Haters go to hell

That, or they make our lives hell, one.

No, that’s not me sending them. That’s just fact.

And with the increase of hate groups as measured by the Southern Poverty Law Center, hell may get really crowded. The report says an African American president and a tanking economy is tying in knots the dark little hearts of certain people who need a target to hate.

So here’s a prayer to relieve all hateration. Do you go to hell for hating the haters? Just wondering. Should you be tolerant of the intolerant? I wonder about that, too.

Table fellowship

No matter how old you get, if you grew up a certain type of Christian, your mouth will still water at the thought of table fellowship – also known as Church Dinners, the Gathering of the Saints, or A Great Way to Brag About Your Cooking Talents Without Actually Saying Anything. You can be at the home strapped into a dribble bib, and “church dinner” will do it for you.

For years, my favorite cookbook (this was pre-Internet, and yes! I am that old) was a mimeographed (told you) booklet held together by red yarn from the Methodists of Carterville, Mo., (and if you click on that last link, that’s the church off to the left), where my Granny Campbell was a member.

Not a one of those recipes worked. You could carefully cut and measure and mix and the end result would always be, at best, “off.”

Lest you think the dish was a figment of some old woman’s imagination, you could then go to one of those church dinners and sample the recipe-owner’s version and realize: She played me.

With all due respect, I believe all those women have gone on to glory, but only because God graded on a curve. I think every last oneof them left out at least one ingredient when they shared recipes. That way, they and only they could make that dish.

But if you could go the source (Mircea Eliade talks about the purity of beginnings), you could eat your way to heaven — or a heart attack. Services would end and we’d file into the basement to an acre of the folding tables on which would rest every known Jell-O mold and fried chicken that had the original bird understood its destiny it would have cut off its own head. (I may be exaggerating on that last one, but not by much.)

And invariably there was Crazy Church Lady who’d wait until you were chewing a bite of her cake before she’d say, ”Guess what’s in there” because it would be something weird like roofing nails and she would be so proud.

However much I arm-wrestle with God, I miss joining brothers and sisters in Christ and filling my paper plate until it bent.

(I also pre-date Chinet).

What’s a “family?”

Mom. Dad. Two kids (the older a boy, the younger a girl). A dog, probably of mixed breed. Perhaps a cat, perhaps not.

In Connecticut, when Love Makes a Family began lobbying for marriage equality for same-sex couples, one concern from some of their vocal opponents was that once homosexuals could be married, where would it end? Polygamy? Someone marrying the afore-mentioned dog or cat?

As it turns out, those fears were groundless. In the four-plus months since the state Supreme Court ruled banning same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional, there’s been no rush to Connecticut’s picturesque town halls by pet owners wanting to wed their dogs, nor has there been an increase in polygamy in the Land of Steady Habits. (That nickname might explain a lot of the opposition, as well — and, perhaps, our lack of polygamous families.)

In short, gays and lesbians are getting married in churches, city halls, and in front of their own fireplaces. The ceremonies are heartfelt and loud, quiet, and every bit as varied as are the ceremonies enjoyed by their heterosexual friends and family. And they are getting married as couples, period.

But writer Rebecca Walker has edited a book, “One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk About Polyamory, Open Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry, Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of  Truly Modern Love” (Riverhead), about the various ways we define family.

I’m guessing that many of the people who opposed same-sex marriage won’t love this book, but the essays are fervent in their attempt to mark the fluid boundaries of family.  And this isn’t all that odd. My son is engaged to a mother of five (I’ve explored this before and will certainly do so again), whose former in-laws are quite involved in their grandchildren’s lives. So we filled a row at a recent school concert with my son, a couple of the kids who weren’t performing that night, and their paternal grandmother. Yes, it’s confusing, and yes, it’s family. You got a problem with that?

It is also heart and pathos and pain and, well, it’s family.

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Bob and Maria

Bob was a drunk. He didn’t want to be, but there you are. He was also a husband, the father of five, a master gardener, and a painter.  (What he did for a living isn’t important. He couldn’t hold a job, anyway.)

