resolution?

Hi Maggie,

Apparently Anna and her husband set off for Nebraska to try homesteading, because several of their children already lived there, including Pop's grandfather.  When Anna came home, this son and his family came back with her.  Makes you wonder about the what-ifs!  If her husband had not died, that branch would have stayed midwest, and we definitely would not be who we are!

I was more caught in the two recent stories of our matriarchs marry older men while still fairly young teenagers.  I wonder how much different 14 was  two hundred years ago.  I also wonder about allowing a 14 year old girl to marry a man within three days of meeting him.  I wonder if the family was that anxious to palm her off on someone else. I remember some of Dad's attitudes toward his daughters - same family.

I will continue thinking about this...

As for your son's friend and the potential reaction, it is so important to remember that violence is never the way to peace.  If he need to do something, it needs to be nonviolent...

It could always be our child.  Every accident, every war, every fight- it could be our child.  That's why we have to stop it all.

Last summer I talked about   being in the bus station in Portland, Oregon at 5 am discussing Dante's Inferno with a fellow traveler and a security guard.  For Christmas, our nephew gave me Dan Brown's novel, Inferno, which relies heavily on the symbols and codes of Dante's work.  I have been holed up as much as possible with this book.  I love hiding out with a book and forgetting the world.

But I was thinking about the layers of hell, each reserved for a specific sinner. If one commits those sins, one exists in the excess of the sin forever.  That is hell.  The church used our fear of this hell to control us. If we are obedient and ignore our weakness, we can be freed from all desire and avoid hell.

Then I was thinking about my friend who just died, who will be buried on Sunday.  He lived in a hell of his father's making. He lived in pain and shame leading to addiction and violence and disconnection.  It was not him, his mistakes. It was from the pain inflicted by his father.  So, does the church expect us to be passive and of no emotion while being abused in order to be worthy of heaven?

It almost takes me to that Mennonite tenet that we are here to suffer. By surviving this pain, we earn heaven.

But I reject this.  Over and over I come back to the joy of this Earth, of our lives, of the beings that are here with us - our family - the trees,the lakes, the fish, the other mammals, as well as our sisters and our babies.  The Haudenosaunee people said the duty of the human was to celebrate. I want to. But I am so lost and alone and afraid.  I am so afraid.  Have the church and their hell won????

It is not enough to say I am enough.  Somehow we have to believe it. And so far I have not found the wick to light to fire myself up to I AM ENOUGH.

I think I am tiptoeing around a resolution I have no idea how to make or keep...More thinking for me...

Love and hugs and warm thoughts and as much support and Light as you need!

Clare







That is sick. Psychologically sick.