cornflake carnage

We opened up the doors early, the men and women filed in, the coffee ready.  "It's the calm before the storm", they eat breakfast at Asbury Church, the Methodist serve up delicious food I was told, "but it's a long walk to get here and they're coming."

"I'm clean, five months, no crack, no booze, I'm clean now."  Carol checked into the shelter last night but she wanted to sleep with the lights on.  No, honey, we gotta turn the lights out.  So she left, under a streetlight where ghosts leave you alone.

Within an hour the room was full, the gameplayers arrived, turning the serenity of mercy and quiet contemplation into Atlantic City and the domino slamming began.  Greg, the only caucasion among the players showed me his knotty knuckles.  Last week he had a cast on the left hand, broke it, he said, in a fight.  An MRI revealed later there were no breaks indeed and he was able again to keep score of his matches.  He's been staying at the shelter for two weeks and hopes with his next government subsidy check he can get his own place again.  A withdrawn face like an upside down triangle, pock marked cheeks and about eight teeth he filled his mug with four heaping teaspoons of sugar.  "I don't trust nobody with my money, it'd be so easy for you (he was looking at me) to take my check and cash it and go to Austin.  I'd find you and get you, dammit."  I laughed and told him I'd never even consider taking someone else's dole and why would I?  How desperate would I need to be to steal a homeless man's social security assistance?   $900 a month is alot I thought, how in the world does a man, with that kind of money each month given to him, do that he cannot have his own place? I've taken a vow of voluntary poverty to help the wealthy, a relative word I know, wealthy, and understand it's about management, it's about priorities, it's about addictions, and off he went.

Tomorrow the majority of guests receive their social security and disability checks and the numbers coming to get meals will decrease.  Today there were over a hundred, small compared to the larger shelters who do 300-500 a day.  The weather has been miserably hot and humid, the tempers shorten, a throbbing tooth and a carnage of corn flakes this morning put me in a bad mood.  What does it mean to be a good steward?  And how does the Catholic Worker define being a good steward?  I am grateful for being here and everything in this house I see, as one said, belongs to God.  In God's house we respect each other's faith and opinion, even if that opinion defies logic I am afraid.  Let me explain my mental woes if you will permit me.

One of the folks living on the second floor has been here two years.  I will call him Pedro.  He is from Cuba and he has issues with immigration.  I haven't had many, if any to be honest, talks with him, his English is passable but he works as a mechanic somewhere during the day and I see him on occasion cooking something at night in the main kitchen.  Last night about 10:30pm Pedro was going to have a bowl of cornflakes and he filled a bowl of the stuff, put some sugar in it and when he opened the fridge he was alarmed at something, I think there was no milk, he slammed the door viciously and then slammed the bowl down on the aluminum tables and the cereal and the rest in the bag went flying all over the place and he stormed out.  When I came down this morning at 7am his acts of anger were in full view, and four others, all who shall remain nameless, sat at a table eating breakfast, reading the newspaper.

"It's not our mess.  Pedro did this, he has to clean it up."  For almost nine hours no one touched the violence, and sadly no one could understand that Pedro wasn't going to come back and clean this up and within thirty minutes the cooks would be here and begin the day's meal.  It was a most disheartening moment for me.  No one wanted to clean someone else's messy issues with anger.  Well, I cleaned it up right away and twelve hours later I'm saddened at the sight of these men who thought it would be best to leave it alone.  I'm disappointed to think that they didn't care whoever wound up cleaning it up as long as it wasn't themselves.

Being our brother's keeper.  I don't mind washing someone else's dishes in the kitchen, but now I see an attitude among the workers, not the guests who you'd expect to not care about the trails they leave behind them, that says I don't care.

I don't know how I can manage this little incident except look at being a good steward.  I do what I can and will keep God's house in reverence and respect. I can't speak for workers here who are solidly and firmly compassionate and committed towards feeding the poor, the main and operative action in CW lingo, but the attitude stops there.  Broken people we are and perhaps with that brokenness comes an inability to see beyond the reason why Catholic Worker homes exist today.

18 years and 121 meals

Eighteen years ago at 4:09pm Harrison John O'Neil was born in Oasis Hospital in the Emirati city of Al-Ain.  Today all that is left is his first name assuming of course he changed his middle name as well.  Why would the boy I know so little of completely rub me out of existence?  I am not going to find many who'd agree or find empathy with me on the following,  though I think I know why and I don't know if I can make a difference now, on this day.

