Apocalypse in the Sunshine

I had an appointment just before noon. I had to have a Covid-19 test. No, I have had no symptoms, nor am I aware of having been exposed. But I am having a colonoscopy on Monday, which I had to put off because of a medical procedure last year I have written about here, and given, again, that inevitable family history and the fact I have had a polyp in the past, I just didn't feel able to put it off again, nothwithstanding my reluctance to have my nose probed. 

I had heard how the Covid-19 test is done, and the idea was stomach turning. At least with the colonoscopy I'll be asleep. But no such luck with the short, but invasive nose test. I tried to put it out of my mind until I was driving into the Thalian Building Garage. I could still run, but, well, I didn't. 

On the way, I revelle in the beauty of the day. It was relatively warm. A perfect November California Day. Normally, things would be bustling, but with the newest lockdown here in Los Angeles, and state wide, it was basically a ghost town. I noticed that the Coffee Bean Tea and Leaf on Robertson and Beverly has not survived the second ravage of the economy, which though articulated as not significant compared to the dangers of Covid, we are seeing is killing not only businesses but livelihoods and lives. Not sure, but I think Fig and Olive on La Cienega might be gone. Every store and restaurant along the route was empty and barred, except for take out or delivery service which curfew ends at 10 p.m. A beautiful day, and no place to go, except maybe to your local grocery, pot store, and I did notice that at least one nail salon was open. Inside Church Services have never been restored. And there is no sign of it happening, despite the fact that the Supreme Court told New York that such unequal treatment is problematic. Oh, by the way, I have written twice to my Archdiocese, and have received bupkus as my answer. Whether it is in regard to the state or to the institutional part of the Church, the human part, it is a bit alarming to realize that you are one of the "little people", since they are the ones who are always the first expended in public crises. One need not imagine too hard what it will be when apocalypse is upon us. I don't expect anyone to agree. I am merely, as others do, expressing my "feelings" in what to me is a maddening, insane time. 

There was not a long line of cars at the Thalian Building. I assume the others had appointments like I did. I donned my mask. The rule was that you kept your windows up until you presented your identification through the window, something one is required to do pretty much everywhere, except in voting, I note with parenthetical irony. Upon that initial identification I was moved to the next section, where the action would occur. I did think it a little paradoxical that this method of determining whether you are positive or not was occurring in a parking lot. I am not sure how it had previously been sanitized. But there you are. Mine not to question why. I had further identification questions to answer. My date of birth. My full name. When my procedure was going to be. The latter part allowed the opening of the window. Of course, the test itself required it.

The technician was very nice. Presently, everyone is very nice when they tell you what you have to do. She pulled that long q-tip out and told me that she would be putting it up my nose and then there was this slight ten second movement once it was up there (well, given the picture below, it is up, then down) and I should breathe. I could lower my mask to expose my nose, but kept the mask on my mouth. The first effort was not successful, apparently because I had my head tilted back. The sensation had been let's say, unpleasant, and that it would be repeated caused me consternation.  I had every inclination to sneeze. I wondered why, given medical technology, the method of testing is so, primitive. And it seems to me that in a garage a lot could go wrong with accuracy and this odd method. I mean, the stick goes, well, you can see!) And around. I found myself tearing up as if I were about to bawl. Truthfully, there is a lot about this time period in our history that makes me want to bawl, so this reflexive response seemed apropos. My eye makeup running and my nose feeling, well, odd, I drove off and back here to lock up. 

As I said, it is a beautiful day. So I did my laundry, here in the apartment on my super duper good for a dorm plastic machine, and edited my podcast (Ordinary Old Catholic Me on Podbean.com; also found on Tune In, Pandora). I will make one more quick trip today, to my Church garden where they are still able to do half hour outdoor confessions, for now. I have been very close to blasphemy in these last weeks given all the events in the world at large that are impinging on all of us.  I keep hearing we are "all in this together". Alas, what I feel we are in together doesn't have quite the utopian ending that has been promised.

