Make me feel like a woman? Are ya kidding?

Dating, for me, comes with a caveat.

Unlike other men and women I've run into into in my online dating chronicles, my kids come first.

I had them later in life. They still need me in their different ways, and preoccupy much of my time and thoughts.

Actually, they will probably always come first, tipping the ledger towards the maternal as contrasted with the amorous.

Not that a little ooo lah lah wouldn't be nice. A glean in the eye, a flutter of the lashes, a flush of the cheeks...I'm not hopeless, ya know.

I also am painfully aware of how fast time rushes by, and how soon even my son will be gone on to his own adventures.  At that point, I'll HAVE to create a life wide enough to welcome them, and yet allow room for adult adventures.

But I don't understand the whole idea that I have sacrificed much, and that it's now "my time" (come to think of it, that's the name of a senior dating site, isn't it)?

Gross me out. Eeewww.  Even the painful elements in this pilgrimage haven't been a sacrifice -- although they have come close to driving me to the madwoman's attic.

Now and then, a man says to me that it's time to think of myself first -- that he will court me and treat me like a woman, not a mom.

Excuse me? Does that mean that mothers are, by definition, not female?

This flummoxes me. By no means a selfless person, or martyrdom's candidate from Chester County, I am not aware of having let anyone else take precedence.

Perhaps it's because I lost my mom and brother in my thirties, before I'd gotten married.

Maybe it's because I am gun shy about romantic relationships.

Could it possibly be that my stammering arises from my inability to separate my well-being from that of my dependent children?

Aw, heck. I know not why.

What I do know is that a guy who imagines that he can make a "real woman" out of this exurban mom doesn't understand that he's got a woman standing right in front of him -- who doesn't need to be set free from her children's shackles.

The tapestries of their lives are part of who she is, and will become -- and the man who accepts this may find that she does not need to be enticed.

Fountain of Sorrow

When I moved out to this semi-rural area about nine years ago, I was spurred in part by the wish to experience small town life.

Having grown up in a large city, and gone to grad school in an Ivy League New Jersey town, I had a rather romantic view of life out here just beyond the Western suburbs.

In our own way, we are a community.  I meet my neighbors waiting for the bus, walking around the track at the elementary school, clambering up and down the hill that I walk almost every day, and now and then for dinner.

Many of us moved out here to avoid too much intimacy with neighbors. But when a gentleman who lives on the private road behind me said "we're here if you need us" -- I believed him, even though it was the first time I'd seen him in around three years.

We are bound, for better and in taxes, by the Downingtown School District, our churches, and our neighborhoods.

All in all, it's been a difficult month.

In April, some dear friends lost a child in a bizarre accident in New York City.  She was more than a contender -- she was a future star. But more than that, she was,  from what people say, a deeply lovable and happy young woman.

This was stunning. And imagine how her parents, both of whom have deep roots in this area, feel as they try to understand and grieve her death with their families and friends.

This past week the former pastor at St. Joe's in Downingtown, who became Bishop McFadden in the diocese of Harrisburg, died suddenly while at a conference in Philadelphia.

This weekend, members of that congregation ( where the young woman's service occurred) will grieve his passing.

Tonight, my cell phone voicemail had a message from the principal at Downingtown West.  Today the school lost one of its English teachers to cancer.

Dr. Mulvey, the principal, called her "one of the most dedicated teachers I know."

My daughter, who can talk the ears off a brass monkey, might never have done a stitch of work in this teacher's academic detention (yes, she took those clowns as well as teaching English) class.  But she really, really loved this woman.

I asked her tonight, as I walked down the street, if she wanted to attend the service.

Yes, she told me -- we were both sniffling.

Another funeral.  Another gathering of the Downingtown school district clan, red-eyed and overwhelmed.

Too much! Too much! I said to myself as I walked down the hill past my friends street on my way to the Farm trails.

Too damn much.

But that's what part of being in a community is all about -- trusting that, as we are brought together by grief, so we are also able to join in times of celebration.

All I could do was pray for my neighbors, joining my sadness to theirs, hoping that in some tiny way our prayers would strengthen those who mourn to bear the gravity of this moment -- and of every moment yet to come.

