Reading, writing...that's what I do.

Love for the printed word, love and belief in ideas.

What Good Friday Teaches Us About Cynicism

April 20, 2025 12 Comments

With all that is happening in our country, I am reposting this piece. I am also praying for the father who is being wrongly held in a prison in El Salvador.

This post offers an opinion written by the late Michael Gerson. It appeared in the Washington Post. Mr. Gerson was an unabashed evangelical Christian who believed in the importance of faith in public life. A speech writer for President George W. Bush, the two men could not have been more different — Mr. Gerson cerebral, reserved, fidgety; Mr. Bush folksy, outgoing, relaxed — but they shared an almost psychic connection, especially when putting shared values into words.

WHAT GOOD FRIDAY TEACHES US ABOUT CYNICISM

The story of GOOD FRIDAY—the garden, bloody sweat, sleeping friends, a torch-carrying crowd, the kiss, the slash of a sword, the scourging, mocking…the nails, the despair of a good man—is an invitation to cynicism. Nearly every human institution is revealed at its worst.

Government comes off poorly, giving Jesus the bureaucratic shuffle, with no one wanting to take responsibility, until a weak leader gives in to the crowd in the name of keeping the peace.

“What is truth?” asks Pontius Pilate, with a sneer typical of politics to this present day. Professional men of religion do not appear in their best light. They are violently sectarian, judgmental and turn to the state to enforce their beliefs. “Jesus was not brought down by atheism and anarchy,” theologian Barbara Taylor sharply observers. “He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix.”

The crowd does not acquit itself well, turning hostile and cruel as quickly as an Internet mob, first putting palms beneath his feet, then thorns upon his brow. Even friendship comes in for a beating. The men closest to Jesus sleep while his enemies are fully awake. There is betrayal by a close, disgruntled associate. And then Peter’s spastic violence and cowardly denials. The women—all assorted Marys—come off far better in the narrative. But Jesus is essentially abandoned to face his long, suffocating death alone.

And, for a moment, even God seems to fail, vanishing into a shocking silence…

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” asks Jesus, in words that many of his followers would want to erase from the Bible. How could the Son of God be subject to despair? G.K. Chesterton called Christianity the only religion in which “God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.”

WAS GOD ABSENT ON GOOD FRIDAY?

Consider how the world appeared at the finish of Good Friday. It would have seemed that every source of order, justice and comfort—politics, institutional religion, the community of friendship—had been discredited. It was the cynic’s finest hour. And God Himself seemed absent or unmoved, turning cynicism toward nihilism. Every ember of human hope was cold. And there was nothing to be done about it.

Then something happened. There was disagreement at the time, as now, on what that something was. According to the story, Pilate posted a guard at the tomb with the instruction: “Make it as secure as you can.” Then the cynics somehow lost control of the narrative. There was an empty tomb and wild reports of angels and ghosts. And the claim of resurrection.

EASTER

Even those who believe the body was moved, must confront certain facts. Faith in the figure who Rome executed has far outlasted the Roman Empire.

(Comment: I love this major point.) The cowardly friends became BOLD missionaries, most dying torturous deaths (according to tradition) for the sake of a figure they had once betrayed in their sleep. The faith thus founded has given the mob—all of us, even the ones who mock, especially the ones who mock—the hope of pardon and peace.

For believers, the complete story of Good Friday and Easter legitimize both despair and faith. Nearly every life features less-than-good Fridays.

We grow tired of our own company and travel a descending path of depression. We experience lonely pain, unearned suffering or stinging injustice.

We are rejected or betrayed by a friend.

And then there are the unspeakable things—the death of a child, the diagnosis of an aggressive cancer, the steady advance of a disease that will take our minds and our dignity.

We look into the abyss of self-murder. And given the example of Christ, we are permitted to feel God-forsaken.

And yet…eventually …or so we trust…or so we try to trust: God is forever on the side of HOPE! ( my capitals)

If the resurrection is real, death’s hold is broken. There is a truth and human existence that cannot be contained in a tomb.

