Goodbye 2015

Is any year less than strange?  I can't remember a single year this last decade that I've said I'm sorry to see the back of it and yet I wonder whether that says more about me than it did about time gone by.  

I've been reading Dickens over Christmas and it's interesting what he has to say about the bah humbug folk.  Basically that no year is without ups, downs, tears and laughter.  In general those goods are dished out roughly in equal measure yet there are those of us who go out of our way to only remember the bad, to only remember the tears and the worries and deliberately whitewash over all the joys, the prayers answered, the unexpected surprises and the people we've shared them with.  

What is this need for self pity, this clinging on to illness almost as though we desired it? In Ireland we laugh that we're never happy unless we're miserable. Funny...and true. 

So this year I'm not going to throw 2015 a boot in the rear as it slinks away...indeed there were low moments, and many, there are friends permanently lost over the cause of marriage and children's right to a father and mother, yes there were days my children and even more so my extended family suffered because of some weird notion that 'you're Catholic therefore you hate'.

There was the pathetic sight of a little girl so filled with fear they almost had to cancel her little operation.  There was crappy weather and ISIS and the mess that is the Middle East and the attacks on France which I love so much & which has done so much for my family.

And there was cancer...there's always cancer lurking waiting to ruin your year.

But hand in hand with all those sorrows...there were doctors.  Doctors who cure.  There are doctors who give hope for a future.
There were the heroes who stood up and were counted in the face of a totalitarian heave of intolerance of even debate.  There were heroes who took planes to help the suffering refugees.  

There was France, beautiful France who knew how to restore drooping morale with her vineyards and sunflowers and the smell of summer holidays and sun cream which means we are having golden time with our ever growing children.  There was the moment she learned to swim when we had been told she probably wouldn't walk.  There were numerous times we had movie nights with our children's little gang who are more like cousins than neighbours...and there are the real cousins and new babies and the new life which arrived only yesterday in the form of beautiful baby Elsie.

There was my big girl and being thankful for Skype so she could join us for family moments, and then she came home so happy and grown up.  Worry...you serve no purpose in life.

There were friends who shared funny times, meals and long chats, sometimes over a supermarket trolley, sometimes in the secret world of hidden Facebook groups. There were meet-ups with old friends in Rome and in our home and new ones in England. There were grandparents and Halloween costumes and starting school, ballet, Taekwon Do and the music of piano which sometimes reluctantly filled our house.  Teenage chats and discussions about the state of the world and the meaning of life, how I love discussions on the meaning of life.  There were weepy movies with my girls and the spectacle of Star Wars. 

And best of all there was PINK.  This was the year of pink. Right in the middle of 2015 on some unremarkable date, our little girl finally became pink.  And when Santa was considering a wooden fairy castle for Christmas then realised that this pink girl is not a playing fairies indoors sort of gal but an outdoors at every opportunity one, he changed track and gave her a go-Kart because girls who have been promised no quality of life tend to kick ass and expose those doom and gloom folk for what they are...wrong. Oh so wrong.

So 2015, thank you for your moments.  Thank you for your sufferings which made me so proud to be a member of my family.  Thank you for the tears which made me realise just how much I love them. And THANK YOU for the smiles.

And thank you for the one constant never flinching presence of John.  Thank you for him.

Goodbye 2015.  I close the door on you, but gently...and tiptoe away.  All I ask of you is one thing...please take your useless weather with you.

On Grieving For Paris

I've been reading a lot of social media posts asking why people seem to be more concerned about the recent horrific terrorist murders in Paris than they are about similarly motivated atrocities elsewhere this week.  There is a suggestion that this is a disingenuous reaction, that we are unconcerned about the deaths in Lebanon and elsewhere and only interested in Paris because Facebook has told us to be.  Why has Facebook turned red, white and blue and not the other colours?

