Caring For The Least Of These

"And the King will answer and say to them, truly I say to you, inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me." Matthew 25:40

Now, those of you reading this who know me personally know that I do not go around spouting Bible verses. Ever. I'm more likely to quote Shakespeare or Gandhi or even Buddha, if I'm honest. I still even squirm a bit when people start sharing Bible verses, but I'm starting to let go of my judgements and read it again without any reservations - just a plain read like I would any other good book. I want to see what I discover about it on my own - without anyone else giving me their spin on it. (And, yes, I've read it before. All the way thru, twice actually.)

I was brought up Roman Catholic. Like any good Irish-American girl, I knew all my prayers by the time I was eight or nine. I attended Mass regularly, went to CCD, all that stuff. But somewhere along the way I became suspect of it all. I let go of all my beliefs and "shopped around" a bit. In my twenties, I somehow ended up at an evangelical college, surrounded by mostly Southern Baptists. Boy, was I considered a black sheep! But it was fun. I liked being the black sheep ( I was used to it in my family sphere..). All told, I have spent time as a wanna-be Buddhist, wanna-be Jew, a Catholic, a Quaker, an agnostic, a near-atheist, a born-again Christian, among many other things. I've attended churches and temples of every kind. I've read:

~The Bible: the Catholic Bible, several Protestant versions, the King James version ( in a class by itself), the Jehovah Witness version (to satisfy my curiosity) the Christian Scientist version, and bits of other versions.
~The Bhagavad Gita
~The Koran
~The Upanishads
~The Tao Te Ching
~The Five Classics of Confucius
~The Tibetan Book of the Dead
~ Parts of the Talmud (not the whole thing)

I have not taken getting to know God lightly. I came at it from all angles. You see, I had my own internal experiences of God that told me that He existed in some form. I had unexplainable miracles that had occurred in my life, I had prophetic dreams, I had a strong sense, even as a child, that there was a loving presence looking out for me, even if I couldn't put a name on it.

I still struggle with what I believe. Some things are fixed in my mind and heart, though. I know I believe in kindness. I know I believe in compassion. I know I believe in "doing unto others..." My sense of what and who God is changes, but not what He stands for. Does that make sense? Sorry, I'm just writing without a filter...as the thoughts come...so it might be a bit convoluted.

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to get at is this: In all the holy books I have read, there is an essential unity I discovered. And that is love. Each book had a different way of explaining it, and different paths to it, but it was still the same. Love. Kindness. Compassion. Caring for others. I know that this is the most essential part of God, because it is in every single text that speaks of Him, that is the heart of the message. Some go astray quite a bit. Some don't describe God exactly the way I see Him, but they all talk about Love. Over and over and over.

The part of the Bible that always made sense to me, even when I was courting Atheism, were the words of Christ about "caring for the least of these" and " do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Or " Love they neighbor as thyself." The Good Samaritan story was always my favorite. Now that resonated with me. I wish I could meet that guy. He was a kindred spirit, even if he was just a character in one of Christ's stories.

So, even when I am still questioning and searching. Even when I feel alone in the world, or abandoned by God, I know one thing that never fails to help me feel close to the Divine. And that is helping another human being: feeding them, clothing them, loving them - whatever it is that person needs. I have found that no matter how financially strapped I am, I always have just enough to share with someone less fortunate. God provides. Love provides.

So, I'm planning to blog about times I have cared for others when it was anything but easy or convenient, or even safe. I'm hoping anonymous of the previous post will hear and understand. There are some things that are far more important than even our physical lives. I'm not scared of dying, anyway. I never have been, even when facing death right in the eye . (Ok, I was a bit scared that time, but not too much.) For me dying is just moving on, graduating. It'll happen in God's time, so I'm not worried. I wear my seat belt and I do all those other things I should do to keep myself in one piece. But if I have a choice between mortal danger and walking away from someone who needs my help, I'll choose the mortal danger. Sorry. That's just me, and folks, that just ain't gonna change.

An Answer to Anonymous

"Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit."