I knew even before I proposed to his mother this wasn't an intelligent move.  Insecurity, an absence, a complete absence, of counsel, I was on my own in this one, and it happened.  Marriage.  A marriage that shouldn't have happened.  Obligation and love and two different creatures, dear, and neither of us knew the difference. So, a few years ago I posted it somewhere, and I knew, if my son ever read this or was told by his Manchurian mother what I had concluded, he'd feel, well, how would you feel?  Like a bastard?  An illegitimate child, tossed away by a man who didn't believe the consummation shouldn't have had happened in the first place?  I'm wrong to guess but when silence is one's choice of communicating, it's hard to know.

I knew this would hurt him, this declaration, perhaps I should have kept my mouth closed but in the past ten years I haven't made an effort worthy of sustaining the relationship between this beautiful boy and myself.  I gave up, not because I believe him to be anything other than my son, I just didn't want to see his mother, and if I had to see her to see him then I was going to take the hit.  And that is the fact.

I do wish I had had worked at the relationship with his mother but during the entire marriage we saw counseling and I have never prayed harder to God to change my heart for her but God didn't.  I accepted the fact that it was I who got my knee and asked her to marry me.  All the wrong intentions supported by this woman who had her own agenda and intentions, sealed me in.  I am sorry.  In the end, there was nothing I could do and nothing God wanted to do.  Perhaps my son ought to be a little pissed at God.

Now my son is an adult, he is still without a voice.  Perhaps there is nothing good he has to say.  What is it he could say?  I abandoned him, no, I didn't follow.  If the marriage were to have never happened how does that legitimize my relationship with him?  If the marriage wasn't supposed to happen, then my birth, my blood, my crazy eyelashes, are aberrations, they mean nothing to him, they mean nothing to you.  But they do and that's why I don't forget.

I don't even know if forgiveness is applicable here, but I wish to say I am sorry for the way you think of me, if that is you ever do think of me.  I pray each day I do not hinder you in your thoughts.  If you have forgotten me and you are a better man for it, then I will accept, for what else can I do?

But everyday, sometimes a dozen times a day, I key your name.  All my passwords are a variety of your name, so I have never forgotten.  And I never will.

----------------------

121 people came for lunch today.  I suspect there will be more tomorrow.  I listened closely to a few of the regulars in the hospitality room, mindful of Dr. Campbell's unorthodox approach; Sam and Cecilia.  Their tragedies make my own stumbling about so miniscule I wondered how they have managed to stay in the race.  Sam, 69, was married twice, has 28 grandchildren and great grandchildren but the horrors of death for his children in murder and accident and  two wives, divorced, leave him with nothing but memories, distant contact with all the relatives, and a meal every day at the soup kitchen. He enthusiastically regaled in his cross country trips when he was married and how much he loved the West Coast.  Next week he is scheduled to have a tooth removed or repaired, a tooth that is somehow connected to a nerve that leaves his right eye in tremendous pain.  I will remember Sam, the only fella who plays dominos quietly.

Cecilia is in her mid sixties and I sat down next to her after she asked me if I could pray for her.  Both eyes are askew, her tongue thick and with a mind of its own, she was afraid someone was going to steal her television.  So I said I prayer for her and asked God to keep away the evil spirits who wanted to rob her of her only legal distraction.  The woman with frizzy hair told me of her bunions, her new shoes that help reduce the bunions, and how much she loves court television.

 I didn't try any Joseph Campbell on them.  Telling anyone to rejoice in their sufferings because they brought it on themselves seems strange but how much do we suffer because of our own choices?  Well that's one thing. To suffer because that's how the hell it is for some is hard for me to see any rejoicing unless of course one thinks of those who have excelled in some achievement in spite of a physical or mental disability.  I can rejoice with them.  At a soup kitchen though, you won't find many doctors or violinists.  Just broken and really screwed up people.  

Four hours after the lunch was served we cooked up the leftovers for the Tuesday afternoon meal and a whole new bunch of faces came.  Women with little kids always seems so un-Godly, meaning, how in God's name does this happen, and there were no seconds.  Chava, the female priest led the service afterwards and shared her pain of having to take two Mexicans to the airport where they were flown to Mexico City.  Deportation is really stupid.  The NSA says the woman and her 11 year old pose a threat to national security.  I spit on such stupidity. Ok, again I spit.

