On Coming Home

So I've been home for a few days now.  I wanted to blog several times when I was in Dublin, but my access to the internet was somewhat erratic; the hotel where we stayed wanted to charge an outrageous amount even just for a couple of days' worth of access, and we were there slightly over a week, so that didn't really work out that well; the few times I managed to hop online, it was generally to check my e-mail and it was with the not-strictly-legal use of an unprotected wireless network provided for the patrons of a café around the corner from the hotel.  So I do have a few ideas for posts that came from my time abroad, but for now I'd like to meditate a bit on coming home.

I looked forward to it while I was away, of course, but I was travelling with a great group of people who I see fairly often at home anyway, so I have to admit that while I missed my mother and my cats and my friends who weren't with us, I was far from being homesick.  I've always had a knack for getting settled in to most new places like they were home anyway, and because of all my walking and careful map research, within a couple of days I knew the immediate area close to where we stayed in Edinburgh and Dublin very nearly as well as I know most of my own city, and actually blended in so well that I got asked for directions several times.  But coming home after being away for so long is always a bit of a shock, and this time it contained a few more actual surprises than usual...

The first big one was finding out that Jack Layton, who had been leader of the federal branch of Canada's New Democratic Party (which, along with the Green Party, is the most progressive political party we've got at the moment), had died of his cancer.  I wasn't terribly shocked; I'd wondered if things were progressing in that direction when he resigned so soon after his party became Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition.  But it was an unpleasant surprise nonetheless.  I didn't always agree with his policies, but I had a tremendous amount of respect for the man, and I hope that his successor as the head of the NDP is capable of continuing the work that he began; the NDP have been my country's conscience for eight years thanks to him, and with Stephen Harper enjoying the power that his majority government gives him, we are dearly going to need a very strong voice to say, "Hey, this isn't right!" when the Tories inevitably do something else that will not only weaken our social safety net, but hand even more money and power to those who need it the least.

The second was that my brother has rather suddenly broken up with his girlfriend of nearly six years (not a surprise because out of necessity she moved to another city last year, though they tried to keep their relationship together) and moved in with his new girlfriend.  Furthermore, he and one of his friends are hitchhiking from Thunder Bay to Toronto.  So I'm a little worried about him, but at least he's with a friend and there's some safety in numbers there, and I'm glad of that.

There are a few other personal surprises that I ran into, and I'm still recovering from a slight cold that I seem to have picked up in Ireland, and my sleep schedule is still kind of messed up, so coming home has been a little less pleasant than I had hoped that it would be.  But if that's the worst that I can say, then I suppose I'm doing all right.

Another Conversation With Another Evangelist

So I'm walking down Princes Street today when this tall older gentleman (I'd place him in his late 60's at the youngest) offers me a Gospel pamphlet.  I politely decline and he goes on his way, offering other people his pamphlets as he goes along.  And then I stop for awhile to look down at some of the gardens, which are really very beautiful, and he (apparently forgetting that he'd already spoken to me) offers me a pamphlet again.  I still decline, but this time, we talk.  I'm not entirely sure that my point (that most people are looking for wisdom in whatever way makes the most sense to them, and that people have to reach their own conclusions about what to believe or it just won't sit well with them) really gets through, but it is a pleasant and interesting chat nonetheless.  We part ways again, wishing each other a good day.

I have a habit of attracting people who want to talk about God, for some reason.  I'm not sure why.  (Maybe it's just a logical extension of my tendency to get drawn into conversations with random people.)  I know that a lot of these people tend to talk to anyone they can get near enough to say "Have you heard the word of the Lord lately?" to, but in general I seem to get more of these people talking to me than most people do.  Even though my own perspective on spiritual matters is inevitably different from theirs, and although I usually feel that I have to be quietly subversive rather than totally open about what I actually believe, I've always come away from these conversations with some form of  insight, and hoping that I've been able to give the other person the same thing.  

Actually, this tendency of mine used to drive my mother absolutely nuts before the JWs stopped coming 'round our place; I'd talk to them, but I'd always steer the conversation in whatever direction I wanted to go in, not following the JWs' planned spiel.  I have a feeling that it drove them a little nuts, too, which I have to admit was the main reason I did it...but then, since JWs tend to be the sort of proselytizers who really annoy me to begin with, I figure that the sheer entertainment value of de-railing their conversion attempts was a fair exchange for the annoyance of having them there in the first place.  Besides, even in those conversations, I usually came away with some new understanding, even if it was only a further understanding of the sort of belief that leads one person to arrogantly assume that their beliefs are the only Truth, and that anyone who doesn't believe what they do is wrong and should be converted and/or shunned.

