Christmas Ornaments and Nazi Whorehouses, Redemption Part 2

(The last entry, Part 1, was seriously exhausting to my little brain. 

So most of this one is other people's words)

(No profound insights in Part 2, if in fact
there were any in Part 1. Mostly quotes.
I will share that there is a ... physical and  mental 
health crisis for a family member (not Matt or boys) that is
currently occupying a lot of brain-space). 

[[  Part 2  ]]

I love thinking about the various forms of redeem, redemption, etc. In a recent phone conversation, my maternal aunt shared with me a letter her father had written to her mother from France, during World War 2. My grandfather (Loyce, he died before I was born) wrote that his unit was being housed at some chateau (which, he explained, "means castle" :) ), that before the American soldiers were there,  had been used by the Nazis as a whorehouse. The kiddos were listening when I related this story to Matt so I used the phrase "house of ill repute" though I followed it with clarification that my Grandpa Loyce had likely never used that term, he just used the, ah, colloquialism. Which is probably not a word he knew either.

Ice T is my Co-Pilot [Redemption, Part One]

(Okay, so this is actually the 100th post but it was an honest mistake - 

there were a couple of "drafts" clogging up the count)

[[ Part 1 ]]

Last weekend Matt & I sent the boys to their grandparents' for a night, so we could enjoy a kid-free night. On the way home from the meeting point, we listened to Ed Kilbourne's CD Promised Land; Kilbourne describes himself as a "folk theologian." Matt had purchased the CD just a few days before, after hearing Kilbourne perform at a clergy retreat he attended (not "perform" like a big concert, just to the folks in the room). Some of the songs are kind of ... sentimental (I was going to say "sappy" but Matt as always says it better) ... but others are fairly humorous, poking fun at aging and 'kids do the darndest things' situations. Then there's one song, "Promised Land," that is amazing. I hesitate to use the word "powerful" to describe it because that's so cliched, but I was slightly in tears when it was over.

The first verse of the song describes the life and death (from AIDS) of a young gay man, phrased as a query to God, does God care when gay men and lesbians are beaten and killed and lonely and die horrible deaths from AIDS, in the framework of the strong belief that sexual orientation is inborn, not chosen, and if you're born that way then obviously God makes you that way and does he worry about what he's created? Matt said Ed explained later this verse is about someone he knew, his young daughters' gymnastics instructor.