It is possible to live lightly, even in the face of death—not by becoming hard and strong, but through a confident perseverance. Because cynicism is the failure of patience. Because Good Friday does not have the final word. Thanks for being here. May Easter bring you health and joy.

(artwork by Harold Coping; unknown; Gustav Klimt)

THE CASTLE IN MY LIFE

April 13, 2025 9 Comments

When growing up, I lived near a castle, one I could easily walk to or ride my bike. And thinking about it, that was amazing, considering I also fell in love with tales of kings and queens, only to discover there was a real live queen, who had my name: Elizabeth.

BUT A CASTLE? Really? Yes. Here’s the story…

I grew up in the Beverly neighborhood, part of the southern end of the city of Chicago. A man named Robert C. Givins, who was a successful real estate developer, decided to live out his dream and build a castle on the HILL, that is part of the area’s ecological history.

Givens and his ego, certainly knew what to do, the location of the castle being on the highest point in the city of Chicago. But how can that be?

The castle is situated on part of the Blue Island Ridge, geological remnant of a prehistoric glacial island and a former lake shore. This history made the Beverly area uniquely “hilly”…compared to the mostly flat Chicago landscape. And for those who know more about early land formations, the Blue Island Ridge’s distinct geology and strategic location along the Vincennes Trace attracted early settlers, shaping the area’s development and thus the reason the area was called Beverly Hills. (No relation to the Beverly Hills in California.)

FUN FACTS

The official name of this edifice is B. Givins’ Beverly Castle, built in 1886. It is unique because it is the ONLY castle structure in the city of Chicago. And it was modeled after an Irish castle…which makes perfect sense, many of the families in the area being of Irish extraction when I was growing up. Through the years, the castle has been used in different ways. Though initially a private residence, when I was growing up, it functioned as a church and is now a school.

Landmarks in a community always make them unique. They become a marker for the world you live in.

“On we’re easy to find, our house is just up the hill from the castle.”

Landmarks such as this also provide amazing material for local artists, Jack Simerling being one of them. The painting of THE CASTLE was done by Mr. Simmerling, who for many residents was considered Beverly’s artist. He developed a passion for historic Chicago architecture and the finely detailed architectural elements found in stately old homes.

He was dismayed by the destruction of residences such as the Potter Palmer Castle and many of the fine homes in what would become the Prairie Avenue Historic District of Chicago. Thus, he worked to preserve these homes through through his paintings before they were demolished. And in 1958, Simmerling opened The Heritage Gallery, which is now located on 103rd Street in Beverly. His daughter, Vicki, continues the business to this day.

The Simmerling Family actually owned the historic Blackwelder House on South Prospect Avenue in Morgan Park, a premier examples of Victorian-era architecture in the Beverly/Morgan Park area. Jack’s love of art and history expanded as he rescued antiques and architectural ornaments from many older Chicago homes.

Simmerling’s works and a collection of architecture are on display at the Glessner House Museum. A National Historic Landmark, the Glessner House Museum is located on the corner of South Prairie Avenue and East 18th Street in Chicago.

Thanks to our daughter Caroline and her husband Ben, we know how a print of a Jack Simmerling and THE CASTLE in our home.

My Compulsive Habit…Organization

April 6, 2025 5 Comments

I have been told that it started when I was three years old. We had two throw rugs in a pass-through to the kitchen. I was constantly bending down to straighten them.

I am not a psychologist, but as I grew and heard this story, I found the answer to that compulsion.

Many of you know I lost my father at the age of three. He was there holding me, loving me, and then he was missing. Where did he go?

ANSWERS

Many psychologists would find a link between my compulsive “rug” behavior and the event that shook my world. Where did Daddy go? Is he coming back? Why did he leave me?

Of course, those were not questions I asked at such a young age, though later I would ask them.

But in those first months of loss and change, my mind and body did not like things being OUT OF PLACE. Enough of that! No more change. Let’s keep things the way they were, the way they should me…and that might explain the thought process of a child. That certainly explains my thumb sucking, crying fits and rug adjusting. WHY CAN’T THINGS BE LIKE THEY WERE? Even today in my older age, I hurt for that child who was so angry and confused by this loss.