I need to blog about this, because it's still REALLY bothering me. I received the anonymous comment below to a recent post. As a rule, I don't post anonymous comments (I think they're cowardly) but I really wanted to respond to what this person said, so I did post it. I'm sure there might be some of you who agree with anonymous, but I do not. At all. Not one tiny bit. And I felt it was an important enough issue to address, so cut & paste her comment & my response here:

Anonymous said, about my post Your Prayers are Needed:
"Please..You are putting yourself and your daughter in grave danger by inserting yourself in this womans life.For your daughters sake remove yourself from this situation ASAP! Your daughters safety is your priority.."
10:05 PM

Here is what I wish I could say to her face to face:

"Anonymous, I am only posting your comment so you may see my answer. As a rule, I do not post anonymous comments. However, as you left no other way of contacting you, here is my answer to your comment:I will NEVER ever let fear stand in the way of helping others. I'm not stupid. I have many family members and friends who spent their lives in law enforcement (including my Dad.) I know what is safe and what is not. But to deny this woman help and friendship simply because her husband is making verbal threats is cowardly and selfish to me. You are entitled to choose otherwise, but please do not post your fears on my blog. If I wrote a post asking for opinions on the matter, I would understand your comment a little more. But I didn't ask for anyone's opinion on the matter and I never will. I asked for PRAYERS, and only from those who would choose to offer them.

I live my life according to my personal beliefs and I happen to think that caring for another human being, however uncomfortable or scary it might be, is the highest good. My daughter is safe, thank you, and she is learning incredible life lessons thru this experience, lessons about doing unto others, about caring for those less fortunate, about true love and compassion, and about how WE EACH can make a difference in this world, if we just STEP PAST OUR FEARS and do the right thing. I am sorry our situation scares you. It does NOT scare me, or my daughter. What lesson would she learn from seeing her mother walk away from a situation God had laid in her lap - A chance to really help someone? Not the lesson I would have her learn. I ask God to give me chances to help others, and when He gives me these chances, I will embrace them and trust HIM. Perfect Love casts out fear. I choose Love over Fear."

So I ask you all....

If we do not step out of our comfort zone to help others, who will? How can any one of us lament the state of things in our world and yet sit idly by, waiting for someone else to clean up the mess? I don't get it, I never will. I choose to live a messy, sometimes painful, sometimes confusing life. I CHOOSE it. I choose it!!!! Would life be less stressful if I walked away from people like N? Hell, yes. But I won't. My Dad taught me to never walk away from anything. He taught me to face things head on, and get my hands dirty. God bless him for that.

You know what? I think I'm grateful that anonymous wrote, because she has now inspired me to write about all the other experiences in my life that I have not walked away from. I've had lots of people like anonymous in my life - people who tell me "Please don't do that! It's dangerous/scary/ not your business/ fill-in-the-blank with your excuse here". I take those moments as chances to educate those people about their own ignorance. So, thanks , anonymous. I now plan to blog about this all week.

Hope you have strong stomachs, people :)

Why I am 'FaerieMama"

Someone asked me why I use FaerieMama as my blogger identity, so I thought I'd explain, for anyone who is curious. And no, it is not because I am a closet lesbian, as one of my online friends joked. (Not that there is anything wrong with that, Seinfeld fans....)

Anyway, there are several reasons actually. The first is that my email address for decades had "faerie" in it. I was given the title by a group of my younger students. I was directing a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the seven and eight-year-olds were die-hard faerie believers. They were convinced that I was secretly a faerie, pretending to be a human. There was a huge rumor going around that whole year with the little ones that I only pretended to be mortal, but that really, I was magic. I couldn't help fueling the rumor a bit with some magical experiences I created for them, and the label stuck. Even now, some of them (they are now all in college) tell me they really, really believed I was a faerie back then. That summer is one of the most special times I've ever had. We spent our days building faerie houses out of twigs and moss and seashells, we sang faerie songs, and made up faerie dances, and we built wings out of coat hangers covered in giant leaves and shellac. We ate faerie food (mango tea and little cakes), and we tried as best we could to live the faerie life - all in an attempt to "get into character." It was bliss.

I still have a thing for faeries. I collect books on them, I still build little houses out of twigs in the woods, I have faerie cards and cds and, well, you get the idea.

And now I'm really going to incriminate myself: I even am pretty sure I might have seen a faerie once. Scoff if you must, but I was a full ten years old at the time. I was no baby. I was wide awake and not in a particularly imaginative mood. It was during one of my dad's campaign parties. Our house was full of people...and I mean full to overflowing. There was a band in the yard, and there was singing and laughing and drinking and talking. Much too late, my mother finally told me to head upstairs to sleep. I was sitting up, all cozy in my canopy bed, and I was watching a slow trickle of rain make a show outside my window, in the soft glow of the streetlight. I noticed the drops beading on the screen, and slowly making a path down to the sill. Then I saw it. One little drop of rain with a little faerie person inside. I blinked. I blinked again. I remember rubbing my eyes and looking again. She was still there.

