My darling, in a reflective mood tonight, not really in a frame of mind to blog. But I wanted to reach out my hands to you, and touch yours. It's so funny that you & I are so spiritually connected in this way. On the face of it we could hardly be more different. I'm outside the Church, and I'm a Democrat (though not rigidly so - I'd self define more as fearful of and against global-corporatism; the Democratic Party isn't outside that, can't be given "facticities" of several decades).

And I do believe in God, and in J.C., and his spirit & message. But I cannot get into the C. Church, not American-style, as I observed at least in T'town firsthand a few months ago. You see, I am sure - never having set foot in Poland, but having observed historical events enough - that the Catholic Church in Poland is very different from the iteration here in the States. What I observed in T'town - granted, it was just one service, but I was unimpressed. Stale music, some girl reading a completely unimaginative essay about what the adjoining Catholic school means to her, she just droned on & on a succession of grammatically correct, hackneyed lines. During the church service. At which there was no sermon - the priest devoted that entire segment to a fundraising appeal for the school. No words of uplift or counsel, no reference to the outside world. And then the choir sang, wanly, dispiritedly. And yes, a Mass was said - but I don't know - I couldn't feel it. Not in that space, with that strange portal above the altar to heaven. Which I suppose is meant, architecturally, to float me - but didn't. It seemed so truncated to me, somehow, this flat eye, compared to churches with soaring archs & knaves and - from the outside - spires.

And then yesterday as I was doing my workout, I flipped PBS channels and came on a program that touched on the prospective new liturgical text, and the piece included an interview with a Chicago-based priest with a Polish last name, who is very unhappy with the new version - which, mind you, my only knowledge of it is from this segment I saw - sounded absolutely abysmal. And this priest of conscience, who I completely sensed joined the Church out of love of God and for all the right (to my mind) reasons, is dispirited by the new liturgy that he is required to embrace & train his congregation in. He read a couple of lines from a key portion of the Mass - and true, I was horrified to hear how incredibly clunky the words are, the English.

Well - obviously, that's not my battle to wage, I am not a practicing Catholic, not here in the U.S. or anywhere else.

But I might have been had I not felt that it was being co-opted.
Or that somehow aspects that I think are true and dear and important get - I want to say thrown under the bus - I'll choose a gentler term - subsumed.

There are Catholic values I treasure deeply - right to life, sacredness of family - but here in the States I really believe that Catholics - too many of them anyway - are used as tools by the corporatist rightwing puppeteers. It's too lockstep it seems to me, here -

in Poland - back when - the Church was a resistance force against totalitarianism - the Church functioned as pushback

here in the States, it seems rather more like reinforcement to the very broken political system -

darling, truly I am struggling for words here
it's just that - what do we stand for?
I know that your family (the ones I have acquaintance with, the one you married into) has been R for decades - but the meaning of "R" has shifted, been co-opted, big time - I am certain that you, my dearest one the only one to whom "across the aisle" (as I hug you) I can even broach such a topic - can understand where I'm coming from

I am certain (?) that we care about similar things
even if you're in the Church
and I'm not
and you're (or have been) an R
and I'm D (or at least believing very much in a set of values that I have felt spiritually my entire life)

I discovered one wonderful new writer & thinker on Saturday at the literary reading (namely, Rebecca Wolff)

and this afternoon, I discovered another, and here is a link to a piece that resonates with me - I relate to this writer, her conscience, conscientiousness, very much

my dearest - I just sense - that despite surface differences - formal affiliations - we're not so different in what we believe -

maybe? maybe I've been too presumptuous here

darling, the light is fading, I've had my share of wine & then some, I'm wondering where D is, I know he's working hard

I imagine you, your face
moon everpresent in my sky
no matter where I turn
on the speediest twisty turny highway
moon on the left sometimes
sometimes on the right
I could never figure that out
because in the backseat as I'd watch
the moon appear then vanish
then reappear on the opposite ridge
forever changing positions
like a game
I couldn't figure it out
we were always to the Tappan Zee
didn't the moon know that?
love you very much