BUT MAYBE THERE IS AN UPSIDE?

We can form bad and good habits early on, habits that often stay with us. I must have subconsciously looked at the rug straightening habit as a way to KEEP THINGS IN PLACE, AVOID UPHEAVAL, DEAL WITH CHANGE.

My mother might not have realized it, but she fed this need in me by asking that I always bring my young brother Bill’s empty formula bottles to the kitchen…which I did. Such a request and my rug straightening fed my desire, my absolute, desperate need to bring some order into the present chaos of my life.

Thus, I always complied, my mother then praising and thanking me, thus accomplishing two lessons I would take into my future life: first, despite upheaval, you can find calm in organization, routine. And second, any child, your own or one you are caring for…needs to feel part of the world around them, needs to feel they are contributing to life.

Saying thanks might sound too complicated for children under the age of five…but it is not.

Human beings thrive on love, yes. But they also thrive on praise. The smallest acknowledgment that I was being a good girl…being a helper…caring for my baby brother—worked a small miracle. Yes, my mother had her moments when she went into her bedroom, closed the door and cried. But those were moments I wasn’t privy to.

In my little life, I was a helper. Which of course now makes me think of Mr. Rogers, who often talked about the Helpers. Why? Because as humans we come into this world with a desire to help. It is simply part of our DNA. When I raised my own three children, I made sure they had part in caring for one another, and their bedrooms, their possessions. Maybe that’s why so many families have a dog or a cat…we had a bird!

So in the end, being human requires we learn responsibility, we learn how to organize, take care of our things, do our school homework, complete our daily chores….and thus in the end, someone will always be there to say THANK YOU or WELL DONE…and if not, we will simply feel we are doing what we can to make our lives better.

What in your life has made you a HELPER?

Joan Didion, My Days of Magical Thinking

March 30, 2025 4 Comments

Joan Didion is a writer and thinker whose work has stayed with me. The Year of Magical Thinking was a book that made me cry, not only for Didion, but for myself. Because this is book of very personal feelings…the experience of being with a person one moment, then finding him dead the next. And yes, Joan Didion wrote about this in her skilled, beautiful way, she being the one to put into words what many of us have felt. Yet, Didion having the courage to set down her feelings, the horrendous experience of speaking to her husband on moment and then finding him dead the next.

Didion wrote: I only remember looking up. His left hand was raised and he was slumped motionless. At first I thought he was making a failed joke, an attempt to make the difficulty of the day seem manageable.

I remember saying, Don’t do that.

When he did not respond my first thought was that he had started to eat and chocked. I remember trying to lift him far enough from the back of the chair to give him the Heimlich. I remember the sense of his weight as he fell forward, first against the table, then to the floor. In the kitchen by the telephone I had taped a card with the New York Presbyterian ambulance numbers. I anticipated a moment like this. I had taped the numbers by the telephone in case someone in the building needed an ambulance.

Someone else.

I called the numbers. A dispatcher asked if he was breathing. I said Just come.

Didion then relays the arrival of the ambulance and the procedures the team went through. They had set up a computer monitor on the floor and were watching it, but then in seconds made the decision to take her husband to the hospital. Though Didion wanted to go with them, she had to wait for a second ambulance to take her. She writes: “I have no memory of sirens. I have no memory of traffic. When we arrived a the emergency entrance…the gurney was already disappearing into the building. A man was waiting in the driveway. Everyone else in sight was wearing scrubs. He was not. “Is this the wife,” he said to the driver, then turned to me. “I’m your social worker,” he said, and I guess that is when I must have known.

A TIME FOR HEALING

What does a woman who has watched, evaluated, then written about place, time, birth, life…what does she do when faced with death? Some time had to pass, but then Joan Didion wrote….

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe their husband is about to return and need his shoes.”

LIFE….REALITY

I cried when reading Didion’s book. I cried for my father, a man I barely knew. Because we all have lost someone. But have you ever thought of writing a memoir to honor that person?