A tiny raindrop woman inside the bead of water. She had long whitish hair, parted in the middle, and she wore a silky looking dress, and her wings stuck up behind her shoulders. I was mystified. dumbstruck. scared. And elated, all at once. I debated running to get my dad for what seemed like hours but was probably a few seconds. She was still there floating inside, the drop clinging to the screen. The need to share this experience soon won, and I raced to my door to get my dad. But as I opened the latch, I had a terrible sadness wash over me. I thought, I will never see something like this again. I dashed back to the window, and scanned the screen. She was gone.

So maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe I was more sleepy than I remember. Maybe it was an insect that just looked like a tiny faerie woman. It doesn't matter. The adult me may think these things, but the child me knows what I saw.

So, here I am, FaerieMama, some thirty-odd years later. I'm still just trying to share the magic I knew then - but now with my daughter and the rest of the world. You have to admit it, we could use some faerie magic these days.

And Now For Something Completely Different....

I think I'm going to make this a weekly post theme ( see this post's title). My life has gotten so crazy and stressful lately, I find a need some time each day to completely redirect myself. For me, one of the easiest ways is looking at old photos. I love to revisit great moments I've experienced. I decided to go find 3-4 pictures in my picasa albums just now that make me smile. Here is what I came up with:

I take about twenty to twenty-five of my advanced students to England each year. Here we are on a very rainy Monday on the silly touristy bus tour they insisted on taking. I LOVE M's grumpy (paranoid?) expression in the front row. It cracks me up....
And yet another one from this trip. I think this one looks like the album cover of an up and coming grunge band...lol...not. I'm in the middle....( we were told to look serious, btw)

Ahhh! My favorite! Anastasia on Halloween last year. She insisted on taking her puppy along...

Anastasia came upon this wall sculpture on our annual camping trip to Martha's Vineyard. She couldn't stop laughing about it, all day. Every time I see this photo, I think of that day full of laughter....

Ok, we now return to our regular programming....

Your Prayers Are Needed

Things are only getting worse for N and her family. Please, please pray. I have never in my life heard a life story as horrific as hers, and I have heard more than my share of terrible childhoods in my past work with child victims of sex abuse. N needs more help than J or I can give her, and more help than DSS and the Domestic Abuse advocacy group is willing to give her. She needs deep heartfelt prayers, in the worst way. I know some of you are not the praying kind, and I certainly respect that. But for any of you who pray daily or even once in a blue moon, I BEG you to hold this woman up in your prayers.

I cannot go into much detail, but her husband has been laying some major traps for her these past two days. He is far smarter than I thought and he has been using the police and DSS to his advantage. He has the twins so terrified, they are lying to protect him. He has made verbal threats against her life, and against the people who shared his "business" with DSS ( me and J.) He vows he will find out who we are.

N was inconsolable tonight. She wept and wept and cried " I just want God take me now. Please God take me." Everytime a car drove by, she froze in terror. She still refuses to get a restraining order because she will have to tell the court what her husband has done to her. She said " God do what He want with me. If God want me live and stay in this country, He do it. If He want me die or go back to Haiti, He do it."

Pray for enough of her fear to be lifted that she can think straight. Pray that she be protected from her husband. Pray that she accept the help she is being offered. Pray that she feel the love of God embracing her. Pray that her children be protected through all of this. Pray that these stupidly indifferent and careless authorities DO something. Please, please pray.

Deeper Down The Rabbit Hole...

The more I talk to N (the mom of the past few posts), the deeper I feel I'm falling into this endless rabbit hole. I have to be careful about which things I post here. Still, I'm sharing what I can because I think it is only right that the world hear these stories. Even if it's my little blog world. At least someone is hearing and, hopefully praying and sending light their way.

N went looking for her mother yesterday. The mother who abandoned her, the mother who later disowned her, the mother who cut all ties with her. Yes, I know there is more to the story and that this mother feared for her own life. ( Her husband had forbid her contact with N five years ago.) But this is a mother we are talking about. Anyway, N spent the entire day trying to track down this mother, whom her sister had said died in May. N says her heart told her that her mom was still alive. In a last minute reprieve, the sister (out of guilt, I'm guessing) brought the mom to the train station at 7pm to see N before she headed home. They had a 15 minute reunion on a train station platform. N said her mother was bald, skinny and very aged. (She has advanced breast cancer.) From what I could gather from N's rambling, her mom is going into hospice care soon. When I picked her (N) up at 9pm at the train station, she climbed in my car and just wept. My daughter was in the back seat with the baby and kept stroking N's arm telling her it was ok, that she had a bad birthmom, too, etc. It was very bittersweet to watch my daughter comforting this young mother. She told her over and over " It's ok, you're safe now, It's ok." These are the words I use to comfort her when she is crying. So incredibly sweet that she used the same words for N.