But at least when the apocalypse comes I will be in the sunshine. Unless of course on that day, it finally rains. 

House Arrest for the Once Free

Not that it matters as I am an insignificant cog in the world of shakers and movers and of course "the science", but today I am really in a state of existential despair. I have struggled with the "What if" version of Obsessive Compulsive Order throughout my life, and probably an underlying dysthmia (a less dramatic form of depression). I have always needed to find the absolute of a thing or a situation, and as I am sure I have written elsewhere on these pages, I was raised by a very authoritarian mother who brooked no opposition over what she thought was true, and thus was true for me, and a then very strict Catholicism in school where authority and truth were one. Most of us worry about doing the "Right thing" (Well we used to anyway), but I had contorted my worry into a case of debate over pretty much anything. They call some forms of OCD the "doubting disease" because one can never settle on what is the "correct" thing to do. There are two aspects (well there have been for me) of this cyclical analysis. The first is that when you settle on a decision, you feel all right for about thirty seconds, and then the "what if I am wrong" shadow falls, and the whole back and forth starts again. Once forced into a decision of one sort or another, the net phase is wondering over and over whether you did the "wrong" thing, and if you did, whether it can be undone. No doubt it is a case of being stuck at some early developmental phase that gets taken with you in to the adult world. From the age of relative cognizance until I retired some years ago, the torture of that way of being was, in Catholic terms, my "Cross".  Some few friends have seen me in the throes of it. Others, who think of me as relatively decisive, would have no clue that my particular form of the search for truth (and there are I know many fellow travellers on this psychological road) has been pure torture. 

If I could not be certain about a path and its potentialities, I avoided it where I could. It probably partialoy explains my never marrying or having children. I had to work since I would be supporting myself, and, when I look back, probably it was idiotic that I became an attorney, where debate is a feature of the job--like I needed some more of that. I happened to find a niche in that arena--legal ethics--where my need for settling on THE TRUTH--was moderately protected and nutured. But even there the storm in my head over every trial decision raged until I was able to find a sub-niche, which included teaching that made it somewhat bearable. 

Once I retired, the occasions for worrying about decisions I made, diminished on a day to day basis, since I remain unattached and don't have a daily job in the usual sense, though they still pop up from time to time where I cannot avoid a significant task. But the last several years, culminating in global and national gaslighting, have reignited the torture.  And it has been topped off with Covid. What is plain to me and to like half the nation is not plain to the other half. And one half, not mine, has the media, official and social, and all educational facilities to tell me that I am wrong about pretty much anything I think I think. You know that phrase, "Don't piss on me and tell me it's raining"? When you have the doubting disease it doesn't help to have outside forces entering your head to trigger debates you don't want to have. 

So, yesterday, I read another one of many articles on how there should be no live Thanksgiving activities. We are told that the positive cases are increasing. Well, that makes sense in that there is a lot more testing. I am having a colonoscopy at the end of the month and am compelled to have a test myself. But carefully omitted in the terrifying news of increasing positives/cases so that a new lockdown can be imposed is a breakdown of the positives. Many have no symptoms. Some have mild symptoms. Some get very sick. Some die, as they do of heart disease, cancer, car accidents, bathroom falls, bacterial infections, suicide, murder and the like, every day. In California, the death rate since the beginning of the pandemic affair is just under one half of one percent of the population of the State. And yet we have never actually opened and are about to be fully shut down again. 

And IF we do go to ANY such gatherings, it should be very very small, and it really should be outside, and everyone wearing masks, and only one person handling food, and everything disinfected. In fact, you should even use paper plates. I have a small bubble (well under ten) with whom I usually share Thanksgiving, and I was perfectly satisfied that with reasonable care I could and should go until I read this article, these articles. And then there was a curfew. Nobody out from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. 