I don't think it's necessarily true that people care less about the terrorist victims in places other than Paris this weekend.  I think the overwhelming reaction to Paris is a very human phenomenon related to proximity.  When we hear of a road traffic fatality on the radio the first thing we all do is listen to hear where it happened.  If it is far from us we move on but if it has happened in our town we immediately turn up the sound to hear further details. The reason is because we now have something important in common with that victim.  The more we relate to the victim the more their death affects us.

Practically all Irish families have connections to France.  I know in our home texts were passed back and forth checking on the wellbeing of French friends and their families. We have visited France and her restaurants and concert halls.  The small
Metal concert is the sort of event my own husband could have been at. Last year my daughter did her Christmas shopping in the market village which saw the jihad motivated attack just a week later. These attacks relate directly to many of us.

I don't think our concern reflects a disdain for the others but the grief that comes from losing part of our own. And also the very real fear motivated not by hatred or racism or all the multiple 'phobias' we so love to accuse each other of, but by the realisation that that could have been me or mine and it may very well be me or mine next time.

So just as we sympathise and objectively grieve the road death far from us, we connect with and subjectively grieve the particular teenager of our own town who we might not have known, but we know his grandma, we know the school he went to, he was best friend of my friend's son...we personally relate.

I think this is normal human behaviour because unless our grief is selective we would definitely all buckle under the burden of every atrocity everywhere in the world.  It would be shallow to post about Beirut if we are not also posting about North Korea, Thailand, Burma,...dozens of other places.

When I was in Africa and saw the most abject poverty and subsequently witnessed and was there when a corrupt government bulldozed the shantytown of up to a million people, my mind definitely went into protective mode by blocking me from really believing what I was seeing.  It was like we were watching it on television not really happening right in front of us and we were directly involved in the evacuation. I heard war photographers describe similar experiences. There is only so much horror any of us can process, we cannot take on every single burden but we take in some and that is not hateful.

One thing is certain these days, humanity weeps.

(photo ABC News)

Bag-Packing, A Sociological Observation.

I have just spent the morning in a supermarket helping out at a fundraiser for my son's sports club by packing grocery bags for shoppers in the hope that they'll throw their spare change into the collection bucket. Easy enough money with no overhead costs, all you need is volunteers.

Now I am no stranger to either packing groceries or working with the public.  My teenage years were funded by this very activity as my weekend job, and that of practically every Irish teenager at the time, was a casual worker for the first Irish supermarket chain to introduce the service of packing groceries. The after school and weekend hours were often tedious and boring with every customer basically saying the same thing: "Lovely day we're having" or "Bad day we're having" over and over and over again.  However I didn't really mind too much as the allure of new clothes saved up for or a night at the local teenage disco made up for the repetitive work and the occasional unpleasantly over broken eggs or some such mishap. By and large though, people were generally friendly and appreciative.  By the time we were finished, a stint working for this particular supermarket was a bonus on any teen CV as the company was known for it's standard of excellence. We knew how to work and the founder and CEO instilled a work ethic in his teen brigade. Do the job and do it right and the customer will return.  Staff wore lapel pins of a boomerang depicting this ethos.



I went on to work with the public after I left college.  I worked in an environment quite opposite to that I had left.  Unless an employees work ethic came from within there was no incentive whatsoever to put in a good day's work.  In fact good workers were often ostracised because they showed up the others.  The Chiefs despised the Indians and indemic bullying was the norm. So babyish. However, one thing was so eye-opening was the public.  At the time, most people were neither here nor there, neither unpleasant not pleasant. Most still said please and thank you, apart from third level students that is.  Those words seemed pretty alien to them or maybe they felt they were too hip and cool for social niceties to cross their lips.  Since I was roughly the same age or just slightly older than most of them I wasn't backward at asking them right out for the Magic Word! Especially since they were often hoping I'd actually DO their tardy course work for them...the bits their Mammy hadn't already done, and it was usually due tomorrow or yesterday. I had the upper hand!

