April is the Cruelest Month

So wrote T.S. Eliot in "The Waste Land." And it seems to be true. Today, in Binghamton, NY, a gunman killed 14 people at an immigration center, some of whom were taking their citizenship test when they were shot. Two years ago in April, 33 people were killed on the campus of Virginia Tech. And nearly 10 years ago, in late April of 1999, 12 students and a teacher were killed at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colorado.

But it's not just April. In February last year, five customers and employees were killed in a robbery at a Tinley Park, Illinois Lane Bryant store. In December of 2007 a gunman killed eight people in a Von Maur store in Omaha. And the list can go on and on and on.

The reporter on the news today said that this type of tragedy is an American signature tragedy. Gun violence doesn't need to be dramatic multiple killings either. In Chicago this school year, 20 Chicago public school students have been killed, 18 the result of gun violence, most of them one at a time over the course of seven months.

I don't even pretend to have the answers, but I do have a lot of questions. Why do the simplest arguments need to be resolved with a gun? Why are so many innocent bystanders killed? When did human life become so disposable? Why is it so easy to obtain a handgun legally? Why do proponents of handguns object to delays for background and criminal checks on gun purchasers? And what can be done to stop this killing?

I don't have answers to these questions or any others, but I do know something needs to be done about this. Something needs to be done to stop the killing, to make lives count, to make the lives lost not be for nothing, but perhaps a catalyst for change, for a better way. Life, in April or any other month, doesn't need to be cruel. There has to be a better way.

Darkness or Light

This week's Gospel included the most quoted line in all of Christendom: John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. But Father Ralph focused on lines that came after that: For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but He sent Him that the world might be saved by Him... This is the judgment, that though the Light has come into the world, yet men have loved darkness rather than the Light, for their works were wicked.

But nobody really wants to hear the Good News or the good news, do they? We really do prefer the darkness, don't we?

Open a newspaper, turn on the TV news, open a news webpage, and the headline will most likely be bad news. I just opened up CNN.com and the main headline was "Fourth Oakland officer dies after shootings." Every so often there's a story on the evening news that is uplifting and positive, but that is the exception rather than the rule. And any news editor will tell you they are giving the public what they want.

And we stop to look at car accidents, slowing to crane our necks to see what's happening. We can't take our eyes off the major bad news stories (consider the massive coverage of the tsunami and Hurricane Katrina a few years back), we remember where we were for major tragedies (individuals from previous generations remember exactly where they were when they found out JFK was shot, for some it's the Challenger disaster; do you remember where you were on September 11th?) It's all the negative things we remember and use to mark history.

So are we part of the problem? Are we so ready to condemn (or be condemned) that we don't allow ourselves to be open to be saved? I certainly don't have the answer, and am also guilty of looking at the bad rather than the good.

Maybe we can take a moment out of our lives, just a moment every day to part the positive, to point out the good, to encourage it, even. So what in your life today is good? What did you read in the paper, or see on TV that is positive? What today renews your faith in the goodness of people? Let's be part of the solution. Let's make that one small step to acknowledge the positive, encourage the good. It really is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. It's spring, it's daylight savings time, it's the time of renewal, and dusting out the old cobwebs and starting fresh.

So light that candle, renew your life. Whether you are religious or not, it's worth a try to renew your spirit.

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

The day after Thanksgiving I left for Budapest. The "Christmas Markets" trip was nice, Prague was great, but it was winter. It was cold enough for hats and gloves and sturdy shoes or boots. And that is how December began. When I arrived back home, there was snow on the ground, a chill in the air, and signs that winter had settled in for a long stay. A week and a half later when I left for Florida for Christmas, it was -3, and the Bears were scheduled to play the Packers that night at Soldiers Field. My return was greeted with a 40 degree day, sunshine and blue skies. It seemed as if we were getting a rather late and rather chilly "Indian summer."

Then the whole thing tanked. While we had quite a bit of sun in January, the temperature never really got that high. It probably stayed mostly in the single digits or teens, reaching the twenties maybe a few times. Maybe. It snowed, and snowed, and snowed, never all that much each time, but it's piled up and the damage to the streets (some of which were never really fixed last year) only became evident when the city plows went through. The snow was pretty, at first. White, fresh, glistening. Only we all know snow doesn't stay that way very long. It turns off-white, then dusty white, then contains streaks of black (and perhaps even yellow) and finally turns into a dirty mess on the side of the roads and walks.

