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Goodbye

Today, a friend of some 25 years died.  I didn't get to say a proper "goodbye".  I knew her cancer had recurred.  Her husband, who over the years had become a closer friend to me than her, had called some weeks ago to tell me.  He expressed his confidence that it could be overcome.

The news, instead, became worse.  So, I called her on the phone at the hospital where she was receiving daily radiation treatments.  I didn't visit her though and, when we spoke, I made some lame excuse about that.  Not a lie, a real excuse, but lame nonetheless.

I offered her words of encouragement although I had concluded, from all the information I had, that she was not going to survive for very long.  She said all the right things about her hopes and expectations and about how, like always, she would celebrate Christmas with her family.  I don't recall my glib response.  "Of course you will".  Or "no reason why not".  Or "anything is possible".  Or something.  In any case, our exchange nonetheless reflected, in my opinion, a mutual awareness of just what exactly we were talking about.  "I'm supposed to die, but I'm going to fight it".  "Of course you will and, God willing, you'll succeed".

God expressed his will and the next news, several weeks later, was not unexpected even though the timing of such things always is.  She had been taken to a hospice recently and, frankly, her husband would be surprised if she survived another day.  So I determined to visit her the next day to say a real "goodbye" even though her husband said he would prefer if I remembered her the way she used to be.  She looked really bad now, even compared to the earlier deterioration in her appearance.

I set out the next morning for my visit but, in an abundance of caution, I called first.  "She's not here anymore.  I suggest you contact the family".  "She's not here anymore".  So true.  And no longer could I say, except to the ether, what it was I wanted to tell her.  I missed her death by 6 hours.  I missed my father's by 1.  I missed my mother's by 5.

I don't know anything about my mother's final minutes.  I don't know anything about my friend's.  When I arrived at the hospital after my father's death, his body was waiting for me.  At the end, my brother reported, his body just sort of stiffened and he promptly expired.  I kissed his lifeless forehead.

What might I have told my friend at the very end?  I had thought to tell her that science has established the almost illusory nature of time and its dependency on the relative motion of matter. That, if there were a spirit and some existence after death, that it was in a "place" without time.  That if she were sad about leaving her loved ones behind, they would, paradoxically, all be there to meet her because, in timelesness, they would all have already died as well.  That the only loss to be experienced would be by her loved ones.  They would experience her loss for the rest of their lives.  That the suffering of loss was confined within time and was itself not eternal.

Would she have cared what I said, even had she heard me?  This was no message of a personal universe.  No message of salvation.  No message from the heart.  Just a message from my rational mind unaware of the experience of communion with the Divine.  Hers had been a more spiritual life, rationally imbued by what are characteristically called irrational experiences.  Direct forms of knowing what I might only rationally divine (pun intended), but not experience.  Describe love to someone.  Have them experience love.  Describe Beethoven's Ninth to someone.  Have them listen to it.  Describe Michelangelo's David.  Have someone stand before it.

No.  Better that I didn't get there on time.  What I had to say would not have helped.  She would only have felt bad for me before she left.  I kissed my hand and touched the coffin that bore her lifeless body.  



    
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Ahmadinejad the Intellectual

This guy has the IQ of a tse tse fly.  Imagine anyone in the United States, Left or Right, penning this drivel.  The responsive attacks would be fast & furious.  The author's sanity would be taken to task.  He would be summarily dismissed, ridiculed, heaped upon.  Query.  Will we see the same for Mahmoud or will the pundits craft more intelligent arguments than his own from the wreckage of what he actually wrote?

"Oh, Almighty God, bestow upon humanity the perfect human being promised to all by you, and make us among his followers."  Excuse me.  Are we talking about the Twelfth Imam here?  Trying to slip one by these stupid Americans?  The Imam to emerge from the chaos you are so intent on creating?  Believing you are an instrument of God, I have no doubt you will seek to make me among his followers.  Sorry, but no thanks  As for the rest of the "Noble Americans" you address, I think you ought to spend some time in their churches & synagogues.  If you breathe the air inside, it will choke all your misbegotten ideas about us.

He may be addressing "Noble Americans", but everything he sees in our country is what he sees when he looks in the mirror.  The negative influence of Iran on his part of the world, its negative influence on the everyday lives of the people, the tragic consequences of Iran's interference in the Iraqi sectarian strife.  Does this guy actually believe, as he implies, that Sunnis and Shias, at each others' throats for over a thousand years, are going to lay down together like the lamb & the lion?  He ought to pray for continued US intervention in the hope that it provides a Shia-Sunni glue.  The enemy of my enemy... 

