Celebrating Life

I love the Catholic Channel on XM/Sirius radio and now that I have "discovered" it, we listen to it in the car almost all the time.  It is funny and interesting and entertaining.  Why shouldn't it be?  Should it be boring and serious and critical because it is about religion?  NO.  I do not believe so.  But  my kids have come to recognize Lino and Fr. Rob, Cardinal Dolan, Fr. Dave Dwyre and other's voices and I hope they also have come to appreciate their living spirituality and love for the Church.

Yesterday, on the Entertaining Truth show, Fr. Leo and Tom Leopold discussed how to makeover the pro-life movement and bring a new voice to the people who support and celebrate EVERY life.
So here are my thoughts based on yesterday's episode.

1. I would never bring my children to a pro-life march, mostly because as a young girl I went to one and was shocked and horrified by the images I was exposed to.  This is a terrible process, but one does not need to see it to know that it is wrong.  Thank you to the thousands of young and old who are out in the cold today and praying peacefully for the end to this monstrosity.

Instead I will tell my children the stories and help them to imagine the lives and possibilities within EVERY human being.  Take this beautiful 10 week old child.

What will he be?  What are her dreams?  Will she cure parkinson's disease?  Will he discover a new galaxy?  Will he play baseball with his friends?  Will she love a special doll?  Will he marry your daughter?  Is she the perfect spouse God has intended for your son?  The mother to your grandchildren?
Think of the potential hidden inside each child, inside each of us.  All of these possibilities are in EVERY child in EVERY woman's womb.

And what about this 9 week old child?  Is she going to be our country's first woman president someday?  Will he  be your grandchild's favorite teacher?  Maybe he just wants to kick a soccer ball.  Maybe she wants to learn to dance in a ballet.  Should we let them?  Do they deserve the chance?  The chance to succeed, the chance to fail, the chance to love, to learn?

One day 38 years ago, my mother made the choice to offer me a life and the chances I deserved.  It was not easy for her.  It was not convenient or simple, or lovely or fun.  It was hard.  Harder than I can ever imagine.  But she knew I deserved a chance to live, love, and lose.  She could have chosen a different path.  She could have not told her parents.  She could have quietly hidden away the pain, difficulty, suffering and inconvenience in a quick trip to a doctor.  But she did not.  She took the difficult path, that so many young women have traveled and so many more have forgone.  And because of her choice, I am here and free to love, to be my children's mother, to teach, to sing, to dance.

I planned to say something else today. (I know there is no #2). But here it is.  Part of my story of love.  I guess it inspires me to try to live even more fully for those who never have the chance to live at all.  Should you care to read more, I urge you to visit Bonnie at A Knotted Life and Ginny at Small Things.  They discuss it all so eloquently.  I had forgotten how much the song "Zion" meant to me.

Wishing you all blessings on this wintry day.  Stay warm my comrades in DC.  Thank you for marching for me.