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UNINDICTED CO-CONSPIRATORS
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the thirteen year old daughter of a friend of ours received the sacrament of confirmation yesterday evening, and then there was a party with dinner and dancing (mostly by all the thirteen-year-olds) at a local restaurant
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one was with a complete stranger at the mass, a woman of about my age sitting directly in front of me, who when she turned around to shake my hand and wish me peace, said "you should be in the choir" - she had heard me singing during the "our father" - this pleased me very much and i assured her, "i AM in the choir - at my home parish"
the other was with a friend of ours whom i have known for twenty years - she is a generation younger than i and has a son almost the same age as the confirmandee - she is a clintonista, it turns out, admiring hillary's intelligence, dedication, and commitment to principles of making a better world for all
i said i was a bernie supporter, and when she said that she thought there wasn't much difference in positions between hillary and bernie, i gently countered that in my view there WERE differences (which I did not specify), but they paled in size with the difference between either of them and any republican - i used the term "quantum leap", which she thought was apt
then, during the dancing by the young people, they would mouth the words and act out the songs - one of which was a taylor swift song, "shake it off", with the lyrics haters gonna hate
and so i wonder - am i too cynical? am i, despite my efforts to achieve menschlichkeit, a hater?
but also, too, yesterday i read peggy noonan's column from the wall street journal - in which she posed the all-but-certain general election candidates as a choice between "a crazy guy and a criminal"
during the mass, the bishop whose ritual annointing of the confirmandees is what notionally "confirmed" them had, in place of a homily, a sort of "final oral exam" asking the young people theological questions which they should know at this point, having been through the process of education and spiritual formation which made them eligible for this step on their faith journey
one question he asked, "why is the world so f*cked up?" - or words to that effect - the right answer was "original sin" - and the bishop went on to relate that to our first parents' disobedience, in a very biblical way
meanwhile, sitting in the audience, i had my own view - that it is not disobedience, as the authoritarian hierarcy has taught for millenia, but rather selfishness
but i didn't argue with anyone about it - no one at the occasion except for my spouse knew that i was actually a follower of pope maurice, and his principle of "the popehood of all believers" - tutti uomini sono pietri, as he expressed it in his native italian - this was not a time for a frank exchange of views, either on religion or politics
people were eating, drinking, and being merry - as one has been so recently reminded, THIS is the future - you got to LIVE it, live WITH it, and at a time TBD, get out of the way
Well... I can be blamed for having an opinion, I suppose. And peace be unto you too.
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