Jesus' birthday thru the eyes of children

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I'd just like to know who 'Mike' is.

Merry Christmas all .. (5 people or so who read on a regular basis and anyone else who drops by) I wish you peace and love and all that gooey stuff people wish for other people they like.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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Very disturbing

I’ve been watching what is happening in Texas with the children being removed from the FLDS compound there. Over 400 children. There are so many aspects of this that are disturbing and I am torn.

There is the aspect of freedom of religion and if these people want to live in a communal way and stay separated from the rest of society, they have the right to do that. But if their religion includes forcing young girls to marry older men and to have babies by them? Well, that kind of cancels out the freedom of religion part.

Still, knowing that all the children have been removed and are going to be placed with families they don’t know and who surely do not live as these children are used to living is fairly horrifying to me.

All the women in their long pastel dresses saying “we just want our children back” complete the surreal aspect of the whole story. These women are like robots or stepford wives or something. They sniffle a bit but I have seen no tears. The tape of one of them showing the press around their living quarters is scary to say the least. How is it that what they say is their religion seems to have stolen their souls?

Of course these women want their children back. They are mothers. They have most likely grown up in that atmosphere themselves and it is all they know. The fact that they are not reacting like you or I would if someone took our children – doesn’t mean they don’t feel. But boy oh boy it sure appears that way.

The sparseness of their existence, the absolute devotion to their beliefs is their right whether any of us think it’s bizarre or not. But they can’t raise children to believe it’s okay to force girls barely into puberty to marry men to become one of his several wives, and to be fruitful and multiply. That’s just wrong.

Still – I can’t help thinking about the trauma the children are going through. They are going to be placed in homes where there will be TV which they are not accustomed to, and people who do not dress like them, talk like them, and don’t worship as they do. They are not only used to having a mother, they are used to having several mothers. What kind of psychological damage is this going to cause them?

I know that what is being done is in the best interests of these children but oh my gosh – how much help can they be given before it starts to hurt?

I don’t have any answers. I have no idea what would be a better way to handle the situation. For the most part I am disturbed that the situation exists at all. But it does and I don’t think there is a way to deal with it without hurting someone.

I just wish it weren’t the children.

Are we related?

Yesterday my kids went to The Art Institute of Chicago, a membership to that institution was one of my son's requests for Christmas last year. The two of them when to see - I think they said - the Jasper Johns exhibit. Or was it the John Jasper exhibit? I wouldn't know.

Today the two of them drove up to Milwaukee to see another art exhibit, somewhere up there, yah hey dere.

I enjoy flea markets and art by anybody if I think it's nice. I have never taken any kind of art appreciation course and the art museum bores me silly. At least it did when I last went, I'm pretty sure I was about 18 years old and we really don't need to discuss how long ago that was. Okay, we are definitely talking decades. Multiple decades.
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I suppose what I am getting at is - are these my children? I mean, who taught them this stuff, guided them in this direction? I pushed both of my children in one direction, toward doing what would make them happy and getting the education behind them to do whatever that turned out to be.

I am incredibly proud of my kids but I am a little bewildered. They are turning out to be people who appreciate art and literature and things I know nothing about. It amazes me that both of them have this kind of bent, both tend to be more intellectual than not. More intellectual than I am, that is for sure. They are their own people, with opinions (oh my God the opinions) and tastes and likes and dislikes of their own. And they are very different from me and mine.

So for me the question becomes, where on earth did these kids come from?
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Christmas tidings

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***Seriously edited.

I have to take some of that back. The card came today.

All that did not apply specifically to this Christmas - still true, but no reason to post about it now. Sure glad I didn't send that email!

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