4th of July thoughts

• Our power and water have been out since the great storm so we've been staying at my mother's. It's been a lot of fun and I can't complain. Today is the Fourth of July and I don't feel celebratory at all. I'm no Constitutional law scholar but I can't shake the feeling that something life  shaking has happened. It's like coming home with your friends from school and finding your dad drunk and unconscious on the porch. Your friends say nothing and never mention it again and the rest of your family carefully files the incident away in the memory hole but it happened, you all know it and it can't be undone... forever.
  
  I've been mystified by a couple of things: some people at work say that millions of poor people will now have free medical coverage. What poor people? The ones who already get free care? How will Obamacare help me? Since I go to work I take it that I make too much money for "free medical care". It sounds like more money will be going out of my pocket or the IRS police will come get me for something rather vague.  The bishops seem happy about the Supreme Court ruling. So does that mean that they think making me pay for other women's abortions is good? Is the Fortnight for Freedom just a clever dodge ala "I, Bishop X don't want to pay for some woman's sinful behavior but I have no problem with the Baptist/ Christadelphian/AME/whatever layman being forced to?" I don't get it. 
  
  
  
  On the other hand, I'm lying on the floor of my childhood home eating fried chicken and listening to my mother and husband telling jokes. The air is cool, the Washington Nationals baseball team is winning and my parish never lost power. God reigns. Amen.

• Katie Holmes woke up. Great.
  
  
• For the greater glory of God. Thank you Archbishop Sheen.