Matthew 25

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First, you should know: I believe in a literal hell.

Not so much because the Bible alludes to it as because the world displays its existence in broken children, enslaved humans. Sudanese women getting whipped while men stand by and laugh.

There are pictures of hell within easy reach. To not believe in it is hubris.

And then there is the time I have spent there myself.

In the fall of 1996 I sat across the table from two small faces and watched them munch down the first of thousands of peanut butter sandwiches at our table.

We did this because of some rather poetic injunctions in the Bible about helping “orphans.” None more poetic than Jesus in Matthew 25.

He says “the righteous” will take in strangers and feed them peanut butter sandwiches. He says they will share of their safety, abundance, and nourishment with people who are the riskiest and least able to pay back such snacks and beverages.

He says they will give themselves. The cost is implicit in the risk.

But at the time it was just a couple of sandwiches. The humiliation, rejection, exposure, assault, and duplicity would take years to fully unravel.

The emotional cost remains steep.

And the words of Jesus still echo in my head–the least of these…you did unto me..

And if the least of these punch you in the stomach? Take your trust and abuse it?

The sorrow is a badly drawn tattoo along the sternum. And hell comes in the vertigo of watching those you cherish hurt.

Back to the table…

I must return to the table and find someone else hungry and thirsty and lowly like me.

It is a gift to know I am the least of these.

And your attention to my grief, a cup of clear water.

Thank you.

Casey Kasem’s Dilemma

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I used to listen to him regularly. I bet at one time or another most Americans have.

All those years, if you had told me Mr. Kasem would end up dying of thirst and starvation and medical neglect, I would have been shocked.

And yet no one besides his wife seems shocked now?

Our country has become a full-on fulfillment of sci-fi dystopia. We fight and argue for hardened child-rapists and -murders to have the right to die of old age but we let our judges rule against basic rights for the dying.

The right to water should not be withheld.

The right to nourishment is so basic. And yet time and again the most fragile members of our society are starved and dehydrated to death.

Shame on us.

We neither acknowledge the pain of the dying nor the ultimate cost to our souls of suborning justice to lower a hospital bill.

But who will pay for our lost compassion and our broken souls?

Attachment Parenting/attachment disorder

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The descriptions are eerily familiar–children acting out violently and relentlessly, tearing at the fabric of the home they have been placed in. Making life hell for years on end.

No cure in sight.

I think about this–the things we find cures for: flabby skin, erectile dysfunction….

But I doubt anyone is even looking for a cure for RAD.

Anyone who matters, that is.

Sure, there are the people impacted by RAD children. But we are not exactly powerhouses of charitable financing.

It is hard to raise support over the din and chaos.

Like so many scourges the easiest, simplest cure is prevention–babies need to be held regularly, fed regularly, nurtured consistently.

There are places we say this out loud. But often we don’t. We don’t have the guts to break through the uncomfortable silence that surrounds the abuse and neglect of children.

Tragic.

Beneath the mango tree…

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We need pictures.

Pictures of the people we have lost.

And smells as well.

In May the mango trees would be in full leaf, but not fruit, months from the vinegary rot of dropped fruit- a condition you might never smell if the people who lived close to the tree were poor and hungry.

I used to live near mango trees. Despite what might get picked or eaten, dozens of mangos would fall to rot on the ground.

So to hang children on a mango tree. What does that mean? To hang them by their own clothes after they have been raped and brutalized?

To do all of this with family. To do it deliberately.

To lie in wait for girls to go to a field to relieve themselves.

To believe you will not face justice.

To almost not.

We need to see the tree. We need to see the broken girls. We need to face how close they are to our own.

Years ago I had a normal conversation with Charles after he talked to a pretty girl his age at a playground. I asked him about the girls he liked. He gave me a blurry answer except for this–

not Asian.

The not Asian has haunted me since I discovered that he abused children. He groomed us all. He was so very careful. Did he tell me that to deceive me? Did he tell me everything to deceive me?

We need a picture. A picture of grief. A picture of murdered children.

And another picture as well–

A picture into the mind of hate. The excuses, lusts, and prejudice that could effectively strip men of the last shreds of decency. The last vestiges of the soul.

Charlize Theron’s Rape Comments

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Let us be quite clear:

The only thing like being raped is actual sexual assault. Rape is defined by the FBI in clear terms and our society often openly thwarts dialogue about the tolerance of and open acceptance of many of the categories of rape.

Getting your picture taken because you have rich-and-famous career or lifestyle is not rape or anything like it.

Rape victims are marginalized.

Rape victims are forced into involuntary sexual contact and then often revictimized by a lack of justice.

Rape victims are not glamorized, idolized, or over-compensated.

When famous actors whine about the exposure they have voluntarily garnered as a function of the career they have freely chosen and compare this scrutiny to a devastating crime it is offensive and insensitive.

These people use words to make a living. Perhaps they should start choosing those words more wisely.

Gang Rape in India

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The story has been told too many times–a woman, a girl, gang raped by a group of males. Often beaten as well. Left for dead.

I cannot bring myself to call them men. Anyone who would do this to another human being is a monster, not a man.

Men must have some moral code. To rape teenage girls and then hang them is such an atrocity, such a clear sign of a broken system–a system that has made it clear that in India it is open season on women and children.

As appalling as the crimes themselves?

A police force that turns the other way, tacitly affirming that the victims lack any protection from the law.

We in American may look at these stories and choose to believe that it could only happen there, not here when in fact the torture and murder of African Americans in the South during decades of racial oppression proves differently.

These terrible crimes need only two contributing factors–hate, and a government that refuses the protection of the law to its most defenseless citizens.

Remembering Maya Angelou, correctly?

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We expend our words extravagantly about the wisdom of our poets, our beloved memoirists, but it sometimes seems as though we pick and choose our stories.

I heard yesterday about Maya’s “abusive childhood” and the years she spent in silence. But I heard little to indicate we as a nation are willing to examine the take-away of the very things that defined Maya and her titular caged bird.

Because the issue of caged birds is a thorny problem.

Angelou went mute for years as a child because she felt responsible for the death of her abuser.

She was not. He was. He was responsible for violating her and the law and then in turn the law was responsible for a completely inadequate response.

We tout the years of silence instead of decrying a lost childhood and a deeply riven justice system.

Not much has changed. I am convinced that it might have been more effective for me to choose years of deliberate silence over the quiet futility of decrying our inattention to sexual assault survivors.

Except for this: my daughters deserve to watch me fight for them. They deserve to let me carry the futility and the anger just a little.

When so many of us refuse to carry it at all.

Fasting for Meriam Ibrahim

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The year I found out my adopted son was a felon I fasted a lot. It was survival fasting–not so much about food or no food, more about please, God, help us survive this.

He did.

But at my low points I still questioned whether fasting helped.

Meriam Ibrahim reminds me why we fast, so I decided to…fast again.

Governments protest. Lawyers appeal. Journalists report. A young mother languishes in jail, facing torture and death.

Such pain and uncertainty defies description.

It seems a small thing to beg God to spare her.

Please. For her little ones. Please…