This note from the girlchild greeted me on the dining table when I walked in the door last night, just after sunset. I was gone four days and three nights, far far away.

“I LOVE YOO BABA AND I OLSO WIHC YOO WR HER.” Or, to the trained eye: “I love you Baba and I also wish you were here.”

More travelogue to follow, after my kissey lips and my huggey arms have caught up with their several days’ kid deficit. I swear their vocabulary doubled and their limbs are twice as long since last I had a good bead on ‘em Thursday morning. They grow up so fast.

An ordinary ending to a day which began as many probably do, for many people, all over the world. Meaning, with the breathtakingly unexpected.  

As I watch my daughter dance after dinner to  Swan Lake, (here, Suite 4: Scene (White Swan), I know (again) how profoundly fortunate I am for the existence of her, of her brother, and of my beloved. Likewise I know they are fortunate for my continued existence.  I don’t tend to think my continued existence is predicated on a great deal more than chance.  But for that, so far, I am thankful.  There but for the grace of God.

The camera body and the lens I took this picture with are both on loan from a dear friend, who herself received them from a dear friend who had died of cancer with six short months’ notice.  Many get far less notice than that.  

Every day I look through Barbara’s lens at my children, and now (’til mine is fixed) I am holding Barbara’s body, too.  I have no idea what to do with that fact, but the symbolism is not lost on me.  At the very least, I try to appreciate the gift.  And what it reminds me of.  

After attending Barbara’s memorial, I wrote:

 I realize that death is, at the very least, camped out in a van across the street, eating donuts and sipping cheap coffee. More likely it’s sitting quietly in every room of the house, discreetly reading the paper, looking up from time to time to cast a watchful eye on the proceedings. Waiting for whomever, whenever.

This realization doesn’t make me more lugubrious. It makes me more loving. I don’t feel morbid; just mindful. And grateful.

Tonight, as I was tucking in my daughter, I added a new twist to the rhetorical question I constantly ask the kids.  

“How much do I love you?” I ask her.

“Sooooooo much,” she answers.  

“And how long will I love you?”

She pauses only as long as it takes for her eye to twinkle. “Forever!”

And I nod long and slow and serious. 

“Will you still remember me when you’re a star, Baba?”

And I nod again, long and slow, and also smile. “Absolutely.”  Which is the God’s honest truth. I know this for a fact.

She asks me how I know, and I tell her. “My mother lets me know,” I say. (“How?”) “I hear her here” — I touch my fingers to my temple — “and feel her here” — and I touch my palm to my heart.

Her eyes twinkle again, and she smiles wide, and says, “You’ll be the first star I see at night.”

It is hypothetical/magical to her, I imagine. Not so to me.  I continue to smile, and nod long and slow. One day, that star — the one which was once my mother to me, then my nephew; the one which to my daughter is our dear old dog, now gone – one day, that star will be me.  I try in my ways to prepare her, her brother, and my beloved for the breathtakingly unexpected (a task which forgetfulness makes Sisyphean). All I can really hope for, as Mary Oliver writes, is this:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was
a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.” 

 

This gay marriage = religious freedom argument was floating around in my head for a while (probably since I got trained for election day No on 8 work at a United Church of Christ church, or was fed election-day donuts there).  But it did not become vivid until I saw Rob Tish’s crisp, concise video presentation of the argument that  ”Gay Marriage = Religious Freedom.”  If you haven’t seen it yet, do: you won’t be disappointed.  (Those of you who are reading this post in a reader aren’t party to the feverish happenings in this blog’s sidebar; some do read it in situ, but might not have seen: I it posted it in my “Selected Videos” slot in the sidebar a week or two back.)  Here you go:

 

The short version of the above: (1) Each argument that religious freedoms would be limited by marriage equality? False, proved so by a point-by-point examination of them (for further corroboration, consider five years’ experience in Massachusetts, testified to by clergy).  Faiths that do not recognize or support same-sex marriage are free to continue to not marry members of the same sex.  And (2) Pro-marriage equality churches cannot marry who their faith tells them they should when same-sex marriage is outlawed.  That is the limit on religious freedom.

Courage Campaign  just released a citizen-made video reiterating the same point: the separation of church and state protects religious freedom; marriage equality and religious freedom are not in conflict.

And in “Same Sex Marriage is Inevitable,” a commentary earlier this week at Forbes.com, pollster Bernard Whitman reminds readers,

Religions have plenty of prohibitions against actions that are perfectly legal in our society, including working on the Sabbath, eating shellfish, drinking alcohol or coffee or celebrating Halloween. Would anyone think to suggest that these activities be prevented by law simply because some people’s religions are opposed? Of course not.

