When I was eleven years old a friend of my mum gave me a Cooper Black Diamond #240 baseball glove. It was pretty used then (1979) so I estimate 1975 as a reasonable date of creation. This makes my baseball glove about 38 years old. Before that it was a cow grazing blissfully unaware of its future.

I have had this baseball glove for 34 years. I have never owned another baseball glove. It is amazing as far as I am concerned. Nothing I own comes remotely close to have survived for as long as Cooper. Excepting my mum and sister’s Angel, Susan and April,  Cooper even pre-dates most people in my life…it beats out my best friend Mike by three years.

I am not sure why. I have lost books, CDs, clothes, shoes, friends, and family but Cooper continues to hang on where most else has vanished.

Cooper fits like a  glove – literally. Which means it must have fit pretty bad when I got it. But for some reason I hung onto it.

I left it outside one winter in the backyard. It was eventually covered by snow and ice and forgotten about until one warm spring day I caught a glimpse of its black leather peering at me from its melting tomb. I dug it up and left it on the porch to thaw out. The next morning I grabbed my baseball and ran into the porch, picked up the wet glove and crammed my hand into it. Seconds later about 100 earwigs climbed out all over my fingers and hand. After that Cooper languished in the porch for about another month until I had the courage to investigate whether its inhabitants had moved on – they had.

After that Cooper was cared for a little better in that it was kept inside instead of left outside.

I find it strange that this inanimate construction of leather has survived as long as it has. I use it every summer. It has been used by my kids and I bring it to Itsy’s baseball practices and games. I am tempted to anthropomorphize it by imbuing it with feelings and memory.

Of course I won’t but it does have a memory of sorts. It has been there like some dead witness to the great quakes in my life. Silent witness to the beauties and the beasts.

It is like a bookmark moving page to page through my days.

sometimes
when I stretch
the wound tears
and I bleed

sometimes
I will stretch
so the wound tears
and I bleed

“That is repentance, to put oneself in the presence of God, to recognize the foolishness, the sins, and to humble oneself before Him. It is because of this that the proud man is incapable of prayer, the self-sufficient man cannot pray.”

– Jorge Mario Bergoglio

there are no words
they fell like leaves
dry beneath my feet
speaking useless
dead brittle tongues
cold as old coals
burnt out long ago

i, we, two and three
small ancients
in the lexicon
we i
we two
we three
sound simple
in the end
i want to be
one who takes the ancients
and makes them new
i, we, two and three
can sing an old song
to a young forgetful world

felt
is an intent;
is an instant;
a grabbing hold
a never letting go
it is
words of love
meeting at a knot of string
tied in the middle
between old cans
held to eager ears
It is fulfillment and peak
plateau and satisfied
all in one
uttered past in present
as air pressed over teeth
and under lip
finishing with whiplash tongue
felt is forever felt

Each word said
is a word shed
a part of me
poured into the world
and
I am perhaps
diminished;
every poem
every letter
every one
a clod of earth
broken away
from the main
a toll of the bell
’till
I am dispersed
each word said
is a word shed
until in time
that last is breathed
and I am dead
and I am in the world

The nature of God is that God cannot be fully understood…the nature of humanity is that we cannot fully understand.

I have been thinking about Superman (Man of Steel) lately and it’s various and many allusions to Christianity, faith in general and, it seems, conception.

In brief: Krypton has evolved technologically to a place where the burden of pregnancy and child birth have been removed from women and placed in the hands of the medical establishment. There has not been a live birth “in hundreds of years”.

I have never been fond of eugenics (the medical and scientific manipulation of human beings essentially to breed out “imperfections”) and this seems to lean in that direction but it lends an interesting scenario…

Were there abortions on Krypton? It sounds like a silly question (I suspect it is) but these sorts of hypotheses can be helpful in looking at a situation we are close to.

If women no longer had the burden (I will call it burden although many women would call it a blessing it depends on circumstance and context) of being pregnant would that end abortions?