Today, though, the insight, more of a gentle reminder, really, was that sooner or later, those of us who look for wisdom in the spiritual realm are generally looking for the same thing.  It doesn't matter what path we're walking, whether we're following an established one or blazing our own trail; as long as we hold on to the concepts of compassion, respect, and love for each other and the world, then what we're looking for is a way to build a better world altogether, and I'm not talking about the possibility of life after death, but this world, but with less poverty, corruption, and greed.

I know it's not going to happen in my lifetime, but as far as I'm concerned, that's no reason not to work for it anyway.  If humanity is to survive what's coming at us, we'll need that kind of a world, and people who are willing to work for it.  My conversation with that gentleman today reminded me of that, and for that, I am immensely grateful.

Walking in Edinburgh...

This will probably be a fairly scattered collection of thoughts; a kind of mental potpourri, so to speak, so there won't be much structure...

The last time I was here, I was seventeen years old and not nearly as streetwise or as confident as I am now.  I wasn't quite a nervous wreck, but I did tend to stay close to my mother, and I spent most of our day in Edinburgh trying to assure her that, contrary to all expectation, we actually would be OK and we wouldn't be completely lost in a strange city without finding anyone else from our group ever again, or having a way to get back to where we were staying in Glasgow.  With that kind of memory to deal with, I'm not surprised that my experience with Edinburgh so far has been much more positive this time around.

I did a lot of walking yesterday.  So much, in fact, that when I traced the route I'd taken on Google Earth when I got back to the hotel, it told me that I'd very nearly walked ten kilometres.  I'd had a definite destination in mind, but my walk took me to some unexpected places (including Calton Hill, which I'd intended to see anyway), and I started thinking about how much had changed in my life since I'd last seen a number of the places that I saw yesterday.

When I was seventeen, I hadn't yet come to terms with the idea that one could be both Pagan and Christian; I was still very much an either/or type of person, and I'd chosen Paganism, even looking down on what I thought of as my Christian past, even as it still existed in my present.  I had self-defence skills, thanks to my years of judo class, but not the observation skills that are so valuable when you're in a big place with a lot of other people.

I was silly enough to forget my umbrella yesterday.  Naturally, the rain was absolutely pouring down.  A total stranger offered to lend me her umbrella for a few minutes; I declined, because there was no point in pretending that I wasn't already completely soaked, but I appreciated the gesture anyway.  We had a nice little chat, though, before we each went our separate ways.

This is my fourth trip to the UK, and my third trip here to sing Evensong, though it's my first with my church choir (the other two were with my community choir, which is directed by the same person as my church choir), and the first time we've sung in Scotland.  I know that it might seem that I should feel more casual about it; after all, I've done similar things before.  I've even been here, in Edinburgh, before, though it was only for a few hours and I didn't get to see much more of it than a tiny bit of Princes Street and the Royal Mile.  But every day I've been here so far has been full of new experiences and things to wonder at; in such a short time, I've come to know at least this small-ish section of the city very well, and I love it.  It's such a different type of big city than what we have at home; I have yet to see a single skyscraper, and there are trees everywhere.  I can't ignore the existence of poverty and inequality here, of course; as much as I've loved being here in Edinburgh, I have not deceived myself into thinking that this is some magical faerie city where nothing ever goes wrong and where nothing bad ever happens to anybody.  (I'm pretty sure that even a real magical faerie city probably wouldn't be like that, anyway.)  Even I'm not that naïve.  But I am very glad to be here, and the past few days have been wonderful.  I fully expect that when we return home after our time in Dublin next week, we'll be jet-lagged but mentally and spiritually refreshed, and we'll be better musicians for having spent so much time singing in unfamiliar spaces.