Israel and Christians: the ambivalence that dares not speak its name (sometimes)

For diverse reasons, mainline Christians and conservative Christians get squirmy on the topic of Israel. It would almost be funny if it wasn't so serious.

Conservatives get nervous because they don't like being tagged as being impelled by self-interest when they support Israel. (After all, the book of Revelations can be read to support the idea that Jews have to be in Israel for Jesus to come back).

And mainline denominations don't wish to be accused of being anti-Jewish when they speak up for the rights of the Palestinians.

There's always a subtext -- and, thus far, the political, moral and biblical subtext has driven the policy conversation.

I discuss these drivers, and how we arrived here, with Professor Julia O'Brien at the Lancaster Theological Seminary.

Take a look -- and please comment.






http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/842635_Column--One-text--with-many-perspectives.html

Funeral evangelism

Is it possible that clergy who do an awful job preaching at memorial services are driving young people out of churches, perhaps forever?

It seems very possible to me.

Caveat, caveat -- having me, or many other clergy attend a funeral is like having a chef eat dinner at someone else's restaurant.

So take what I'm about to write with a small grain of salt.

Over the past year, I've attended two funerals that were excruciating, even to attend.

Both of the people who died were young -- parents were burying their children.

Both of the children were particularly promising -- stars that would have sparkled across our dark skies.

The two services brought out young people in droves.

Dressed in black dresses or suits, tears smudging the girl's mascara, they were at heartbreaking sight to behold.

In both, parents got up, walked to the lectern (perhaps the longest walk in the world on that particular day), and eulogized their kids.

All the parents did a fantastic job. I couldn't believe the grace and class they demonstrated.

One couple got a standing ovation.

And one clergyman was wonderful -- honest about the unbelievable pain in that sanctuary, how much we don't know, and how much God loves us through it all.

The other was anodyne, bland, and totally forgettable.

We live in an increasingly secularized society, one in which many have grown up without any acquaintance with the Christian or Hebrew scriptures. But people still crave a way to make meaning in their lives.

Adolescents, young adults, the elderly and even middle-aged people like me had crammed into the pews, desperately hoping to hear something that would allow for the tragedy, explain the scriptural perspective, and give us a bit of consolation in our shared grief.

Let alone the parents. Shouldn't they have a right to expect that from their clergy?

In fact, it was the parents, giving bravura homilies on one of the hardest days of their entire life, who brought down the house, and gave the mourners something to hang on to.

Both services happened to be Catholic. But they could have been conducted by Protestants.

I don't happen to believe in altar calls at funerals. I've seen that happen in Protestant funerals -- it seems cheesy to me.

Very rarely do people get scared into believing something.

They may, however, be invited to look deeper.  Not to be crass, but what better time than at a memorial?

And don't your flocks DESERVE decent funeral preaching?

After all, isn't that what, in part,  they pay you for?

Two traditions but a similar voice on Israel

Sometimes it's tough to get someone to talk to you.

When I went trolling for sources on this series, I was aware that it might be challenging to get the Conservative rabbi in our area to open up.

And he decided, bless his heart, that he didn't want to speak with me about the significance of the land of Israel in the Conservative tradition.

So I had to go a bit above his pay grade-- a very gracious, and  very well-known rabbi at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York was willing to make time on his crowded calendar for me.

What a mensch. Plus, he's really skilled at talking to the press, very clever and fun to read.

We have a friendly, down to earth,  Reform rabbi in the Lancaster area -- he's a great quote also.

I'm fascinated by how similar their voices are.

What do you think?

http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/837426_Column--Jewish-traditions--fact-vs--truth.html

Lady Thatcher and our Gadarene rush

Margaret Thatcher died this morning in England.

She was a fascinating woman in her own right -- and a very divisive one.

When I read that she had passed on, I had a few reactions.

The first was that her legacy would be judged by history.

Another was that I was glad that she was free, finally, from the nightmare of dementia.  No one should have to go through that.

As historian's daughter, I'm kinda stuck on the idea that writers in decades and perhaps even centuries still to unfold will have a verdict that is more sophisticated and nuanced than ours.

But Lady Thatcher couldn't rest in peace for a minute once the news broke over here across the pond.

My Twitter feed became a battle ground between the right, to whom she apparently was an icon, and the left, who thought she was responsible for the misery of a whole generation of Brits (and probably some Americans and Soviets, too, if we only knew).

