Save Ohio’s Libraries

Many of Ohio's 251 public libraries could close or face significant reductions in operations as a result of the Governor's latest proposal to balance the state's 2010-2011 biennium budget.

Public libraries in Ohio are funded primarily through the Public Library Fund (PLF), which receives 2.2% of the state's tax revenue. Since 2001, public library funding has been on the decline. As a result of the current downturn in the economy and decreasing state tax revenues, public libraries are currently experiencing a drop in funding from the Public Library Fund (PLF) estimated at 20% or more as compared to 2008. At a news conference on Friday, June 19, the Governor proposed an additional cut in the PLF of $112.5 million in fiscal year 2010 and $114.8 million in 2011 as part of his framework to fill the $3.2 billion gap in the budget that must be balanced by Ohio General Assembly's Conference Committee by June 30. This will mean a more than 50% cut in funding for many of Ohio 's public libraries.

With some 70% of the state's 251 public libraries relying solely on the PLF to fund their operations, the reduction in funding will mean that many will close completely, close branches, or drastically cut hours and services.

The Governor's proposed funding cuts come at a time when Ohio's public libraries are experiencing unprecedented increases in demands for services. In every community throughout the state, Ohioans are turning to their public library for free high speed Internet to access information on employment opportunities, children and teens are beginning summer reading programs, and people of all ages are turning to the library for information and entertainment.

Ohio 's public libraries offer CRITICAL services to those looking for jobs and operating small businesses. Public libraries are an integral part of education, which Governor Strickland says is critical to the state's economic recovery. But it is unlikely that many of Ohio 's public library systems, especially those without local levies, can remain open with these proposed cuts.

The Portsmouth Public Library will be rendered a devastating blow if state legislators adopt Governor Strickland's proposal. The Portsmouth Public Library has no local operating levy and is reliant on state funding to provide library services to the residents of Scioto County. The Governor's proposal would leave many Scioto county residents without library services.

If this proposal is adopted, branch libraries across Scioto County could close, the bookmobile will cease operations, hours at the main library will be drastically reduced, library programs at daycare centers, preschools, schools, senior centers, and nursing homes will end, and the Homebound Program, which delivers library materials to elderly and handicapped residents who cannot visit a library, will be curtailed. Cutting library services would also impact the many schools in Scioto County that rely on the library to provide materials and services to students through the bookmobile, drop collections, and afterschool programs such as the Homework Help Center.

You can help by contacting legislators now and telling them that the Portsmouth Public Library is important to you and urge them not to approve the governor's proposal to drastically reduce library funding. Contact:

Governor Ted Strickland
Riffe Center, 30th Floor
77 South High Street
Columbus, OH 43215-6018
(614) 466-3555
Email: Contact Governor Strickland

Representative Todd Book
77 S. High Street
11th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215-6111
(614) 466-2124
Email: Contact Todd Book

Senator Tom Niehaus
Senate Building, Room 220
Second Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
(614) 466-8082
Email: Contact Tom Niehaus

Homily for the Baptism of my Daughter and Grandson

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.

For many of our Christian brothers and sisters, the Church has always been in the business of proclaiming rules and righteousness. This is not the Good News – not the Gospel. Robert Farrar Capon, an Episcopal priest and theologian, taught me a long time ago that the Good News is that Jesus came to find the lost and raise the dead. Period. He did not come to reward the rewardable, improve the improvable, or correct the correctible; he came simply to be the resurrection and the life of those who will take their stand on a death he can use instead of on a life he cannot. The Church, then, should be in the business of proclaiming mystery and grace.

Today on Trinity Sunday, we celebrate one of the deepest of those mysteries – the mystery of the Trinity. I have good news for you today, pun intended, and that news is that I'm not going to wear you out with a long systematic theological explication of this mystery; I'm only going to give you a very short experiential theological understanding of the Trinity so we can get on with celebrating another mystery – the mystery of Baptism, the experience of going through the waters of Baptism along with my grandson, Jackson, and my daughter, Jennifer.