You know, I absolutely love Evensong.  There's very little preaching and a lot of singing.  But Evensong last night was particularly wonderful; there's a lot of room for enthusiastic and powerful singing in the Sumsion Mag and Nunc* in A, and our choirmaster was evidently having a lot of fun with it, signalling a lot of crescendos (crescendi?) and sudden bursts of high volume by mouthing "Come on!" at us. :D  I'm not sure about some of the other singers, but the Gloria from that particular Mag and Nunc (Sumsion used the same one for both, but many Mags and Nuncs have two different settings for the Gloria) was so much fun to sing that I almost felt like dancing for joy...which would not have been appropriate behaviour for a singer in an Anglican choir, alas.

And that's where my thoughts have been leading me today.  It's only a little after 10:00 AM over here, though, so there's plenty of time for more unusual lines of thought. :)

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*Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis.  In brief, the "Magnificat" is that "My soul doth magnify the Lord" bit that Mary is supposed to have said after Gabriel told her that she was going to have God's baby, and the "Nunc Dimittis" is a prayer that starts with "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word."  They're both followed by the Gloria: "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost..." etc.

Meditations of a Travelling Christo-Pagan

So, here I am, sitting in a surprisingly comfortable chair at Pearson International Airport in Toronto.  If all goes well, in a few hours, I'm going to be boarding a flight bound for Heathrow Airport, and then travelling to Scotland (Edinburgh, to be precise) for a week, with a week in Dublin, Ireland, to follow.  It's the first time I've gone on such a long trip to such far-away places since 2005, and while i've noticed that there have been a few changes in the way that air travel is conducted here, for the most part I still feel as nervous-comfortable with it (if that makes any sort of sense) as I ever did.  Nervous, because there is always so much that can go wrong with any given trip, but comfortable because I'm something of a gypsy at heart (apparently some of my ancestors a long way back actually were Gypsies, by the way); I love to travel.

But then, I'm a white person travelling with a group of other white people, so that's bound to make a few things a little bit easier.

This isn't going to turn into another one of my long rambles about privilege, by the way; I know you're probably getting a little tired of those by now!  It was just an observation that I felt was worth making.

Anyway, the reason why I'm travelling is that my church choir is going "on the road," so to speak; we'll be singing at churches in Scotland and Ireland while we're away.  I anticipate, as I have experienced on other, similar trips, a good experience overall, spiritually and otherwise.  I love singing in old churches like the ones where we'll be; somehow it helps me to put so much into perspective.  In the next couple of weeks, I'll probably be blogging about this in rather more depth than I am now  But I'd like to note, at the beginning of the journey (sort of, anyway; I flew to Pearson from the airport near my hometown this morning), that although I am understandably nervous about being away from my own country for so long, and about having decided to bring my laptop with me, I'm also very much looking forward to seeing Scotland again, and to seeing Ireland for the first time.  I have roots in both countries, after all, and besides, I'm with a great group of people.

This is going to be fun. :)

Musings on the Day of a Former Friend's Wedding

This afternoon, someone I used to care very deeply for got married to his girlfriend of five years.

There was a time, about nine years ago now, when we were very good friends, and I cherished some hope of eventually being more than that, even as I berated myself for that hope.  He's tall and slender and looks a bit like Orlando Bloom; as much as I'm still trying to convince myself that I'm actually not completely unattractive, I was even more convinced back then that I was absolutely grotesquely ugly and that nobody could ever be attracted to me, especially since we'd gotten to a point in my first-year Psych class where we were learning about attraction and love, including a statistic that stated that people tended to date and marry people who were about as attractive as they were themselves.  (You can probably guess my immediate reaction to that little tidbit.)  Besides, at the time there was another female piper in the band; the two of us looked enough alike that strangers would often mistake us for sisters.  He called her hideous at least once in my hearing (though she herself was nowhere near at the time), and because she and I so closely resembled each other, I figured that he probably thought the same about me.

Yeah, I know.  Not a great moment for either of us, I think.

Somewhat ironically, I learned years later that he'd actually had a terrible crush on me at the time but, because I'm not at all a flirty person, he thought that the feelings were totally unrequited.  And even though I became a bit more confident in my own skin over the next few years, and despite the fact that we always seemed to default to an attraction to each other when he wasn't seeing anyone else and I wasn't falling for someone else, nothing ever came of it.  I suspect that our involvement in my old pipe and drum band might have been a factor; by that time we'd seen the trouble that could happen when couples who both played in a band broke up.  In any case, nothing significant ever happened (a bit of flirting here and there, and once in awhile we'd hug or he'd put his arm around me) and eventually we drifted apart when my depression and an injury to my hands made it impossible for me to continue with the pipe band.