I am no Joan Didion, but I wrote a memoir when my children were young. Searching that work I found the following…my way to cling to security, to do some MAGICAL THINKING…

My mother gives us a record with the story of the PIED PIPER of HAMLIN. I play this over and over. It is a strange story about a town infested with rats, about a piper who can rid the town of these pests. But then when he is not properly paid, he plays his pipe once more, coaxing the children to follow him out of the town, along winding roads and over hills to a long tunnel. It leads to a place where honey bees have lost their sting. This detail lingers with a very young me…but all of it…the tunnel, the honey bees that don’t sting. And I keep picturing all the children lined up in darkness before emerging into this place of light, this place of flowers and trees, warmth and sunshine…and those marvelous bees.

And sometimes when I lie awake and the hallway of my childhood is dark, I worry that I’ll hear that strange alluring music, that I will disappear into that tunnel. It is in the dark of my childhood bedroom that I discover how dry my lips can get, the existence of uneven spaces between my teeth, the clutching pain of stomach cramps before vomiting. It is in the darkness of that room that sheds on me the light of human discovery.

WHAT IS LIMINAL SPACE and WHY IT’S OUR NEW NORMAL

March 23, 2025 10 Comments

After 9-11 life was totally altered for all of us. As a writer, I sat and stared at my manuscript, wondering if anyone would ever read a novel again. Should I even bother. Normality had escaped us, and now I feel something like that is recurring. Back then, a friend offered me some insight. It came in the words of Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest whose teaching is like that of the first St. Francis: empty yourself, be compassionate of others, especially those that are socially marginalized. Okay. How do I do that when I am angry and confused…

Rohr spoke of liminal space—and despite my many years of study and reading, those were words I had never heard.

He defined it as: …a unique spiritual position where human beings hate to be… It is when you have left the tried and true, but have not yet been able to replace it with anything else… It is when you are between your old comfort zone and any possible new answer. If you are not trained in how to hold anxiety, how to live with ambiguity, how to entrust, wait, you will run…anything to flee this terrible cloud of unknowing.  

Thus, I had found a label for what I was feeling, what millions were feeling: liminal space—this terrible cloud of unknowing.

And it truly was a terrible time—but ever so slowly we went back to work, children went back to school and life haltingly proceeded. My husband had lost a co-worker who had been at the hotel attached to one of the towers, his body never found. More images of that day were released and they pinned us to this new and frightening liminal space. It was a horrible new norm, but all we could do was go on. For many—even that did not happen. There was too much pain and sorrow to allow forward movement. Adjustments were indescribable, unlivable.

When I finally sat at the keyboard and wrote again, I injected the concept of liminal space. It felt right. My character was truly living there.

But you know what? Often—we all are. Because we are always waiting for something: a job, a pregnancy, a graduation, a diagnosis, an acceptance letter, even a death; or a yes from someone who is holding what feels like the rest of our lives over our heads…until the yes comes through. Until then, we are under that cloud of unknowing.

Regardless, there is often good news, as there was post-9-11. We saw, heard and felt the warmth, love, understanding and the giving of many Americans who did whatever they could to help those who had lost someone. Later, it was young men, women who joined our volunteer army, feeling that the best way to give.

Certainly, liminal space always challenges us. We are rarely free of the unknowing—because ah, yes, we are mortal and have no knowledge of the date of our demise. That’s a given. But it can be used to power our love of self (taking care of our bodies) and the love of those we live and work with. For how much better to offer understanding, honesty, friendship on a daily basis—because who really knows what the next hours bring.

Pain can provide all of us with teachable moments. Though we find ourselves in liminal space, on the threshold of something unknowable, we forge always ahead:

the cancer patient who goes into remission and dedicates her time to helping other patients; the teacher who takes extra time to work with the very student who upsets his classroom; the doctor or nurse who enters the clinic despite life-threats; the cop who does all he can to make certain-sure before using deadly force; the mother, father, neighbor, citizen who listens and evaluates any situation before making a judgment or rising to anger.