To lay my cards on the table I should say I am not and have never been a supporter of abortion. I think it is wrong. I thought it was wrong before I was a Christian and I still think it is wrong.

But time has led me to consider certain uncomfortable realities – context for instance. Should the rule against abortion be a strict no abortion ever under any circumstance? Should there be absolutely no laws regulating abortion whatsoever such as in Canada? Is there a happy medium? Should fertile 9 year old girls who have been raped by their fathers be forced to carry that child to term? Should a woman who uses abortion more like a reactive contraceptive be allowed to have her fourth or fifth abortion? Should abortion be restricted or limited after a certain point of fetal development?

How do we answer any of these questions? I know how we avoid to answer them – we objectify that little human being in the womb (some of you just cringed at that description) and we use the scientific name for it – fetus. To put it in words that perfectly express this: “She’s not a fetus, because fetuses don’t necessitate or care about government protection since they’re not real people. She doesn’t exist.” from this article – http://bit.ly/16zL79J

The fetus becomes an object and as such open to manipulation and destruction. It is not alive. Not like us. Or if it is it is not really human and what’s the point of trying to figure out when life begins anyhow? The very suggestion that we debate this is shouted down in our culture because of fear. We fear what the answer might be. When did we become afraid of knowledge and dialogue?

Culture has successfully communicated to me that, as a man, I have no right or voice in any discussion on abortion (unless I support it). It has been so successful that posts like this make me literally break out in a cold sweat.I am afraid to communicate.

Some would respond by stating that this has been the state of things for years for women but past injustice does not justify continued injustice.

Back to Man of Steel. The film makers sent a clear message by having Kal El’s (Superman) parents choose, against all cultural restraints, to have a child naturally. They are called heretics for their choice. But the message is clear – choice. Freedom. These things are of supreme importance.

And just when you think we have wrapped up our argument in a nice little bow and determined that since choice rules women should be allowed to choose abortion we must be reminded again of the nagging little question – what if this being is alive…alive in the same way I am?

Is it murder?

Some of my Christian friends clamor at this point and state unequivocally that it is murder and therefore should be illegal. After all we have laws against murder. But what about the death penalty in some countries? What about state sanctioned murder (war)? Where are the Christian voices that stand strong against these things? Oh they are there but not nearly in the same way they are there for abortion. In fact many Christians who stand against abortion support a death penalty and war.

Some no doubt do not like the comparison of abortion to the death penalty. People on both sides of the false dichotomy recoil at it. On the pro-life/anti-choice side people would say that you cannot allow abortions because we allow war and the death penalty it’s different. On the pro-choice/anti-life side there are those who would say that to compare it to the death penalty equates women and their doctors to executioners.

Still the reason for aborting the life is because it has been deemed to be a burden. An unwarranted (or warranted?) emotional/physical/societal burden. Like a criminal.

Complicated. Like a tangle of yarn.

We are told that to regulate or ban abortion equates to regulating a woman’s body and yet we regulate each and every person’s body everyday…what can be put in; what can be taken out. It is illegal to put crack cocaine into your body. It is illegal to remove your kidney and sell it on eBay. But it is my kidney…to do with as I please. My body – to do with as I please.

We need to allow the philosophical/moral/ethical conversation about life and when it begins and its value to happen regardless of what you believe. Why? Because when we stop philosophizing; when we stop discussing something it dies and becomes corrupt and is left open to abuse…abuses we think are not possible at all…like eugenics…like removing the choice of natural birth altogether in favour of the seemingly morally right choice of leaving it to science.

Whether we agree with one-another or not we must talk about these things and wade through the terribly uncomfortable swamp of dialogue and we must do so with enough respect for the other to allow them the possibility of being correct (which allows for the possibility of us being incorrect) but to do this we must love one-another, genuinely…and there is a distinct lack of love in our world these days.

There is only one point to experiencing God…and that is to get rid of God by shedding God into the lives of the people around you.

Bleed God, speak God, live God into the world that empty, you might be refilled to get rid of God again and again and again.