Then there was the folk who would just lift your day just by being themselves.  so friendly and warm.  My favourite in particular was a man who had Down Syndrome who always dressed in a suit and fedora hat and carried a black umbrella and briefcase.  He was so proud of his smart appearance and his research work. When he'd leave, he'd leave in his wake a feeling that life is good and it's good to be here.  Wonderful. I wonder where he is now.

Then there was the minority.  Oh deary me, the miserable minority.  Scowling, grumpy, fault-finding nasty minority.  I'll just leave it at that.

Anyway, back to my fundraising contribution this morning.  Now if I know anything, it's how to pack bags.  I have six children...my grocery trolley is sizeable.  I'm always in a hurry and I like my groceries intact. So apart from my early 'training', I'm good and I'm speedy. No eggs will break on my watch.  I think I look capable enough. I think I look pretty much what I am...a mother well used to supermarket shopping.  I think I look like I can capably pack your shopping, saving you some time and effort in return for your contribution should you want to make one.  It was an interesting window through which to study people. I was reminded of things I'd noticed years ago and forgotten.  I was treated in ways I'd encountered before but which genuinely surprised me as a mature adult as opposed to a young person. It was a look at a part of life that is no longer mine and I am left less than comfortable with some of what I observed. Not because I personally was treated in any particular way but because anybody would be treated in that way.

Here are some of my observations.

One...a smile costs nothing.  Do you realise how few smiles people who work in retail receive? Very few.

Please and thank you also cost nothing.

Old people who shop as a couple are maybe the nicest people you could meet.

People who bought the most possible with the least amount of money and had carefully counted coupons and small change tended to be very generous and appreciative of the help offered with packing their purchases.

People buying most luxury items were least likely to acknowledge that their bags had been magically and perfectly packed and walk off without contributing.  Some had no coins to offer but apologised and were thankful anyway. I certainly didn't mind in the slightest.

Teenagers stuffing bottles of vodka into handbags in anticipation of the upcoming evening...not cool.

People with clearly tight budgets were often making very poor food choices.  Very few fresh foods or vegetables.  A lot of the bulk of shopping was highly processed very cheap foods with little nutritional value. This should be addressed.  A lot of these families are headed by single parent early school-leavers.  The short time spent in education would be well served by a robust home management/food programme.  So easy and obvious when you know but not so obvious when one is in the cycle of poverty.

The words thank you came mostly out of those who appeared poorer.

It can take very little effort to strike up an interesting conversation with some people.  I heard quite a few reminisces and life's anecdotes.

Some people are delightful.  Old people are mostly delightful.

Some people are just not nice.

I remember why when I was working, staff far far preferred to be appointed to the poorest parts of the inner city or working class estates than to wealthy affluent postal districts.  Honestly, just because someone is doing you a job of service does not mean that that person is less that you.

Just because your income is higher than the girl at the check-out does not entitle you to speak down to her.  I have been watching her, she goes to a lot of effort to be friendly to you who does not return the common manners

If you prefer to pack your own bags, there's no need to rudely announce it's because only you knows how to pack bags properly.  Believe me Ma'am, you did not pack your bags properly.  Cooked and raw meats should NOT be in the same bag, rude lady.

If you prefer to pack your own bag don't act as though the person offering to help is the dirt off your shoes.

It's a sad indictment that the better dressed you are, Lady, the ruder you are because you think someone else is less than you.  They're not. That someone's job may seem menial to you does not justify your lack of common manners to them.

Being rude to kids fundraising is NOT ON. Yuk!

Dear vegan with a wan child dressed in unbleached knits...that your groceries are so so expensive does not necessarily mean they are good nutritional choices, alternative and unappetising and all as they may be.

Dear woman who rudely shoved me aside so you could pack your bags in a superior fashion,  I hope that bottle of shampoo you shoved upside-down on top of perishable foods didn't actually do that thing I wished it would.

