MountainMornings

“…for I have sinned.”

Every Catholic school girl or boy can recite that phrase in their sleep. It’s been drummed into them since they could first kneel in a confessional to get a priest up to date with the following, “My last confession was (fill in the number) days ago.” We had to eat tuna fish casseroles and think up sins every Friday, some of us more than others. Disobeying your parents was always a favorite.

The Flapper wasn’t really a Catholic, but she married one anyway. In her later years, she surrounded herself with representations of Buddha, and belonged to a group called Science of the Mind. But lucky me, after our Year of Living Dangerously, I was sent to a very Catholic family to cement the dogma with a side of Sacred Heart School. It didn’t really take.

Last night, Bob and I threw away our sins for Yom Kippur. In Judaism, you only get one chance a year to make yourself right with God. In our family anytime between Rosh Hashanah and today is a good time for confession. We walked to the park with Ms Bean, and symbolically threw dryer lint from our pockets into the fountain. It’s called “Tashlik” an act of atonement, from Micah:

 “He will take us back in love; He will cover up our iniquities. You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.”

I’ve been thinking of how a woman, Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt, sang in Hebrew and spoke at the Capitol for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s service. She said that the Justice, even in her famous dissents, was not crying about her defeats, but outlining a future blueprint for the Court. There is no finer example of this than the Lilly Ledbetter decision about equal pay for equal work. Ginsburg’s reasoning in her 2007 Ledbetter vs Goodyear dissent is stellar:

“Tellingly, as the record in this case bears out, Goodyear kept salaries confidential; employees had only limited access to information regarding their colleagues’ earnings. App. 56–57, 89. The problem of concealed pay discrimination is particularly acute where the disparity arises not because the female employee is flatly denied a raise but because male counterparts are given larger raises.” https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/05-1074.ZD.html

And RBG was there when President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009!

And over this holy weekend for Jews, Mr T has said he will push forward a young judge to fill the empty seat on SCOTUS. If Amy Coney Barrett IS confirmed, she will be one of SIX Catholics on the High Court – one that has seen mostly White Protestant men over its history. But Barrett isn’t just any Catholic, she belongs to a fellowship called “People of Praise.” https://peopleofpraise.org/

She actually scares me because this is a fringe evangelical group – and anyone who is a zealot of any sort does not belong on the Supreme Court. Let alone filling such a profound woman’s seat in the midst of an election. Today is my birthday, and I just filled in my absentee ballot. My cousin has already voted in VA. I hope you have a plan for voting safely this year.

I wonder if Ms Barrett or Mr T have confessed any of their sins?