First, the Trinity. While we may be able to grasp intellectually the idea of the Trinity, an experiential understanding of it is more elusive. The idea that there are three persons but only one substance is just too weird. For four thousand years, more or less, people (and not just Christians) have recognized the experience of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. That experience is given to us in the first three verses of the Book of Genesis. In the words of the holy translation by Robert Alter, "When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God's breath hovering over the waters, God said, 'Let there be light.' And there was light." It took another couple of thousand years before the Evangelist John gave expression to the experience of God the Son, when he wrote, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us."

The closest I can come to combining these experiences into an expression of the Trinity is to examine my own experience. And each of you can do the same. For example, I am, at the same time, a father and a son and a husband. (Now Becky might call that role as a husband a ghost, but probably not a holy ghost.) Many of you are fathers and sons and husbands, and many of the rest of you are mothers and daughters and wives. You already know from that experience that it is the same person who performs each of these functions, but it is also three very different people and they do very different things.

'nuff said directly about the Trinity, so let's go on to Baptism. But as you will see, Baptism is inextricably intertwined with the Trinity. Baptism is no less mysterious and we compound the mystery by baptizing in the name of mystery, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, because Baptism is a Trinitarian action. In the very first chapter of Mark's Gospel, John the Baptist tells us, "I baptized you with water; but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

For way too long many of us have thought of Baptism as something we do by which we purchase forgiveness of sin, by which we purchase salvation. You've heard the question; you've probably been asked the question, "Have you been saved?" If you answer, "Yes," then the next question is likely to be "When?" If you then answer, "I was saved at the creation of the world," or "I was saved when Jesus died on the cross," or even "I was saved when I was baptized as a baby," the reply is likely to be, "Oh that doesn't count. You need to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior as an adult, confess your sins, repent of them and be baptized by immersion before it counts." With respect, that is simply wrong.

Baptism is a sacrament, not a transaction, not a deal we make to hoodwink God into giving us a salvation that He otherwise wouldn't have. In Baptism, we celebrate, we sacramentalize, that which we already have. In the catechism of the Book of Common Prayer, a sacrament is described as the "outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace." This means that all sacraments are subsequent to the act of God. We receive the grace first, we celebrate it later.

As far as Jesus is concerned, and the Parable of the Prodigal Son is the most obvious proof, everything we do is subsequent to the act of God. In the far country the prodigal realizes he is in trouble. He is starving, so he cooks up this plan to go home and apologize to his father in the hope that his father will turn him into a hired hand. He knows he is dead as a son, but hopes that he can at least get a job and eat. As he comes down the road with his eyes cast down to his feet, his father runs out to greet him and embraces him before he can even say a word. He had been lost and has been found; he had been dead and has been brought back to life; he is guilty but he is forgiven. And it is only then that he can truly confess.

All real confession is subsequent to forgiveness. All true repentance is subsequent to forgiveness. Only when, like the prodigal, we are finally confronted with the unqualified gift of someone who died, in advance, to forgive us, no matter what, can we see that we have nothing to do with getting ourselves forgiven. Neither confession nor baptism is a transaction, a negotiation in order to secure forgiveness; they are the after-the-last gasp of a corpse that finally can afford to admit it's dead and then accept resurrection. Forgiveness surrounds us, beats upon us all our lives; we confess only to wake ourselves up to what we already have.

Every confession a Christian makes bears witness to this, because every confession, public or private, and every absolution, specific or general, is made and given subsequent to the one baptism we receive for the forgiveness of sins. We are forgiven in baptism not only for sins committed before baptism but for a whole lifetime of sins yet to come. We are forgiven before, during and after our sins. And we are forgiven for one reason only: because Jesus died for our sins and rose for our justification. And that happened before our baptism and we had nothing to do with it.

The sheer brilliance of the retention of infant baptism by a large portion of the church catholic is manifest most of all in the fact that babies can do absolutely nothing to earn, to accept or to believe in forgiveness; the church, in baptizing them, simply declares that they have it. We are not forgiven because we made ourselves forgivable, because we said or did the correct things or even because we had faith; we are forgiven solely because there is a Forgiver who wills to forgive. And our one baptism for the forgiveness of sins remains the life-long sacrament, the premier sign of that fact. No subsequent forgiveness – no Eucharist, no confession – is ever anything more than an additional sign of what baptism sacramentalizes. Nothing new is ever done, either by us or by God, to achieve anything. It was all done, once and for all, by the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world – by the one God in the Person of the Word incarnate in Jesus.