And to cap the day, a forlorn kind of day, hot and humid, with threats of rain that never came, I went out after college students from RIT delivered 350lbs of frozen foods, and I  bought three cans of Molson and sat on the banks of the Genesee and contemplated life again in the states.  It hasn't been easy but this is where I am and if no one wants to hire me anymore that is the way it's going to be.  Amen.

I have to pay for these pancakes?

Dark rains fill the day and leave me anxious.  Am I still a foreigner in my own country?  How long will it take to assimilate?  I suppose it wouldn't be too hard if I knew what people around me were talking about.  I still haven't learned the streets and their whereabouts.  Having a car, having a bicycle would help. 

Yesterday I had lunch with two ladies from the Assisi Institute, this strangely unique place that is managing to find common ground between the East and the West, and when the bill came I had to excuse myself:  'Living a life of voluntary poverty means I don't eat out very often'  and I went and bummed ten bucks from Tom who was sitting at another booth.  I know I didn't impress them with that little maneuver and I was a tad embarrassed but this is the wheel I am in now and nothing comes easy. 

At fifty I got at least twenty years of teaching left in me and it's hard to not keep looking outside the US for work.  Oh I know so many who would die to be in my position, ok, not necessarily where I am right now and doing what I am doing right now.  But this is a beautiful area even if winters will be dark and cold and depressing.  I miss the twelve hours of sunshine the Arabia peninsula gives.  I've never missed snow.  How in the world am I going to adjust?  What do I need to do to assure myself this is where I need to be and be happy about it? 

Getting involved.  While I continue to say how grateful I am to be where I am, I can't let waves of melancholy rob of what is good in life and working with the folks in the hospitality room, well what is good in a life that sees their own darkly ceiling?  What potential is there for those who know themselves well enough that nothing isn't going to get better?  Well, what's wrong with sitting down with them each day, and trying out some Joseph Campbell lines on them?  Taking the piss out of the negative isn't that difficult.  Hey, the wheel of Ronald's life is stuck in the mud, how do you get him out of the rut?  A smile, a few words of encouragement, the tiniest Higgs Boson acts of kindness have to have an effect on him.  They have to because it's all we can give.  "Brother, be happy you're miserable and that you got nothing, and you fried some neurological wiring in your head up with drugs and booze. Fuggeddaboutit, you brought it on yourself, accept it and it will make you stronger. Affirm you're crazy, embrace it, and use it to brighten your disposition."  I don't know if this is going to work, Dr. C. 

And how will it leave me feeling in the end? Will I accept that where I am now is most likely because of what I did four years ago?  I am not a shaman, I did not ask the spirit world to turn me inside out, what can I do with this experience that can help others and myself?

And if I never see those two ladies again, though I probably will, and eat pancakes at Dennys with them, which is most unlikely, will I desire my mission to live in poverty end? 

 

homeless in Key West

Two days at the Abbey of the Genesee was two days of contemplative isolation; no talking, no tv or radio, only cornfields to ponder what is understandably the biggest transition in my life and Lord, I wish I had a peace about it all.

After some reluctance I decided to buy a copy of "Shantaram" (which means a man at peace with God in the Marathi language).  I'm not sure if a story about an armed robber who escapes prison in Australia and winds up in the slums of Mumbai is exactly contemplative reading but his story captivates, no pun intended, and it had(s) me reflecting on a lot of things.

But before I started this 900 page textbook I finished "The Power of Myth" and I'll need to read it again because it is as well scary good and it has challenged me to consider what happened to me four years ago and how to deal with its aftermath, the downward spiral to salvation, as Dorothy Day said it, or the downward spiral to reconciling before hitting bottom, as I look at it.  Campbell says of those who experience a moment of transcendence (other words I've used in the April 2009 experience such as nirvana, synchronicity, epiphany, spirit possession by others, etc) where all wrongs are righted, where dualism ended, where Jesus, the Buddha live daily, above the sin and filth of earthly existence, those who come down from the experience and are not rightly guided afterwards do stumble, trying to figure out the meanings, incorrectly translating the symbols. Describing what happened hasn't been hard.  I wrote down everything I said and understood, but as it has happened, and as Campbell noted, what is said and heard isn't for this world.  Try explaining coincidences when they later dissolve into dreams and imaginations.  Four years later the objective is to assimilate and learn without dwelling on what happened.  The Buddha lived for another sixty years or so after he experienced Enlightenment.  Well he knew for sure what he experienced.

