Can I get a Hail Mary? Or not, because that's fine too.

      In the spirit of Easter and this Lenten season, religion has been on the minds of most. I was baptized Catholic  as an infant. From what I'm told, this has saved my soul from damnation and made me a Catholic for life. The thing about that is, I don't think I want that stigma associated with me.

      My experience with the church has never been too positive: in my youth or today. I'm not sure if I've only been blessed enough to only meet the bigots and uncultured sector of the Catholic Church or if the majority of the constituency actually believes the hate that has been spewed at me and about me.

      I was forced to dress up and sit through a Catholic mass every Sunday from my infancy until I was around ten years old. I had to go hang out in Sunday School whilst the adults drank coffee and conversed afterwards. I took communion and believed the majority of what all these adults were telling me that is, until my parents' divorce. For some reason, my father was no longer welcome in the congregation and people weren't being too kind about him. A priest went as far as to tell me that I was a bastard child because of my parents' sins. That was the end of my involvement in the Church. I never went back and refused to become confirmed.

      Since then, I have managed to read the Bible and have formed my own interpretation of it. Something that I encourage everyone to do instead of blindly following a certain religion. I learned that the Bible is not the word of God, but the word of the disciples. The disciples were not God; they were not Jesus. They were common men like the rest of us. The Bible is no primary source. Much of it was written hundreds of years after the death of Christ, so the authors didn't even have a first hand account of his life. When you critically analyze the Bible, you quickly realize that you need to read between the lines and discredit parts that obviously go against Christ's essential teachings because it is riddled with the opinions of the common man. You also need to observe the fact that it is an ancient text; it is over two thousand years old. There is so much of it that does not hold a place in a modern society.

       My takeaways from the Bible were that Jesus died on the cross for me to absolve me of all my sins. He lived a life of kindness to his fellow man. His good works were not governed by hate, but by love. Jesus loved all man. He loved them no matter their flaws. 

      These takeaways are why I so ardently question and challenge the Catholic Church. I question it's refusal to allow women to be ordained. I question the church's reaction in the midst of a sexual abuse scandal. I question it's constituency in their treatment of homosexuals and unwed mothers. 

      I don't want to be associated with an organization that discriminates against others in the name of someone who preached nothing but love and understanding. I don't want to be associated with a group in which it's highest powered members ignored and denied the claims of children that they were being abused by the people from whom they were supposed to be learning of Jesus's love. When I look at these people who claim to be devout in the teachings of Christ, all I see is hypocrisy because that is all that I've ever encountered. 

      I wish that people would take the time to critically analyze their lives if they are going to preach that they are holier than thou. They should educate themselves on what message they are sending. They claim to be following the Bible, but they should critically look at the way they live their life and realize that it is nearly impossible to be following the Bible in any modern society. Instead, they are picking and choosing which parts of the Bible are convenient for them or that credit the hate that fills their hearts at the moment. 

      I believe that you do not need religion to live a morally sound life. Live your life in the ethic of reciprocity and you will generally do well in life. If you really need to drag religion into it, it's right there in the Bible, "And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise." Luke 6:31. 

      Hands down, playing by the Golden Rule will get you far. Denying other people the same things that you expect for yourself, is morally reprehensible. Govern by love, make decisions in empathy, and always question without evidence.

Growing Up Gay

   

      With all this crazy DoMA and Prop. 8 stuff going on in the Supreme Court recently, there has been a lot of debate about gay marriage. It's being discussed on the news, in social media, in my classes; it's everywhere. I, honestly, find it astounding that people are still of the opinion that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. They obviously grew up on some other planet than I did. In class today, a kid tried to argue that a marriage was only for the intent of making children. He said there was no point in two men or two women marrying because they cannot procreate. He went on to say that children raised by gay and lesbian couples were at a disadvantage to those raised by straight ones. I am not even to get into the flaws in his argument that marriages now are only for making babies. Instead, I'd like to address his claim that children raised by gay and lesbian couples are somehow disadvantaged in approximately the same way I addressed it in class.

      I have lived both sides of the spectrum. I have one heterosexual parent and had one that was homosexual. I have grown up in the same house as a transgender individual. I have been raised by a couple united in marriage. I have been raised by two people who were later divorced. I have been taken care of by two men and by a man and a woman. I can honestly say, no matter which side of the coin you analyze: I have and had two excellent parents. They brought me up to respect others and to respect myself. They taught me to take pride in myself and help any other person in need. I learned from them that no matter what you always stand up for what you believe and support the people you love. They instilled the humility to know my weaknesses and to ask for help. They molded me into the person that I am today. Someone who graduated high school with a 4.0 GPA. Someone who is actively involved at her university and performs around 100 hours of community service a semester. Someone who is happy, healthy, and makes the effort to succeed in anything that they put there mind to.