But most people are lovely.

Especially old people.

Especially old people who are poor.

Cinderella Movie Review

I have just been to see Disney's newest production, Cinderella. I'm writing a review simply because I have heard opposite opinions about the message the movie presents. So just as an extra voice here's my initial analysis of the movie.

Whenever I watch a children's or family movie I try to see it from a values point of view so that I can use both good and bad points afterwards in trying to teach our children discernment.  I know they will always come upon values that aren't those of our home and that's perfectly ok.  I have no intention of mollycoddling them in a false protected world which will leave them disarmed when they enter the fray. Overprotection is not a wise parenting method in my opinion.
Neither is allowing all and everything with the attitude that "Oh you can't protect them from the world". Rather I try to see teaching moments as I go along. I can't protect them from the world, nor do I want to.  I want them to get stuck right in there as active participants in this great world of ours but armoured with the art of discernment.

What I try to see is what's beyond the surface. Sometimes the surface is all there is but in general I feel no artist applies his or her trade in a neutral fashion, all art displays some of our personal ideals. It wasn't till the ending credits that I realised that Kenneth Branagh was the director of this Cinderella tale. I'd have looked forward to it more had I known. The movie has the historic elegance that I would associate with his movies.  It captures the atmosphere of the fairy stories I read when I was small, large thin papered tomes bound in navy cloth covers. The kingdoms I conjured up in my head were world's apart to some of the shoddily drawn illustrations so common in children's literature today. In Cinderella , the house, the animals, the castle all make the seamless connection with the original fairy story.  I think Branagh makes a huge effort to capture those classic qualities in this movie. The panoramic scenes of the kingdom are perfect. The choice of Lavender's Blue as a background theme evokes babyhood and early childhood for me anyway. I have dreamy memories of being soothed to sleep by both my mother and my father to this tune gently hummed.

I've said numerous times on this blog about my strong belief that children should be educated in beauty. I read an interview recently with Irish sculptor Dony MacManus who spoke about this very concept. That beauty points to God and that the function of art, even if not overtly is to capture beauty and therefore reflect a glimpse of Divine. Art works best with that aim, look at the art of the great masters of paint, architecture and sculpture...all aimed to achieve something higher than the artist. McManus tells of how European art colleges have moved away from art reaching higher and toward being used only to portray self and how the concept of beauty is oftentimes laughed at and rejected as immature and passée.  Mr McManus has gone so far as to found his own Fine Arts College in Italy which focuses on beauty leading to God and precisely the human body and it's creative power as the highest form of beauty.

I'm delighted that the story wasn't ruined by any attempt to 'modernise' it by making the female and male characters somehow at odds with each other in a struggle of power. In this movie, neither character is vying to be superior or more powerful.  The prince acknowledges time and again that he is an apprentice to the trade of being a good man. He is neither portrayed as arrogant or, as is more usual in movies, an endearing idiot. Humility, as in acknowledgement of our inabilities is perhaps the most manly of virtues because without it which man can become great as he is caught in the snare of believing he already is.  Although it is not an indepth character study, he is nevertheless a refreshing movie role model.  Not loud, not a fool needing to be saved by alpha-princess, neither is he chauvinistic. He just seems to be a good man.

Neither is Cinderella seemingly made strong by being warrior-like or crass or shouty. Her power is in her femininity. She isn't obsessed with beauty but wants to look beautiful for the ball to honour her mother who she loved. She is transformed into beauty most feminine...just that dress...I want one. So beautiful. She sticks with her efforts of courage and kindness, neither of these are easy feats and neither are signs of subservience or weakness. I love that femininity is finally portrayed as a quality and not as some sort of 'betrayal' of the sisterhood.

The deathbed redemption of the King, triggered by the honesty of Cinderella and the steadfast refusal of the prince to go against his decision reminded me a little of the death of Lord Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited. (I told you I see things in movies that aren't there at all!) And the following scene of the prince and king embracing was a powerful testimony to fatherhood/son-hood, again, both men humbled but not weakened.