With a final week left before summer turns to fall I am in the old lands, Seneca Nation, and it will be cold and dark I will be working with people who have really big issues to deal with, issues much greater than mine.  Again and again I am grateful for the Catholic Worker house.  But this shift to living here, to working with and for the poor, at my age, it hurts, and frankly I'm fearful if this is disbelief.  I believe all will be ok.  If something terrible happens it'll be to the Florida Keys, where the homeless must surely struggle in a most beautiful place.

So having said that, how can I assimilate what I experienced?  How can I share what was good and true?  Telling the poor about coincidences isn't going to help anyone.  Telling the poor about the spirit world isn't going to help anyone.  Telling the poor that their miseries and suffering aren't going to end anytime soon because two days to the Lord is like a thousand years and if God decides to bring all believers home in a week, well, what hope is there in an end of suffering in this lifetime?  I don't know how to share what I learned and what I experienced because nothing I saw and imagined has come true in this reality and that is discouraging.  And yet I cannot not believe what I saw and happened.  Only in time, a long bending curve away from the events will help.  And o dear Lord, distract me greatly, won't you?  From the events that turned me inside out.

James Eliot

James Elliot is in his mid sixties and he is going blind.  Today he sees shadows and can still shuffle along from the South Tower to St. Joes, which is about one block away.  James also suffers from mental illness, which, unfortunately I cannot explain in detail but alcohol and drugs have had an adverse affect on him and it's pretty obvious when he speaks.  This evening James came to the five pm service which follows our four pm meal.  James didn’t arrive for the meal.  Most of the time he doesn’t arrive for the daily 11:30 meal, and instead knocks on the shelter doors around three or four in the afternoon every day asking for something, anything, to eat, and most of the time, if one is within earshot gives him a couple of muffins or a bag lunch and a cup of cold water.  James is thankful but he continues to ask for he knows he has nothing to lose so he asks for money, for coffee, for anything. 

Today Joanne led the service and towards the end she asked if there were any prayer requests.  James is about six foot one, an African American, with a bald head and few teeth.  I just finished mopping the kitchen floor and went outside in the fenced garden for a breather.  This is the hardest job I’ve ever had for many reasons, one, the needs of the poor and the mentally ill never end.  And the philosophical demarcation of  Catholic Workers workers, volunteers, and those who are guests can be so blurred sometimes you’re running around putting out fires of your colleague while trying earnestly and urgently to find a pair of clean underwear for a guest who many times needs not only clean underwear but a de-lousing only the fire department could accomplish.  These lines between the three groups is frighteningly close and James, well, James is more needy than I am, he is more needy than many here and when Joanne opened the floor she had no idea who this man was sitting in front of her.

James:  I’ve lived in many places.  Many places have helped me.  Open Doors let me stay with them, St. Francis let me stay with them.  St. Joes helped me out.  The VOA has helped me out.  I get real hungry some times and I cannot cook so I look for food.  I have a sister and she gave me a carton of cigarettes but I don’t like to smoke but I smoked them.  Sometimes I have a beer, only one, I’m always hungry but I can’t cook.  I’ve been in prison, only for three months though, and I sometimes go to the hospital, last week I almost got hit by a car but I’m ok.  I’m always thirsty and I don’t know why.

Joanne:  James, Jesus can give you water and you’ll never thirst again.

James:  I like water, I drink it all the time.  I like coffee too, with sugar but most of the time I’m thirsty.

Joanne:  James, did you hear me?  Jesus can give you the kind of water where you’ll never thirst again.

James:  Well I like water.  I drink it every day.  My sister bought me a lot of beer one time and I wasn’t happy about that but I drank it because it was in cans. 

I don’t know how to counsel James. I don’t even know how to talk to him.  Sometimes I’ll bring him a coffee if he is sitting outside and it doesn’t take much to get him going.  I think he just needs to know someone is listening even when he doesn’t make any sense. 

And today I read something in Joseph Campbell’s ‘The Power of Myth’ about suffering that I had to read again and if in God’s name I knew someone who read this could comment on it that would be great because Campbell’s ideas have blown me away but when it comes to suffering, it’s so audacious I can’t help but wonder how it could be true, if it is true indeed.

