Thursday, December 28, 2006

GRANT ME PATIENCE, BUT HURRY


I'm a sucker for happy endings. I prefer feel-good series on TV.

I love the Christmas Gospel, the Son of God born as an innocent child with angles singing and wise men bringing gifts.

The fulfillment of God's salvation plan, crucifixion, a tortured man forsaken by his friends, family, even by God, who sent him...It's too tough, really. I'm not a huge Easter fan and would make a lousy Catholic. Even though there was a happy ending on Easter Sunday...

Even though I wear a cross around my neck as a symbol of my belief.

I feel so devastated when things go wrong in my life. I keep putting so much effort in getting things right.

Then I fail. Others fail too.
I can't take it. I need a happy ending.

Or at least an ending.
I simply cannot allow bad attitudes keep on being passed on for generations.
Guess I need to call upon my favourite, Saint Peter, for help, at least to make me a better person, and to heal open wounds.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

RESPECT


My father had a brain hemorrhage some years ago. He's now 86, and dependent on help from nurses, who come to his home five times a day. They are underpaid, not well educated and always in a hurry.

If my father is talking to me on the phone or hasn't finished eating his dessert, he has to stop at once. "Move, hurry, straighten up," they're shouting, not unlike an army sergeant to his hopeless recruits.
We all feel humiliated by the way my father is belittled.
He is not senile, he is not used to being bossed around. He is and has always been a very polite, gentle...and wise person.
He never was much of a talker, that is, if he did not have anything of importance to say or tell.
Chatting or smalltalk was never his style.
Now he needs more time to formulate his thoughts. That makes the nurses believe he's not so bright anymore.
My husband has always been on the same wavelength as my father. They have never stopped to like or respect one another.
Today my father took a long look at my husband's jogging suit.
"Nike", he read. "Nike of Samothrace," he added.
Gunnar looked the words up in the encyclopedia, and they both had a nice talk about the goddess of victory, whose artful elaborated statue is displayed in France.

At the end of the day;
we became somewhat wiser, renewed our somewhat blur knowledge of the Greek Antique, and my father regained some of his self respect.