“Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.” —Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
“Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.” —Will Rogers
“That’s it! You people have stood in my way long enough. I’m going to clown college!” Homer Simpson.
“It takes two to lie: one to lie and one to listen” Homer Simpson.
“It’s not easy to juggle a pregnant wife and a troubled child, but somehow I managed to fit in eight hours of TV a day.” Homer Simpson.
“When will I learn? The answers to life’s problems aren’t at the bottom of a bottle, they’re on TV!” – Homer Simpson.
Bart: “Grandpa, why don’t you tell a story?” Lisa: “Yeah Grandpa, you lived a long and interesting life.” Grandpa: “That’s a lie and you know it” Grandpa Abraham Simpson [Loser]
“Life is just one crushing defeat after another until you just wish Flanders was dead” – Homer Simpson on his religious neighbor Ned Flanders.
But Mary was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Conceal and carry!”
Luke 1: 26-28 NRAV [National Rifle Association Version]
It’s almost Christmas. Joseph and Marystayed at our house last night as part of La Posada, a Mexican tradition re-enacting Mary and Joseph’s search for lodging in Bethlehem.
We welcomed them to our home for safe lodging, food, and a warm place.
When they arrived we sat them on the floor.
Barclay welcoming Joseph and Mary to our home.
Unfortunately, Barclay quickly took a liking to Joseph’s left ear, so we moved Joseph and Mary into the pantry where they’d feel safe from a domestic terrorist attack.
Last night, after Barclay had gone to bed, I invited Joseph and Mary to join me watching the presidential candidate debate. Last night’s debate topic was terrorism. Refugees fleeing persecution and immigration policy were also discussed.
Our guests stayed very still. They were very quiet. They watched the faces on the TV screen. They listened to every word. As I went to the kitchen for a drink, Mary cuddled up to Joseph needing reassurance. She whispered, “Joseph, we have to get out of here before one of them gets elected -these people don’t like us! They’re mean. They sound just like Herod!”
I took them back to the safety of the pantry, put them back on the shelf, said goodnight, and closed the door so they’d feel more secure. Today they came out of the closet when another family came to protect them from Herod on their way to Bethlehem. But before they left, Joseph told Mary, “Don’t worry, honey, as soon as you give birth and are strong enough for the journey, we’re leaving for Egypt.”
Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, December 17, 2015.
The Holy Family traveling to Egypt
An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.” – Matthew 2:13-15
A chair should be there BEFORE I sit,
I should roll down the window BEFORE I spit,
But because I am old,
I am frequently told:
“You know we all think you’re just a HALF-WIT!
The wedding I’m remembering took place in August, 1972 at Shalom House, the ecumenical campus ministry center at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater that housed a collaborative Roman Catholic and Protestant campus ministry.
The bride and broom were students active in the campus ministry. Max, we’ll call him, a counter-cultural jazz flutist with long hair down his back raised in the arch-conservative Wisconsin Synod Lutheran Church, had become involved in the progressive protestant campus ministry. The bride, whom we’ll call Elizabeth, was raised Roman Catholic and was active in the Catholic Campus Ministry.
Because it was a “mixed” marriage involving at least one Christian tradition that viewed the other as going to Hell, Father Charlie and I officiated together at the wedding. Charlie, a much loved priest known for his light touch and quick laugh, and I were colleagues and best of friends.
Imagine the scene in the small Shalom House living room.
Father Charlie and I take our places at one end of the living room, followed by Max, who has replaced his normal attire of blue jeans and a tie-dyed shirt with the light tan polyester suit purchased just for this occasion. Elizabeth enters wearing a lovely traditional white gown every bride still wears, forgetting the ancient meaning of the symbolism. They’ve “known” each other, as the Good Book puts it, for quite awhile.
The mid-afternoon temperature is in the high 90s. There is no air conditioning. Max is sopping wet, sweat pouring from his nose and chin onto the new polyester suit.
