When the Homily is about Immunology

Division

Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated. Life has gotten busy and intense (which I will describe to some extent shortly), but most of my opinion blabbing has been going on via the League of Ordinary Gentlemen Group and in regards to the deposition of Saddam Hussein and the defense of democracy in the new Iraq. I think that makes my position clear, eh? If you'd like to discuss it...join the LOG group and go for it, please don't bring it here though - this is a place of rest for me where I can argue about other less contentious things like how all protestants are going to hell...jk

Someone I know well is going through a divorce. And while I can well imagine how difficult it is for that person (and the kids), it is also not an easy thing to watch from a relatively "safe" distance. The dissolution of a family is - no matter the situation - a tragic thing, for even if you can see it as the best outcome of a particularly bad circumstance, we must agree that the divorce is a sort of the crowning ceremony, or culmination, of an ongoing tragedy.

I do not wish to pander at all to the wrangling over who is to blame for any given divorce...because in the end, we are ALL to blame. We have all created this environment which makes it so difficult for marriages to succeed.

There has also been something particularly enlightening to me in watching a unity collapse into disunity, love degrading into legal documents. It seems that divorce is a sort of archetype of our fall from grace...from unity.

My "novel" (I put it in quotes, because it just seems so pretentious to me...I dunno) deals a lot with this issue: allegorizing sin as the dissolution of unity. But, in fact, it is not an allegory to say this at all. Sin IS the dissolution of unity. It is the breaking of the bonds that tie us to one another and tie us to God: our TRIUNE God.

Everyday we ought to live in a spirit of repentence and remorse, for we have ALL divorced ourselves from God, from our spouses, from our children, from our parents, from our friends, from our neighbors...heal us Lord, teach us to love one another.

Those experiencing - suffering - through a legal divorce deserve our compassion, our support, and our prayers: they are facing a reality that most of us turn a blind eye to in our own lives. Consider for a moment, who you may be divorcing right now.