      It doesn't matter if the person that raised you is gay, straight, or transgender. It doesn't matter if you are raised by a single parent or a happily married couple. What matters are the morals they teach you and the strengths that they instill in you. A parent's job is to mold their offspring into a productive member of society and if they can accomplish that, they have succeeded. Anyone can be a parent if they are willing to put in the time and energy required to care for another human being.

Blood Clots: only beneficial outside the body

     Yesterday, something happened that I did not consider ever having to deal with until decades down the road. I got a phone call that my father was in the hospital and that he was in really bad shape. Getting a call like that is a real punch in the gut. There is a moment of disbelief right before the onset of panic happens. You rack your brain for signs that something was wrong or ways in which something like this could happen. Thirty minutes in the car becomes what seems like an interminable amount of time. I had spoken to him less than 24 hours before and we had discussed when we were going to see each other next: less than 24 hours after the time I got the call. It's horrifying to think how my last words to him were, "I'll see you tomorrow, I have someone on the other line, I have to go." There was no 'I love you' said and I was in such a hurry to get on with my day that I had given him little if any consideration during our 2 minute and 37 second conversation.

      I pulled into the parking garage and walked into the ER with no information on his condition. The person I had received the phone call from was his boyfriend and they wouldn't give him any information on his condition because he wasn't family. I was told that doctors were working on my father in the back and that the resident on the case would come out to talk to me in the waiting room once they got him stabilized. Twenty minutes later, it was explained to me that he was experiencing a pulmonary embolism that was caused by a blood clot in his leg dislodging and traveling to his lungs. In other words, he was unable to breathe on his own and this was causing distress to multiple organs.

       When you hear multiple organ distress, that's when you know that there is a serious issue. Staying calm while calling my grandmother and uncles was probably one of the more difficult things I had to do that day. They were all flying in as soon as possible which added to my anxiety. When his brothers decide to make a trip to Ohio, you know that something is very wrong.

      I got to go back into the ER to see him shortly after I had finished the phone calls that I needed to make. He was hooked to dozens of machines, was not conscious, and had a breathing tube inserted. He began convulsing just as the doctor left us. I had no idea what was happening until I heard the telltale monotone from all the hospital dramas I watch. At this point, I was asked to exit the room as they brought in a set of paddles to attempt to revive him. When the current hit him, I expected some sort of movement, but there was nothing. It took three tries for his heart beat to come back.

      My mom and brothers were the first to arrive at the hospital. They got there just as they were beginning to transport him to the Intensive Care Unit. By then, I had been further updated. The clot traversed the entirety of his femoral artery. Little pieces were continuing to break off into his blood stream because the blockage in his heart and now lungs had caused his blood pressure to skyrocket. They were going to perform an emergency surgery to attempt to remove the clot as soon as he was stable enough to transport to an operating room.

      He was taken to the operating room half an hour after his mother arrived at the hospital. We sat in waiting rooms two floors down for hours waiting on any news. The news we didn't want came blaring over the loudspeaker while he was still in the operating room. A code Blue was called and doctors from all over the hospital came flooding towards the doors through which he had been taken just a couple hours before. After thirty minutes, a gurney came out with three people on each side and one person on top of him pumping on his chest. They were headed back to the ICU to get him stable enough to be put on life support.

     I was approached an hour later asking if I wished to stop extraordinary measures. I was not and don't think I was ever going to be ready for this question. I was not prepared to be the legal next of kin as his adult child. I expected this decision to be made by his mother or his brothers, but not by me. I had to make what in a way was both the hardest and easiest decision of my life: the decision to end all extraordinary measures. On my 18th birthday, he and I had had a conversation. He was in the hospital because his kidneys were failing and he was unable to stand without being dizzy. He told me where his will was and to never let him live on life support or in a capacity in which he didn't have all his cognitive functions. By this point, my choice was whether to let him die naturally or to put him on life support knowing that he would likely never wake up again and that parts of the clot had traveled to his brain likely causing severe damage.

      He died minutes short of Easter Sunday. Seeing him after death, he almost looked disfigured from the bloat caused by all the IV fluids they pumped into him. His lifeless 6 foot 5 inch frame hung off the bed because they didn't have one long enough for him. 

      I was the only one who couldn't seem to muster up the energy to cry. Instead, I waited for his brother to arrive from the airport. He'd died when he was in the air, so I figured I should probably break the news seeing as I was the only one maintaining any composure. Besides, I wanted to take a break before having to meet with the organ donation people. 

      So now, I'm running on exactly 25 minutes of sleep trying to figure out the rest of my life sans a father. We'll see how this goes. 

Happy Easter everyone.