Tipperary
It’s A Long Way To Tipperary
or
Up Too Early. Much.
Coming downstairs mornings, often as now much too early for normal, make coffee, almost always black but this morning with a teaspoon of Linda’s nice French Vanilla lightener. Drink while it’s hot, because cannot stand lightened coffee after it cools, it’s beyond gross, leaves a nasty, sour taste in the mouth. Ice coffee with a splash of milk is a deliciously different matter altogether though.
Open laptop, use Yahoo and Network Diagnostics to fight with wi-fi until it catches and holds. Used to open Apple Mail but it doesn’t work anymore because of a destructive Apple update a few months back, so check mail via Google, which is damnably inferior. Damnably is not a bad word, and if it is, stuff it. Used to check NYT news and WashPost news via Apple Mail, but now check Google news first enroute to Google mail because Google email program fouls the computer when wi-fi messes up as it often does, whereas Google news program doesn’t foul. Not complaining though: George Washington would be amazed at the electronic gadget in my lap.
Usually get sidetracked with Yahoo, which features odd stuff including this morning an essay by student psychologists at Yale on why we want to hug and squeeze cute things such as kittens, puppies, babies; and ten this and ten that nonsense lists of Yahoo trivia that is only interesting at two o’clock in the morning. This morning, a count down list of
10 things you didn’t know about the brain in which ten, nine, eight, ... number three is
Teen brains aren't fully formed
Parents of stubborn teenagers rejoice, or at least relax: That adolescent attitude stems, in part, from the vagaries of brain development.
The gray matter of the brain peaks just before puberty and is pruned back down throughout adolescence, with some of the most dramatic development happening in the frontal lobes, the seat of judgment and decision-making.
A 2005 study published in the journal Child Development found that the parts of the brain responsible for multitasking don't fully mature until we're 16 or 17 years old. And research presented at the BA Festival of Science in 2006 revealed that teens also have a neural excuse for self-centeredness. When considering an action that would affect others, teens were less likely than adults to use the medial prefrontal cortex, an area associated with empathy and guilt. Teens learn empathy by practicing socializing, the researchers said. So much for grounding them until they're 20.
which explains why teens are so frustrating and puzzling to deal with, but still so cute and adorable that you want to hug and squeeze them at their time of life when they least want to be hugged and squeezed. And maybe why (at least in the male parent, I cannot speak for the female parent) we are so protective of them and during their teen years so condition ourselves to being protective that even when they move into their twenties, forties and fifties we still worry so about them.
My last teen just moved into her twenties, and if I were to be still around when she turns fifty, which God forbid, I would be just as worrisome and protective of her as ever. The proof being in my feelings toward her mother and her aunt, one fifty-four and one forty.
Maybe because I’m male and expect it, the boys slip on into independence. After all, when your fifty-year-old son rides up on a Ducati, you might as well wave the white flag.
Which twistingly wanders off to Tipperary and what was on my mind. What happens when we die?* Oblivion? Or is it something we think of as heaven or hell? Christians like to believe it will be heaven. And counter to what Saint Paul seems to believe about sleeping in Jesus until the great Parousia at the end of the world, most Christians like to believe that life is changed not ended, and that we slip away into a new, conscious awareness immediately at death. So, what might that be like? We don’t know, do we. I mean, the fog has lifted and I don’t honestly expect that red Duesenberg SJ touring car to be parked waiting for me out in front of my -- in my Father’s house are many --mansion. So what then if it isn’t oblivion? What would be heaven and what would be hell?
Just thinking, OK. Seeing that it will be beyond the physical that apparently ends at death, it would have to be spiritual, eh? Spiritual and -- emotional? Emotional in that it will be enjoyable -- or so we expect -- believe. Since we’re taking this little trip, stop and look at what we believe, which is to say, our theology. If lex orandi lex credendi, as we like to say, what we believe, our theology, can be found by looking at what we pray -- what do we pray? In our liturgy for Christian burial we pray (BCP p. 481)
Give courage and faith to those who are bereaved, that they
may have strength to meet the days ahead in the comfort of a
reasonable and holy hope, in the joyful expectation of eternal
life with those they love.
may have strength to meet the days ahead in the comfort of a
reasonable and holy hope, in the joyful expectation of eternal
life with those they love.
If that’s to be so, what might I hope it will be like? And will what I hope influence what is? What I hope it will not be is ongoing awareness of what is still going on back here on earth, so that I worry throughout eternity about the loved ones I leave behind; that would be hell not heaven. Could I be a guardian angel? Heaven forbid, leave that to the cherubim and seraphim, the little beings with heads and wings but no bodies, and those other heavenly beings with six wings, two to cover the face, and two to cover the -- feet -- and two to fly with. As for me, our theology says in eternal life with those I love -- which ones that I love? What if they don’t want me around? If I'm there and they don't want me there, it could be heaven for me but hell for them. What if the ones I want to be with don’t want to be with me, that wouldn't be heavenly -- and vice versa -- what if I want to be with different loved ones? What about the levirate marriage family in the Bible where the wife was widowed of seven husbands (Mark 12:18-27)? What if “just because I believe it, that don’t make it so”? Thankfully, Jesus said (Mark 12:24) “You are in error, because you do not understand the scriptures nor do you know the power of God.” Maybe I don’t need to worry about it.
It’s a long way to Tipperary, it’s a long way to go.
It’s a long way to Tipperary and the sweetest girl I know.
TW+ still happily in +Time worrying about my girls
* Not to worry, this isn’t personal. It all came to mind yesterday morning because I had to go meet a family at the funeral home instead of watching the presidential inauguration and so missed the whole thing.