Voices in the Wilderness

So how many of you think that Sandra Day O'Connor is in some dark room somewhere right now, wearing a velvet robe, smoking the longest Virginia Slims you've ever seen, and laughing her evil ass off about the reign of horror she just unleashed on this country? (I picture her sounding like Marlene Dietrich, too!) Personally, that mental picture of her does way more justice than the pictures that AP, CNN, and Reuters are posting of her. Sheesh! She makes the runaway bride look like Eva Longoria!

And we thought the election was bad! The fight over this Supreme Court nominee is going to make the election look like the Pillsbury bake off. Load your weapons, because everyone from the Center for American Progess (yay!), to Priests for Life (boo!) will be releasing some statement on this.

This world is just too damn crazy. But I was thankful that, while reading more of Marilynne Robinson's novel "Gilead," which I posted about here, I came across a passage that seemed to make some sense of this 'crazy, mixed-up world.' In it, the main character (a minister) is talking about a biblical story he reflected on during his morning meditation. The biblical story is Hagar and Ishmael, and the moral of it is that even if a mother and father can't find a way to provide for their child, provision will be made by God.

"That is how life goes - we send our children into the wilderness. Some of them on the day they are born, it seems, for all the help we can give them. Some of them seem to be a kind of wilderness unto themselves. But there must be angels there, too, and springs of water. Even that wilderness, the very habitation of jackals, is the Lord's. I need to bear this in mind."

I like to think of life as a wilderness, and all of us as voices in it, accompanying one another through each chaotic path. There are hardships, there are evils...but there are also joys, also angels. Not in the Michael Landon sense, do I mean. More along the lines of the people we hold dear to us, or the pets we hold dear to us, or even the food we like to devour in times of despair, that make this life - this wilderness - manageable.

Speaking of hardships, I guess I have to do this "tag" thing that my friend Mags sent me via her blog You forgot Poland! This is all Sandra Day O'Connor's fault, I'm sure.

(I think she started polio, too.)

I'll be posting again soon with the answers to my 'tag'.