priests & paramedics

“Ivan Illich was once asked what is the most revolutionary way to change society. Is it violent revolution or is it gradual reform? He gave a careful answer. ‘Neither. If you want to change society, then you must tell an alternative story.” • Tim Costello

29 August 2006

Even the Wind and the Waves

This latest hurricane/tropical storm (Ernesto for the uninformed) has caused me to reflect on my own self-reliance.

See, just a couple of months ago we had impact windows installed in our house. I bought a generator in case the power grid gets wiped out like it has before. I'm about to take one last hot shower... just in case. I bought my gallons of water (actually Dede did, but I'll take credit - she doesn't know how to edit this blog). I am completely in control of my environment.

Or am I?

Today I reflected upon Mark 4 - the story of Christ and his disciples in a boat in the middle of a lake when a giant squall overtakes them. The disciples, like me, rest on their own resources and intuition, and not in the one who sleeps through the storm.

I pray for that faith.

21 August 2006

Take Your Time

This morning, I read an article about former major leaguer Jesse Barfield. Barfield played for the Blue Jays and Yankees, but that's beside the point.

The article was about an incident that caused Barfield to be in the hospital recovering from a head injury. Not that big of a deal, right? Well, apparently it made headlines due to the fact that he was pushed down the stairs by his 18 year-old son, Jeremy.

Pretty shocking. Sounds like it was ripped from the pages of Desperate Housewives (I realize that I've mixed my metaphors, and that there are no actual pages of a TV show, but work with me). But shocking as it may be, does it warrant an entry in my little exercize in self-importance?

Actually, yes. Yes it does.

Turns out, the incident was provoked when Barfield went to see what was delaying his son as they were getting ready to go to church. You read that right - they were about to be late for church, so Junior shoves his pop down the stairs. I know it's often a bit of a hassle to get the kids out the door on any given Sunday, but that's one heck of a morning.

Take your time. Slow down. We'll get there when we get there. Just don't throw me down a flight of stairs.

14 August 2006

Dear Lord, Baby Jesus...

Yesterday saw a new twist in my Sunday afternoon routine. Oh, it started off normally, alright (come home, rip off sweaty clothes, throw on shorts and t-shirt, eat lunch, use the facilities, pass out in bed for about half an hour), but that's where it took a dramatic turn.

Usually in preparing for my little Sabbath-day power nap, I'll pop on the TV and let a little golf match drone on and put me to sleep. But today... no golf. So I flip around the channels when I finally land on some coverage of a guy praying. I thought I had flipped all the way up to TBN (the televangelist channel with the lady with pink hair sitting in a gold throne), exept for the fact that the guy praying was wearing a cowboy hat and a sateen jumpsuit emblazoned with patches of Bud Light, Windex, Mitchum, and Easy Off Oven Cleaner (I don't remember exactly what the patches read, but work with me).

But this guy starts praying, and it's not one of those "Dear celestial force up in the puffy clouds, uniter of the cosmos" kind of prayers. It's one of those "Dear Heavenly Father... bless this race (that would be "car race," not "white race" - I think)... bless the troops... in Jesus' name" kind of prayers. One of those prayers where it gets top billing before the National Anthem - I'm not kidding, "The Banner" got bumped.

Now forgive me for being the only person in North America (or at least south of the Mason-Dixon line) who hasn't seen more than 13 seconds of a NASCAR race, but this was news to me. The purpose of this posting is not to comment on the prayer - I'll deal with the propriety of that at another time. But post-prayer I couldn't change the channel. There was something that kept me glued to the set.

It was like the vortex of a black hole sucking in all life within a resonable proximity. Like the sirens' call drawing Odysseus to the rocks. Like the disgusting pile of roadkill from which - no matter how hard you try - you can't turn away. Like the... OK, I'll stop.

What I'm trying to say is (and I feel dirty even admitting this) I kinda liked it. First a little disclaimer: it wasn't a normal NASCAR race where all they do is turn left. There was actual skill involved, since it was one of those road races where they turn right and left. But it was NASCAR nonetheless.

Pray for me. I don't want to end up like that guy.

01 August 2006

Cuba Libre!

Last night, as I was flipping back and forth between a rerun of Supernanny and Hell's Kitchen (that reality show with the wannabe gourmets who have to put up with the hot-tempered, potty-mouthed British Chef), when all of a sudden the news busts in with one of those "This Just In, and It's Really Important... So Important That We're Gonna Interrupt an Important Episode of Supernanny - You'll Have to Learn How to Discipline Your Kids an Another Time."

And whereas many times, it's not really that big of a deal (news of a tropical depression that maybe - just maybe - might become a tropical storm if the sustained wind speeds pick up another 30 knots, Paris Hilton being spotted on Lincoln Road with what seems to be the look of someone who has broken her vow of abstinence, or something of the like), this time it was.

Kind of.

"Castro steps down." Rumors abound about whether he was dead or not, but the official news coming in from Havana stated that Fidel Castro announced a provisional transfer of his duties as Cuba's president to his little brother Raúl. The announcement cited "an acute intestinal crisis, with sustained bleeding" requiring immediate medical intervention - basically a colon that had become so impacted it caused his hemorrhoids to bleed profusely.

But seriously, I had this thought pop into my head as I watched the celebratory parades waving Cuban flags and cheering in the streets of Little Havana, Westchester, and elsewhere in Dade County: do you think they're interrupting Supernanny elsewhere across America? In places like Des Moines, Peoria, Omaha, and Spokane? I mean, it'd make the 11 o'clock news (or in most of those places, the 10 o'clock news... they go to bed a little earlier in the Heartland). But they don't bust in.

Let me say right off the bat that I'd love to see Castro out of power. He's a despot who has brutally executed his enemies, driven his island into abject poverty, and struck fear into the lives of the resilient Cuban people. Ordinary citizens dare not utter his name for fear of arrest by Fidel's Gestapo-like secret police.

Back in 1997, I witnessed this firsthand: doctors, lawyers, electricians, teachers scraping by on the government mandated $15-a-month; a former island paradise (and I don't use that term lightly - it used to be a paradise) delapidated and in ruin; young girls whose only hope is a life of prostitution - selling their bodies to the myriad Canadian and European tourists who remain at the resorts, but never see the real Cuba.

I stayed with a family of 7 who were crammed in a tiny, sweaty apartment, whose oldest son was my primary means of communication - my grasp of the Spanish language is limited to spewing vocabulary words and misconjugated verbs. The son's name was Alejandro. He was 25 years-old, and had what looked like a volleyball tucked under the skin of his neck. This grotesque tumor was malignant, and it was something that any doctor could operate on and remove - even one whose medical school diploma was signed by Sally Struthers. But day after day, Alejandro stared at this growing death sentance - one exacebated by the man in control.

And while I witnessed this firsthand, and long to see a free Cuba, it's all cerebral... I don't harbor this feeling in my gut like the people celebrating on Calle Ocho. Like the ones who fled Cuba after the Revolution. Like the ones desperate to the point of hopping in an innertube, braving shark attacks and the Florida Straits simply for the chance of a taste of freedom.

And while Castro has been resilient through the years (surviving the Bay of Pigs debacle, a 13-cigar-a-day habit, and beard leeches), he has also had his share of moral support (the picture to the right shows Castro, the USSR's Nikita Krushchev, and Steve Buscemi).

Of course, the big question remains: what happens next?

My hope and my prayer is for a free Cuba. And when that happens, we'll work on the east end of the island.