Eternal Love

http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_5180263

This Lenten season I am devoted to fighting for better healthcare for all families, particularly the children, teens, and adults I grew up with who suffered terrible abuses in private that were caused by the illnesses of others around them, without us having any recourse (besides the systems of Child Welfare and Foster Care, two horrors I would never submit to, nor would any of my native New York friends), which means I won't be doing the exact same type of pilgrimage as those of you who frequent church, but you still have to go. Sorry, though not very much so, because that's the deal: I take on the world, you take on our faith. This covenant extends to our entire faith, as well as those of you who have remained our dear faithful around the world. You are not alone.

In addition to today's message of hope, love, and mercy (during Our Most Holy Father in Rome's aptly titled "Year of Mercy"*, a time of great reconciliation and forgiveness for all of us, worldwide), I wanted to share some fun facts with you, too. We don't just work hard. We also work hard to enjoy each others company as well, both in celebration of St. Valentine's** legacy of eternal glory through love, and our continued recognition of the weekly Sabbath, as necessary breaks from our labors, so ordained for us to maintain our balance with communal care.

During my almost daily acts as a publisher, I scan through thousands and thousands of images. In my expertise, you learn to see the truth behind a great image that's immediately recognizable as art, and then you see all the rest. For a time, I "pinned" the ones I liked onto a public board for all of you to enjoy, until that application stopped the practice, intimidated as they are by the image-makers who make it great. It came to a head one afternoon for me, when I came upon the strikingly beautiful image of a native Indo-European boy from a prominent New York tribe. I did the customary actions I usually did with that software, went back to my home screen and POOF! He was gone. I mean, his image wasn't there for me and my subscribers to see.

I began a protracted and deliberately frustrating online chat with their "IT" support, along with the other users who complained about this big change in their successful company practices thus far. My subscribers could only see the image if they "liked" the category subfolder I placed it in, but the beauty and symmetry behind my purposefully and excellently designed stream of images on my home page that was done with my expert eye was gone, and that's what did it in for them with me. They couldn't find anyone better to design "their" advertising-sponsored boards that they wanted to re-route my audience to, hijacked as they were by far better talents than they, as a group of computer programmers and "webbies", will ever be. I knew it was done with a timing that speaks to both a love and a prejudice that hasn't died with the ages, enmeshed as he and I are in this timelessness.

I went on the warpath after that, furiously complaining and writing about their exposed hack onto our boards designed with "their" software, in this petty show of envy that hasn't dulled with time. C'est la vie. The image I was drawn to of a pair of lovers buried together will endure long after trendy social media apps come-and-go with an amazingly quick frequency in our fast human time that is dwarfed by both geological and universal time. After a while, it became irrelevant in the face of my daily life, a forgotten social footnote that probably won't make design history like I will, so who are they? They are no one to you and I because here we are together again, and that's what counts.

Besides, sexiness is found in far more places than some obscure image app, and heart-shapes mean way more than some bland teenager's cartoon emoticon easily placed but devoid of any real meaning. Care to dicker with my assertions? Oh, please do! It's what every parent lives for; schooling kids who know a lot less. See it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_%28symbol%29. "Happy Hearts" to you and your loved ones this holiday weekend made for love, because in any century or time, love is always the greatest answer you can have as a human being. Love is the key.

*  http://wwwmigrate.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/how-we-teach/new-evangelization/jubilee-of-mercy/ **  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Valentine 

Trail of Tears

http://bit.ly/1OtyMcW

I heard about a lot of holocausts growing up in the New York area: the killings during World War II (naturally), which led to my schoolmate's telling of her family's Armenian genocide, but the only story of mine I knew was in a book, albeit infamous epic form*. The grandeur and longing for home and love is something that never leaves you, even when my family left it out of family gatherings, the way my parents hinted at darker histories by naming our cousins "Dark Irish"; an apt way to describe the twin horrors of deliberate starvation through The Potato Famine** in Ireland, and the marking of Métis children by the darker color of their eyes, which must have sank a pit the size of the Atlantic Ocean in both of my parents' stomachs. Who would see it? Would they know the story? Who can they tell the knowing of it all? What would happen to us, in any time period, given the collected badness of centuries past?

