A Good Chance They Were Paid

Posted on April 3, 2018 by Elea Lee

In the mid- to late 90s President Clinton pushed through legislation to streamline and monetize public adoption from foster care.

People who adopted sibling groups, minorities, and special needs kids from foster care received free adoptions, public healthcare benefits for the children, and variable daily payment of ten to over forty dollars per day, per child. And in some states, like Texas where the Hart kids were from, college benefits.

Before this legislation (and the change in the ethos on adoption) children remained in foster care for years and parental rights remained robust.

After the legislation some enterprising judges saw a way to monetize the adoption of low income, disadvantaged children.

I lived in a county and fostered in a system where the abuses crossed every line of protection to include coercing disabled mothers to relinquish their rights or face the threat of criminal charges. Women would be targeted while pregnant, their babies taken from the hospital after birth, and adoptions processed within 6 months.

The Clinton system was designed to move foster kids out of the system. It was designed to monetize the adoption of children who were normally left in foster care. While it may have helped some, it harmed many.

There is a greater than 80 percent chance that the Hart mothers received generous federal payouts to take their “kids from hard backgrounds.”

Which means tax dollars would have funded their household, bought the car they drove over the cliff, and have been significant source of income intended for the benefit of the children.

No one should get paid to beat, starve, and murder children

Who never had a chance.

Swept out to sea

Posted on April 2, 2018 by Elea Lee

I can’t help but stare at the picture of this family swept out to sea. I know what it is like to attempt to parent children from “hard backgrounds.”

And yes, I have often tried to assuage my deep grief about the damage caused by my adopted children by telling myself that we have survived (so far).

None of this is fun to talk about, but I did talk–sometimes unsparingly, because I hoped that if people heard our story they could do something to prevent tragedies like ours.

More than the average mama, I can put myself in the shoes of these mamas, and I have two things to thing to say–

Why weren’t the children removed from the custody of the Harts in 2011 when there was a child abuse conviction?
And when a mother chooses to murder her children all the rosy adjectives no longer apply.

Just: a story of the lost and found https://www.amazon.com/dp/1468123459/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_JPNWAbDZT3TR5

A.D.

Posted on April 1, 2018 by Elea Lee

Matthew 28:5-7 NIV

[5] The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. [6] He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. [7] Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

The Coat Sez

Posted on March 31, 2018 by Elea Lee

It is a small label inside a second-hand London fog. Sez “waterproof” in a way that means tell the dam story. Which I tell in my head in one way or another

Every day

Protagonists too vivid to fictionalize and actual jackass antagonists who are surprisingly two dimensional for real people in a small

Awful story I don’t want to tell, but my lovely black raincoat says I must.

Leaves the 99

Posted on March 18, 2018 by Elea Lee

I have always marveled at the risk involved in the parable of the lost sheep. In fact, I can actually see the economists in the crowd shaking their heads and coming up to J. afterwards and trying to convince him that it just doesn’t make sense.

One lost sheep? Who is gonna watch the others?

I have a tendency to worry about all the sheep. What if there are wolves? Wolves stress me out. But J is unswerving. He leaves the 99 and goes to find the one. lost. sheep.

Of course he knows some secrets.

Like: the 99 are actually supposed to watch out for each other.

Like: a few stubborn jackasses in the flock help keep the wolves at bay.

Like: I am the one lost sheep. You are the one lost sheep.

We are all lost without him.

For J every last flipping one of us is that solitary-witless-easily-confused-fluffy-lost sheep.

Sometimes the only thing one needs to do to be found is to admit that one is lost.

Real lost

Without him.

4:21 am

Posted on March 17, 2018 by Elea Lee

After a solid fudging week of losing thumb wars to the god of grief I decide to change my stance.

Fine, I say, keep me up if you want, but we are going to do this together.

Make no mistake. He is not my friend. He is the quiet satellite tech on the slow train north. He is the Russian student who used to try to beguile me with roses and sweet talk. He is the dark standing just shy of sunset. All these years I have avoided his gaze, pretended I didn’t notice him at the same parties, never wailed and pummeled his dark, cold chest.

You win, I say, snake hole, only to realize he hasn’t, can’t because You have already–no matter how many days to resurrection.

3/15/44 BC

Posted on March 15, 2018 by Elea Lee

They say that JC fought hard until he saw Brutus among his assailants. How well-thought-out is death by a thousand cuts? And would it matter to us if he had called him child in the dying hour? These are my ides-of-March musings, as if we were not warned he was the god of war, not love hanging over us. I do small calculations–how old was the world when Julius Caesar died? How long until that other kind of King? Easter is coming, sure as each sign of spring, but there has never been a resurrection without some kind of dying first.

Eight Day Litany

Posted on March 14, 2018 by Elea Lee

When Billy Graham died there was a minor brouhaha about a young woman who wished him fun in hell.

Whatever you or I may have thought about BG, he was an unabashed Eternalist. Stephen Hawking was not.

It is my belief that they both are now.

Which reminds me of a story…

A long time ago a rather counter-cultural day laborer was executed by the Romans apparently for some sort of political expediency.

His rag-tag followers were devastated (naturally), until a few days later when he came back from the dead and started appearing to people!!! (Rather supernaturally)

Although not initially to Thomas, a contemporary Aramaic friend of his, or Stephen Hawkins, a science-type from the 20th century B.C.E.

But after a bit,* he fixed this by showing up. For Thomas it came in the 20th chapter of the Good News of John. For Stephen it happened today.

Worship science all you want, or money or sex or power or fear.

But on the day we die we all turn into Eternalists…regardless of whether the science was every really on our side or not.

John 20, 21

*eight days

Night River

Posted on March 12, 2018 by Elea Lee

The disembodied woman on the late night public radio station compares colors we cannot see to the notes we cannot hear in the full spectrum of light shaken by wind, the tree next to the street light makes a shadow puppet barn owl with its bare limbs alive, snow-globe present in this river of sky the color of a song sung by invisible voices, if I believed in ghosts you are there, touching my shoulder blade reminding me we all live forever somewhere, shiver down spine no word for this beautiful mammalian

Night river.

Carrying Light

Words for light