Why I am not a Christian or a good person

This post may seem more personal than most but it's not, not really. Simon Critchley has written a brilliant article in today's Times:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/the-rigor-of-love/?hp

I can never get the link to work. It is about being good without God, but emphasizes the importance of living a life without judgment of the other. It is only the individual, I guess the self, before God (or the mirror) that can be judged important. Really Ivan Illych talks about the same sort of thing: a speck from someone else's eye cannot be removed while there is a log in your own; it's a comment about judgment. And, let's face it, I judge the matriarch all the time.

Unfairly.

I wish I could be a better person when it comes to the matriarch. It is so hard sometimes. I keep thinking to myself it would be worse on my mother-in-law if she was in a home. There, she would not be treated as a person, as an individual. I mean it is a struggle to constantly recognize my mother-in-law as a senior person, my elder in the old fashioned sense. It is easier to say she has regressed and is back to the solipsism of the two year old and treat her as such. But, then, I think to myself that is to deny the life she has led and not offer it any respect. I can only think I have to do what I think is best because at the end of the day I have to look at myself in the mirror and be happy with what I see. And, I can't fall into the trap at looking at what others do in comparison. Sometimes, it is really hard to hate the idea of a home and be so envious at the same time.

Yesterday, after the corn roast, the children came home and two got out the sewing machines and did some projects. We are getting to the skill level where some clothes can be worn out in public and not look homemade. My mother-in-law watched the children and felt their projects and made the pronouncement she would like a new blouse. Made by one of them. I imagine you can just see the anticipation in the children's faces at the thought of making a blouse, measuring, buying fabric and sewing for their grandmother. And, I sat there and wondered.

Is it such a big deal to make a blouse for their grandmother? Why is it that no matter what the children get up to, their grandmother always wants to participate, even when she can't. And her desire to participate is in constant competition with her ability to do something--I grant it is not fair. It sucks (sorry, for the term) to grow old but it also sucks (again) to have to live with the constant accommodation for an older person. And, I am sitting here wondering about the log in my eye. How do I behave in this situation? Make her a blouse myself? Buy one and pass it off as authentic? I can't buy one and tell the children to pass it off as their work as equally as I can't force them to make a blouse. And, I am sitting here trying not to judge the matriarch's desire to always want what the children have.

I don't have a log in my eye; I have a bloody forest.