And so they sank it way down deep below, like a hidden headdress fitted for a beautiful little girl, or a pair of handmade Baptismal moccasins that may be tucked away forever; two sharp shooting pains forever felt by burying it within, like a treasure chest to be discovered by someone strong enough to survive its' telling. And so I leave it to you to gather up all of our fallen tears, on a trail that leads the way back home, through a river journey I can feel like the wetness shed by the cries of so many parents who felt their beloved ripped out of their arms, in an act of murder so painful***, I can't really wrap my entire consciousness around it, let alone take on the pain of a mother and father who did nothing wrong in G-d's eyes but love each other willingly and with open hearts (http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/11204).

Today I give thanks to the loving qualities we have present in our free society, ones that many people have fought and died for. May we love each other always, with gladness in our hearts.

For My Beloved

 *     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangeline
**    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_%28Ireland%29
***  http://bit.ly/1QmerFQ

Like Water for Chocolate

http://barkthins.com/

I had a really weird day this week. During the morning, I saw the most beautiful movie I've ever seen (http://vimeo.com/38263988), and then I went food shopping in an insanely large grocery store. It was like a lesson in opposites from "Up High": this great, perfect beauty followed by lots of bad sh#t in triplicate lining every friggin' grocery shelf. 

I sought some comfort because I felt lonely away from my Brothers in Christ shown in the movie, and I'm also forever in mourning for my grandparents, people who shared a deep abiding faith in The Lord, and all the earthly delights as they happen everyday in nature (life philosophies and a real happiness that is rare). And so I went looking for them in the guise of my grandmother's recipe: a basic dessert (or so I thought) made of chocolate cake, whipped cream, and a jar of peaches preserved in a simple syrup, something we've enjoyed during wintertime when foods run scarce for many a year throughout the ages.

It was so hard, I thought I was going to cry. I couldn't find chocolate cake without reading an ingredients list that read like something written out by a mad scientist for some crazy project that never gets off the ground, and then I couldn't find real heavy cream without cancer-causing ingredients in them like Carrageenan and High Fructose Horseshit. I found a brand of preserved fruits in glass a few months back, so I put those peaches and pears in syrup in my basket, which made me feel slightly better (pear juice is a natural throat soother that elicits helpful, productive coughing: thanks to Dr. S in  Park Slope ;) But, I was starting to feel nauseous from the store's overheating with too many layers of clothes on, and lots of morbidly obese sick people with their bad energy and overloaded carts...it was too much.

What could I have for dessert? My time window was running out. Aha! How about chocolate? How bad can someone fuck that up? But...someone had. Package after package that I turned over to read listed high fructose this, and corn syrup that. No "cocoa" or "sugar" or "milk" or "cream". I felt like a monk, or my grandparents transported into the future, when everything is rotten and sick, like a "Soylent Green" fantasy gone wrong, until there it was; BarkThins. I turned it over, and there it was, too: the language that we speak to each other, in words easily understood, like childhood lessons we learned about good over evil, on a simple foodstuff package; words like "non-GMO" and "Free Trade Certified". The ingredients were the same type of words, too: real cocoa, and actual sugar cane. Yes! Score!! 

Later on, when I got home, munching on chocolate so good that it tasted like food I hadn't eaten in years; good, wholesome, rich, delicious chocolate, I looked at the package at little bit closer. 
And there it was, in black text on a light background, the name and address of the chocolatier in a town five minutes from the place my grandparents lived for many years, just a mere ten minute drive from the home in New City I grew up in Rockland County, New York. Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa. It was just what needed, exactly when I needed it, and that's just the type of love they always gave me: the really good stuff, of the kind that sustains you by lasting and being there whenever you need it, wherever you go.

Amen to you, on this winter day in 2015, from your beloved granddaughter who will always cherish, adore, and miss you. 
I honor you daily by not squandering the gifts you so lovingly gave 
to me, the first of which is this great lesson that so very many 
people miss: knowing the good from the bad. Amen.

Goodness, right here at home.