handsome young man took her home, the husband, worried and now angry, accused the two of doing, well, exactly what they had done. Instead of confessing, apologizing, or even making excuses, they became indignant at having been accused. “How can you say such a thing, after all we’ve been through?” was the gist of their response. Then the husband backed down and apologized for being so mean!

     This was such a twisted anti-morality, I never wanted to watch the program again, and I certainly didn’t want my children to see it. Now, though, I see this backwards outrage all around me in public discourse. When a “reproductive rights activist” (meaning someone who wants sex without any of that darn reproduction) cynically enrolls in a Catholic law school and then tries to force them to abandon their pro-life principles by claiming that she and her sister students need $3,000 worth of contraceptive services to get through the program, her duplicity and what sure enough sounds like promiscuity are simply “good citizenship” in the POTUS’s words. But Rush Limbaugh wonders out loud whether “slut” or “prostitute” is a more accurate term for her, and all hell breaks loose. OK, it was crude, but it was a way of naming her behavior. Pointing it out seems to be a much worse offense than doing it.

     It’s the same with talk about abortion. I use the term “baby-killing,” and I’m taken to task for being harsh and rude. Yet pointing a suction tube at a tiny baby and ripping its arms and legs off, oh, that’s just women’s health care. Pulling a bigger baby out of the birth canal except for its head, sticking a pair of scissors into the base of its skull and cutting up the brain so the head can be collapsed and the dead child pulled out, oh that’s just reproductive health. A woman’s right, don’t you know. Call it baby-killing, and you are the rube, the outcast, the criminal. And you can’t change the channel.

Life, Death, Suburbs

      Out for a walk with toddler grandson, I hear tapping in a tree. I walk around it until I spot a woodpecker high on a branch. I pick Edward up and point out the bird. We both stare until it finishes its lunch and flies away. The scene comes to mind as I’m watching “Nature” and hear the Himalayas described as “a place to see the power of nature and the fragility of life.” So is our suburban neighborhood.

     In the Himalayas, a snow leopard stalks and chases a markhor goat. Right under my front window, a cat battles a black snake. They freeze and stare at each other. When the snake finally makes a move, the cat pounces. The snake slithers up the wall, drops, tries to hide under the wood siding, is batted out by the cat. They spar for a good half hour until both give up and wander away. In that same front yard, a crane has stalked a lizard in the mondo grass, and flocks of ibis stroll through occasionally, nibbling at the lawn. Down by the library, an alligator lives in a drainage ditch.

     As Edward and I kick a ball back and forth, sparrows begin to peep in the oaks and dash from branch to branch. A mockingbird calls and glides to another tree. I wonder what the fuss is about. Then comes the indescribable whistling “scree” of a hawk, and there it is, wheeling in its self-assured way high above the houses. One of them glided into our back yard when it saw a snake entangled in netting that I wrapped around a fig tree to keep squirrels away. I saw it from the kitchen window, hopping forward to snap at the snake, but pulling back as the netting tangled its talons. By the time it gave up, it had made a long gash in the side of the snake. Some little birds, diving and chirping, drove it away. The snake had pulled the netting so tight, I couldn’t work a blade in to cut it loose. I saw the eyes lose their light.

     The nature program shows people erecting an enormous flag-bedecked pole that is supposed to convey their prayers to the mountain top where their gods reside. Mine goes with me all the time. He shows His character in great oaks that grow from acorns, in the smooth bark of crape myrtles, in fluorescent fuchsia ti leaves and the exotic yellow-flowered shrub that my South American neighbor says can help regulate diabetes. This created world has neighbors who smile and garbage truck drivers who honk the horn and collectors who wave to my grandson and make him feel like the center of the universe. And I get to stand there with him.

Swift News Service; This Just In

          The Wekilla Mall of Baffin Island announces a new tenant called “Curtains,” a women’s health center with an unusual approach to financing: seal pelt harvesting. “We want to keep our contraceptives and breast exams as inexpensive as possible, especially since we don’t actually do mammograms and have to send clients to the mainland for them,” explained director Jane Brazen. “We have a deal with Charon Ferry Line, but it still costs money.”

          Curtains staff will travel to fur-seal breeding grounds every spring to “club as many baby seals as we can,” according to Ms. Brazen. “It’s labor-intensive too. We tried using a big vacuum hose, but it tore off the flippers and made a mess of the pelts.”

          Asked whether anyone had expressed moral objections to the seal harvest, Ms. Brazen said, “Oh, only a few ignorant and closed-minded people who hate women and want to force their beliefs on others. Besides, the seals are only about three percent of our business. We give out at least three dozen condoms for every seal we terminate.”