N came home with us, because she was too scared to go to her home. We had heard from a neighor that her husband was uncharacteristically home, with the lights on, sitting on the couch...for hours. He was obviously waiting for N. We made up Anastasia's bedroom for her and the baby, stayed up and talked a bit, and then went to sleep. In the morning more sharing happened, and by 1pm she said she was ready to go home. I did not think this was a good idea. I knew her husband would be very angry by this point. She insisted, so I called to inform the neighbors so they would be ready to help her. She had me drop her off with the baby a block away. I tried to get her to keep the baby with us, but there was no convincing her. She felt she had to confront her husband about everything before she could, in good conscience, get a restraining order. Nothing would convince her otherwise. I called the advocacy group and DSS immediately, and I went to my friend J's house , so I could be nearby if she needed help. Within ten minutes we heard three cruisers racing down the street. They stopped outside of N's house. I was terrified. However, it turned out that a neighbor had heard screaming, yelling and banging and called the police. When they got there, N refused to tell them anything and after 20 minutes, they left.

This morning I had confronted N about some facts I had learned. I heard that just 2 days ago the husband, in anger had thrown a heavy ceramic mug at her head - she had ducked, and it hit one of the twins in the eye socket. She denied it and denied it, but I wouldn't let up. She finally admitted that it had happened, but that it was her fault. He had been angry because she was talking to "white women" in the neighborhood. " If I no talk to people, he no throw that."

Tonight my friend J went to the house with her boyfriend and insisted on seeing the twins. The husband was gone & N was scared to let her in. " They tell father everything and he be angry." She said. J would not go away until she saw those kids. Finally, N let her in, and she and her boyfriend went up to the room where the twins are kept. She had snuck in food in her purse, and the kids wolfed it down as fast as they could swallow. J asked them if they knew it was wrong for them to be kept in that room all the time. They said they had to stay there, or their dad would be angry. She saw the gash on the boy's eye socket and asked him about it. "oh, I just fell." He said. J told him she knew what happened and that it was ok to tell her the truth. He looked at the floor and would not answer. The girl, too, had a bad cut on her face. " I fell, too" was her response.

Tomorrow J, another neighbor and I are going to bombard DSS with all this info. We are calling the police, too. We are not going to stop until SOMETHING is done. This is ridiculous. These kids are prisoners in their own home. They are not fed, they are not cared for. N is so traumatized she cannot even get herself to take out a restraining order. She would rather live with the abuse she knows than enter the unknown. And the baby. What happens to the poor baby?

I can't think about it anymore because it's too painful. I give it up to God. God, PLEASE take it. Please get these kids out of that h*ll-hole. Get N the help she needs. Get the husband OUT of there.

He told N on Saturday morning that he knew what she was doing and to "just wait till Monday." He told her last week that he would kill her if she told anyone else "his business." The police know this, the advocacy group knows this, DSS knows this...and still those children and that mother live there in fear.

Last night N was sitting in Anastasia's bed feeding the baby. I asked her if she needed anything else. " K, I sleep on floor every night with my baby. I no need nothing. This what you give me very good." I tried to get her to stay tonight again, but she said no.

Tonight I am in my palace of a house ( that's what it feels like now) and I will sleep in my warm, comfortable bed, with a full stomach. Only five minutes from my house, N sleeps in complete squalor, on the floor with her baby, with an empty stomach. Upstairs from her sleep two children in a dark room with no blankets, no pillows, on two urine stained mattresses, The shades are drawn down, the door is kept shut, and they will remain there until SOMEONE rescues them. God help them. Please pray.

A Little Light, To Brighten These Dark Days...

Anastasia is positively blissful with baby Ariella around. Yesterday, when she was at our home, the baby's mom asked Anastasia to be Ariella's godmother. She said " You love my baby. I see you love my baby. I have no family here. You be my baby godmother?"

I'm sure you could hear the bellowed 'YES!" from wherever you are in the world...lol.

PS: That's a temporary tattoo on Anastasia's hand. She got it from a gum machine.


Ok, I've pretty much fallen in love with her, too.....

Anyway, even the worst of weeks can be redeemed simply by holding a newborn....there is truly nothing like it in the whole world....

And we have her until 10pm tonight!!!