Campbell:  “I had an illuminating experience from a woman who had been in severe physical pain for years, from an affliction that had stricken her in her youth.  She had been raised a believing Christian and so thought this had been God’s punishment of her for something she had done or not done at that time.  She was in spiritual as well as physical pain.  I told her if she wanted release, she should affirm and not deny her suffering was her life, and that through it she had become the noble creature that she now was.  And while I was saying all this, I was thinking, ‘Who am I to talk like this to a person in real pain, when I’ve never had anything more than a toothache?’  But in this conversation, in affirming her suffering as the shaper and teacher of her life, she experienced a conversion—right there.

 

Moyers:  There was a moment of illumination?

 

Campbell:  Right there I saw it.  I gave her the belief that she herself was the cause of her suffering, that she had somehow brought it about.  This is an important idea in Nietzsche, of Amor fati, ‘the love of your fate,’ which is in fact your life, if you say no to a single factor in your life, you have unraveled the whole thing, and the more challenging or threatening the situation or context to be assimilated and affirmed, the greater the stature of the person who can achieve it. 

 

My friend thought, “God did this to me”  I told her, No, you did it to yourself.  God is within you.  You yourself are your creator.  If you find that place in yourself, from which you brought this thing about, you will be able to live with it and affirm it, and perhaps even enjoy it, as your life.”

 

Moyers:  The only alternative would be not to live.

 
Campbell:  All life is suffering, said the Buddha, and Joyce (James) has a line,  “Is life worth leaving?

 
 

Getting James Elliot saved isn’t going to help his condition one bit.  No preaching Christ crucified, no preaching Buddha or Islam or Hindu is going to change this man’s life but what if, what if he were able to see that the afflictions that encumber him every moment of the day were turned inside out and he were to see that his state of mind and his physical condition could be, if he understood and that’s a big if, if he understood is a blessing.

It’s a bizarre approach but ya know what, watching the homeless and the crazed and the dealers and the lazy and drifters every day who knows, maybe it could work.  Maybe James could, for the life he has lived, live a better one if he accepted who he was, another big if, that is if he knows who he is today.  This evening I do not know that.

my yogurt blues

August 18

When does an act of mercy become an act of discord.  You want to do what is right but you do wrong.  The grievances aren’t major and that’s where the tension leaves me always wondering what would Jesus do, what would the Buddha do.  What does John do.  Sometime I think it is better to simply stay on the third floor and not descend to the kitchen and witness the chaos.  The Catholic house has rules, though they are rules for the anarchist, mind you, a benevolent one.  Give it all away, God will always provide.  So everyone gets a key to the walk-in refrigerators?  I have seen in the six weeks here how the poor and the volunteers hoard, they’ll take whatever they can get their hands on.  A caseworker says when someone has nothing to lose he or she is going to take greater risks.  I feel like I ought to police the ‘infractions’ and Lord knows I am praying to confront in the spirit of mercy and compassion but the poor and the homeless, sometimes they don’t respond and one must be more forceful which of course, leaves me looking like the bad cop, which I am most certainly not. 

The entire contents of the house belong to no one but to everyone.  It tries my spirit to see the absence of respect for each other and for what is here so how do I go about it?

This morning I attended mass at Blessed Sacrament and paying close attention, closer than I ever have since reading Joseph Campbell’s take on the ritual, to the consubstantial body and blood, I desired nothing more than to transcend above the paradox, the constant muddied fight between right and wrong, to be with God, to be in harmony with Om, and for a few minutes I was at peace, though I was challenged on three sides; to my left a woman wanted the kneeler down and there was no place to put my feet comfortably in the narrow pew, then the woman sitting in front of me bounced and when I was on my knees I had to dodge her large body from crashing into me, and then it was the beloved priest whose jokes deflated my desire to maintain an attitude above my own present consciousness. 

If it weren’t for the stain glass windows and the big organ.  Two babies were also baptized and one in particular, Sophia, almost one, calmed down just enough when the godmother tipped her head back and sitting close enough I saw the child’s eyes get big as she was laid horitzonally for the water that ran down her little head.  I was moved. 

So now I go to sleep and may I rest.  Jobs.  I almost applied to three posts yesterday but stopped short in each of them. I only ask for some sign, some dream, perhaps, a dream, they are so elusive, that would encourage me to pursue.  Stayiing here feels more daunting.  Working in the chaos never ends.   