We may be unable, as the prodigal was, to believe it until we finally see it; but the God who does it, just like the father who forgave the prodigal, never once had anything else in mind.

Amen.

Homily for the Mass of Christian Burial for Mary Curnutte

This morning we had two baptisms. This afternoon we have a funeral. We have completed the circle of the Christian life. There is something fulfilling about that. Several people have come up to me in the last couple of weeks and said, “This has been a rough year for you, losing both parents in the same year.” While there is some truth to that, in many other ways, this has been one of the best years I’ve ever had. My older daughter, Jennifer, and her husband, John, are going to be having a baby in the middle of March. My younger daughter, Kyla, is starting to make her own life and career at Ohio State. My business has picked up much momentum. My health is hanging in there. So it is true that “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the sun. A time to be born and a time to die; a time to mourn and a time to dance ... and even at the grave, we make our song.”

At my father’s funeral in January, Father Tom Miles, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan, Kansas, said something that has stuck with me. He said that part of the process of dealing with grief and loss is to tell the stories. By telling the stories of those who have died, we keep them alive; as long as we are telling their stories, they are still with us. It is through these stories that “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.” So I must tell some of my mother’s story.

Mom was born here in Portsmouth, baptized here at All Saints, confirmed here at All Saints and married here at All Saints. Her family had been members of this parish for almost as long as it had been a parish. When my dad got out of the Navy at the end of World War II, we moved to Columbus so he could get his Ph.D. from Ohio State. In 1953, he took a job as Professor of Physics at Kansas State University and stayed there his entire career. After Dad retired, Mom and Dad stayed in Manhattan until he died. I moved Mom back here to Hillview Health Care then. She was wheelchair bound and there was no question about leaving her alone 850 miles from us.

Mom was the original disciplinarian. At least she was with me – not so much with my younger brother, Greg. I think she was that way because of her older brother, Bill Lukemire. He had been a pretty wild child and she was determined that her sons would not be. Mom and Bill’s mother remarked more than once that she would count her life a success if she could just keep him out of reform school. Mom had that same determination; she wasn’t going to raise two savages like her brother.

She was athletic and feisty when she was young. One day when I was in first grade, I rode the school bus home even though my school was only a couple of blocks from home and I had always walked. I had a friend who lived out in the country and who always rode the bus. That day I decided to ride with him. When the bus driver got to the end of his route, he had an extra passenger he didn’t know what to do with. When he finally got me home, it was 5 or 6 o’clock and I should have been there by 2:30 or 3:00. Those of you who are mothers will understand that as the bus pulled up in front of the house, Mom came running out and smothered me with hugs as mothers are prone to do. But then she told me to get in the house because I was going to get a spanking. I said something like, “You’re going to have to catch me first,” and took off running down the sidewalk. Guess what … yes, she caught me.

Another time back when my brother and I still shared a room – I must have been about 12 and he would have been about 6 – she had been after us for a long time to clean up our room. In the way of boys that age, our priority for that chore was pretty low because we knew where everything was and we didn’t understand the problem. But she had finally had enough, so she marched into our room, stripped all the sheets off the bed and threw them in the middle of the floor, took all the drawers out of the chests and turned them upside down on top of the sheets, cleaned all our books and toys off the shelves and took all the clothes out of the closet and threw them in the middle of the floor. Then she took one of our hockey sticks, stirred it all up and said, “NOW … clean it up!”

Mom was a very protective mother with me. When I was young, I often wanted to go hunting with my friends who lived on farms and hunted. That never happened until I was grown and gone. She would never have had a gun in the house. When I was 14, I wanted a motorcycle so much that I could taste it. I think her answer to that request was something like, “Not only no, but hell no.” The interesting thing is that once I left home, my brother was able to do all the things I had not been able to do and had all the things I wasn’t allowed to have. When I complained to my dad about the injustice of that, he smiled and said, “What can I say? Greg had experienced parents. You didn’t.”