It seems he’s in danger of fainting. “Don’t lock your knees,” I whisper to Max, just hang loose.” The whole room feels more than a little uptight. Wisconsin Synod Lutherans and Roman Catholics don’t share the same space, except at the drug store.
Because the guests are from war traditions, Father Charlie and I have printed out every word of the service. The bride and groom, and each of the 50 guests has a copy of the service. Every word of it.
Father Charlie’s and my words are in regular type; responses by the bride, groom, or congregation are in bold type. Charlie and I had agreed to alternate leading. But we have also decided that whichever one of us is not leading will help prompt the congregation in the bold type responses.
All is well until we come to the consent questions, the “I will” questions.
Charlie, reading the regular type, asks Max the question. Max responds: I will.
I ask Elizabeth, “Will you have Max to be your wedded husband, to live with him and cherish him, in the holy bond of marriage?”
The bass voice from next to me answers I Will! before Elizabeth can respond. I look at Charlie, Charlie puts his hand to his mouth, opens his eyes wide and says, “Oops!”
Father Charlie and I worked together for four fun-filled years. The day of Max and Elizabeth’s celebration of Holy Matrimony was a Mr. Bean kind of day.
In her old age – I know we don’t use that term anymore but she was old no matter whether you called her a “senior citizen” or the more current “older adult” – my 88 year-old Grandmother came to live with us. “Us” was my father, mother, two brothers and I, the five (5) of us and Grandma in a small three (3) bedroom home in Broomall, Pennsylvania.
Grandma also shuffled back and forth between two other places – my rich Uncle Harold’s palatial home on Long Island Sound in Greenwich, Connecticut, and Harold’s summer cottage in Rockport, Massachusetts, where Grandma and Pop (Grandpa’s children called him “Pop”) spent their summers.
Letitia Sophia Campbell Stewart (“Sophie”) felt welcome in our little home and would settle in during her stays with us. Everything would be fine for a month or two. She sort of seemed to like my mother, although no woman would be quite good enough for her Kenneth or her Harold, and both daughters-in-law knew it.
My mother was more than gracious, much more attentive to her needs than Rene, and they got along just fine. But there were times when something like a boulder would come crashing through the picture window into our living room, hit Grandma in the head, and turn her into a whining old goat. She became self-absorbed, self-pitying, annoying and quite unlovely.
Grandma was attached at the hip to Harold, 15 years older than my father. She hated the separation. Harold was the family hero, the nationally recognized Washington insider, the wealthy provider. Aloof and cold as ice but kind…if that makes any sense. Which meant he didn’t pay attention to his mother when she was at our house. Out of sight, out of mind.
Grandma became morose. “Was there a letter from Harold?” “No, Mom. I’m sorry. No mail today.”
“Harold never writes. He hasn’t called. Harold doesn’t love me. I’m just a burden. Why doesn’t God just take me. I’m of no use to anybody anymore.”
One day my mother couldn’t take it anymore. “Ken,” she said, “we have to do something or she has to go to Harold’s.”
Dad suggested taking Grandma to the doctor. She liked the doctor in Broomall.
“Sophie, what’s going on?” asked the doctor, who’d already been briefed on the boulder. Grandma repeated the script. She was a burden to everyone. Pop was gone. She was alone. “I don’t know why God doesn’t just take me!”
“Well, that’s not a problem. WE can take care of that,” said the doctor. “Really?” asked Grandma. “You bet. We can take care of that right now. I have gun out back. We can just go out back and end your misery right now.”
“O, doctor, you wouldn’t do that!!!” said Grandma.
Grandma came home as though the boulder had never hit her. The whole world had been lifted from her shoulders. She flashed her beautiful smile again and told us how much she loved us. But she continued to leave her leave her mark in the living wherever she sat, leaving my mother to ask why God hadn’t taken either Grandma or her, and I asking when I could get my bedroom back.