          Wekilla Mall will host a grand opening for Curtains on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. with drinks and snacks. Children are invited to play the action-packed “Whack-A-Seal” game at the front of the mall. Wekilla Mall is at 666 Reaper Boulevard in suburban Dark Soul. All are welcome.

Waiting Room Apocalypse

     With my trusty Forester safely in the hands of the mechanics for its 12-month check-up, I mixed up a cup of coffee and selected a granola bar from the gingham-lined basket on the refreshment table in the waiting room. There was a basket of apples, too, and all sorts of tea bags. It looked like a motel breakfast buffet. I settled down with my snack and my newspaper. When I was about finished with the local news, two very odd-looking people walked in. Both were extremely thin and about the same height, on the short side, and it took me a minute of discreet staring to decide what sex they were. Both wore garishly embellished jeans, sliding down a bit on flat rear-ends. Studded belts encircled both. Ah, one had a yoked western shirt and, yes, I detect whiskers. The other had short, spiked, bleached hair perched above a pink tee aswirl with sparkly bits. Still not conclusive—until a slight curve showed itself on the chest. OK, female.

     Then it got weird. The two of them scuttled up to the refreshments, produced a plastic bag and began filling it with the granola bars and apples, every last one of them. “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” the female said. I’d say she giggled, but her voice was too harsh for that, like that of a lifetime smoker. “This is so wrong!” Um, yeah. A young man was sitting opposite me. We looked at each other and each raised an eyebrow. It was starting to feel like a reality show of the “what would you do?” variety, but the camera crew never appeared. If the thieves had been children, I suppose I would have spoken to them directly, but there, well, you never know what people might have in their pockets.

     I walked around the corner to the parts counter; people on the business side can’t see the waiting room. I told the clerk that two people were stealing all the snacks, while one kept saying “I can’t believe we’re doing this.” She looked disgusted and said “I can’t believe they’re doing it either.” Then, “I guess I’d better get the baskets and refill them.” We saw the pink-shirted creature out the window, apparently having taken the stash to a car. The other was gone. Clerk took the baskets away. The baskets stayed away as long as I was there, apparently because pink shirt came back to sit in the waiting room, utterly without shame, as far as I could tell. She was still there when I was summoned to reclaim my car.

     So, did I fail to stand against the decay of contemporary culture? Or did I do the best I could under the circumstances? Is it better to appeal to authority than tackle such a situation myself? Was I wise? Chicken? Both? Probably.

Listen, Annie, Listen

    I like Annie Lennox's Christmas album so much, I've bought more than a dozen copies to give to friends. She says in her liner notes that she grew up singing the traditional carols, that they've "accompanied" her life. But, somehow, she sings them splendidly without actually listening to them. I know she doesn't hear them because she writes that "the word Christ... could just as easily be 'Buddha' or 'Allah.'" No, Annie, it really couldn't.

    "Carols tell ancient stories," she wrote. Truly, they tell only one story, very specific in detail and quite impossible to equate with the tale of any other religious figure. Angels who were present at the creation of the universe "now proclaim Messiah's birth," the advent of the Anointed One, the Christ, the One on Whom God's Spirit descended like a dove, and of Whom the Father said, "This is My Son." This happened to Jesus when His cousin John baptized Him. It happened in a particular place and time, and to no one else. 

    Generations had awaited His appearance, "promised from eternal years." They knew He would be born to a virgin. They knew He would be born in Bethlehem. Prophets reminded them of the promise, and they encouraged each other to remember and hope and watch. Even in Babylon, "the East," wise men, magi, awaited His birth. Men of their office, taught originally by Daniel, chief of the magi, had passed the prophecy down through four centuries. They knew when to start looking, and they followed the brilliant light in the sky. It led them to the Child, "the King of Israel."  "Il est ne', le divin Enfant;" does anyone sing such a song about Buddha or Mohammed? Did any king send soldiers to kill them in infancy? Which of them came as "God with man... now residing"? Which of them "with His blood mankind has bought"? 

    We still sing these carols because Jesus sacrificed Himself on the cross to pay for our sins and to redeem the world. The songs are not about an ideal or a force or a principle. They are about a Person, the God/man, Who was born, lived, died and rose from the dead to purchase our way into a perfect world filled with the "love and compassion... empathy, harmony and respect for each other" that Annie Lennox and so many others long for. We can't do it on our own. He has done it for us. So we keep singing the story, the amazing, beautiful, incredible, impossible story,  because it is real. Because it is true. Annie? Everyone? Do you hear?