He might have a point somewhere in there, although he certainly fails to make it explicitly, that the West and its faiths can make common cause more with Shiism than with the Sunni Wahabbi variant of Islam.  But, that would require, and so he hopes, the total abandonment of Israel, that tiny flea irritating the buttocks of almost the entire Muslim world.  Is he not at all aware of America's non-Jewish sympathy for Israel?  That's rhetorical, of course, because if Ahmadinejad proves one thing over and over again, he does not "...proclaim the dignity and exalted worth of all (Jews)."  He pleads for compassion, empathy, respect for the rights of human beings, and defense of the innocent & the weak; but, never let him be heard to plead for these in respect to the Jews.  This is absolutely extraordinary from a man who must be fully aware of the second class status of Shias in Sunni dominated nations and from the physical and moral suffering they have endured.

But, his moral & political blindness actually shows his better side.  His disingenuousness lowers his feet to where Satan can grab hold of them.  After all, he claims that this leading exporter of terrorism nation "has always extended its hand of friendship to all other nations of the world." (including Israel?  Will somebody just ask him this at his next Western press conference?  Or in an open letter from the Western press?  Ask him about his own participation in the friendly taking of US hostages during his youthful foolishness.)  Will somebody remind him that the "(h)undreds of thousands of my Iranian compatriots...living amongst you in friendship and peace" are Persian Jews or other Iranian exiles that have fled his country in droves into a self-imposed diaspora to get away from its theocracy, and that they share our values, not his?

Look, I happen not to be Jewish and, if I had my druthers, I would not have voted, as Mahmoud's treasured  UN did, let me remind you, to create a Jewish state in the midst of the Middle East mentality unless it was my plan to annihilate the Jewish people there.  What were they thinking?  Duh?  But, it's done.  Get over it!  Should we give the United States back to the Native Americans?  To what conquered group should we give back your house, Mahmoud?

Your sympathy for Palestinian mothers would be very touching if you even noticed the suffering of the Israeli ones.  Your concern for the rebuilding of Iraq would be heartwarming if your own support for the insurgency & sectarian warfare were not itself responsible for the failure of the rebuilding effort and indirectly responsible for the warfare & chaos in Lebanon.  Your focus on Cindy Sheehan as the quintessential mother of the American soldier shows your ability to read the American people as well as you, no doubt, read English.  And what Leftist propaganda rags have you been reading that have persuaded you that Americans believe in our government's willy-nilly kidnapping of innocents abroad and our horrendous treatment of them even unto death?  Have you been sharing some South American loco weed with Senor Chavez?  I am so glad to discover the obvious mellowing influence of remedial peyote.  

You need a reality check, Jack!  Er, Mahmoud.  The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that Bible (so to speak) that you so perseveratively utilize as loo reading when your head is clear (so to speak), do not register a blip on America's radar screen.  Sorry to inform you, but we are sophisticated.  Only our children believe in Barney & Santa Claus.  Really!  So sorry to diappoint you.  Hope I didn't hurt your feelings now.  That Zionist under every bed feeling of yours really is treatable.  Perhaps, even without medication.

You know, I have to calm down again.  This subtle(?) clarion call to eliminate Israel (and a few million Jews to boot?) as a remedy for the world's problems might just have something to it.  Give that man a kewpie doll!  Or maybe...just let him have his nuclear bomb.      


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I've only seen a snippet of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's letter to the people of the United States; but, despite my desire to see a rational dialogue commenced between the United States & Iran, I find his utterances totally disheartening.  I will, of course, offer more detailed comment when I have availed myself of the time to review it in its entirety & subtlety(?).

For now, however, I am struck by his ignorance.  It is not that he is alone in this.  The world is overflowing with idiots; but, whether I know the dominant shrine in Najaf or Qom is inconsequential to international relations.  Presumably (?), some advisers to our leaders have at least a passing understanding of the people, politics & culture of Iran.  But this guy is like a 16th century monk dropped at 21st century Times Square. 

His endeavor may be to win the hearts & minds of our citizenry, but he is positively scary.  He understands nothing but the intellectually restrictive forms inside his own head.  He will make no friends here with this nonsense.  What is he thinking?  Who are his advisors?  Have any of them left Tehran and visited Chicago lately?

If the comedians of the world think George W. Bush is funny, the material Mahmoud generates ought to keep them busy for the lengths of their careers.

Now, I really have to stop this.  My first blog entry and I am without sufficient detail to justify any intellectual claim on my part.  At least some of you can understand my need to vent, though.  I'll return with calm soon.
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