Today, most of that changes. Today, the temperatures are enough to melt most of the snow. Today we can see green peeping through. Oh, sure, there is still dirt. What landed on the snow now lands on the sidewalks and streets as the snow melts. And everything is wet, puddles everywhere. But the sun is out, the temperature is 58. It feels like spring is coming.

I know it's just February, and early February at that. But we've turned the corner, so to speak. The sun is higher, it's at a better angle for the Northern Hemisphere to get the light and warmth. The melting snow gives us the promise of something better to come, even if it's probably a couple months away. We've made it through the worst of it, our minds tell us. We've made it through the bone-chilling cold days of January, the month that seems to go on forever. We've made it through the days that come and go without hope, without promise. We're on the other side of that hill now, still with a ways to go, but past the roughest parts. And we know that for a fact. This coming week, pitchers and catchers report to spring training. It's that yearly sign that we're over the hump, past the worst winter can throw at us, on the downward slope of that nasty pile of snow going toward spring.

Yes, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood today. It needs a few good rains to clean up the crud, but it's coming, sooner than we think, when the dream begins again, and a young woman's fancy turns to baseball once more.

A Neverending Story

Since I haven't updated this journal in so long, I decided to take a look at it and do a little redesigning. Like everything else in life, it needed an update, a new look, a fresh face. It may change again, at another time, it may look totally different. But making these changes in this journal, as in life, is sometimes necessary.

And that brings me to my New Year's resolutions. It's a time to say I, too, want an update. I, too, want a fresh face, a new look for the world to see. The changes don't always last, the traditional ones keep coming back every year: lose weight, eat healthy, exercise more. The lack of success in one year doesn't eliminate the possibility of change in the new year, so we keep including these resolutions.

Some may say it's foolish to make the same resolutions year after year after year when there's very little, if any, progress made on them. But is it foolish to try? Is it foolish to want to be better? Aren't we all just fallible humans who are just trying to go forward? And what is the alternative if we don't try? Do we give up?

In our own personal progression, our own growth, trying is necessary. It's a sign to ourselves, a sign to everyone else, that we want to improve, we want to make ourselves better, we care that our world be a little better. We may not always succeed. We may fail horribly. But maybe, somewhere along the way, we achieve a little victory that makes it all worthwhile. Maybe we learned something about eating better. Maybe while we still eat things we know we shouldn't, we've started to buy more locally grown foods, and thereby helped local farmers stay in business. Maybe we're walking to the store, getting exercise and creating less emissions into the air we breathe. Maybe we're carrying our own cloth bag to the store to get our junk food, and eliminating all those plastic bags.

Success isn't measured by how many of our resolutions are kept. Success is measured by those little steps, those small gestures that don't seem to mean much if taken alone. Success is measured by the fact that we keep making resolutions, that our will is there to be better, to improve ourselves and our world. My New Year's wish to you is that this neverending story continue and blossom and thrive. For if we stop, if we give up on improving ourselves, all is lost.

Moving Along

Just a little over a month ago I closed on my condo. Since it's new construction, there were still some things that needed to be done. On the day of my closing they were finishing putting up the couple remaining shelves in the kitchen cabinets, putting up towel bars and toilet paper holders, taking care of some of the nicks and scratches on the baseboard. After going back and forth with the floor guy who was supposed to fix some of the nail holes and scratches the workers made on the floor but ended up making it worse, they refinished the whole hardwood floor (kitchen, dining room, living room and hallway). Though I didn't really have time to go there the day after it was done (I was having 11 family members descend on me at the old place), I went to check it out, and to my surprise it looked good. So now furniture has been ordered, more things are making their way there, and I'm planning on spending the night there on Monday (the day the furniture arrives). When I'm there, it feels like home, only with much less "stuff" around. I've moved over some dishes (and realized I need more of that style -- I only have setting for four), moved over 734 books so far, moved pillows and blankets and sheets, oh my! But it will really be home once I get Comcast to move the cable and internet service. That will come only after I watch the 91 hours or so of DVR'd shows I have to watch. But with a new season marching along, and the days getting shorter, I will make it my home. It's new, it's functional, it doesn't let me keep the things I don't really need. And this may be the best part of it all. All that excess baggage will be moving along, making way for a new me, a new start, a new home.

