Death Is Not "The Worst Thing About Life"

On this most difficult day I am thinking about death.

Last night, on my way out of my graduate class in Jersey City, a friend texted me to let me know our next door neighbor's infant son had died suddenly. I spent the long drive home talking to Ruth. When I got home at 11 p.m., I sat in my car in the driveway, crying and still talking with her and noting that all the lights were on in the family's home and all the shades drawn. My friend and I were grieving, trying to make sense of the unimaginable.

"On Heaven and Earth": a Pope and a Rabbi

(photo courtesy of http://www.vosizneias.com)

It's a measure of my attachment to this six-and-a-half-hour-long audiobook that would listen to it in my driveway when coming home from my commute, and I felt sad this morning when I finished listening it on my drive to my high-school teaching job. This book is for anyone interested in issues of faith, of history and culture and on a friendship that shapes the life of the current Holy Father. Indeed, I found echoes of one of my friendships in theirs.

"On Heaven and Earth," first published in Argentina in 2010, is a conversation between Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, and Rabbi Abraham Skorka, a Conservative Jew and a biophysicist. In their home country, the two religious leaders avidly promoted inter-religious dialogue and the book is a series of conversations the two dear friends had about issues ranging from abortion to fundamentalism to the Middle East.  I also learned a bit about the history of Argentina, which is my maternal grandmother's homeland.

Burying a Bomber: What Would Christ Do?

We ended up tonight at St. Matthias in Somerset, NJ, a parish we don't normally go to and we all left stunned and inspired by the homily. The celebrant said he had had extra time this morning and decided to read the newspapers. He read the story of Martha Mullen, the Virginia woman who found a way for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev to be buried in an Islamic cemetery. Her gesture, widely critized, is an example of Christianity in action, he said.

"Are we not told to bury the dead?" he asked. Indeed. Burying the dead is one of the seven corporal acts of mercy. "

God requires us to bury, not just the dead of whom we approve, but every body that was created in His image. "And aren't we supposed to pray for our enemies?" the priest asked us.

Did we know, the priest asked us, that the suspect has a three-year-old daughter? Have we prayed for her?  Have we considered what this child's life will be like? Nope. I hadn't.

Sisterhood at the Nail Salon

Grace comes in unexpected places. After work today, I went to the nail salon for a pedicure. A group of ladies, older and Jewish and lifelong friends, were there. The owner of the salon is a Korean woman, married for years and a devout Catholic. Her husband of many years works with her. They never had children. And so this story begins.

A Good Heart and a Cell Phone in a Broken World

Our 13-year-old son put his cell phone in his sweatshirt pocket Saturday afternoon as he headed to the high school track for a run. About halfway to the high school, he realized the phone was missing. He backtracked. Four times. He came home distressed. This was his very first cell phone. He has had it a little more than a month. I told him to go do his run and I called t-mobile to deactivate the phone. Then, something extraordinary happened.

"Island Beneath the Sea:" Sex, Slavery, History and Heartache

Better-read folks than I say that Isabel Allende's novel Island Beneath the Sea is not her finest work, nor is it the best novel about Haiti. But this is my first encounter with the Chilean-American writer and the first book I have ever read about that former French colony. And I am enjoying this novel about the New World of colonists and slaves and the mingling of many cultures.

I bought the audio version of this 2010 novel to keep me company on weekday mornings, when I head from home before dawn to my teaching job. This is an epic, historical tale that switches back and forth from a third-person omniscient narrator to the first-person point of view of Zarite, the mulatta child of an African mother raped by white sailors on her forced passage to the New World.

Funny in Farsi: Comic Tales of our Common Humanity

I borrowed a copy of Firoozeh Dumas' Funny in Farsi from the big pile of them in the book room at the public high school where I teach. Her sweet, humorous best-selling memoir has made its way onto lists of books that high schoolers might like. My own curriculum doesn't include this lovely book, first published in 2003, but I found its title intriguing. I was not disappointed.

Dumas' memoir of a Muslim girl growing up in Southern California is the perfect antidote for these days when we feel so much polarization among Americans and the sharp differences between the United States and the rest of the world. We find ourselves falling so easily into anger, fear, despair or self-rightousness, none of which does a thing to build bridges.

Reflections of a Catholic in Amish Country

On a visit to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania last week, my husband and our younger son bought  combo passes to ride the historic Strasburg Railroad and visit the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania next door. From the train, the views of the verdant farmland were spectacular.    (Above is one I took with my iPad.)  Still, the two most powerful moments of the visit came when I least expected them.