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forever

“Do you love me?” she asked.

“What?”

“Do you still love me even though I’m not cute like I was when I was young?”

“Do I still love you even though you’re ‘not cute’? Listen: I’ll love you when you’re old and wrinkled and gray. I’ll love you when you’re dust and bones. I’ll love you when you’re only dust. I’ll love you when you’re just part of the earth’s molten crust. I’ll love you when you’re burned up by the ancient red sun when it devours the earth. I’ll love you when you’re nothing but interstellar ashes. And in the final collapse of all that exists into the last inexorable black hole, I’ll still love you. Do I still love you even though you’re ‘not cute’? Hmph. My love for you isn’t as shallow as beauty

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Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

Kurt Vonnegut died of brain injuries sustained in a fall in 2007.

So it goes.

“Hi-ho,” say all the Literature profs, high school English teachers, and humanists.

“Hi-ho,” say the seven kids who call him Father: four natural from two wives, and three adopted from the family of his dead sister.

“Hi-ho,” say I, because I read Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, Deadeye Dick, Galapagos, and Bluebeard, over and over and over and over again. You can tell, can’t you?

Kurt Vonnegut was underneath Dresden when it was firebombed in 1945. He said it “was a work of art”.

The most important thing Kurt Vonnegut learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.

Kurt Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis in 1922.

After he was born, he imagined someone saying to him, “Hello, baby. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, baby, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, baby — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”

Before he was dead, he imagined that he said, “If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC”

So it goes.

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Święconka

[http://www.catholicculture.org/lit/activities/view.cfm?id=1064]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Saturday#Cultural_traditions]
[http://acweb.colum.edu/users/agunkel/homepage/easter/basketdia.html]

Bread shall be broken, with a lamb of pure butter.
A shank of meat shall be carved; let it be ham, in accordance with the New Covenant.
Horseradish with beets is bitter but reminds us of sweetness.
Eggs are new life; let the children decorate them in joyful colors.
Tasty sausages show us how bountiful are the world’s gifts.
Salt is an elemental component of our bodies and a direct connection with our origins in the primaeval chaos of the ocean.
A cheese is a very simple and humble food, and it shall be included as well, to our admonishment.
Now tomorrow we light the candles, pour the wine, and feast.

Our baskets which were blessed by the deacons of St. Brendan the Navigator Catholic Parish.

My mom’s basket … her first year participating in the blessing of the baskets.  Since when was my mom a Polish Catholic?!!?

Luke blesses his basket with his very presence.

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Holy Thursday Mass

I’m not Catholic, as most of you know. I’m a heathen, technically atheist. Woo hoo! Goat leggings tonight!

But seriously: nevertheless I, without any unease or sense of hypocrisy, attend Mass nearly weekly.  Tonight, however, was my first Holy Thursday Mass. Wow. Quite a moving and symbolic ceremony!

Our priest quoted Neil Peart during the homily. No, really.  “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”. The boys got that one. They like Rush, and they like church.

The austerity and lack of decoration was beautiful, with the altar laid bare. Our church is a beautiful, no, STRIKING, place. Different than any other Catholic church I’ve ever been in.  Very ancient in feel; not 1,000 years ago ancient. More like 1,800 years ago ancient.

The priests and deacons washed the parishioners’ feet, and I asked the boys, “Who is the servant and who is the master?”

Paul noticed the tabernacle was empty.  I pointed out to him, “We are all empty. Then in three days, the Tomb will be empty, but we will no longer be.” (Note: I said I was an atheist, not that I hadn’t studied Campbell and Jung.)

We did a full formal processional following the sacrament to the Place of Repose.  All the way around the parking lot and down past the grotto. In the dark. In the snow.  Rockin’.

The boys were confused but didn’t grumble too much.  I explained to them afterwards, “Were you unconfortable walking through the dark parking lot? Were you cold? Were you scared, unsure of what you were doing and where you were going?  Didn’t you just have to trust your parents that they knew what they were doing?  Well, then, now you’ve had a little taste of what a man named Jesus of Nazareth went through on a certain Thursday night a couple thousand years ago.” (Note: I said I was an atheist, not that I don’t believe in history).

I’m an atheist, but I’ve pretty much thrown my lot in on the side of the Christians, you know? I think at some point one needs to pick sides.

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