The wicked stepmother was a masterpiece. I'll be very surprised if Kate Blanchett doesn't win an award or two for her role. Her and whoever designed her costumes, just perfect.

The only downside was that maybe the movie was a little slow moving for smaller children. Setting the scene took quite some time and my 5 year old nodded off missing some of the more spectacular scenes closer to the end of the movie.

Also, perhaps the movie could have gone a little deeper into the consequences to Cinderella of the cruelty to which she was exposed. For most of the film it seems to flow off her. She smiles a bit too much which inadvertently superficialises her suffering.  Probably a bit more character study of the prince too would have added to the story. However, that's just me and maybe not for a children's movie.
All in all, I liked the movie.  My children aged 17-5 all enjoyed it.  It probably isn't the most memorable movie in the history of mankind but it is a refreshing good old fashioned tale of good people making a go of it.  The wedding reminded me of that of Archduke Imre and Archduchess Kathleen of Austria in 2012. Two good people hoping to do good together as a married couple, a team of equals.

Yes, it's a fairy story. Yes it's probably sugar coated, but fairy stories are good. Wiping them from our children's bookshelves in the name of modernity, or even worse...rewriting them to suit ideology, is doing our children a great disservice. They show us we are not our sufferings, they show us we can be more than how we are treated.  C.S.Lewis wrote extensively on the value of fairy stories and I tend to trust his judgement.

So I say, go to the movie, bring your teens. Enjoy it and don't feel guilty, you are not returning anyone to the dark ages just because a woman is feminine and a man is noble. Did you ever think that perhaps this is the Dark Age and that perhaps we need to reclaim the light?  Perhaps we need to reclaim both womanhood and manhood and marriage between the two as something better than the sum of the parts?

You might not see all those things but I did.

My favourite character?

The lizard footman.

A Rose For Louise

My little girl has a heart operation coming up in the next few weeks.  It's not open heart this time.  They'll go in through her leg and up through her arteries to reach her heart.  It will be a two stage procedure, first they'll insert a little balloon to temporarily close up the fenestration which the surgeon made during her last surgery then monitor her lungs for a few days to see whether they can tolerate the new pressures.  All of these things are designed around protecting her organs as much as possible, not just heart but also lungs and liver.  Well if her lungs rise to the occasion they'll remove the balloon and permanently close up the hole which should finally see us bringing home a pink girl. I love blue too but this little girl needs to be pink.

So the success of this operation is 100% dependent on a little pair of lungs.  This morning I looked up to find out who is the patron saint of lungs. Lo and behold, who is it but one of the most approachable and loveable of all saints... St Therese of Liseux.  Which suddenly reminded me of a very interesting story that really happened.  I had completely forgotten about it.  

If you read my other blog you will know that when Louise first made her presence known to us in the form of two pink lines I didn't think for a single minute that we'd be bringing home any baby.  Although I have what is now considered a 'lot' of children, I also have a long history of pregnancy loss.  You never get used to miscarriage and you never become expert at dealing with it no matter how old a hand you are at it.  Babies aren't replaceable be they born or unborn.  I never grieved a 'pregnancy', I always grieved that baby...a person in their own right, no less someone than I am. 

I spent the first few weeks of this pregnancy in preemptive grief.  I had just lost four babies one after the other (accounting for the seeming gap between Louise and her nearest sibling) and there was no differential to suggest that this baby had any better chance.  I was grieving her when she was still alive, waiting for another miscarriage to happen, but still, hopeful that maybe this time would be different. 