Mom and Dad had one of those marriages that could be a model for us all. They truly enjoyed being with each other, and they were together from the time they started dating in high school until Dad died almost 63 years after they were married, a span of nearly 70 years. In my whole life, I never heard them fight. They did have some spirited discussions, but they never screamed at each other or called each other names. As they say now, they never disrespected each other.

One of those spirited discussions may have been after the “NOW … clean it up” episode, or it may have been the time Greg broke our fish aquarium and many gallons of water poured out on Mom’s Persian rug and my friend who had come over for lunch crawled out my bedroom window to avoid the fireworks. Mom and Dad were in the living room reviewing what had happened that day as they almost always did and I was in bed listening in. In those days I could hear a cat walking on carpet in the next room. Now I can’t hear anything much quieter than a jet engine. Anyway … I heard my Dad’s soft voice saying something that I couldn’t understand. Then my mother said, considerably louder, “And I suppose you think I overreacted. They’re still alive, aren’t they?”

Somewhere along the line, Mom contracted neuropathy. Neuropathy is an insidious condition that creeps up on you and steals your freedom and independence. In Mom’s case, it started in her legs and affected her balance. The first time I suspected something was wrong was probably 20 years ago. Becky and Jennifer and I were visiting Mom and Dad in Manhattan. We had gone out to play golf. Mom was standing on a green that sloped gently downhill, lining up her putt and just fell over backwards. She jumped right back up, but I thought that something wasn’t right. Over the years, her balance got worse and her legs got weaker until she was finally wheelchair bound probably 10 years ago.

Mom was also a musician, and a good one. She had attended the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music until she quit to marry Dad when he graduated from the Naval Academy. The neuropathy affected her hands and eventually she could no longer play the piano or the classical guitar, instruments she dearly loved. She also began to get very hard of hearing, a disability that her vanity wouldn’t let her deal with until it was almost too late to correct. Probably 20 years ago, Mom and Dad, my family and Greg’s family were vacationing together in Hawaii. Becky and my brother’s wife, Lauren, decided to be helpful and tell Mom that she really ought to get hearing aids. That intervention didn’t go over very well, and it was only 5 years ago or so that my Dad finally convinced her.

When Dad finally died, if Mom had been able to get out and about, visit her friends, play bridge, go to concerts and visit her grandchilden, she would have been able to work through her grief. But she was now a prisoner in a body she no longer knew and could no longer love. She was ready to go with Dad. She had had enough, but I think she stayed here for Greg and me. But when she had a stroke the weekend of October 10, that was just about the last straw. The stroke affected her speech and her swallowing. She started to aspirate everything that was in her mouth and that led to pneumonia.

She and Dad had Advanced Directives that made it very clear what kind of medical intervention they were willing to accept and what they weren’t. When Dr. Bonzo told me that to turn her around, we would have to suction her lungs, probably multiple times, put her on a CPAP machine or perhaps even a ventilator and maybe insert a feeding tube, I knew Mom would be horrified. I said, “No, just make her comfortable.” Dr. Bonzo said Mom probably had two days left. Before I left to get supper at 6:30 that evening, I gave her a hug and a kiss and told her, “If you’re ready to go, it’s OK.” She was gone in less than two hours.

Many of the very things that made Mom who she was, some of which we’ve been laughing about affectionately, became a really heavy burden of guilt for her. In her later days, she began to think she had treated me and Greg and Dad badly. We, of course, had long ago recognized that she was not perfect, but we also recognized that whatever she had done was out of love for us. That was what was important to us. Her obsession reminds me of the story about two monks, one who was old and wise, and one who was young and just starting the monastic life. The order they belonged to was one that didn’t allow them to touch women. In fact, it didn’t even allow them to talk to women. One day they were walking from one monastery to another when they came to a waist-deep stream they needed to cross. On the bank of the stream was a young woman obviously very distressed. The older monk took pity on her and asked her what was wrong. She said, “I need to cross this stream, but I can’t swim.” Without hesitation, the older monk picked her up, carried her across the stream, set her down on the other side, wished her a good day and continued his walk down the road. The younger monk was outraged and nagged the older one all the rest of the day, saying, “I can’t believe you spoke to that woman. It’s completely against the rules of the order. And then you not only touched her, you actually picked her up and carried her across the stream. It’s just outrageous.” That evening, when the monks had reached their destination and were ready to go to bed, the younger one was still nagging. The older monk looked at him and said, “You know, I put that woman down miles and miles ago. Why are you still carrying her?”