In my heart of hearts, I wanted to say, with extra emphasis, particularly since the leaders imposing these rules have manifestly not been following them (which in one's debate in the head seems to mean that THEY don't believe what they are selling), "Don't piss on me and tell me it's raining!"  But instead I realize the gaslight had worked, playing on my wish to be good and true and charitable, I don't want to hurt anybody. I don't care much about my getting it, and even dying from it (in fact if this world we are in is what the "new normal" is, dying might be preferable where you believe in eternity), but after all this propaganda, even if I know that what I have been told is crazy, well, I don't really KNOW, do I?

And I can hear not just in my head any longer, but some of you perhaps reading this post of lament, saying, "Yes, you would be responsible!" Unlike me, they are very very very sure of "the science", even though that's not "the science" of a lot of other, well, scientists. And no one will tell me how it is that post Covid, if there is a post-Covid (as we know even with a vaccine, we are told that we must maintain masks and other forms of PPE for a time unspecified) we will become less dangerous to one another outside of our hermitages. 

So, I wrote an e-mail to my potential host to say that, essentially, the deep concern of the state for our respective healths and my wish not to kill anyone was getting to me, and though I didn't believe a word anymore that is being said to me by anyone in authority (which is quite something since authority was as I said that upon which I was weaned even more than the average developing child), maybe Thanksgiving this year (and probably henceforth in my dismal view of things) wasn't a good idea. My friend was understanding and empathetic. He pointed out that some of his more socially minded, progressive friends had not cancelled their small gatherings. And he reminded me that several of us have been together throughout "L'Affaire de Covid" in the prior 8 months, that bubble I was talking about since none of us have much family left. None of us had contracted even the sniffles.  I was on the other end of the debate in my head. 

Which brings me to the title of this blog entry. I still haven't made a final decision about Thanksgiving. I am trending toward going. But of course, that will probably change as I engage in the "What if's" some more. But the oppression of this time we all share and my particularly psychological baggage really got to me.  Except for the Rosary Across America which I have been doing every day with Relevant Radio, praying in desperation for some change in our national and world circumstances--and that I did in the supine position in my bed--I did nothing at all today until I began writing this entry. There were things I could do, that I do other days, when I am not going to my doctors for yearly examinations, or shopping at the 99 Cents Store for some provisions like toilet paper which is about to be in short supply again (I really was running low even for normal times), or going to my still closed parish outside for Mass. I could read. I could speak to someone on the phone. I could read again. I could write. I could read again. I could pray, which as I said, I sort of did. I could take a walk. No, not that here in California 'cause one is supposed to be wearing a mask when outside. I admit to avoiding that when I am walking short distances, but it would be hard to achieve in a city, and I the mask for me (and I am sure for others who simply fear to admit it) is unbearable for long periods. 

I did go out on my newly fixed terrace, and lie in my free standing hammock, watching the palm trees and the little fountain I got to enhance the locale. I thought, well, at least I have this. Then I thought about "house arrest." How was what I, all of us, been doing, particularly in California and New York and the other enlightened states, different from "house arrest"? As we know, though better than regular prison, house arrest is usually that which someone who has committed a crime is subject. 

I went to that source of all modern day knowledge, "Wikipedia".  Here is some of what it says, "In justice and law, house arrest is a measure by which a person is confined to their residence.  Travel is usually restricted, if allowed at all.  House arrest is an alternative to being in prison while awaiting trial or after sentencing. . . 

. . .most programs allow employed offenders to continue to work, and confine them to their residence only during non-working hours.  Offenders are commonly allowed to leave their home for specific purposes; examples can inclue visits to the probation officer or police station, religious services, education, attorney visits, court appearances, and medical appointments. Many programs also allow the convict to leave their residence during regular, pre-approved times in order to carry out general household errandes, such as food shopping and launry.  Offenders may have to respond to communications from a higher authority to verify that they are at home when required to be. Exceptions are often made to allow visitors to visit the offender. . ." 