In his bedside drawer my husband keeps a first class relic of St Thérèse, The Little Flower as she is affectionately called.  I think we all know that life's difficulties are a great impetus for heartfelt prayer.  I know that some of my readers who aren't Catholic have difficulty with the Catholic tradition of praying through the intercession of saints.  It's very simple really...we ask each other for prayers here on this earth all the time.  Please pray for my intention, my child, exams, financial worries...and few of us will refuse that request.  Oftentimes we particularly seek out those we seem to be maybe more 'holy' than ourselves to put in a good word for us with God.  I know in Dublin there used to be a great tradition of single young men and women dropping donations of food into the cloistered convent of The Poor Clares, requesting in return that they might pray for a good spouse for them.  Well it's no different with the saints..ordinary folk like you and me who had faults and struggles but who kept getting up and starting again and finished the race. Of course we ask our friends the saints to pray for us. We're not praying to them, instead we're asking them to also pray for us.

Well back to Thérèse, she is such a lovely saint.  When I was a child my mother told us about a particular devotion to St Therese.  A nine day novena of prayers. Now the different thing about this novena is that the tradition is that as she had promised before she died at such a young age, St Therese would acknowledge those prayers with a rose which would be received before the end of the nine days.  It's not any guarantee that you are going to get the thing you want in the way you want...God's plans are often a bit better than ours, but it's like a little calling card that indeed your prayer has been heard. I have heard story after story about those roses unexpectedly being received, including in my own family. Anyway, not to get a rose, nor to test God, nor in any way looking at this little relic as a talisman, rather a momento of someone we love, we printed off the particular rose novena to St Therese from the EWTN website and John and I prayed in earnest that this Saint, who had said such beautiful things about unborn babies, would intercede for this hidden little one who nobody knew was there except for her Mummy and Daddy.  Nobody else knew I was pregnant. We began the first day at about 11pm.

Every night before sleeping we recited the prayers and blessed our little one with the relic.  Each day passed and no rose appeared.  It didn't matter, we know God hears our prayers and we don't need proofs. Then a few days before the end of the novena, maybe day six, it happened to be my birthday.  My sister sent me a bouquet of flowers.  A mix of pretty scented Lillies, carnations and...roses.  Hmmm....it was a bit of a stretch to consider that this was the rose.  Still...a rose is a rose even if I was sceptical.  Day seven...day eight...nothing. Day nine my husband came home from work and said that a patient he rarely sees had come in and as she sat down she lamented to him that she had picked his wife a bunch of roses but had accidentally left them on her kitchen table. Well, getting warmer, but that someone was going to give me roses wasn't exactly a miraculous event. 

Oh well. 

That evening for some reason all our children were down in their grandparents house, we must have had a meeting or something to go to. John went down late to collect them in time for bed.  My mother-in-law was out somewhere so only Grandad was home with the children. Now my father-in-law is one of the nicest people I know.  He's always in an even good mood.  However, the gift-giver, as in most husband/wife arrangements, is Nana.  Grandads sign their name to the gift.  My father-in-law, as is normal, doesn't really give me gifts,  he has never given me flowers.  

After John had put the younger children into their seat belts he chatted for a while to his Dad then started up the car.  Suddenly out of the blue his father waved him to stop.  He went over to his rose bush and picked the perfect head off a bloom and handed it to one of the children saying 'give this to your Mummy'.  He knew nothing about either the novena or the pregnancy.

My husband and children arrived home and, at about 10.45 pm, handed me the beautiful and most unexpected rose, 15 minutes before the 9th day of my novena was over.  

So there you have it.  Coincidence? A sign from Heaven?  Make of it whatever you like.

A Troubled World

This may seem naïve, like throwing a thimble of water onto a raging fire.  Believe me, I am not naïve, as I write this I am listening to blanket world news service about an unfolding event which might shortly bring even more bloodshed.

I was going to write a blogpost about so many things that I think about the terrible events in France.  About victim blaming...I cannot even count the number of times I've read 'they were asking for it'. 'Well they did 'offend''. A roundabout justification even if follows a condemnation.  'I'm sorry but it was your fault' is not an apology, it is a kick in the teeth. 

