Susan's Scribblings the Blog

The head of any church would probably not knowingly prevent somebody from the comfort of spiritual matters during Holy Week, but I heard a story recently in which that apparently did happen.

All of the persons involved probably feel bad enough, so I won’t go into detail and make it worse. However, let’s settle one thing. If a person is visiting another church because they are away from home or in a circumstance in which they can’t get to their regular church, there is no reason (at least in my mind) for a cleric of any rank to be short-tempered or otherwise unaccommodating. If there is an issue, take a moment to ask.

I don’t know what happened to open arms or the “Welcome to All” sign. Maybe too many people crowd into churches and other places of worship around holy events and not enough the other weeks of the year, but in this case the circumstances were different. A layperson was trying to carry out a duty that was done every Sunday after going to church. Caught out of town, they came to the nearest church hoping to get communion and prepare to go home for a faith related visit. This was a person trying to keep a routine appointment with God in His house, and do good deeds.

Had things gone the way they should, the visitor would have left services with an authorized supply of the sacrament, and it would have gone to a homebound blind person who counts on this person’s visits weekly. Instead, though the visitor did provide the credentials needed to leave with the necessary materials, they got a refusal and a short-tempered send-off.

For all of us–the big and the small, clerics and laypersons and visitors alike–we should take this time to remember Who is truly in charge and make allowances for who we are as human beings. Not to mention the amount of effort it takes to curb our initial reactions to the unusual and step back from rank and privilege and see what life is. The blind housebound person can probably see that better than we can, and they missed out on a weekly holy experience because somebody said no on impulse.

If I counted how many things might have gone differently for me if somebody had stepped back for a second before saying no, then multiply that by all the people who have had the same happen to them, it makes a miserable world indeed.

Nothing good happens by withholding with a “no” said on impulse when all the facts aren’t known. At least we can learn from mistakes and hope next time will be better.

Every year I watch “The Ten Commandments” on ABC, which has been a tradition every Easter weekend (this year it airs Easter Sunday night). This year, there are a bunch of other religious themed movies coming out at about the same time, including “The Dove Keepers,” “Killing Jesus” and “A.D.”

If you watch television religiously, this is the year to do so.

Religious television and movies involve a lot of guesswork, close attention to political correctness and biblical accuracy, and a good cast of well-known actors. Producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey have pretty much cornered the prime time holy programming on other networks. For the Big Three network crowd, ABC keeps Charlton Heston on the air once a year (mostly because the one year they tried to take the movie out of play, the uprising from the people was so loud, they had to comply). People who watch these productions are more nit-picky than Harry Potter fans, so they have to do it in a timely manner and get it right. The Bible provides the script, and a few nervous screenwriters try their best to modernize the adaptations to suit the current viewing audience.

So far I’ve not seen Roma Downey in anything since “Touched By an Angel,” but I’m sure her performance in “The Dove Keepers” will be right up there and true to form. She is a great actor and knows her genre.

Unfortunately I’m not into all the epics and serial shows, so I’ll stick to watching Yul Brynner get his comeuppance for a few hours. Sure, it ends the same: as do they all. But once a year, it’s nice to have one thing that is true and trustworthy and is older than I am, like a good movie or holy traditions which allowed me to walk this earth in the first place.

Bring on the spectacle.

I am wearing one of my favorite tops, which has managed to survive plenty of abuse over the years. I bought it about 20 years ago. Some fashionistas would clutch their pearls at that, but classic clothes that are well made last a long time.

It’s a warm Lands’ End(R) long sleeve tunic that stretches and snaps back with ease, hides my weight highs and lows and forgives the most wretched stains from Italian food to hoagie oils. I haven’t found them listed in the Lands’ End catalogue for years, so this is one of those times I wished I had bought one in more than one color.

I hear pearls being rubbed between fingers like rosary beads again.

Some people are known to discard entire wardrobes at season’s end and buy new clothes the following year, even if they are still rather fresh off the rack. I’m clutching my pearls. . . of wisdom. Imagine if your favorite comic characters changed their clothes every year: who would recognize Charlie Brown in anything but that shirt with the zigzag pattern on it, or Curtis without his hat?