I am, we are, under house arrest. Now, a lot of you think that there is this big difference. We aren't offenders--well we are as we are germ factories and any potential contact with another is lethal. It always was. It always will be. But right now, it is particularly a focus in the days of Covid, which has been given a distinct place in the hierarchy of dangers by approved scientists. So, public health requires house arrest.  Someone, many someones, writes on Facebook "Just wear the mask".  I do, because there is no choice as far as I can see and I am still the perfect subject/object for mandates from authority (though I have learned that authority is often wrong; but you know what they say, "Give me a child till he is five and I'll show you the man."  Or woman. I was a malleable child.) But I cannot help but ask the question, mostly quietly, as dissent is no longer patriotic as it was when it was progressives dissenting, "Will there ever come a time when we can stop wearing a mask?" And since, as I said, I know that we won't stop being germ factories, and no doubt there is some other contagion, natural or man made, ready to be released upon us, my terror, and it is a terror, for me, though apparently not for most of you given the nods of approval for extended use, it will be forever. And to me, if that is our future, we might as well be bugs. What we will no longer be is human. And my opinion being just as valid as anyone else's until I become a speech offender and house arrest becomes the real prison kind, is that we are heading toward tyranny of the kind you read about in history books until they get revised by utopians. My prayer tonight is "God spare us from Utopians". 

My religious friends are calling all this a "chastisement". It sure feels that way. 

Since by tomorrow the fullest of restrictions will likely be reinstated here in California if not everywhere in the United States (and the world), I doubt I will be in a better mood. 

And as I said, I am just a cog. I will have to try to reframe and see it as another part of "the Cross" and hope that I will accept the cup of suffering which surely is going to get worse. God will have to unload a heap of Grace on me for that to happen. And even then I am not sure I can handle it. 

Staying the Course

If Joe Biden is formally and officially denominated to have been the winner of the 2020 Presidential election, life will go on for Americans, including the 70 million who did not vote for him. Anyone who lives say, in California, or New York, will find that nothing much has changed since they are one party Democrat states where money is taken from the populace for repeatedly failing programs and restrictions which ignore freedom of expression and movement are becoming the norm. The rest of the nation will soon experience the thrill of Progressivism. Those who voted for this outcome are clearly elated. Their voices and car horns resonated all day in my neighborhood the day the media crowned Mr. Biden as President Elect nothwithstanding the still extant (for now) Constitutional framework that makes state electors the ones to confirm the outcome. 

So it goes. Freedom is fragile. Nations come. They go. Then there is the Catholic Church. Although I know that the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against it, at least intellectually, it is the Church leaders, the shepherds, the Bishops, who have created spiritual, emotional and psychological doubt so intense that many of the faithful wonder if they can maintain the intellectual hope. The Church, which is the Body of Christ on earth since his Ascension, will indeed survive, but too many will be convinced by the Scatterer, Diablo, that it cannot survive and loyalty to Him is amusingly foolish. He is being helped in this by so many Bishops, and priests who have the secular imprimatur of the media. I am aware that many Catholics will not agree with this assessment. But many do. And all I can say is that is what I see as plainly as the history which is being repeated and from which human beings never learn. Why I might see it and others, far more intelligent and learned than I am do not, I cannot say. And I can tell you, I am just as susceptible to the nudge of the Devil to separate me from my faith because of the overwhelming (to me) betrayal of Church leaders.

It has been hard enough during the pandemic lockdown to trust the motives of the shepherds. Yes, there has been a Corona Virus. Yes, if one is in a risk category, getting it can be terrible, as getting any disease which threatens life, can be terrible. But to tell Churches that they cannot function, and say one can watch on TV or one's tablet, was extreme, particularly in the case of the Catholic Church where many of the seven Sacraments occur inside a Church, and where some, like Last Rites and the concomitant funeral rites require more than 10 people. Still, in the beginning, I was among the faithful that understood and given that it would only be as long as it took, estimated at a few weeks, to "flatten the curve", I was not alarmed, though I was disappointed at the alacrity of the Church's compliance. I wonder if the Church at the time of Henry the VIII was quite as speedy in acceding to King Henry VIII need to separate from Rome so that he could replace the wife who could not provide a male heir with one who, hopefully, could. As we know ultimately that did not work out. 

