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Michelle L. Torigian

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Michelle L. Torigian

Tag Archives: parents

Art and Life in Step: The Handmaid and the Refugee Parent

20 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by mictori in Current Events, Pop, Pop Culture, Social Justice, Television

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Art, children, Immigrants, Immigration, June, Life, Offred, parents, refugee, refugees, separation, The Handmaid's Tale

This post contains spoilers for The Handmaid’s Tale, season 2, episode 10.

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I can’t imagine a more apropos episode of The Handmaid’s Tale for today.

Earlier today, I saw the following Instagram from Elizabeth Moss:

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I had a feeling I knew where this episode was going…

After some very brutal scenes earlier in the episode that needs a trigger warning, the last 1/3 of the show presents us with a familiar storyline. June/Offred is granted the opportunity to visit her daughter Hannah and spend a few rare moments with her child. As we see earlier in the series, the child was kidnapped from her parents and June was forced into sexual and surrogate slavery.

The conversation is heartbreaking. As their visit continues, the child asks her (former) mother why she didn’t try hard enough to look for her. She hides behind the Martha as she is so unfamiliar with the woman that gave birth to her and raised her for the early years of her life. Hannah screams out for her mother as people pry the child out of the mother’s arms at the end of their short visit. The two do not know whether or not they will see each other again.

So this is just another dystopian series, right?

Or is this too real?

What we see in this episode and hear on the news are eerily similar: children being ripped from the arms and lives of their parents.

(As they filmed the episode, I highly doubt they knew this episode would be airing this week of all weeks.)

Like what is going on today, the party who very much wants to push a pro-family platform destroys families that cross their path.  Children are ripped from the lives of their parents, undoubtedly crying themselves to sleep as they abide in a world of uncertainty.

Some people believe it’s part of God’s plan or divine intervention that such horrific moves are made. They want us to follow they demands of the government instead of God’s ethics. And yet, as they continue to believe they are the good guys, our world becomes like Canada in The Handmaid’s Tale: seeing a humanitarian crisis unfold.

Like some posts I’ve seen online this week, leaders in the Bible who separated children from their parents were not the “good guys.” Rather, they were Pharaoh and Herod. They were notorious not only for taking children away but killing them as well.

I don’t think any “Good Christian” wants to identify with the two of them. But here our Jesus-professing leaders are- following in their footsteps.

Dystopia is a breath away from us right now, America. When children and parents are ripped apart from one another, and the children are kept in cages, not allowed to be picked by adults, and may never see their parents again, the distopian nightmare is real.

You may read this and say the refugees have broken the law. But they came here because their living conditions were so unstable and dangerous. And we turn our backs on them. We’ve been told over and over in Scripture that we are to care for the orphan, widow, and alien/stranger, and we ignore the many Biblical texts that give us this mandate. No matter what the law says or what the powers-that-be want the law to look like, Jesus was (1) a refugee and (2) a law breaker as he healed on the sabbath. Our powers-that-be wish to forget this.

I encourage each of you to watch the last 1/3 of the episode. Hear the screams between mother and child. Watch the tears swelling in their eyes. This is not fiction. This is not dystopia. This is America in 2018.

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A One-Month Prayer

10 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by mictori in grief, Pop

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

death, death of dad, death of parent, grief, grief prayers, loss of parent, memories, mourning, never returning, parents

Divine Crafter of Time and Space,
It’s been a month.

Now, I know that it hasn’t been a full month since he breathed his last breath,
Or the last beat of his heart,
Or the very last time I saw him “alive,”
But a month ago we lost the him we knew and a life of familiarity.

We lost his laughter and his political grumblings,
The ability to ask him one more time what the Tin-Man symbolized in the Wizard of Oz,
As well as questions we never knew to ask him beforehand.

We lost his voice.
Of course, we have recordings from the past thirty years-
Videotapes from birthdays and Christmases.  Even a Facebook video or two on a needed Civics lesson.
But recordings, though sacred, just aren’t the same.

One month ago today,
I lost the blessing of receiving his hugs
And his constant reminders to gargle with saltwater
And to get my oil changed and have all of the fluid levels checked.

I lost the ability to see his eyes not only open
But look and interact with the people surrounding him.

His spirit ascended while we were left to descend into the valley of grief.

So until I can climb out of this valley under the dome of cloud-filled skies,
God grant me the strength I need to take life 15 minutes at a time.

Someday, we will find ourselves on even land again,
Even occasionally making our ways to mountaintops.
It will be a bittersweet journey upward and onward,
As I realize Your strength and his love are on this pilgrimage with me.

Amen.

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A Prayer in Dad’s Last Days

15 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by mictori in Life, Pop

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

comfort, Dad, death, dying, family death, father, grief, hospice, mom, mother, parent death, parent dying, parents, peace, prayer of comfort, prayer of peace

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God in whose arms rock me throughout all my bouts of tears, I abide in pain as I watch my dad struggle to draw breath after breath.

He was with me throughout my first sleep-deprived nights and now I sit with him through his final sleeps. His tears flowed in my struggles; my well of lamentation has now run dry of liquid grief watching his body’s strength evaporate before me.

I ache for the days when I could hear his voice, see him write on a piece of paper, listen to his monotone singing.

Those moments can only be found in my rear view mirror.

As the aches of my heart pass along to my mind and spread fatigue throughout my body, give me the balm I need to survive these next hours.

Together, Holy One, we will continue to linger on every sacred breath, every twitch of his face. Even as his body is minimally alive, I bask in the radiating sunset of his soul, cherishing the last few moments of summertime innocence.

Amen.

 

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A Meal with the Past

18 Sunday Aug 2013

Posted by mictori in Current Events, Life, Pop, Pop Culture, Religion, Television

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Cheerios, Cheerios commercial, Cheerios commercial Nana, Christianity, Communion, communion table, grandparents, Hebrews 12, lectionary, Nana, parents, progressive Christianity

Who knew a Cheerios commercial could stir something within me and theologically warm in my heart…

The commercial features young boy asking his mom if Nana poured Cheerios for her when she was young.  Her mom used to eat Cheerios with her

Maybe communion hasn’t quite been exactly the same for two thousand years like Cheerios has been the same since it was invented.  There have been lots of rules added and removed.  The quality of bread is different from denomination to denomination.  Some of us walk to the front to receive our elements and others pass the elements from person to person while sitting in the pews.  But one element remains the same – we come to the table to partake in a meal in remembrance of Jesus, and in doing so communion “has pretty much been the same forever.”

And then the little boy asks his mom: “So when we have Cheerios, it’s kind of like we’re having breakfast with Nana.”  (Anyone else besides me get a little choked up at this point of the commercial?)

As this past Sunday’s Hebrews 12 lectionary text says, “we are surrounded by so a great cloud of witnesses,” communion reminds us of our connection to the generations of yesterday.  In our time at the table, we recall what Jesus said: that in the sharing of this meal, we remember him.  And as we remember him, we also remember all those who shared the same meal – our parents, grandparents and so forth.

When I go to the communion table, I share the meal with Jesus the Christ, with great theologians with whom I agree and disagree and with friends and enemies.  I share the table with the rich and the poor, the criminal and the innocent.  And I also share the communion table with my Grandad Lawrence, my Grandma Queenie, my Medshireke Fred and my Memama Margaret.  I share the table with their parents and countless generations who have gone before them.  I share the table with my Mom and Dad – whether they are in my church that day or not.  I share the table with people who have not yet been born for ten, twenty or one hundred years.

It’s pretty amazing when we realize that each time we go to the communion table, it’s “kind of like having breakfast with Nana” and people from every time and age.

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