Mom carried guilt like that. It got to the point that when my Dad died, she was almost inconsolable. She couldn’t understand how Dad and Greg and I could love her. I finally had to do an intervention and told her, “Dad and Greg and I love you with no strings attached. We know you weren’t perfect, but we know that we weren’t perfect either. Since you seem to need this, we now formally forgive you for anything you feel guilty about. But you need to forgive us for our sins too.” I should have done that a long time ago; she didn’t obsess about it anymore.
So if there is a lesson to be drawn from Mom’s life which I can share with you, it is this. If you are carrying heavy burdens of guilt or of grudges, set them down. Let them go. Ask forgiveness from anyone you have injured and grant forgiveness to anyone who asks you for it. That includes you yourself. As the lesson from Lamentations that we just listened to says, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning.” Jesus later commanded us to show that same mercy to each other and to ourselves.

So, Mom, now go with God. As our Gospel lesson from John told us, Jesus went and prepared a place for you. He has now come again and taken you to himself, so that where he is, there you may be also.

Amen.

In Memoriam - Mary Leet Lukemire Curnutte

Mary Leet Lukemire Curnutte, 84, of Portsmouth, Ohio, a former Manhattan, Kansas, resident, died October 16, 2008 at Hillview Health Care in Portsmouth.

She was born December 2, 1923, in Portsmouth to the late Ruben Burnett and Maria Louise Small Lukemire.

Mary was a retired music teacher, having taught harp, piano, and classical guitar. She received a Bachelor of Music Education from Kansas State University, and she had attended the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. She was a member of All Saints Episcopal Church in Portsmouth, and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan. She was also a member of P. E. O. (the Philanthropic Educational Organization).

Her husband, Basil Curnutte, Jr., whom she married June 10, 1945, in Portsmouth, preceded her in death Jan. 22, 2008.

Surviving are two sons, William B. (Becky) Curnutte of West Portsmouth, Ohio, and Gregory M. (Lauren) Curnutte of Tigard, Oregon; and four grandchildren, Jennifer Anne (John) Dvorak of Hilliard, Ohio, Kyla Jordan Curnutte of Columbus, Ohio, Shannon Joanne (Sean) Henry of Portland, Oregon, and Erin Margaret Curnutte of Tigard, Oregon.

Also preceding her in death were two brothers, William and Nelson Lukemire; and a grandson, Kyle Curnutte.

A memorial service will be held at 1 pm Sunday, October 26 at All Saint’s Episcopal Church in Portsmouth with Rev. Jeffrey Queen officiating. Memorial services will be held at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan at a later date with inurnment in St. Paul’s Columbarium. Arrangements are under the direction of the Ralph F. Scott Funeral Home in Portsmouth.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made the All Saints Rector’s Discretionary Fund at All Saints Episcopal Church in Portsmouth.

Grace and the Trinity

For a very long time, an idea, a concept, a notion has been gestating so far below the surface that I didn’t realize what was happening. It took my youngest daughter’s 18th birthday and a bit of excellent Kentucky Bourbon to let it break free like the creature in the movie, Alien. The idea is, as best as I can verbalize it, that grace, like the Trinity, is a concept almost beyond understanding and explanation. Further, that our inability to grasp it is largely responsible for the generally horrible way we treat each other.

This notion is going to change the way I write on this blog. I have been guilty of hoarding God’s grace. I have been guilty of ridiculing those people who disagree with me theologically. I repent. That doesn’t mean I won’t still talk about how we disagree. But it does mean that I won’t ridicule them. There is a chance that I’m wrong, although I don’t believe it. But it’s God’s call, not mine.

“God shed His grace on thee.” In the case of humanity, God did more than that. God took a container of grace and inundated us with it like suddenly turning a bucket of ice-cold water upside down over our heads. Not only that, but God continues to do it on a regular basis – so regular that we can’t catch our breath.