About majority sympathy being lavished on those who are offended rather than those who are killed.  About wondering how reposting disgusting cartoons is somehow helpful, how some have posted beautiful cartoons like the Charlie Brown one is maybe more sensitive.  

How nobody lavished victimhood on the ordinary catholics and priests, all of whom were tarred with the brush of the horrendous acts of a few and were all blamed as though we knew and approved of them. I see very little commentary on the fact that synagogues across Europe are now given police guard during services...the stealthful creep of anti Jewish sentiment is going un-noticed and I see it becoming fashionable in my own peaceful country with one country being portrayed as evil incarnate and it's neighbour as innocence personified.  Political/cultural unrest is never so simple. 

About how we are all Charlie and yet none of us is the unborn child equally the victim of massacre. How I disagree with the publication of pictures and videos of the death of anybody at the hands of another...and the compulsion to look at them. I don't know how many pictures I saw last year of children triumphantly holding up the heads of murdered men. Do we become immune to these acts? Is it helpful to see a man being put down like a dog or to see tiny dismembered children? Is it more helpful to show the humanity and beauty and value of every life, like the biography of the understated policeman, or the devout and selfless lives of an american journalist or British aid worker? Or the beautiful photos of life in the womb which show that the victims of that hidden massacre are indeed our brothers and sisters? I think so. 

I was going to write about how 9/11 was the day the world became a more scary place.  How the scary thing is that we all look at people differently and more fearfully.  I was sitting somewhere recently near an extended family from somewhere in the Arabic world.  It struck me that the only place I have heard that sort of language this last year has been on horrible videos celebrating atrocities.  I felt sorry for them because in spite of how 'normal' or good or decent they are, nobody has any way of discerning the one in 1,000,000 who will do harm and so the decent folk are feared because of the acts of a few. 

About how I don't blame satirists for their own death but how equally I am uncomfortable to sidle up with artists whose only aim is to offend and insult not least, perhaps even more vehemently, my own Faith. About how secular Europe is still riding on the back of it's Christian roots, forgetting that getting along with our enemies...forgiving them...not seeking revenge and vengeance...loving them even...are remnants of Christian culture which was not the norm before Christianity, and when that goes, as it surely will if we continue along this path, we are in serious trouble.  That maybe it's time to examine ourselves and the way Europe is heading and that perhaps we need to change something and revive our identity.  Just too much effort has been made to rid Europe of Christianity while at the same time there's a piercing silence on rising unease and a head in the sand approach to history.  I think it was Churchill who said that the further back we look into history, the further into our future we can forsee.  Instead of bovine cries of 'what about the crusades?''what about the inquisition' by people who know as much about either of those events as they do about how to build a time machine, maybe we should actually study history in it's raw truth rather than in an ideologically edited version. 

About how I am afraid as a mother because my own child is in France, in a peaceful town where a disturbed young man drove at speed into a crowded Christmas Market which my child had visited several times...a disturbed drunk boy from a messed up family jumping on the back of a dangerous ideological mindset. I don't think this fear is over dramatic because I know about the low grade stress of family living in the northern part of my own country during troubled times, how mothers were nervous every time their teens were out. A more intense fear compared to that of mothers in peaceful places who still are fearful for the safety of their young adult children. 

So I'm not going to write all those things, they're too unformed and garbled...the same way lots of the commentaries are unformed and garbled. This isn't a political blog, it just me and what I think.  

But this is what I am going to do. Today, every hour I am going to post a picture on Facebook of somewhere/someone beautiful in the world, beginning with France. It's naïve in it's simplicity but I hope maybe it will serve to remind us all that while the world is a scary place with so much unrest and hatred and...dare I suggest it?...sin. In spite of that, the world is a beautiful place.  It is good, people are good and life is valuable. I'm not trying to start a meme or to trivialise events, I just hope to apply a little salve to all our wounds. 

Jennifer