I have to admit that in the past, I have sometimes wondered what might have happened if I hadn't been so dense, and/or he had actually told me in terms that I couldn't possibly misunderstand that he actually was attracted to me.  I've felt a little wistful; tactless remarks about the physical appeal of the pipe band's other girl quite aside, he's a very kind and loving person in general, and for the time that we were friends, I treasured his friendship.  But perhaps it's better this way.  On reflection, we'd probably have been good for each other for awhile, but because of some of the more difficult things that were still ahead of me at that time, I suspect that it might have ended badly.  My depression, illness (I developed bronchitis in late 2007, and it was nearly 2009 by the time I had fully recovered), hand injury, and persistent unemployment, added to the fact that I was trying to support my mother through her own depression and consequently overlooked my own mental and physical health, would all have taken their toll and I shudder to think of what they would have done to any relationship we might have had.

Regardless of what did or didn't happen, though, I am truly happy for my former friend and his wife.  As long as I can remember seeing the two of them together, they seemed to have built up a good relationship; they were friends first, years before they started dating, and there's a genuine respect for each other that I think bodes well for their future.  When I heard, a few months ago, that they were getting married (my dad is good friends with his dad), I couldn't keep the smile off my face; I'd seen this coming years ago, and I was glad for them.  They have always been good for each other, and I have hope that they will continue to be so.

May their life together be blessed.

"Politically Incorrect"

I hate the way that the phrase "politically incorrect" gets misused.  And "politically correct" as well, for that matter.

Being politically correct, or at least trying to be, can sound a little silly at times.  Maybe it's even downright ridiculous sometimes because of the verbal gymnastics involved.  But it also tends to come from an intention of not being offensive or hurtful; it's usually a well-meaning attempt to speak of people whose experiences may not be familiar to the speaker in a way that isn't dismissive or insulting.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  But the point is, there's at least an attempt to be respectful and polite.

Which brings me to political incorrectness.

Seriously, how have we gotten to the point where being rude is actually preferred?  When people use the phrase "politically incorrect" to describe something that they are about to say or do, it's usually a short form for "I'm going to be an asshole and because I've used this phrase you can't stop me or you will face my scorn for being a weak and wishy-washy politically correct bleeding-heart liberal."  We praise people who call themselves politically incorrect for their honesty and forthrightness.  We applaud them for being blunt.  We admire them for doing what they do, when all they're really doing is being intentionally offensive and hurtful, and being proud of how much hurt they cause, often while making themselves look like total boneheads in the process.

Being a hateful and small-minded jerk isn't something to be proud of.  Or at least it shouldn't be.  As far as I'm concerned, most people who call themselves politically incorrect should just knock it off.

Not that they will, of course.

That would just be too "politically correct" for them to stomach.

Sorry About That, Chief...

I admit it: I'm a die-hard Get Smart fan.

The original series, that is, though I also enjoyed the movie that came out in 2008, in spite of its many problems with characterization and plot.  Get Smart is, and always has been, one of the inspirations for my funnier writing; as ridiculous as some of the plots may seem, the writers, cast, and crew of Get Smart told great stories that somehow managed to have heart and soul as well as hilarity.  Sure, the gadgets sometimes seem a bit extreme and/or unrealistic, the laugh track is annoying, and the foreign accents are often unbelievable (any time they had someone on the show who was supposed to be from England, the accents tended to be particularly awful) and KAOS' plots seemed a bit ridiculous, but those things are nothing to the sheer entertainment value of the show.  I've loved it since I first saw it in reruns on YTV sometime in the early 90's, and even though there are other shows that I've come to love (those who know me will not be surprised if I mention The X-Files, The Vicar of Dibley, The Red Green Show, and Are You Being Served? as some of my favourites), Get Smart was the first show of which I ever really considered myself a fan.

And boy, was I ever.  I'd wiggle the erasers off the ends of my new pencils and pretend that they were secret communication devices.  My brother and I would play "spy" almost every opportunity we got.  (It certainly didn't hurt that at the time, there was a popular line of kids' toys called "Spy Tech"; we had a lot of fun with that stuff.)  I even tried to take apart one of my dad's work shoes to see if there was a phone in it; fortunately I had the presence of mind to do that to a shoe from a pair he'd just replaced because they were wearing out!  In the world of Get Smart, I found a lot of inspiration (and a lot of laughs) that helped me to get through the worst of my childhood years.  It truly is one of my favourite shows, and it always will be.

