Babies and Mothers

A mother came in yesterday to talk about the marker of her baby who died thirty years ago.  Her grief was palpable.  She kept telling me that she and her husband did not have the money at the time to complete the marker and wanted to do so now.  She looked to me like any mother who wants the best for her babies, and who could just not do it at the time, but did her very best.  I could not find all the information we needed for all the details she wanted to know.  We will meet later.  I went out to search out the grave.  I am new and I need to learn the park, and I wanted to have some idea  what kind of marker I was dealing with.  I found it, along with the bouquet with a beautiful white ribbon.  I know the father did not come with her, and I know that the anniversary date was soon.  I cried for her, her baby and for the near loss of my own babies.  Some of the story I had not told my sweet husband until this morning because it was so terrible and scary and near bleak.  I am so grateful for my two boys, and my own life.  Had I had these babies a eighty years ago, I would not have survived the first and if I had, the second child would not have lived.  I live everyday with  miracles, gifts I do not deserve.  Peace to all mothers.

There's No Justice. There's Just Us

For a week or more I have had this little saying I read in a Canadian women's prison running through my head.  I used to think it was the women acting out and feeling sorry for themselves.  I think it would be easy to do in prison, sometimes I manage to do so without the benefit of being incarcerated.  I have been thinking that there really is not real justice when it comes to humans passing it out.  We are flawed and tend towards wanting to enslave each other in one way or another.  As Christians we hope in the justice of God knowing  it is a justice of love.  Sometimes I wonder if I could handle that.  If we follow Christ, we know that we are here to love each other.  I mean we are to love the person next to us, the one most immediate.  I am not always very good about that.  I tend to love the ones that are easy for me to love.  What I want to do is to love more boldly and love those who I find hard to love.  In that way, the world changes.  I do not believe we can change the world for the better, making people do things they do not want to do just because it makes our lives softer.  In a nutshell, there is not justice, there is just us.  All we have is each other, and we may as well try to love each other more if we want to change the world. 

Connected

This last week, I sat with no fewer than three families who had lost their loved ones.  I am amazed that my work  brings me into contact with people at such tender times in their lives.  On Friday, I led a funeral of a man who served for his country.  I am sorry to say, that while I have access to some of his military record, I had not found the time to read it.  I have no idea where he served to what he did.  What I do know is that the Navy sent out two of her men to attend the funeral and perform the full military honors due him.  I pulled up, and because I was the lead car, I was the first car my car was saluted.  I felt completely unworthy of it, and of course I am.  When have I risked my life for countless many who I do not even know and those yet unborn.  As I got out and waited for him to be carried out of the hearse, I was struck again that while this was a family event, all of us were touched in someway by this man and somehow that makes it a public event.  I stood there and thought of how all of us are connected in ways we do not even know and how we all belong to one another.  Every person is part of our lives in one way or another.  We are the same humanity, and our actions effect the lives of everyone on the planet.  This gives me pause.  I know I am responsible for my actions and I can not even begin to see what they do to those I have not met, and to those yet unborn.  May I keep getting back up, every time I fall.  May I learn to love and serve my brother I have yet to meet.  May my heart open to the possibilities of love. May I be peace.