Grey's Anatomy

Change is all around us, everyday, everywhere. It's what we all dread, at times, but what we all do. Think about it. You're not the same person you were 10 years ago. You're not even the same person you were 5 years ago. You change your hair, you change your clothes style, you change your mode of transportation. Life is change.

And that change has found me. For quite a while now I've been "looking" at condos. "Looking," in this case, means surfing online, checking the newspaper, but not really looking. While I was in Florida this past May, something changed. Maybe I really needed to be ready. Maybe real change finds you when you are ready and really need it. I set up appointments to see some condos the week I got back. Two weeks and numerous units later, I found one that called to me and told me this could be home.

The first time I walked into the unit I got a good feeling. It helped also that that day, after seeing Wrigley from the outside and from a rooftop deck looking at the back of the scoreboard, and with the Cubs being down by 7 runs, they came from behind to win 10-9. It just screamed that this was right, that this condo was the one for me, that all was right with this decision, that I was finally ready for a change.

I went to see the condo a second time, and felt the same way. I took pictures and sent them to friends and family to get their opinion. They all liked it, too. And so I made the bid, signed the contract, paid the earnest money. This change is going to be real. And I've spent time measuring, and furniture looking, and deciding what I like and what I want and more importantly, what I don't want. Change is good.

Change is also difficult, however. What do I do with all this "stuff" that has accumulated throughout a lifetime? There are always things that cannot be left behind, and there are always things that are easy to part with when you realize you still have something you no longer want or need. It's those inbetween things that are difficult, that grey area between right and wrong, between stay and go, between here and there.

What makes up this grey area is our lives, the unsentimental pieces, the necessary parts, the difficult times and the good times. This is the point where change comes in and says, "what do you do with this?" Do I change? Do I stay the same? If I change too much, will I still be me? The decisions will not be easy, but the decisions will ultimately define me, for a while at least. As in most things, black and white is easy. How we respond to the grey areas of life "make" us who we are, "build" us into what we will become, and allow us to grow along the way.

A One-Year Plan

A friend of mine posted in her Live Journal about a question a co-worker asked her. What did she want to be doing in five years. That question got me thinking. I read the responses to her post, and posted a response myself, but today I began to consider what "I" wanted to be doing in five years; heck, what I wanted to be doing in One year. I know that circumstances may change, my interests may change but still, I should try to be working toward something. I also watched Nova last night, which aired a program about regular people, young, old, overweight, medically questionable, all preparing, over a nine month period, to run the Boston Marathon. They knew what they were working toward. Not everyone accomplished their goal, but they all worked,, hard, focused, toward it. Shouldn't I be working toward something, too?

So where do I want to be in one year? What do I want to be doing? I know that I want to write. Isn't that why I created this blog? To write? To practice? To figure out what my voice is, what my view is, what I have to say that is so different from anyone else. To do that, I need to write. And write. So that's what I'm going to do. I've been harboring some story ideas and want to get those ideas down on paper. Two of the stories are fan fiction, one story is for a novel. No, I don't think this will be "The Great American Novel." I don't have expectations that high and mighty. But it's a story, a quest, that sits with me, and walks with me, and ponders with me as I go about my life. It's a story of friendship, of life, of finding your way with the grace and dignity, the knowledge and intuition it takes to not screw things up too much.

And so I'm going to write, maybe not every day, but most days. I'm not going to try for perfection, there's no such thing. I'm not even going to try for good, that can come later. That's what revision is for. But to revise, to get to that stage, there needs to be something there, something to revise. And that's where I am. And that's where I start, where I begin a one year journey toward writing. My goal in the year isn't to get published, but to get finished. To start the three stories I've got in my head now, to finish those stories. By finishing these stories I make a step toward being what I hope to someday be: a writer.