And yet, now that I see it with adult (and very feminist) eyes, I realize how very problematic that show can be for a modern audience.  Women barely have a role; Agent 99, who is never given a name besides her number, is the only regular female character for most of the series; all the others are informers of one type or another, KAOS agents, 99's mother, and various minor characters who are mainly there as scenery.  Oh, and there are a couple of female CONTROL scientists who are dancers at what's occasionally implied to be a Burlesque house of some sort as their cover.  (And yes, there are a few jokes about that "cover" in the series.)  And even though the Chief frequently talks up 99's bravery and intelligence, we don't always actually get to see her show these attributes; most often, she's the one screaming "MAX!" when some disaster befalls her and her partner, only springing into action on her colleague's orders or remembering some small detail that helps him come to the conclusion that saves their lives.  And once she and Max get married, her IQ seems to take a nosedive in a lot of episodes.  Sure, Max is the main character of the show, but would it have been too much to ask to see 99 take more of a leading role once in awhile or at least not lose her head at the first sight of a KAOS gun?

Of course, the original run of the show was from 1965 to 1970, so perhaps it would have been too much to ask, considering the time...

And then there's the treatment that marginalized racial groups get in the series.  The Chinese-born Hawaiian detective, Harry Hoo, who appears in two episodes is played by a blue-eyed white man.  (To be fair, he is a caricature of the ever-controversial Charlie Chan, who was also played by white men, most notably Warner Oland and Sidney Toler.  Somewhat parenthetically, the Chan films starring Toler are another of my guilty pleasures.)  Anyone who's supposed to be Latino/Latina or Hispanic has a strange sort of nearly Mexican accent, and they're nearly always KAOS agents or working with KAOS.  There's a highly stereotypical portrayal of Native Americans in an early episode (though Max makes a particularly good political point when, in an attempt to convince Chief Red Cloud not to launch "the second-biggest arrow I've ever seen" at the White House, he realizes that between the past abuses and persecutions of Native Americans by European settlers and the shoddy treatment that they were still receiving from the American government, Red Cloud actually does have a legitimate grievance and tells him to "Let 'er rip, Red Cloud").  Offhand, I can only remember one Black character, a highly stereotyped man who turns out to be a KAOS agent in disguise.  There are a handful of characters who are supposed to be from somewhere in the Middle East (apologies for the term; I don't know any better one for that region of the world, despite its problematic nature), and they're not all portrayed in negative ways (twice, they're actually princes who Max is supposed to protect), but again, they're highly stereotyped and rather obviously played by white Americans.  And, white or not, most characters with foreign accents of any kind will usually be KAOS agents.

Rather obviously, cisgender heterosexuality is the presumed norm in the series, though there are a couple of characters (most notably Charlie Watkins) who are played by women but supposed to really be men.  Occasionally there'll be a character who's implied to be gay by the use of a number of very tired stereotypes, and Max at one point protests that he's as normal as anybody else when someone refers to him as a "Homo sapiens".

So, while I love the show and I probably always will, the fact is that there are levels of privilege and other people's oppression (and even some of my own, considering the status of women in the Get Smart world) which shouldn't allow me to view the series as purely harmless entertainment.  And while I admit that there's no point in feeling guilt over liking Get Smart anyway, these things do bother me, and whenever I discuss the show I try to keep these things in mind.  But I can't help wondering sometimes if it's actually okay that I enjoy the show.

Whether or not it is, of course, is not for me to say.  But I suspect that even if allowances can't and shouldn't be made for the social climate at the time when it was made (after all, there's plenty of modern stuff that's just as bad and, in many cases, even worse on all of these grounds), it's not necessary to feel guilty for enjoying it or acknowledging its profound effect on my life.  Being aware of the problematic parts of the show, and being perfectly willing to criticise them and accept criticism of them, may be enough.

Provided, of course, that I don't let the privilege that allows me to enjoy the show to obscure the fact that these things are problematic and that they deserve to be spoken of as the problems that they are.

"Natural"

We hear a lot about whether other people's choices about what to do with their bodies is "natural."