When my youngest turned 18 yesterday (and is about to head off to college next week), it dawned on me that I have two daughters whose lives are richer than anything I had a right to expect. And richer than I can claim any responsibility for. So who is responsible? I choose to believe that God is. Someone else might call it luck or kismet or the way the ball bounces. Whatever. That’s disingenuous, but I understand. Sure, I love them, but love doesn’t always raise successful children. Sure, they worked hard to get where they are, but I didn’t, and they didn’t, give themselves the ability to work hard. It just came from nowhere, right? No, God shed his grace on them. And me.

In the eight months since my father died, I have often thought about how my feelings must be like his were. He was always proud of me, even when my accomplishments didn’t call for much pride. And trust me; they often fell short of that. He was proud of me because he loved me like God loves all of God’s children. The only requirement God has is that we are his/her children. And that covers all of us. It doesn’t matter what sex we are, or what race, or what nationality, or what sexual orientation, or – dare I say it – what creed. It only matters that we are God’s children and that God loves us.

Unfortunately, sibling rivalry raises its ugly head. We just can’t grasp the fact that God’s grace is a bottomless well. We are so jealous when we think one of our brothers or sisters has received a touch more grace than we have. We grasp it so tightly that we smother it. God forbid that someone else should get more than we do. Oops … who forbids it?

In one of his parables, Jesus asks which one of us, having 100 sheep, and finding one missing, wouldn’t leave the 99 to go search for the one. Well, the answer to that question is that NONE of us would. Not if we were in the sheep raising business. You don’t leave 99 sure things to the dangers of the world to go hunt for one questionable sheep that is most likely dead. But God does. There’s the deal. God does the outrageous, the unimaginable, the silly, the stupid. And God bids us do likewise. It’s so crazy; it’s so beyond belief that we can’t believe it. We can’t imagine it, therefore we can’t accept it.

You know, we really need to get over ourselves.

Is there a wideness in God’s mercy?

There's a wideness in God's mercy
like the wideness of the sea;
there's a kindness in his justice,
which is more than liberty.
There is welcome for the sinner,
and more graces for the good;
there is mercy with the Savior;
there is healing in his blood.

There is no place where earth's sorrows
are more felt than in heaven;
there is no place where earth's failings
have such kind judgment given.
There is plentiful redemption
in the blood that has been shed;
there is joy for all the members
in the sorrows of the Head.

For the love of God is broader
than the measure of man's mind;
and the heart of the Eternal
is most wonderfully kind.
If our love were but more faithful,
we should take him at his word;
and our life would be thanksgivingf
or the goodness of the Lord.

Most of the time, I want to believe the words of this hymn. Most of the time, I do believe the words of this hymn. But there are times when it makes me want to throw up. Thursday before last was one of those days, and there have been several since.

My mom and dad sold their condominium and moved to an assisted living apartment five or six years ago when the work of being her full-time caretaker got to be too much for my dad. Mostly it was the transfers from bed to wheelchair to couch to shower that went beyond his strength. When he was 50, he could have picked her up bodily, but now he was in his late 70s.

Her peripheral neuropathy finally progressed to the point that even an assisted living apartment wasn’t enough. My mom had to move to the healthcare section (read nursing home) of the facility where they lived. They both hoped the move would be temporary, but it wasn’t. Peripheral neuropathy was complicated by incontinence and increasing dementia, and she became a permanent resident. So then dad would go down to her room and have the aides put her in a wheelchair so he could take her up to his apartment. Then he would transfer her to the sofa so they could listen to music or watch television. In the process of one of those transfers, they both fell. My dad broke his hip and my mother broke her wrist.

My father died in January. He was my mother’s anchor to the present. Without him there every waking moment, her dementia worsened rapidly. With her in Kansas, my brother in Portland and me here in Ohio, that situation couldn’t last. I have been trying for three months to get a place for her here. That finally came to pass last week and she had a going away party at the facility in Kansas before the transport company picked her up at 8 p.m. The reasoning behind that decision was that she could sleep much of the 14-hour trip.

At her going away party, she was upbeat and looking forward to being back here with her family. At 11:30 the next morning, things had changed. She knew who she was, but she had forgotten everything else. She was fit to be tied, furious, manic. Her neuropathy has left her physically very frail, and about the only weapons she has left are words. She was using them liberally with the folks at the new facility. At one point, she yelled at me, “I hate you, you son of a bitch!” I think she meant it at that point. Words are sometimes more hurtful weapons than swords.