He goes on to reiterate the breathtakingly overlooked fact that marriages conducted in a church, synagogue, or mosque are only legally recognized by the state because the officiant has  been recognized by the state, and this person files paperwork with the state on behalf of the couple, if the couple doesn’t do this directly. Whitman:

And while religions certainly have rules that married couples are supposed to follow, it is the state that decides who may get married and who may not, when marriages begin and end, and what rights, benefits and privileges are awarded to married people.

I note these things not so much because I think any of you highly astute LD readers are laboring under essential misconceptions about such matters, but to provide you a bit more material from which to draw as you have your various water-cooler/ dinner table conversations with friends, colleagues, and family members.  Since that’s how this whole shebang is going to move.

And generally speaking, anyone watching the polling these days  knows that movement on this topic is actually coming along at a rapid clip.  Both the Washington Post/ABC and the New York Times/CBS have recently released polls showing sharp upticks of support for gay marriage:  The Post/ABC poll just asked pro/con for same sex marraige, and came up: 49% for, 46% against.  Got that? More for than against. (ABC coverage on it, with graph, here.) The NYT/CBS poll factored in support for civil unions as well, and still came up with more for gay marriage than any other option: Times/CBS: 42% for same-sex marriage, 25% for civil unions, 28% for no legal recognition.

Seeing Rob Tish’s video a few weeks back got my own curiosity about pro-marriage equality churches to its logical next step, and I rooted around for more numbers.  I haven’t yet turned up a head count of US congregations, but The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reported on various denominations’ positions on same sex marriage in May of 2008. I’ve poured a synopsis of it in a home-spun table, below; for more info do look at the report itself, since it provides links to each of the denominations’ own publications on the topic.  [Full disclosure: I am a heathen (okay, okay; I'm a Buddhist) and do not pretend to a more nuanced command of the topic than I found on this Pew overview. I know a couple of you LD readers are lesbian clergy  (yay!) and Jewish scholars (yay!), and may be inspired to focus this picture even further for interested readers. Plus there's this "Learn More" section of Freedom to Marry's "Why Marriage Matters to Religious People and Communities" page.] 

By my count, out of all these denominations, only around half are explicitly anti-gay marriage. The rest are either for it, or not explicitly against it, or even, in several cases, in the throes of significant internal turmoil over an evolving redefinition of their position.  I could add up the numbers of congregants in these open and affirming (or at least not clearly closed and denouncing) denominations, but what would that matter? Isn’t protection of religious minorities one of the bedrock tenets of this nation?

 

 [Data for the above table adapted from The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's Special Report: The Same-Sex Marriage Debate -- Religious Groups' Official Positions on Same-Sex Marriage, revised May 20, 2008.]

* B.A. Robinson notes, In “The Episcopal Church, USA and homosexuality” at Religious Tolerance.org, that “the Episcopal Church (USA), along with the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the United Methodist Church are probably experiencing the greatest amount of conflict over the questions of equal rights for their gay and lesbian members.” 

If you’re still reading this lengthy, patchwork post, you may be wondering: What specific good works are afoot right now to strengthen and support the work of these open and affirming congregations, since the California Supreme Court decision on Proposition 8 is going to hit us like a big huge smelly fish in the face (!) any week now? 

Reader, wonder no more! Equality California’s Coalitions Coordinator Andrea Shorter (score, EQCA!) has been hard at work fostering discussion among various faith leaders, and in “In Good Faith: Moving Towards Marriage Equality,” a post today at Equality California’s blog, Shorter conveys some of that dialog.  It’s rich, and very heartening.  Go read it.  And if you’re local to the San Francisco Bay Area, know that the Bay Area Coalition of Welcoming Congregations is engaged as you read these very words in planning a concerted response to the court’s decision (dates and locations here).

Alrighty then!  Enough words for one post, and, as I’ll clarify tomorrow, for one month. Thanks for reading. To you, and to myself, I say: Stay calm and carry on.

My first thought was: Should I be worried?  A friend who’s a mental health professional says, No. Says I should be more worried if she’s drawing faces with no mouth, or no eyes, etc. Weelllllll, okay, I says, marginally convinced.

I put it to the lil’ monkey.

Baba: Wow, sweetie, that’s quite a drawing. Can you tell me what you see here?

Punky monkey: You tell me. [Where the hell does she get that, little smartass. Ooop! Moi.]

B: They look sad to me.  Or angry.  How did you feel when you were drawing this?  Were you upset?

M: No.  This one is silly [points to upper left one, sans eyebrows].  The rest of them are angry.

B: So these are angry people.

M: Yep.  Silly, angry people.

