Haunted by Katie Reider

Horrible.

That the cancer took her voice was particularly cruel.

Thankfully, her beautiful children will grow up knowing that they had such a talented and strong mom.

They will always have her music.

That was a beautiful tribute by Peter Appleborne. I had never heard about Katie or her music but his article was able to give life to this remarkable person. I am going to have to check out her cd's.

A sad story, and baffling, as death always is. But baffling all the more for Karen's and Dan's persistent faith that God is good in the face of overwhelming evidence that he is nothing of the sort. Robbie, the brother, who lost his infant son and his mother as well as his sister, is more on the mark. "Christians are always throwing around lines about how God is good, God is good all the time, and my take on that is, if that's true, God's definition of good is very different than mine." As to the existence of a plan, I would add: show me.

Amen. It is indeed sad. Some people are able to accept that horrible things happen for no reason at all - it's random. Others need the crutch of supersition that tells them it must be part of a plan. In any case, my heart goes out to the entire family. They should all be proud of her strength and the ability to carry on with grace and humor under the most horrible of circumstances.

On another sad note, Randy Pausch died today. He was the Carnegie Mellon professor who gave that great "last lecture" last fall after he was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. If you have never watched the video of his lecture, the full 1+ hour video is on YouTube and many other places. Highly recommended. There is also a book now.

That's sad, Spicoli, thanks for letting us know. Did you know, by the way, that the guy got almost SEVEN MILLION BUCKS to write that book?

That is a pretty good upfront payment. There are a few million copies of that book in print, so the publisher made their money back and more. Glad to hear that his family will be set financially.

Walleroo, go and read C.S. Lewis's "A Grief Observed." And some of the poems and sermons of John Donne. Perhaps even some Milton, especially "Lycidas."

That this item became an excuse for both you and jerseygurl to rail against religion, however, is surprising. But also rather dismaying. I expected better from you personally.

Traditionally, the ways of God are viewed as, in the main, inexplicable to man.

In Christian thought, too, some are simply called "home" at inconvenient-to-them times. Again, however, the "plan" may just be unreadable by our minds. To rail about lives cut short is sometimes even not to give proper credit to how much was accomplished during one's life.

"Did you know, by the way, that the guy got almost SEVEN MILLION BUCKS to write that book?"

Who cares? He's dead now. Personally, I wish I was talented enough to make $7M off a book. At least his family can enjoy the spoils of his talents.

Your point about the accomplishment of short lives is well taken, cathar, thank you. And I would be a better person if I followed your reading list to the very end (though I read the C.S. Lewis book ages ago, as well as some Donne). Having strayed from the Catholic fold, I am familiar with the notion of God's plan being unknowable. I just choose to reject the whole kit and caboodle. The idea that otherwise intelligent and literate people such as yourself would choose to accept the Catholic system of beliefs, contrary to reason and evidence, is equally shocking to me.

Who cares?! Book writers everywhere, that's who!

Maybe they can use some of the proceeds from the book for cancer research.

The funny thing is, Pausch never would have gotten the seven mil if he hadn't have been dying and his video hadn't already gotten a gazillion hits on YouTube. But I'm glad for his family, too, and for him--I'll bet it gave him some consolation that the world was so ready to receive his message.

"Traditionally, the ways of God are viewed as, in the main, inexplicable to man."

Yeah, whenever a young child dies "God works in mysterious ways" and God's plan is "inexplicable to man," yet I've had to endure a gizillion idiotic discussions in my life along the lines of "I prayed really hard that God would help me find my missing wallet and just a minutes later my brother in law Bob called and said something about the shed in the backyard. . . ."

That you have damned your petty, shrivelled and unshriven soul to hell is quite fine with me, walleroo. I'm sure you'll have plenty of company from Baristaville in perpetual misery.

But more seriously, to "jump on" religious belief as a reaction to an item such as the one above is really just petty and to be expected mainly from yahoos. (And from someone very predictable like jerseygurl, I suppose.) It became an excuse for stuff we've all heard before, that's all. And in some way even a cheapening of Ms. Reider's own considerable struggles.

That you dismiss my tendency to belief is a bit nettling, nonetheless. I take company with the likes of Waugh, Greene and Tennyson, you with George Carlin and James Randi (someone who would crush a child's belief even in Christmas for the feeling of "rightness" it gave his own narrow heart).

And belief in a deity and His accompanying master plan is not at all contrary to "reason and evidence." (We both know, I'm sure, about the ultimateb aim of the Templeton Prize.) There is no such conclusive evidence either way in the end save that manifested via human behavior and hearts open to love, God's or whomever's; to assert otherwise is to take a mock-scientific leap of faith which even a noted "show me" sort like Harry Houdini never quite bought into.