Two cis women, or two cis men, for that matter, who have sex with each other are held to be "unnatural" because they can't reproduce without scientific help and a donor of some kind.  Heterosexual couples who don't want children are called "unnatural" because apparently everyone should want to pass on their DNA regardless of whether it's actually a good idea for them to do so.  Women who like sex are "unnatural" because sex is really just for heterosexual couples and, in that context, it's just supposed to be all about men's satisfaction; women are just supposed to lie back and think of dinner or jewellery or marriage or whatever else it is that the man is supposed to have given them in payment for sex.  (Pardon the pun, but fuck that.)  People who are in polyamorous relationships are called "unnatural" because everyone knows that no normal human being has ever been able to love more than one person at one time.

And perhaps the most vitriolic rants about the "unnatural"-ness of people's desire and decisions to do as they please with their own bodies are levelled against people who, for one reason or another, don't stick to society's still-rigid ideas about what women and men should be.  Trans people, Genderqueer people, drag queens and kings, tomboys, girls who like science, boys who like the colour pink, and anyone who subverts the concept of gender or (as in the case of the child whose parents refuse to reveal hir gender to the rest of the world, many people in which seem to be disturbingly interested in knowing what kind of genitalia said child possesses) completely throws the concept out the window...all of them are dismissed and even attacked for being "unnatural."

As if being "natural" were the only yardstick by which we can measure whether it's right or wrong for a person to be doing something.

Being yourself to the best of your ability to do so is a hell of a lot more natural than playing golf, but I've never heard any big moral outcry against people who hit the links.  (Jokes about doctors who golf when they're supposed to be working don't count and are not welcome.)  Making music isn't natural.  Wearing clothes isn't natural (though it's a good idea when it's cold outside, and if you try not wearing clothes outside of your own home or a nudist colony, you normally run a very heavy risk of being arrested or otherwise punished in most societies).  Space exploration isn't natural.  Watching TV, driving cars or riding bikes, domesticating animals, agriculture, science, medicine, any concept of justice we've been able to form, pretty much all of the Arts and Humanities, playing sports, cooking our food, even (Dare I say it?  YES!) involvement in religious and/or spiritual activities...all completely not natural.  Granted, some similar behaviours to some of these things do exist in other species, but for the most part, these things (especially in combination) are things that only humans do.  We're unlike any other species that currently exists on this planet.

To be human, in short, is to be extremely unnatural.

So don't talk to me about whether someone else's choices regarding their own lives and bodies are "natural".  Unless you want to renounce everything that humans have made and done, which would include any and every luxury you've ever enjoyed in your life (even the most basic things like the clothing that replaces the fur we don't have and the languages that let us communicate with other humans), then as far as I'm concerned, you have no right to look down on other people for being "unnatural."

They may be unnatural...but as long as you're a human being, so are you.

A (relatively) quick observation...

Those who insist on upholding the sanctity of human life also tend to be the ones who don't mind if a longer life means more suffering.  Are you looking for an abortion because you were raped or the fetus is missing something rather important, like most of its lungs?  Tough, you're just going to have to give birth anyway, because human life is so sacred that it should have to suffer as much as possible before it dies; an excruciating death by suffocation is vastly preferable to a relatively quick death in the womb, and being forced to bear your rapist's child is a fitting punishment for whatever you did to deserve being raped in the first place.  Want the right to determine the time and circumstances of your own death because you've got Alzheimer's and you want to leave this world before the disease completely consumes your mind?  Not a chance; your life is sacred, so you're just going to have to suffer through the whole damn thing, and your family will be forced to watch your heartbreaking decline.  Are you in so much physical pain that you need large doses of painkillers just to make you even halfway comfortable?  Well, you're not going to get nearly enough because even if you're terminally ill, it's wrong to hasten your death like that.  Human life is sacred.  You'll just have to suffer until you die.

Life is sacred.  That doesn't mean, however, that honouring that sacredness means that life has to be preserved at all costs in all situations.  To do so robs people of their dignity and makes them suffer in ways that wouldn't even be considered necessary if it weren't for the religious excuses that are so often held up as reasons to make it happen.  And honouring the sanctity of life doesn't necessarily mean the preservation of Earthly existence; sometimes, when the most compassionate thing to do is to let that life end, or to cause it to end, then honouring the sanctity of life means accepting the reality of death.

"Everything that has a beginning has an end."

—The Oracle, "The Matrix Revolutions"