A massive multi-phased spam attack in the wee hours last night and this morning added to the natural challenges of juggling what your average work-at-home/care for kids-at-home person ordinarily faces. All of which conspired against my being able to dedicate the loving care any proper post deserves. And a cathartic one’s a brewing, I can say that much (here’s a hint as to the topic).

Meanwhile, some good clean nonsense fun. How would you caption this pair of images?

Here’s a fun little primer on the muses (which apparently started off as three, and then became nine). If you can’t wait to noodle around and find it on your own, here’s the site’s page on the Amazons. The whole site is about women in Greek myths.

Alright, alright so these aren’t really the three muses. The artist (lil’ monkey) says this is Cinderella, her Fairy Godmother, and Rapunzel (going clockwise from upper left). FG is recognizable as the one who mugged Kate Hudson’s sunglasses from Almost Famous. Rapunzel looks like she needs to get a bit more sleep. Okay so maybe Baba is projecting.

The lil’ monkey was having her way with the white board the other morning.

She made what she called a picture of “the whole family.” Her little bro is the red one with the curly hair. Mama’s in the middle. Her head is nearly nonexistent, but oh, oh what a voluptuous body. Hmm, what’s that about? Head: irrelevant; body: fleshed out? Hmm. And Baba. Baba’s the thing that looks like a quizzical, blue, Praying Mantis. A blue Praying Mantis with movie producer Brian Grazer’s hair.

The artist at work. Here she’s putting the finishing touches on another version of Baba, after she re-did the picture to include herself (as green cyclops).

(Yawns.) “My work here is done, people.”

I may just have to make an end-of-the-month habit of this. That is, if it proves of any entertainment and/or educational value. Behold, above, the search strings that brought various bedraggled souls, possibly even YOU, dear reader, to this place.

I look at the various blog stats from time to time, as my late-night computorial excesses allow (search strings, referring agents, what have you). A good 75% of the data, I’m not quiiiite sure what it means. But I think I have a grip on the search strings.

Sometimes what brings folks here is positively wacky. There was a time there when, kid you not, Aztec warrior or something like that hauled in hapless readers by the dozens (because of this). Legions of high school kids on the hunt for cribbed info to pad a report due the next day stumbled into this blog. And what do you think they did next, after they dusted themselves off and saw where they were? Actually move on to consult a reputable scholarly source regarding Aztec warriors? Or twiddle around here a while, ’til they heard the tell-tale footfall of a parent in the hallway?

Now that the Aztec warrior mania has cooled, and it’s all about the bionic woman. I made reference That infernal imp Looky,Daddy made reference to Lindsay Wagner once, way back, in a comment. (Here. I’m not saying I didn’t take the bait, but he started it.) I’m sure the reappearance of cybernetic action chicks on the small screen has prompted the Lindsay Wagner nostalgia, and I for one hope it helps get Ms. Wagner off her sleep number bed and into at least a decent after-school special.

Ella Fitzgerald, well. She is so, so, so more classy than these digs, I don’t even know why my one reference dragged anyone over here. Says more about search engines than Miss Fitzgerald or this lesbo bon mots depot. But I tilt my head back and let the stardust sprinkle on my cheeks nonetheless.

Lots of the other search string dealies actually seem to be roughly on target, for which of course I’m grateful (by my calculations, a good 92 folks hit the bull’s eye!). Lesbians. Dads. Shoes. Scat. Turkey basters. You’ll find that stuff here. But I’d hate to have someone rummaging around for Thespian Cads or Caspian Fads and bump into this thing. Sure to disappoint. Unless you’re a procrastinating high school student, in which case, pop another bowl of popcorn and set a spell! There’s a lot to catch up on!

Fig. A. In which Baba elbows her way into the state’s somewhat limited parental imagination. (Alternative? How ’bout “Parent/guardian 1″ and “Parent/guardian 2″? Has a nice Thing 1 and Thing 2 ring to it. Plus it works for EVERYONE. That’s what I, an honest taxpayer, like to see in my state-generated paperwork.)

Fig. B. In which we have to cop to the sad, sad truth about the potty training campaign.

Fortunately we also had the opportunity to wax on about our kiddle’s personality: “Radiant! Shimmering! She’s ready for her MacArthur genius grant, Mr. DeMille! Nary a fly in her ointment– er. Well. We’d go on about her few flaws but we ran out of space on the line!”

It aaaaalmost made up for the double indignity.

‘Cause Baba does have a thing about schmutz on the fingers. Only the true love of a bairn would get me this be-schmutzed. Dirt, of course, is another thing entirely and more than welcome. (My thanks to Elizabeth Barrett Browning for the loaner.)