Abatiwaaaa-ha! so is life!

[bronze_ribbons]

Today's New York Times quotes from letters written to Shakespeare's Juliet:

The sisters [compiling a selection of the letters for publication] found that during the nearly 70 years the letters have been arriving, they have become a reflection of the changing times. In 1970, a girl from Montana wrote, "Five years ago I met a Negro boy, William, at Bible camp." They had fallen in love, she explained, but added: "My parents and friends are against us getting married. William and I have separated many times, trying to get over each other."

In 1967, a Louisiana woman wrote that her husband was in Vietnam, and that she had fallen in love with his best friend. And in 1972, a soldier wrote from Vietnam itself: "I am in a bunker. Outside I hear missiles exploding, bullets being fired. I am 22 years old and I'm scared."

More recently, love in its other forbidden forms has begun to show up in the letters. In 2003, a girl wrote, "I am in love with a GIRL, and in India lesbians are never heard of."

---

My minister's installation ceremony took place yesterday. The opening hymns (both in Singing the Journey) included Peter Mayer's Blue Boat Home and Harry Belafonte's Turn the World Around (such a happy song! See here for a photo and clip from the Muppet episode); the anthems included a flowing new setting of Be Thou My Vision (Gail's favorite hymn), and the charge to the minister opened with "We three friends from New England are..." (composed by her former study group partners in Boston).

What's uppermost in my mind at the moment, however, is the quote on which Eunice Benton (the Mid-South District Executive) based her "charge to the congregation." By popular Unitarian Universalist writer Robert Fulghum:

To be human is to be religious.
To be religious is to be mindful.
To be mindful is to pay attention.
To pay attention is to sanctify existence.

It ain't necessarily so, of course. But for someone somewhat obsessed with how and when and what drives other people to bear witness? Yes. Yes, it is.

Comments

[slightlymadmom.livejournal.com]

I like that comment. Specifically the last line. Something to think about, too. Thanks.

[qrssama.livejournal.com]

Thank you, dear heart. I needed to read that. I'm struggling against an accusation of being anti-Semite (because I scheduled a doc admissions meeting the day before Passove), and I'm trying hard to work through all the accomodations I need to make to allow one professor to miss a critical meeting that everyone else can make, by rescheduling the meeting into a time that other people have to miss. And I will do it being mindful.

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

What!? That's nuts. I'm so sorry you're having to field that kind of !@#%@#@.

*buries face in hands* There are times I have to believe in God, because I can't stand people.

(To be precise, it's so fucking heartbreaking how some people are so ready to think the worst of others. And regardless of whatever rottenness happened to them in the past to warp them that way, it's no less unfair of them to take it out on you. ARGH!)

[qrssama.livejournal.com]

I'll run down the full story in the mail coming your way. It is tiresome.

[slightlymadmom.livejournal.com]

That is nuts. *HUGS* to you, and good luck! You'd think a person would be glad to miss a meeting (I often am)... ;-)

*You* are a wonderful person. Period end of sentence! Repeat as needed!