When I was 13 my parents put me on a flight from Philadelphia to Boston. My paternal grandmother, recovering from a near fatal heart attack, needed a live-in caregiver at the summer cottage in Rockport, Massachusetts. My grandfather had died three years earlier.
When we learned of her need, there was an extended family discussion. The doctor said she needed someone with her for the next month.
Who would stay with Grandma? Who could go stay for a month?
Motif #1, Rockport Harbor
Grandma insisted on going to Rockport when released from the hospital, and she did, all by herself, though she remained bed-ridden on doctor’s orders except for necessary short trips to the facility and the kitchen.
Shall we say Grandma was…just a tad stubborn, and her stubborn independence was a worry for the whole family. She wasn’t safe and shouldn’t be alone.
My cousin Gina would have been the most likely candidate, but Gina had married a MacDonald. Grandma – of the Campbell clan, the mortal enemy of the MacDonalds – had refused to bless Gina’s marriage to Norman, and would have nothing to do with either of them. Did I mention she was stubborn?
Partly by process of elimination and partly by reason of her grandson seizing the chance to live up the road from Old Garden Beach and the Headlands in my favorite place in the world, I boarded the plane and stayed the month in Rockport.
I took the train from Logan Airport to Rockport, suitcase in hand, walked the mile from the train station up Atlantic Avenue beside Rockport Harbor and turned left onto Harraden Avenue. It didn’t occur to me that it was odd for a 13 year-old to be on his own on his way to an onerous responsibility. Old Garden Beach, the Headlands, and nightly trips to Bearskin Neck and Tuck’s for ice cream were on my mind more than Grandma.
Grandma Stewart was in bed when I opened the picket fence gate and walked in the cottage’s unlocked door. We greeted each other with outspread arms, Grandma’s eyes big as saucers, flowing with tears.
“We’ll be safe,” she says. “I have a gun.” She points under the bed.
I pull out a revolutionary war rifle weighing about 10 pounds. There’s no ammunition. Just an old revolutionary war musket, like the ones the authors of the 2nd Amendment had in mind.
Revolutionary War rifle – requires only 13 steps to fire.
“Grandma,” I say, “I don’t see any bullets. Is it loaded?”
“I don’t think so,” she says. “It’s heavy. We’ll just hit ‘em with it!”
The rifle stayed under the bed long after my month playing long-distance nursemaid and body guard to Grandma from down at the beach during the day and from candy and ice cream shops on Bearskin Neck at night. I was the family hero.
Poor Grandma! Poor America! Wouldn’t the founding fathers be proud!
Steve Shoemaker, my poet colleague on Views from the Edge, is at Mayo Clinic here in Rochester getting a second opinion on newly diagnosed pancreatic cancer and silent heart attack. He recently shared the news with his friends, many of whom had applauded his recent advocacy for welcoming Syrian refugees.
Here’s what Steve wrote:
In Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn,” the young rascal lets his family, and the whole small Missouri town, think he was drowned in the Mississippi River & his dead body carried down stream… And then Huck snuck back into town in disguise and attended his own funeral.
The frequent truant was amazed at all the nice things said about him–even by his school teachers.
This has been my experience the last few days as my serious cancer diagnosis became known, along with a surprisingly positive article in our partisan Republican News-Gazette about Democrat me being critical of Illinois’ Republican Governor refusing State aid, public or private, to vetted Syrian refugees.
As I spoke & wrote about welcoming Syrians, the outpouring of support & personal praise has been amazing…some of the positive words coming even from my grown children (who seeing me up close for years could have written very differently.)
Of course I know after bad news, and at a funeral, critics are silent or absent. I am grateful for both the good words, and the silence!
Illness, diagnoses, prognoses and treatments are personal. Some keep them not only from others but from themselves. Not so with Steve. This is typical Steve. What’s not to love about a humble rascal?
“That’s it! You people have stood in my way long enough. I’m going to clown college!” Homer Simpson.
Views from the Edge 