Current Mood: Happy

Earth Angel ¹

I guess my siblings and I were raised as somewhat unusal Protestants, in that we were raised with a belief in Guardian Angels.

To ward off the “boogie man” - and assorted other beasties that stalk children at night - our mother used to draw a picture of our “Guardian Angel” and tape it to the wall beside our bed at night. “See? there’s a picture of your guardian angel. Nothing is going to happen to you while she’s looking over you.” Many, many nights I’d fall asleep looking at that picture. When I became a mother, I used to do the same with my daughter.

When mom got lung cancer, and all her electrolytes went out of balance, she’d be talking out of her head, and she used to be afraid to fall asleep. So to help her, I drew a picture of her guardian angel too, and posted it by her bed at the hospital. It helped her, too.

In her last year she used to talk about her Guardian Angel, a lot. She said his name was “Sing” - well, it wasn’t really his name, that was just the name he gave her because humans couldn’t pronounce his name. She used to tell us all about the conversations she had with Sing, all the while, dad shaking his head behind his paper. We all just humored her, our mom had always been “weird” - this was just yet another way for our mother to express her weirdness. If it brought her peace - why not?

Recently I had an opportunity to go over her medical records. Our brother decided to file suit with the State of Florida with the Engle Trust Fund, against the tobacco companies, and I had to search through them to find references to her smoking before 1996. I found something very interesting in those records.

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I love that cartoon; it cracks me up every time I see it. In fact, I crack up at most religious jokes. “I found Jesus - he was behind the sofa the whole time.” “Did you hear, Easter was cancelled? Yeah, they found the body.”

There’s a lot of things to laugh about, when you’re talking about God & religion. There are WHOLE websites devoted to religious humor - and I think that’s a great thing! People who are so serious about religion, all the time, scare me.

There was a joke going around last year that went like this:

Did you hear? The Pope has the bird flu!
-oh NO! Say it’s not so!
Yup. He got it from a Cardinal.

Now most of the Catholics I told that joke to, got it, and weren’t offended. Most went straight to the phone to call every other Catholic they knew, to tell that joke. But a couple were highly offended, and I guess that’s their perogative. I have to admit though, I watched a whole lot of the Pope during his visit to the States, and he seemed like a pretty cool guy to me. I bet he would have laughed at that joke!

I had a comedian tell me one time, that everything was fair game for a joke. Everything. Including things like child abuse, rape, murder. It’s needed most at times like that, said he.

I can’t agree with it, though, I just can’t. Some things are sacrosanct, and should be above being made fun of.

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