After 9-11 Rohr reminded us that both Christian and Muslim mystics preferred the language of darkness. That is: they were most at home in the realm of not-knowing. In that darkness, Rohr writes, things are more spacious and open to creative response. We are more open to letting in God or blessed, positive thoughts–just like the cancer patient who is grateful for every day and turns darkness into light. This from the Persian mystic Hafiz:

Don’t surrender your loneliness so quickly.

Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you.

Finally, in this time of questioning, where we find ourselves often divided, even from friends and loved ones who feel and think differently than we do, try to accept and live in the cloud of unknowing. Try to move a bit closer to the other side or try to find something they share with you. It can be very challenging and just downright hard. But remember, you are both in liminal space, not truly knowing all.

Literature–inspirational books, poetry, memoirs, reflections–can serve as guides. There is actually a website devoted to liminal space that can help lift that cloud. Music allows all cultures to come together sharing dance, songs and just the joy of listening. Do you remember the film, the Hundred Foot Journey? It underlines that people and cultures that are vastly different can cross the threshold and come to a place where there is not only knowing, but also sharing and love. Because we truly have no choice, but to often life on the threshold, uncertain of which path to take. We exist in this liminal space, a new normal that we must accept and work with, so that the cloud of unknowing will be transformed into one of understanding.

How do you deal with your own pain? And thanks to Fr. Rohr, artist Aeron Brown, and the artist below.

A GIFT FROM MY CHILDREN: THEY HELPED ME SEE My TRUE SELF

March 16, 2025 4 Comments

When I was a child, a daughter growing up, I reflected my mother’s image—her habits, nuances, even her opinions.

I was a mirror. She could look at me and see aspects of herself. But then, I didn’t truly know who I was becoming, though later I changed, advanced, fell backward, tried again, grew. Others saw the changes. I did not…growing up is equal to change. I was just me.

When I became the mother of two girls, they began to reflect and mirror my image, my words, ideas, habits and actions. Gazing into their faces, listening to their speech, observing their choices revealed things about myself. I could see my tendency to be over-cautious in one daughter. “Mom, you shouldn’t carry all those books down the stairs.” The other sometimes reflected my crazier moments, “I’m punk today, Ma, just call me Punky Weirdo.” One liked her room neat and tidy (so me). One liked a sunny messy corner to read in. One would cry easily when hurt by a friend. That’s me too. And they both were tender to our cat and any child who visited. So okay, I must be doing something right.

VERBAL INFLUENCE

So much of what we do and say around our children, and now around our grandchildren, they take into themselves. Listen!. You will hear phrasing, tone of voice, word choice. My daughter remarked recently that she gets why she uses the word “literally” as emphasis. “Both you and dad just used it in the last five minutes!” To underline her statement, moments later when Keegan was only four, he walked into the kitchen and said, “It’s really hot out there, Mom, I mean literally.”

This word usage thing is generational, stretching forward and backward. Sometimes when I’m speaking I have no control over what comes out—it is my mother: her inflection, her vocabulary, and often her ideas. I can be my mother, so kind and gentle with a sick child, yet so impatient when things aren’t flowing my way. Is that a good thing?

The answer: we do finally decide, I want to be myself. My own self. Not my parent as we grow, make our own decisions and even as we use our own way of expressing feelings and thoughts.

And luckily, for both parent and child, we don’t become exact copies. We are finding the paths of choice. Yes, we bring along parental things, but we also change things up—more and more we grow to be just ourselves.

I guess we’re like pieces of glass, catching beams of light, casting them off into the darkness or bouncing them into other pieces of glass. We affect and reflect one another.

And if we have performed our parental tasks well, our children give us back the gift of seeing the best parts of ourselves. They change others’ lives for the good. They earn a degree, a paycheck, start a company, make a good marriage—and there is something of us in those choices. There is also something of us in the first argument or maybe a divorce, or a job loss. When we parent, we bargain that most of the gifts from our children and grandchildren will be positive and confirming. It’s always been our responsibility to be good models, so that the mirror we eventually look into—the lives of our children—will be good, the light they are beaming out will be mostly bright and positive. It’s a light that we started and that will be carried along to the generations that follow—it’s that gift from our children.

Reading, writing...that's what I do.