She despised feminists, blared some commenters.

She got it all wrong, retorted others (only, of course, they weren't paying attention to one another, because generally, in twitterland, you only give credence to your own opinions).

Heretical as it may sound, I don't give a darn whether Thatcher was a feminist in disguise, hated feminists, or couldn't care less what people called her.

I suspect that, whatever she said, she really didn't give a hoot. That was one of her defining public traits --a sublime disdain for what other people thought.

So why do we care?

It seems to me that perhaps we care because Margaret Thatcher is worth more to us as a symbol than she is as an intriguing, often difficult, courageous and sometimes actually rather intimidating (remember the Irish hunger strikers) woman of substance.

That irritates me.

But more than that, it scares me.

History isn't an Instagram, a series of fast phone shots.

It's not written on the fly, but slowly, reflectively, and, hopefully, without a partisan agenda.

Passion is one thing.

A rush to judgment is another.

I'm not taking sides on Maggie, God rest her soul.

Will you still be my friend?

An asterisked faith

It was warm when I went out for my walk, a ramble that takes me down and up hills, past streams and, often, by some rather docile looking bulls (perhaps bulls are docile when they aren't being tormented or unforgettably fictionalized by Flannery O'Connor).

But given the rather late hour, as the sun set it quickly became cold.

 I could not avoid the mocking chill of a spring that many of us in the east have found delayed (here, though, the rain still waters the earth, and there is a harvest).

As I strode, I couldn't stop thinking about Rick Warren's son Matthew, who committed suicide last night.  Warren, in case you have been living in a hermit's cave for the past fifteen years, is pastor to the mega-mega Saddleback Valley Community Church, and the author of "The Purpose-Driven Life."

Matthew, wrote Warren in a letter to his congregation(s) was an "incredibly kind, gentle and compassionate man" with a brilliant intellect -- beset through his short life with mental illness, depression and suicidal thoughts.

They say that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. But it seems, from what his father wrote, that Matthew suffered for a very long time. They tried the best medical care money could buy -- Rick Warren isn't a poor man. But nothing worked -- long enough, anyway, for this lovely young man to outrun his demons.

As a person of faith, I don't understand, I tweeted in some anguish, how God can allow this terrible kind of suffering without ceasing.

My thoughts inevitably went back many years, to the death of my brother.  Two years older than Matthew, Jonathan  was also a beautiful soul, someone who cared profoundly for the world of nature and for oppressed peoples, particularly native Americans.

Jonathan did find some relief from his depression -- in loving a young woman with two children he met out in northern California.  It seems as though, finally, this boy who had undergone so much misery at the hands of an educational system that didn't understand his learning disability and our sometimes dysfunctional family would find peace with her.

But then, in a minute of what I still consider terrible evil, she was killed, and one of those children with her, on a German road -- on her way to the airport to rejoin my brother in California.

Though Jonathan didn't struggle constantly, as far as I know, he could not withstand this cruel assault. His death changed so much about life for my father, my sister and myself -- not to mention my mother, who was ill then with the disease that would ultimately kill her.

Since then, I have been impatient with aphorisms.

"He's gone to a better place." Or "God just wanted another angel." Or, particularly "We don't understand, but there's a reason for everything.":

No. No. No. YOU don't understand, I want to say -- but I don't (usually). I try not to, you see, because I know that for many, such truisms provide a frail comfort zone against the mystery of theodicy --why God allows evil in our world.

I do mutter, on occasion, whether they hear me or not "I don't believe in that God."

I can only imagine the Warren's ordeal -- drug after drug, therapy after therapy, and each time, each time the profound hope that Matthew was going to be o.k. He was going to o.k., not in heaven (where I trust he is now free from pain), but o.k. right here.

Isn't that what we want for all of our children - earthly happiness? The heavenly kind is great, too, but let it come in time -- not too soon, we pray. We don't want to bury our children.

That's what Rick Warren and his wife will be doing in a few days.

Why did Matthew Warren suffer so long, and so terribly?

Since my brother's suicide, my faith has had an asterisk -- symbolizing the soul that cries out to God questioning: why?

I am fiercer.  Less tolerant of b.s. More capable of being provoking.

Still, I believe.

But I don't understand.