It has, however, come to a point of feeling utter distrust in the motives of the institutional part of the Church, the human part, the always inclining toward evil human part. We are moving into the 8th months of lockdown, with threats of another full one, and Mr. Biden promising the press of full federal authority against the states (good luck though) and the Church leaders are silent, as far as I can hear, as the cooler and potentially rainy weather moves in. This past weekend, at my parish, though it was fortunately sunny, there were huge winds in the area where we have Mass, everyone with covered faces that remind me of every science fiction narrative I ever read in which humanity is humiliated and captured. The little overhang under which the makeshift altar sat and in which the altar servers also functioned was rattling. The chalice covers had to be held down by the package of intentions for the deceased. Of course, it is not yet quite so dire, but it made me think of photographs I have seen of battlefield Masses. The people of God make do. But in this case, does it any longer make sense?

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/us-catholic-bishops-congratulate-biden-as-president-elect-44702

I have written to the e mail provided for the Archdiocese, which is a media relations address. I expect the sort of response one gets from a politician.  All form. No substance. And with the clear intimation that the contact is an amusing annoyance from a plebian. 

Every so often the idea, which I do believe is one of those proddings from the same guy who got Eve to do his bidding, comes that I can't stay a Catholic anymore. But happily, with prayer, the idea dissipates and I remember that the Church is not a building but Jesus Christ of whom we are a part as the People of God. 

And then. As Dorothy Parker once observed, "What Fresh Hell is This?"

All through the election cycle, when I read the instructions for the Formation of Conscience for the Catholic Voter, all I could think of was, "It must be nice to be able to promote ambiguity about the Truth when it is convenient." Abortion, for example, and the fact that the Democrat ticket gives material cooperation, advocates and promotes the evil of abortion (and folks we are not talking only about the small percent of arguable exceptions like rape or incest, and the rare real danger to the physical life of the mother) was superseded by other issues considered, but not truly, proportionate. 

The Pope, the USCCB, both claiming that they were not endorsing a candidate (which is forbidden) in fact were clearly endorsing the Democrat ticket using careful, but clear, wording about things nuanced, which apparently the Dogma as articulated in the Catechism lacks. 

And today, the coup de grace. The USCCB, under the leadership of the Los Angeles Archbishop, congratulates the Catholic Vice President Biden on his as yet unofficial status as the President Elect. 

The leadership is contemptuous of the Traditional Catholics. I have always had reservations about them, myself. I have always favored the Novus Ordo. I like that the Holy Spirit (in my view) guided Vatican II to bring the people more into the liturgy. I have resisted the Extraordinary Form because it does not appeal to me as much as the person in the pew. But the FSSP is starting to look pretty good to me. People who have converted to Catholicism have said that among the reasons for the decision is that there is a Magesterium. What is true is not up to the ideas of different pastors and churchgoers. There is a unity of theology and an of the people in following that theology. Not these days. In fact, it appears that those who want to try to adhere to what is still supposedly the unchanging Truth, are becoming the outliers. It is a parallel to what is happening to the Conservative in the political realm. 

It does not matter much that I am not happy with the Church leaders. They aren't interested in what I have to say as it does not accede to the nuance which they would force on us, a nuance that really makes Catholicism just another religion, made in man's image not in God's. The Church must change to accommodate man, not man to accommodate God in this scenario. It would be less or a struggle for me if I could just accede to this and let my conscience off the hook. 

What am I going to do? It is a day to day thing.  Each day I pray just to remember Christ in the Eucharist. And the strength that He will, I beg, give me. It really is a battlefield.