I keep spot treatment items at work for emergencies, and in a contact center where food is a constant resource it’s a must. Today we have spot remover pens and cloths to remove the most stubborn stains from clothes, and they all advise to not wear the item while treating the stain. Gee, if the stuff to treat the spot is that potent, I can imagine what’s in the food! Is hoagie oil that complex that it takes a science lab to produce something to degrease it and lift it from my favorite top?

Maybe I just need to wear a lobster bib with my favorite top.

When I went to school, we learned reading and writing, science and social studies, math and arts and crafts. Sometimes we would receive something called the Iowa tests, which measured how well we learned the basics. We didn’t have “test prep.” We studied what we had reviewed in daily classes to take a quiz, which consisted of questions our teacher carefully selected from the material. If we paid attention and absorbed the keys to unlocking the mysteries of the subjects at hand, we could easily pass a quiz.

So what is with all this test prep malarkey, anyway?

It seems there is a test called PARCC (Partnership for Assessment for Readiness for College and Careers) which is causing a lot of uproar about measuring student knowledge. A commercial running now on many networks features a father whose first grade son comes home in tears and too tired to go to karate classes because he spent the day in school doing test prep. I always thought karate taught about staying focused and alert, but maybe I’m wrong.

Folks, everyday classroom studies are what should constitute test prep. What are teachers doing with students all day now, learning some catechism of preliminarily leaked practice questions (or perhaps the actual questions)? When I went to school, if you learned what 2 + 2 was, a test which asked what 3 + 1 equaled didn’t faze anybody. We’re not supposed to know the test before we take it. That stacks the deck in favor of the administrators, whose only agenda may be to answer to some bigger fish who only wants to see a successful lie.

Of course, statistics show that many students are graduating high school unprepared for the rigors of college and the job market, where grammar and math knowledge are necessary tools. In fact, I just noticed on the website for PARCC that a prominent sentence appeared thus: “Try out a paper practice tests.” If the people at PARCC don’t know the phrase should be either “try out practice tests” or “try a practice test,” there is little hope that this measurement of human knowledge will amount to much of anything.

I sometimes hate human beings, and I am one. We are a mentally messed-up lot when it comes to the basics of humanity such as manners, conscience and common sense. If it weren’t for our occasional moments when we act like donkey’s cabooses, we wouldn’t have anything to talk about at the gossip fence. I guess it’s social media now, though I can’t imagine Snuffy Smith’s wife Loweezy turning to Twitter or Facebook to chat with her friend Enviney (look it up, kids).

My company wanted to thank all of the contact center personnel for working through the severe weather of the past few weeks, so they arranged for lunch to be delivered. A head count was done and sufficient amounts of food ordered so that each person could get a meal; in our case, a burger or chicken sandwich and chips, and/or some salad. Naturally we over-ordered, but not by too much, since the budget is for the year and we’re just into February. There was sufficient for everybody to get their share.

The next morning I asked the night shift supervisor how the delivery which came after I left at 5:00 went. He said word got out that somebody tried to lift five burgers, so they had to post somebody in the pantry to make sure everybody got fed.

A worker had to stand guard duty because one of our own was partaking too much.

I don’t know about some people, but when a freebie is offered and I don’t think I’ll use it or a friend could use it, I turn it down and let somebody else get one. If there is free food, I’m usually counted in with the gang, so I may grab a slice of pizza, then wait until everybody has had theirs if I want a second. If the count is two per person, that’s all I get. If they bring coffee, I don’t drink it, but I won’t grab four slices of pizza to make up for it. I certainly wouldn’t plan on taking food home that wasn’t mine.

Some folks, however, feel that some slight in their lives entitles them to more than their fair share to make up for it, as if nourishment which will be feces in the toilet tomorrow will heal a bruised ego today. Life doesn’t work that way. When life hands you lemons, if you don’t like lemonade ask for the water: it’s better for you.

The office fridges are usually okay for storing your lunch, but occasionally things have disappeared, leaving some poor person hungry and possibly short of money to replace the missing food.

People who take the basics of life from others are high on my list of the despised of the world. People who pick on other people’s food choices are up there, too. One time somebody went off on me when I introduced them to the concept of scrapple, which is a regional staple. Nobody asked them to eat it, but it’s amazing how a simple topic can turn into a reason for prejudice. It was almost like being back in the high school gym locker room. I survived bullying, so I don’t take that malarkey.