If she asked me once, she asked me a hundred times, “Did Basil die?” She raised me to believe that honesty is the best, actually the only, policy. So I would tell her, “Yes.” Then she would ask, “When did that happen?” When I told her, “Three months ago,” she asked, “Why didn’t anybody tell me?” or “Why did you wait so long to tell me?” Now I find out that honesty isn’t necessarily the best approach with people who have dementia. After things began to sink in, then she started to ask, “Am I crazy?” My answer to that was, of course, “No.” I didn’t elaborate on that answer though, because how do you distinguish between “crazy” and “suffering from a little dementia” to someone who is?

So where is the wideness in God’s mercy here? I’m really looking and I want to find it, but I can’t. It is making me testy and cranky. Having to deal with something like this is one reason I have so little patience with folks who think the world’s problems revolve around having women for bishops and gay people for priests. They don't know what real problems are. There are much more important things to concern ourselves with than that. There are worse things than death; why should I care about the gender or sexual orientation of clergy? Sheesh! Give me a break.

My mother was good enough to give me birth. She was good enough to nurse me and change my diapers. She was good enough to teach me how to be a good person. My failure to live up to the ideal was my fault, not hers. She was good enough to be my dad’s life-long companion. She’s not good enough for a holy end-of-life?

Where is that wideness?

Who knew?

I'm tired of being serious. How about a little fun? I took the test linked to here, and I'm a Labrador Retriever. Wow! Who knew? From the description of Labs over on dogster.com, it says:

Labradors are people-oriented dogs, always ready for a jog around the neighborhood, a strenuous hike or an endless game of fetch. Labs are reliable, willing and patient. They love nothing more than activity and attention. Lacking many personality pitfalls, Labs are not especially aggressive, territorial, whiny, sulky or destructive. Labs are easily trained, being naturally patient and obedient, but they are probably not the best guard dogs. Despite an alert instinct and an excellent sense of smell, they tend to be more friendly than aggressive with people they don’t know. Also, Labs are not particularly noisy, barking only at unknown sounds, yet they’ll often bark protectively when someone approaches your home. Around the house, Labs are animated and good-natured, playing well with children and other dogs. They like to be involved in family occasions, joining social gatherings in an easygoing way, and they are pretty good about sharing and respecting space.

Sounds like me to me.

Visited by Anonymous

I used to think that Anonymous was nothing more than a gutless wonder. The day before yesterday, however, I found out who Anonymous really is. Anonymous is not an individual, but is, rather, a family. The patriarch is John Doe; the matriarch is Jane Doe. For years, they have been able to hide the fact that they are brother and sister, not husband and wife. As is usually the case with incestuous hook-ups, their offspring are transmogrifying into drooling swamp things, freelance racists, misogynists, homophobes and brownshirts in clerical collars.

Until the day before yesterday, I had a post on this blog about one of my clients. Then Anonymous visited three times and threatened both my client and me because of the content of the post. I'm not very worried about myself because if you try to get something from someone who has nothing, that's pretty much what you get. I would never intentionally cause problems for any of my clients however, so I took the post down.

My client is a religious organization. (Don't ask which one; if I told you, it would out Anonymous. Don't ask who Anonymous is; if I told you, they wouldn't be anonymous anymore, now would they?) Anonymous has a theological bone to pick with my client (and with me for that matter). Anonymous's theology happens to be all about "correct" belief and "correct" practice, whatever "correct" means. I guess Anonymous doesn't think it would be politic, polite or practical to discuss those differences in public, so they hide behind the curtain of nondisclosure and, well, anonymity.

Their theology of right belief and practice is a hard, judgmental and unforgiving one. That kind of theology is our form of incest in these times. It is our idolatry and our insanity. Legalism is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, but I will anyway, that by "legalism" I mean a theology that puts itself above Christ and above the principles of love of God and neighbor. Legalism is not a loving interest in the body of Christ that is concerned with everyone’s spiritual and physical welfare; it is an overriding obsession with its own power over other people. Just as the love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s own theology that is not part of one’s love for the body of Christ is not love, but is, rather, idolatry.

