The Weekend

If I started a new religion, it would worship the first flowers of spring. Well, that and babies. 

We invited some friends for dinner last night. I love having people over--and Francisco is the perfect co-host. This year has started well in terms of hosting. I think I've said this before in this space, but--I really never fail to be fascinated that Blaze is both the shyest person in our family (hiding under the cushions when the guests arrive) and the totally most outgoing--he forced our guests to help him with his snap circuit creations and complained when he finished dinner early and no one was playing with him. 

Our friends will be moving at the end of the semester. And this work friend is just irreplaceable. I have worked closely with him for the last several years--he has always respected my input and provided just totally invaluable feedback. And always supported me as a person over everything else. At a meeting lately, we multiple times communicated through eye contact and immediately knew what the other person was saying. I guess the only option is for me to try to be that to someone else. 

I made shrimp stew with white beans and leeks. We served it with bread and salad. Followed up with store-bought strawberry pie. Think I was showing my Pennsylvania summer picnic roots there--it wasn't fancy, but I guess I have to say I really stand by it. 

 

I'm feeling politically low: a friend has been advised not to leave her house due to politics. I met her this week and she--the most positive and good and Christian person I've ever met--sobbed. She is not able to even attend mass. I asked the priest about taking communion to her and others in this situation. His response was simply that this probably isn't allowed--with no expression of empathy for someone in her situation. 

How the f**k are you a priest whose job is to bring Christ to his people in the eucharist who expresses no care at all for a parishioner in this situation. I think of Graham Greene's Power and the Glory and I would rather be the priest with all kind of awful faults than the priest who abandons his people in pain. (I understand he may actually not be allowed to take communion to people outside of certain circumstances--and I would spend time advocating against any policy that prohibits this, if it exists--but how can you, as a priest, not start with concern for the person in pain?) I'm so tired of this priest who believes he always knows best, who is more motivated by political talking points than by personal suffering. 

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Also: I find this Trump policy--that ICE can arrest undocumented people in churches, schools, and hospitals--pure evil. This is a way of saying that undocumented people ought not have the basic human dignity to worship God.

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Also: I oppose abortion. And I have a new personal policy, coming out of mass this morning where some people standing beside an empty basket filled with a white baby blanket were handing out very creepy black roses: I refuse to think, pray, philosophize about abortion without thinking about both the very vulnerable baby at risk of abortion and the also-vulnerable mother. Pregnancy is a very particular relationship in which a mother and a child are connected and in which a child is totally dependent on the mother. We've got to philosophize with this specific case in mind--there's no detached mother; there's no detached child.