The drink defined him. His father was a drunk, his brother, a sister. The thick vein of alcoholism ran straight through the heart of his family, and so it was as natural as breathing for Bob to wrap his hands around the bottle, the glass, the can and ride the chute straight to the bottom.

Maria was his wife. She followed him as he bounced from job to job — Cape Cod, Minnesota, El Paso – a stay-at-home mother intent on holding the family together. At his worst, Bob would cry out, “Why won’t you leave me?” and Maria would reply, “Where would I go?”

Who knows what motivates a woman to stay with such a man, but Maria did. When Bob tried sobriety, failed, tried sobriety, and failed, there was Maria, standing with her hands on her hips, eyebrow cocked, waiting. Oh, there were fights, but they were silent , swelling like a boil only to be lanced (by Bob) by the next bout of drink. Maria threw herself into the children, who grew up, did surprisingly well in school, and pursued, all of them, advanced degrees — in psychiatry, in geology, in English.

And then, in 1976, Bob went to AA. Again, this time in El Paso. And for whatever reason, that time it took. He stopped smoking, stopping drinking, woke up and looked at his family — now mostly grown — and burst into tears, and he and Maria commenced a honeymoon that lasted for years.

And then Maria started to forget things — her keys, the name of the dog, something Bob had just told her. Doctors said it was Alzheimer’s, and so Bob hunkered down to be her caretaker. He owed her, he said, more than he could ever repay.

Bob stood at the gym and told me this story this morning, all in a rush, like he had to tell someone. I had never spoken to him, though we’d always nod hello. He wanted to tell me that story, he said, because it has a happy ending. Yes, Maria has Alzheimer’s, and she can’t cook any more, but she still loves the Jumbles in her newspaper (I work at a newspaper). She can still do those. And sometimes? If you want to find the gem, you have to dig deep. He cried when he told me this story, and I cried listening to it.

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Today’s hymn

Enjoy. And, as always, play loud.

The rules of shopping

If the economy needs stimulating, and you’re a consumer, how do you do your own little part but be ethical about it? What’s an ethical shopper to do?

Here are some suggestions, as well as here, here, and here. And no, you don’t have to be a grind about it.

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A (death) match made south of heaven

In Louisiana, a porn star and the president of Family Research Council are both said to interested in the seat currently held by Sen. David Vitter, who got caught in his own zipper for visiting a D.C. prostitute. Vitter’s term is up in 2010.

In this corner, Tony Perkins — an early supporter of a covenant marriage law, a former cop, former Marine, and a man dedicated to reclaiming “the culture for Christ.”

And in this corner,  Stormy Daniels – former high school journalist and porn star whose fans are seeking her candidacy.

For the record, Vitter isn’t looking to vacate his seat. He’s pretty sure the voters of Louisiana have forgiven him. Whatever happens, some classic stories center on the struggle between good and evil — Jesus v. Satan, et al. Not sure where this one falls on the greatness scale, but at the least, this is a Celebrity Deathmatch made in heaven — or hell.

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Julia Louis-Drefus has abs

And she tells Shape magazine that she works at having them.

Me, I’ve set the goal of gaining 20 pounds by July. I think with the proper discipline, the right amount of drive-through meals, and extra helpings of dessert most nights, I can do this. I can. And, unlike Louis-Drefus, I keep bacon in my house, until I eat it all and have to go buy more. And I have made peace with my menopausal fanny-pack. Take that.

(Sorry. I’m just doing my small part to reverse decades of attention given to skinny women who don’t eat food they like.)

I said this already

But this guy said it better.

What the Bible says about making a national budget. Priceless. Now: All you Republicans, don’t be frightened, but this is an interesting website.

Well, at least two of Slumdog’s kids have homes

Two of the children featured in the Oscar-winning “Slumdog Millionaire” will be moved into homes, from the slums from which they came.

That’s two of them, at least, but what aabout the rest? I mean, they did get the proverbial trip to Disneyland, but, but, but…

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