August 19

I had a terrible night of sleep, tossing and turning, I felt as if little bugs were biting me, which there weren't, but worst, all I could think of was yogurt and how was I going to have some and not go to the first floor kitchen and be seen by anyone on my day off, which is Monday.  So I got up and went down at 4:45.  In the reach in fridge there are, now there is one, two containers of Cabot's yogurt.  In the walk-in there are, or were, about eight cases of single serving Greek yogurts and unsure what I'd do while I descended the stairs I went to the walk in and took a case.  On the way up I saw Bobby and instantly I felt like a thief.  What was he doing up at this time? And of all people, the Franciscan, looking at me like a fox, and I shuffled past him with the case under my arm and put it in the communal third floor fridge.

I was told when I arrived here that all the food in the house was available to eat.  The third floor fridge is used by anyone who wishes to eat from it so it wasn't as if I had it in my room.  And by now, ten hours later, the individual containers are being eaten and not just by me.

Nevertheless, when I read about discord, I see what I did was selfish.  Of course if I had asked Bobby would have said fine, but the fact that our coincidental meeting in the middle of the morning left me with a sour taste in my stomach I knew what I did was wrong.  So, should I return it?  No.  Just don't do it again.  Of course if I hear later that that yogurt was earmarked for lunch I'll feel really bad and I will confess my 'crime' and not take yogurt again.

And on my day off I submitted my work history to the five corners of the globe.  And I didn't go to RIT, because simply I need a haircut.  An opportunity perhaps missed there, bud.  Was it meant to be?  Is being here meant to be?  Only in hindsight you say we learn true knowledge?  Joseph Campbell is teaching me a thing or two.  Smackingly refreshing.

the safe house

Today a large Hispanic man came to the shelter for a cup of coffee and sat in a plastic chair.  His dirty gray pullover was soaked from heavy vertical rains that drove everyone waiting outside the shelter's doors inside before eight am.  He cradled the cup and began to laugh.  He laughed loudly, the quiet men huddled alone with their cups looked at him but there was no joke to share.  He quieted down to a garble and then started laughing again and no one paid attention. 

Yesterday a half dozen beleaguered souls held animated conversations with their unseen choirs.  A local sociologist wrote about the house in a book he published twenty years ago and described the local orators as the crazies.  I didn’t take his label as demeaning; physiologically altered or born mentally ill, or suffering from a multiplicity of traumatic events no longer able to conform or perform left me depressed.  Beyond reach but certainly not alone in their thoughts they have no silence.

The first day of a new month. This has been a long summer and only falling leaves will confirm its end.  Where will I be in a month’s time is uncertain though it’s beginning to feel I will not leave.  How can I not become like the laughing man or the crazies without a large daily dose of silence. 

The 407 house across the street is for the worst of the worst, those who are so mentally unscrewed no one else will take them.  And here we take them in.  It takes an unlimited amount of patience and respect for the truly down but look hard enough you can see in the desperate eye they try to make it through another day. 

But what the safe house cannot do is give sanctuary to the self-destructive.  There is nothing in the words of Jesus or the Buddha that can protect the soul who is close to death because of self inflicted, exacerbated diseases.  There is no one to blame for this except God, if we are permitted to point the finger at the one who created a soul lost in oblivion.  There is great despair when someone’s fate slips through our fingers.  No amount of compassion, no amount of love will save a body barely hanging on a thread that denies it needs help. 

And it is wrong to take the blame for the loss.  I hear you say, ‘well you came into their lives to give them comfort, to help them survive, to share a morsel of hope’, does this suppose then that the shattered life had no meaning before hand other than to test me?  Maranatha. 

Who is the soul beyond our reach?  Do they walk this earth empty of life, departed when they lost hope from violence and drugs and evil?  Perhaps the soul continues its tormented journey, locked in a vicious cycle leaping from one crushed life to another, hoping for its own complete and final end.    

I’ll pray for one tonite.  Walking through the streets barefooted, unaware diseases have ripped her life from her, there is nowhere to go anymore.  The law has protected her rights as much as it can but the time has come when no legal recourse will protect her.  I fear the day her body is found and Lord, have mercy on her and on my soul because we ran out of options.  But really, you need to take the flak for the faulty man.  You made us in your image.  Original sin?  Sins from the father?  They never had a chance, dude, never. 

Lord have mercy

Christ have mercy

Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.