My Current Obsession

I don't know how to embed a video in my blog, so you'll have to click on the YouTube link. I just discovered this amazing singer, Ashley Chambliss. This particular video is just a still picture as I couldn't find any good videos to share of the song. And it is a gorgeous song. I wish I could play the piano like that.

Listen. I think you'll like it.

A Statistic Worth Repeating

Yes, I'm still on a blog break - but came across a video on Joanne Cacciatore's blog this morning, with a statistic worth repeating:

Approximately 120,000 children die in the US every year.

Around 80% of them will die before their first birthday.

Taking a Break

Hello everybody - just checking in to say I'm going to take a bit of a break from my blog for a while. I have a little too much on my plate, despite my best efforts to scale back (always, always trying to scale back). I'll return in....well, no more than a month.

At which point I hope I still have readers.

A Theologian's View on God

Earlier today I was reading Joanne Cacciatore's blog, and she referenced a theologian interviewed on NPR by Terry Gross some time ago. Rev. Forrest Church discussed his battle with cancer, which he knew would be fatal, and his belief in God. His words resonated with me as I keep trying to discern for myself what it is I believe about God and why Ben died. They even validated some of what I feel about God and my own belief that my son did not die for a reason, or because God deemed it would be so.

Here is some of his dialogue with Terry Gross:

GROSS: You know, you write in your book, you know, again, about how you don't believe in an interventionist God, and you say, once you start praying to God to cure your cancer or asking God why he didn't answer you prayers, the questions never stop. And then you refer to, like, a bishop who said his faith was shaken by the tsunami.

Rev. CHURCH: Yes.

GROSS: And then you say, you don't like it when people say about a tragedy or about, you know, an illness or death, well, God has his reasons. It's just part of God's plan.

Rev. CHURCH: This is God's plan.

GROSS: What do you object to about that? Why isn't that the...

Rev. CHURCH: Well, I can see how it can give comfort. But God doesn't throw a three-year-old child out of a third story window or allow a drunken driver to kill a family crossing the street. This is not part of God's plan. These are the accidents of life and death. And if God, for instance, is responsible for a tsunami, that obliterates the lives of a hundred thousand people and leaves their families in tatters, then God's a bastard.

I cannot believe in such a God. For me, God is the life force, that which is greater than all and yet present in each. But God is not micromanaging this world. That is a presumption that we are naturally drawn to because of our sense of centrality and self importance, but there are 1,500 stars for every living human being. And the God that I believe in is an absolute magnificent mystery....

Pretty Pictures

I needed something pretty to look at today, and a bit of cheering up, so here are some pretty photos of Venice. I am wishing I were there.

Awkward Family Story: The Thanksgiving Letter

Because I could use a laugh, and this made me laugh until I cried. A little comic relief is a good thing.



Awkward Family Story: The Thanksgiving Letter

Posted using ShareThis

What I Don't Want To Do

What I don't want to do tomorrow is go to a card store to pick out a sympathy card for the parents of a young man who died yesterday in a motorcycle accident. I don't want to purchase a card to send to his grandparents, either. I don't want to think about his mother and what she was like as a teenager--full of life, always smiling--and how she feels tonight. I don't want to think about his family, spending the rest of their lives missing him, wondering what might have been.

What I don't want to do is spend the rest of my life afraid that I will lose another child. I don't want to know that, far more often than anyone cares to think, children die. I don't want to know some of what those parents are feeling. I don't want to be part of a world where tragedies occur every minute of every day.

What I don't want is to be this sad.