Ebenezer

One of my coworkers at the store actually counted how many Christmas songs we have in the music overhead. She claims there are only twelve songs, endlessly repeated throughout the day. She finds it a peculiar form of torture for those of us who work there. She finds the one sung by Justin Beiber particularly repugnant.  I agreed and said that it probably violates the Geneva Conventions. Seriously now. I love Christmas music. It is everywhere you go now. I sing and hum along. My dear roommate/friend said my rendition of "I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas" went on for over an hour the other day. Off and on. Sung and hummed and whistled and so on. Oh my. Working on not doing that again.

There is a song that has been following me around this holiday season. I never thought of it as a Christmas song, but apparently it can be interpreted that way. It was one of my favorite songs back in the day when I attended church on a regular basis. I have heard it on the radio when I'm driving and in stores when I'm shopping. It has been years, but just like the scripture that I so diligently memorized, the words to those songs remain in my heart and in my soul. My view of life and the universe has broadened considerably from back when I believed in a personal Jesus, a heaven and hell, a black and white kind of existence. But who I was back then is a part of who I am now. The ebenezer stone in this song is from the Book of Samuel. It represents a new beginning.

Friday when the horror in Connecticut unfolded, I thought it so horribly unfair that I am so blessed. That I have so much in my life, that I am healthy and happy, with a wonderful present and an even more exciting future, when my sisters across the country were bereft of their little children. Their lives will never be the same. They cannot go back in time, to a time when their kids were alive. Friday marked a new beginning for them, one they didn't want and didn't sign up for. I was thinking how hard it would be just to get up every morning, if indeed they got any sleep at all, and face a new day. Their future looks bleak, but I must believe that there are good things ahead for them. We must make it that way.

Susan

"Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing" written by Robert Robinson

Do Something

I want to do something. The local radio station I listen to is having a Toys for Tots drive today, and it was suggested that was a way for those of us on the other coast to channel our grief for our brothers and sisters in Connecticut. Good idea.

I would like to jump on a plane today and fly to Connecticut. If I left now, I could be there by late this evening. I would like to just be with the families of those who died yesterday. I could find them (stalkerish, I know, but it's just a thought) and maybe make a pot of coffee or tea if they are tea drinkers. Take the dog for a walk or clean the kitty's litter box. Maybe they have dishes in the sink from yesterday. I could wash them. Maybe make a pot of soup or rub their feet or hold their hands.

I always want to do something, although I am sure there are people right here where I live that could use some help and I have failed to do that for them. Charity begins at home, you might say. I am reflecting. (Are you chuckling, thinking that I do a lot of that normally?) We are all in this together, in this country and in this world. What happens to them affects me, and the reverse is true. I want to do something.

Susan

Christmas in Connecticut

It's the title of a charming 1945 film starring Barbara Stanwyck. Christmas in Connecticut. The horror of the elementary school shooting today in Connecticut seems especially evil since it is so close to Christmas. I can imagine nothing more painful than having your child die, and in such a random, senseless way. The young man named Adam who perpetrated this crime is dead, too, and he was not much more than a child himself.

I have no easy answers. I do know that I hate guns, and question when we as a nation will we wake up and make the changes needed so that troubled people do not have such easy access to firearms. Maybe we will finally do that. Maybe that will mean that the people, those little children who died in Connecticut today, will not have died in vain. I can't believe that back in the day those who felt the need to make sure American citizens have a right to bear arms intended that to mean that one December day right before Christmas, there would be an elementary school massacre. I can't believe that was their intention.

My dear friend/roommate and I were getting ready for work this morning, when she felt she needed to turn on the TV, and we saw the coverage of this tragedy. She cried. I went to work, and one of the sweet young women I work with was crying. I didn't cry, until tonight, when I came home and sat down and started to contemplate it all. And then I cried.

How many people do I come into contact with on a daily basis who are just this far from the edge? Troubled people, angry people, sick people, desperate people? And what do I do about it? Do the smiles and kind words I give out on a daily basis ever touch them? Should we put guns into the hands of these people, making it easy for them to spread their pain to innocent people?

Today I got my Christmas package from my wonderful niece and her family. Among the other treasures, was a homemade cloth cover with one of those tiny purse sized Kleenex packages inside, lovingly made by my ten-year-old grandniece. She made me one, and also was thoughtful enough to make one for my roommate/friend, whom she has never even met. It was a bright spot of joy in the day for both of us.

The timing was perfect, because we needed Kleenex today. Today we weep. We weep as a nation. We weep as a world, for our brothers and sisters this Christmas in Connecticut.

Susan