An anonymous collective, left to its own devices, quickly builds a theology out of rage and hate. Those who oppose this theology will be eliminated. Enemies of this theology are to be dealt with swiftly and severely. Anonymous does not forgive. Anonymous does not forget. Anonymous is devoid of humanity, morality, pity and mercy. Anonymous works as one, because none of us are as cruel as all of us. Anonymous cannot be harmed, no matter how many Anonymous may fall in battle. Anonymous is a hydra, constantly moving, constantly changing. Remove one head, and ten replace it. Anonymous reinforces its ranks exponentially at need.

Anonymous is legion.

The Annual Scholarship Program of the Kiwanis Club of Portsmouth and the Portsmouth East Key Club

The Kiwanis Club of Portsmouth, Ohio, part of the world-wide Kiwanis service organization, is made up of men and women who desire personal involvement in the leadership and improvement of the Portsmouth community.

This club performs local community service with a special emphasis on assistance to youth. It is this special interest in area youth that motivated the club to initiate a scholarship fund that provides an annual scholarship to deserving area students.

Since its founding in 1921, this club has been serving the Portsmouth area. From that time, its motto has been, "We Build," and in this tradition it seeks to assist, in yet another way, "to build" for the future and for the betterment of individual and community.

The Kiwanis Scholarship is awarded each year by the Kiwanis Club of Portsmouth to qualified and deserving high school graduates of Scioto County schools who want to pursue coursework leading to a degree at Shawnee State University. The scholarship provides total funding of up to $1,000 during the first academic year that is paid directly to Shawnee State University on a semester basis.

To be eligible to apply for the scholarship a student must meet the following conditions:

1. The applicant must be a member of the graduating class in the year in which the award is presented.
2. The applicant must reside in and be attending high school in Scioto County, Ohio.
3. The applicant must rank scholastically in the top one-third of his or her graduating class.
4. The applicant must be sincerely interested in a degree at Shawnee State University.

For more information, or to apply for this scholarship, go to the Kiwanis Scholarships page of the website for the Kiwanis Club of Portsmouth, Ohio. The application must be postmarked by April 30.

Groundhog Day

Ever since my father died, my mother has been stuck in this endless loop. Like Phil Connors in the movie, Groundhog Day, she seems cursed to live a day over and over. For her, however, it is not Groundhog Day; it is the day of my father's death. Because of things I have been through, I've been guilty of shooting off my mouth and saying that God does not do these tragic things to us, but that, through his grace, God can take the most horrible thing that ever happened to you and turn it into a blessing. No matter how hard I look, I can't find this blessing in this situation.

Because of peripheral neuropathy, my mother can't walk. That fact confines her to a nursing home facility. She also has short-term memory issues. When my father was alive, he would go down from his assisted-living apartment to her room in the health care ward. They are in the same building. He would go down there right after he had breakfast and would stay there until she was ready for bed in the evening. If she took a nap during the middle of the day, he would take care of himself then. While he was with her, he was her anchor in the present.

Mom has good days and bad days. On her good days she sits with other residents of the court where she lives and talks as much as is possible with her hearing loss. She sometimes gets involved in activities the staff puts together. On bad days, she stays in her room and cries, asking, "Where is Basil? Why hasn't he come down to see me today?" Then someone on the staff has to tell her that he died, starting her grief all over again at square one.

Where can the blessing possibly be in something like this? In Groundhog Day, Connors faces the same sort of thing but in a much less devastating sort of way. Eventually he gets sick and tired of it so he kidnaps Punxsutawney Phil, hoping that if he kills him, the cycle will stop. After a police chase, he drives a stolen truck into a quarry, killing both himself and the groundhog in a fiery explosion. But even death doesn't stop the day from repeating. After he dies, he simply wakes up in the same old bed listening to Sonny & Cher. He knows he's living the day over again; my mother doesn't. If she killed herself, it would break the loop, but where is the justice in that?

Where is the justice in any of this? Yeah, I know, "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding." Well, I don't have understanding. That's the whole point and a smart-ass answer doesn't help a thing.