I wonder who the person was who tried to get five burgers. We all make about the same money, so that shouldn’t figure into it. Maybe they had a tapeworm to feed, or they weigh 500 pounds or 110 pounds with a hyper metabolic rate. Whatever the reason, it’s sad to think that, in an adult workplace among peers, somebody would go to that extreme.

The staff may not do that again, so we would all suffer for the actions of one in a world where the majority is normally righteous. If the stomach is full and the soul starved, it’s the wrong meal for you.

This post is a day later than usual because yesterday I survived a trip to New York City and a blizzard. The city got about one or two inches, and it quickly turned to brownish slush with all the city traffic: Philadelphia got an eight inch whammy, and I came home into it last night.

The flurries were cascading gently onto Lincoln Center while I was warm and cozy inside the Metropolitan Opera enjoying Don Giovanni. The production ended at a convenient 4:00 and, being the adventurous walker I am, I decided to schlep the 20 blocks or so to the bus terminal and hope I could make the early bus home to South Jersey. Made great time and even decided to bypass the bakeries from which I normally buy a treat to bring home, just so I could get into the queue for the 5:00 bus. Fortunately I was in an ideal spot in line, because after that it grew and snaked across the concourse and I’m sure a few people had to be turned away to await the 6:30 departure.

We pulled out on time and got to the NJ Turnpike to find that speed restrictions were posted at 35 mph. A trip that would normally take a little over 90 minutes got us home just before 8:00. I then had to trudge through calf-deep drifts to free my car from its snowy confines and slide home. It was a tough trip.

The meteorologists had a bad winter of predicting epic storms which petered out, so in keeping with the idea of what can go wrong will go wrong, this storm hit us like a jack boot on a bug. The plows were not ready, and the unplowed crossroads were hard to navigate at best; I nearly got trapped by oncoming traffic at a major freeway intersection because none of the cars heading the other way had reached the light and, since it had gone green, who could blame them for not being inclined to stop and re-accelerate?

Luckily for me, my car had enough traction and tires which kept me grounded. When I got home, the cars parked on the street were snowed in; normally I back up my driveway, but for about the second time since I began driving, I pulled in and got about two thirds up the grade before my tires spun.

So this morning I had the duty of chopping and shoveling through Siberian slush. With the help of a wonderful neighbor, we got clear just in time for 40 degrees and the sun to dry out at least a part of the disaster.

To be frank, I’m wiped out. My hands are stiff, my feet hurt and my thighs are burning. After this I’m getting a hot shower and a hot dinner. With any luck this will be the end of the big storm season. It has well overstayed its welcome everywhere, and its surprise visit to our region was a mess.

I think I’ll consider retiring to someplace warm like Hawai’i.

Our winter weather isn’t like it was last year. . .at least not so far. We still have some sixty days or so to go until it’s spring. At least we will have the predictions of the groundhog a week from Monday to boost our spirits (or deflate our hopes of seeing some relief from the crazy temperature shifts and pseudo polar vortexes) and make us believe that there really are four seasons every year.

Today it snowed and rained, making it difficult to clear sidewalks of heavy, water-laden stuff. I got my workout today, and my arms are tired. A doctor recently found a calcific density in one shoulder: he says I’ve probably had it all my life, but once it wakes up after half a century and introduces itself in the form of pain and misery, now I’ll always wonder about future pains and whether it’s just Mr. Calcific just reminding me, “Hey, I’m still here!” Not what you want to hear while shoveling snow.

I have a pair of favorite ugly shoes which I wear on snow days when boots are just too much and good shoes too stupid a choice. I’ve broken them out a few times this month. The important thing is to stay on one’s feet on pavements and in parking lots, especially when they become swimming pools by day and ice rinks at night.

We’re on the verge of another snow event this week. They seem to be coordinating their appearance with rush hour traffic this year. My thought is that weather reacts to population, so when we all head out the door at once to go to work or drop the kids off at school, the buildup of precipitation gathers where we are and joins the hectic pace. We’d rather they take public transportation.

Spring is destined to come. If we can just get through a few more weeks, we might beat the dire events of 2014 and say it was a good winter. Just keep the parkas and mittens on standby in the meantime.