2012: A Very Bad Year

Hurricane Sandy . . . Newtown . . . Aurora . . . Israel bombs Gaza . . . car bombs kill and kill and kill in Iraq . . . Syria . . . Gaza bombs Israel . . . no Pullitzer awarded for fiction . . . Mexican drug wars result in horrific killings . . . Benghazi . . . Israel bombs Gaza . . . bus and train crashes, floods and earthquakes, kill thousands . . . cholera and yellow fever and ebola strike the poor . . . drought spreads . . . one gang rape in India and one Pakistani girl shot stand as exemplars for the horror of our violence . . . History Orb

Turning the page on a calendar will not change anything . . . will not lead to a new chapter of existence . . .

But it does give pause . . . a time, a space, for reflection.

Is this who we are?

In the microcosm, how easily I can name the violence done me; 2012 is no exception.  But can I chronicle nearly so well the violence I do others?  Or does that violence disappear into the fog of self-justification?

We search for reasons as if that changes the thing.  But perspective is just another name for forgetting.  If we can ‘understand’, then we can differentiate – that could not happen to me, to mine.

But it could.  It does.

So to 2012, I bid good-bye.  To all the reasons proffered, I say never mind.  To all the justifications, I say no go.

You did it.  I did it.  We did it.  Now we live with it.

For you see, when it comes to the whys, well, that’s easy: because we could.

The real question is how to avoid the doing. . . the hurting . . . the wounding . . . the tearing of the fabric of all that is good and holy and just and right and true and worthy . . .

We didn’t call names because we were wounded; we called names because we could.

We didn’t kill because it was necessary; we killed because we could.

We didn’t fail to protect because of anything other than because we didn’t want to.

What good is a will if it is only bent to the self?

What good is a will that leans only towards destruction?

So here goes for my own personal 2013 resolution:

This year, I resolve to do no harm.  Period.

Likely I will fail.  But in the resolving there is good to be found, progress to be made.  And fewer bloody carcasses left behind.

My 2012 YouTube Favs

They may not have come out in 2012.  But they came to me this year – and gave me humor and every now and then, something more.

So without further ado, my own personal 2012 YouTube Favs list:

1. Anything Monty Python – you have to like that sort of thing, but if you do, no one does it better.


2.  Google Squirrel +Allan – it’s not really a squirrel, but enough googling folk think so that it’s an easy way to get to this, my current fav from the British Walk on the Wild Side.  This is so funny it makes me giddy to watch – I’ve seen it so often it’s become a classic (to my mind, anyhow).

3. Ben Aaron - the holiday sweater craft show, I predict, will become classic – like the logs in the fireplace static television pic so popular in NYC, nothing says Christmas quite like a Christmas sweater (especially one with plastic angels as epulets).

4. Flash mobs - anywhere/anytime, but especially the Food Court performance of the Hallelujah Chorus – taking the Hallelujah Chorus and asking, fries with that? brings it all to the next level – the next level of what I’m not sure of, but it’s definitely the next level.



5. Leonard Cohen’s Anthem – my one and only serious one.  Hat’s off, Mr. Cohen, hat’s off.

Thank you YouTube contributors of the world for sharing your humor, your wisdom, your talent, your sense of fun, with the rest of us.  And keep those holiday sweaters coming!

A Few of My Favorite Things: Top 7 Blessed Church Moments of 2012

2012 has been a rough year personally and for our nation – a year fraught with violence and conflict, tinged with the red of the rage of others.  How I long to be shed of it.  But in bidding this year farewell, I am trying to remember that there were good things too.  So I am compiling my own personal list of favorite things of 2012 – the things big and small that lifted my spirits.

Top 7 Blessed Church Moments of 2012:

1. Chocolate communion – a time when we get silly with Jesus and it is fabulous.

2. Sitting with – I do a lot of sitting with – and there is always blessing to be found – there in the silences and the whispers and gentle prayers.

3. Bible study – Rosalee gave me such a gift the other day – saying, “You make us delve deeper, you make us think.”  Teaching – never my particular gift – is always a challenge that leaves me feeling wanting – thus to hear that this thing I so struggle with is a blessing is its own blessing to me.

4. Those in the body who take care of me – some may not even know they’re doing it – the ones who call just to say ‘we love you’ . . . the ones who send the special cards of caring . . . the ones who listen when I need someone to listen . . . lunches and shared confidences . . . the entrusting of so much to my care – the confidence that I’m up to the job . . . the wrestling ones who challenge me and my faith as they struggle with their own . . . the ones who always have a smile and a gentle hug . . . the ones who think I know something they might like to know as well . . . the givers of gifts – just because . . . the ones who pray with and for me . . . the ones who make sure I know what I need to know . . . the ones who step up to help when help is needed . . . it’s all of you, really, and I love you all so dearly and am so blessed to be loved by you . . .

5. Singing our joy – loudly, boldly, softly and tentatively . . . and amazingly often in complete harmony – surely God rests there.

6. Walking our woundedness together – for we are surely the walking wounded.

7. Thanksgiving Eve – as we shared our gratitude, many speaking of family, and my own family walking in, grandson Rowen first, my gratitude there before me on two spindly legs, followed by the generations – four, all in one place.  Holy ground indeed.