No, I didn't go to drop my kid off at piano class....he isn't here with us to be dropped off.We left him behind in India with his paternal grandparents...learning a bit of math and physics while there. I called him today and my mother in law picked up and we were chatting for a while until she laughed and said my son was asking her if she was done talking to me because he had been waiting for the last twenty minutes already....sounded a bit disrespectful to me, but that kind of banter with your grandparents is a grandchild's exclusive right and my kids get to exercise it very very rarely and so I didn't yell at him, for once!!!
I digress...I texted his piano teacher today enquiring after her husband who'd had surgery before we left for India and she responded with a bombshell- her husband was recovering, but her piano tuner ( ours too because we bought her piano for Emmy) had passed away. She really liked him and seemed to be in utter shock about his loss. He had passed in his sleep.
I was....surprised, but my feelings were mixed. He has been tuning our piano for the last 4 years...the most recent being a few months ago... definitely after the election because his attitude was very different this time. He was in his eighties, married to a Filipino lady and very very good at tuning pianos. He was also a very chatty guy and we would talk a while everytime he came to tune the piano. I would make coffee for him and chat while he sat at the piano and told me about famous people he had tuned instruments for.
This time however he was different. He asked me if I was from India and proceeded to question me on how crowded it was in India and how trains are always stuffed with people and the streets are crammed with humanity. Nothing new there and so I agreed with him on that assessment. What came next floored me- apparently immigrants coming in to the US need to be sterilised to make sure they don't procreate!!! Same with prison populations too!!
My mouth hung open, but I recovered enough to ask him if those extreme Christians who have ten kids because God asked them to should be sterilised too? No response to that but he went on a tirade about how Germany and the UK were teeming with, you guessed it, Muslims who were taking over the country and blowing it to smithereens and the same fate awaited the US if we didn't curb the flow of refugees and he had written to his councillor or some such official asking not to relocate refugees into his neck of the woods.
I was dumbfounded! Such vitriol! And the fact that he had the audacity to stand in my house and blithely tell off immigrants was improbable to take in but take it in I did.
Once he left, my husband and I looked at each other and shook our heads. New piano tuner next time. I scratched my head wondering how I would break the news to my son's piano teacher. What would I tell her?
Now I don't...that's a relief.
My uncle passed away in July while I was in India and I was able to visit with him and also attend his funeral. He had a rough last few months. He was in a lot of pain, had to be fed through a tube, had enormous bed sores...it was heartbreaking watching him suffer so much. This was someone who was very soft, gentle and kind. But he lingered.
I am not implying that people need to live or die based on their values,ethics,morals or anything...but it seemed a wee bit unfair to my uncle that he went through purgatory but some people who maybe don't deserve it, die without struggle.
The whole concept of God rewarding people according to their actions seems bogus and makes one even question his rationale!
Life has a way about it that is inexplicable. Two people doing the same set of things end up with completely different end results. There is no pattern, no predictability, no straight line process of cause and effect.
Trusting God completely is perfectly fine when our expectations are realistic and one does not want a miracle everyday.
And I think the better thing would be to pray for wisdom and strength to face whatever life has to offer rather than have unrealistic expectations tied to ones religious beliefs and then get disappointed and end up questioning those very beliefs.
I've hit that point where when something like the above-mentioned juxtaposition happens...I chalk it up to...well c'est la vie.
I digress...I texted his piano teacher today enquiring after her husband who'd had surgery before we left for India and she responded with a bombshell- her husband was recovering, but her piano tuner ( ours too because we bought her piano for Emmy) had passed away. She really liked him and seemed to be in utter shock about his loss. He had passed in his sleep.
I was....surprised, but my feelings were mixed. He has been tuning our piano for the last 4 years...the most recent being a few months ago... definitely after the election because his attitude was very different this time. He was in his eighties, married to a Filipino lady and very very good at tuning pianos. He was also a very chatty guy and we would talk a while everytime he came to tune the piano. I would make coffee for him and chat while he sat at the piano and told me about famous people he had tuned instruments for.
This time however he was different. He asked me if I was from India and proceeded to question me on how crowded it was in India and how trains are always stuffed with people and the streets are crammed with humanity. Nothing new there and so I agreed with him on that assessment. What came next floored me- apparently immigrants coming in to the US need to be sterilised to make sure they don't procreate!!! Same with prison populations too!!
My mouth hung open, but I recovered enough to ask him if those extreme Christians who have ten kids because God asked them to should be sterilised too? No response to that but he went on a tirade about how Germany and the UK were teeming with, you guessed it, Muslims who were taking over the country and blowing it to smithereens and the same fate awaited the US if we didn't curb the flow of refugees and he had written to his councillor or some such official asking not to relocate refugees into his neck of the woods.
I was dumbfounded! Such vitriol! And the fact that he had the audacity to stand in my house and blithely tell off immigrants was improbable to take in but take it in I did.
Once he left, my husband and I looked at each other and shook our heads. New piano tuner next time. I scratched my head wondering how I would break the news to my son's piano teacher. What would I tell her?
Now I don't...that's a relief.
My uncle passed away in July while I was in India and I was able to visit with him and also attend his funeral. He had a rough last few months. He was in a lot of pain, had to be fed through a tube, had enormous bed sores...it was heartbreaking watching him suffer so much. This was someone who was very soft, gentle and kind. But he lingered.
I am not implying that people need to live or die based on their values,ethics,morals or anything...but it seemed a wee bit unfair to my uncle that he went through purgatory but some people who maybe don't deserve it, die without struggle.
The whole concept of God rewarding people according to their actions seems bogus and makes one even question his rationale!
Life has a way about it that is inexplicable. Two people doing the same set of things end up with completely different end results. There is no pattern, no predictability, no straight line process of cause and effect.
Trusting God completely is perfectly fine when our expectations are realistic and one does not want a miracle everyday.
And I think the better thing would be to pray for wisdom and strength to face whatever life has to offer rather than have unrealistic expectations tied to ones religious beliefs and then get disappointed and end up questioning those very beliefs.
I've hit that point where when something like the above-mentioned juxtaposition happens...I chalk it up to...well c'est la vie.
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