Slim Whitman - I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen (with lyrics)

This song has great meaning to me because Mama said she named me after it.  If you can imagine a married, pregnant 15 year old young woman who would be separated from my father and go with another man within the nine months until I was born, divorced and remarried at 16 years old, maybe she was a little melancholy during such a turbulent time.  I never heard the song sang until I was 31, at a community organizer's conference in San Diego, CA.  One evening we had a kumsitz where a Catholic priest sang us songs on his guitar, and he sang this song.  I was overcome with emotion.  I've never heard it sung as poignantly as that priest sang it that evening.  It gave me a whole new perspective on the very young woman who mothered me, a whole new appreciation of what it must have been like back in 1948 to be married, pregnant at 15, separated and birthed a baby girl at 16, then quickly divorced and married by the time I was 2 months old.  Mama joined the church of her new husband, LDS, and faithfully raised us in it.  She taught herself to cook from scratch and to can food, clean a house proper, sew some of our clothes, teach us how to be quiet during church services & to have manners, how to comport ourselves in public, and played children's games with us, let us make tents with sheets or blankets thrown over the dining table, taught me how to sew with a needle & thread when I was seven, then taught me embroidery when I was eight, after I'd had Rheumatic Fever, which would be the first of three episodes, though the one time the doctor thought it was Scarlet Fever, later decided it was Rheumatic Fever again.  If that weren't enough, Mama had 6 babies in 9 years, just before I was 10, and due for my 2nd bout with the fever, whilst Mama had Oliver whom she wasn't even able to bring home from the hospital.  He was born sickly and grew up with severe, life threatening allergies and lung disease, asthma.  He died almost a year ago.  And if that weren't enough, Dad, an active Mormon, was an alchoholic, with a very high IQ-which means he could be awfully cruel to Mama, & he had more than one demon to deal with, and Mama got the brunt of it from him.   How she ever maintained as long as she did is a tribute to her G-d given inner strength, but she did break, and The Church was never any real help to her because back then, The Church believed that if you attended half of all their church meetings, lived a pure life, paid your tithes, didn't cuss, drink or smoke, you just wouldn't have any real life problems.  The Church was in denial, you might say, and they pushed these unfortunate women under the rug and to the nearest clinic where they were prescribes powerful mind-altering, addictive drugs to kind of sedate, depress, their moods and feelings.  This is still the normative practice and I have strong feelings against it, having witnessed first hand the side effects of such powerful drugs that big pharmaceutical companies and a derelict FDA still refuse to acknowledge are as prevalent as they are among the patients using the drugs.  It's a scandal that gets exposed and just as quickly the govt FDA and big pharma get the truth about such powerful, harmful, dangerous drugs kaboshed.  The Church still believes in the sovereignty of medicine and so they still send unfortunate women, and a few men surely, to go to doctors who will prescribe such harmful drugs.  In the believing Christian churches one can find anointed men and women gifted by G-d with the gift of healing and such as find these healers never have to suffer as do LDS women.  Mormon men believe they have the priesthood of God, but they don't seem adequate to the task of healing their families, but their god was once a man, so perhaps, their lack of knowledge of the true G-d of Avraham, Yaakov & Yitzhak, does not afford them with the powers they think they possess?  I don't know why that would matter though.  G-d is not a respecter of persons and none of us actually truly knows or understands Him because we can't, nor can our spiritual leaders because the bible, the Torah tells us so.  But our minds in our own minds tells us our minds are higher than our minds actually are...we lack a humility in this our natural man.  The Church, as the LDS calls themselves, is definitely lacking something in this area where they lean to man's knowledge, above the powers of healing G-d grants to some.  They are all about "family" but family must conform to their "ideal" without the flaws and imperfections that were present, and still are present within my family.  While one side of this philosophy is very good in that it subscribes to G-d's commands for us to be holy as He is holy, G-d Himself, by virtue of the ordinances of the sacrifices once prescribed, affirms to us that we indeed are not holy.  But we believe G-d did not err, but that His Ways, His Thoughts are not ours, no matter how much we attempt to elevate ourselves in our own mind's eye.  He is a bit more complicated than we can know.  Yet, we know we are His dearly beloved, imperfect, but beloved children.  Sometimes for one reason or another My Precious Paully will treat me less than respectful and since I am spoiled by his treatment of me, this is very hurtful to me, and I will humbly, quietly, but confidently, remind him that I am a daughter of The King, and he might want to be more his considerate self to me.  Of course I must ask myself too, if I have done something to hurt my dear sweet precious Paully as it is not his habit to be unkind to me.  I am the one who is unkind to him at times, and I'll feel so badly for being that way to him when he doesn't deserve such treatment & after all he has done for me through his love for me.  After all, he is a son of The King, and my covering, responsible to G-d for me, and therefore, I must treat him with absolute respect, too, which is easy to do with such a kindly, gentle, patient, understanding, loving man of G-d.  On the other hand, I struggle with selfishness/meanness & have to remind myself of the great Love G-d has for me, all that He has done for me, and that He has given me with such a great, yet wholly unassuming, humble, highly intelligent, man as My Love.
I've been truly blessed, and hearing this song, I just wish Mama could have been taken back home by a man who would have loved her like Paully loves me.  Mama did well, and now, she is "home," with our G-d, our King, in His Loving Care, and happier than she's ever been.  Reminds me of that other beautiful song by Celtic Woman "Galway Bay" and the line..."I will ask my G-d to let me make my heaven in that dear land across the Irish Sea..."  I will post the video next of that enchanting song.  It's one I listen to for hours at a time.  Then again, there are many such songs, because like Mama, and like little Bunny-Belinda, and like My Precious Paully, we do LOVE good music, yessiree, we do.