Wikipedia (I know, I know)defines Deism as the belief that "a supreme God exists and created the physical universe, but does not intervene in its normal operation."

This philosphy, I think, is closest to my own.

If there truly was a "just" God, do you think that people like Randy Pausch and Katie Reider would experience such agonizing passages while people like Kenneth Duckett still walk the earth?

Mets2008, that others attempt to trivialize both the works of God and belief in same doesn't mean you have to.

Life is full of minor grievances, too. Which more "knowable" deities like Dionysus and Odin have been quite happy, so mythology says, to overlook. They, too, have had better things to apparently occupy themselves with than lost wallets.

But a God of genuine love is not commonly thought to simply callously take, say, the life of a young child or a promising singer. It is just that the end purpose remains unknown to us. A random, ravaging universe is a much harder concept for some to believe in, though you sound quite happy with it. We all choose myths we're most comfortable with for our own narrow reasons, maybe.

Well, I can't say that I understand the incomprehensible things that befall us in this life. But I will say that my faith in God has gotten me through my own purgatories. I would have fared worse in the face of adversity if not for that faith. I can only share from my own life, and that is my own truth.

Mrs. Martta, to pick and choose who walks this earth is truly "playing God." We're generally not taught to do this. (Vigilantism, too, is usually discouraged, speaking of Duckett.)

That we don't ever understand why someone is, uh, "taken" is our problem. Something to be pondered as, even possibly, a path to belief. Yes, the Creator may be disinterested in the earthly realm's daily processes. Or maybe just tired of having to explain everything to us, in creed after creed and faith after faith. (One also might note that using the phrase "before his/her time" could be offendingly presumptuous to the Deity, if indeed there is one.)

Either option, there is still only one way to learn the ultimate answer, and few hasten so to learn it firsthand. (Though one of Gore Vidal's exceptionally bad novels, "Messiah," is in fact about this very subject.)

Alright, here's your weekend assignment: read "fireflies' by David Morrell

I suppose it's more polite to proclaim, when someone dies an untimely death, that it must somehow fulfill some cosmic plan. To do otherwise, I suppose, may be to imply that somehow the person's death is less important, or somehow dimished, or that his or her life was for naught. This was never my intent, and if others have construed it as such, I offer my sincere apologies.

You overlook the tone of my comment (which perhaps is due to my own laziness or limitations as a writer--again, my apologies). I am pained by this woman's death, and I am disturbed at the notion of a world without a divine plan or an afterlife. To be fundamentally unable to believe in such things is no picnic.

Martta,
Your views are light years different than mine but I respect your views and don't belittle anyone's religious convictions, regardless of how they might strike me. Whether it's not eating meat on Fridays, praying at certain hours of the day, not operating certain kinds of machines at certain hours, having your dog blessed with holy water, not eating certain parts of animals, etc., etc. Whatever floats your boat is fine with me. But how many lives have been taken over thousands of years because my view of god doesn't square with yours? Smarter people than I could undoubtedly make a compelling case that more people have been killed over some God concept than anything else in the history of man's existence. I think we'd all be better off if religion didn't exist, but, then again, that's just one person's opinion and nothing more.

"But how many lives have been taken over thousands of years because my view of god doesn't square with yours?"

Mets: Agreed. This is why I call it a philosophy and not a religion. I believe in a God (not a fire and brimstone God, nonetheless) but do not adhere to any organized form of religion. None of them appeal to me for the reasons you cite in your post.

Imagine if you can, walleroo, that the Lord's master plan actually includes you, me and even jerseygurl nattering on meaninglessly here, day after bloody day. (And with the additional fillip of occasional dollops of laserboy's grim philosophy, to boot.) It is enough to drive anyone to Islam.

Or, anyway, to my long-secreted remaining bottle of Michter's, "the whiskey that warmed the Revolution," from back in the day when it was distilled in Lebanon County, PA. You are much welcome, should we ever thus meet, to a huge "wee dram."

And mets2008, it is not usually a deity's absolute fault that others have been out to the sword in his or her name. But rather the flawed nature of believers. Most deities seem quite happy to reign over peacefulness.

I also like to think that, without religion, great artists like Piero della Francesco, Brueghel, Jan van Eyck and Caravaggio would unfortunately have brought us to abstract, boring art all that much quicker. And saying that much for religion is saying a great deal.

Evil does exist in the world.There is no way for any one person to avoid the occasional encounter with evil in all its putrid reality. What we can do is seek out some level of higher consciousness that hopefully will ease our pain and keep us from becoming bitter and angry. "Being The Light" is catching. It sure helps me when the times get bad and there is not a thing you, one person can do. As parents, it is vital for us to give the gift of faith to our kids also. They need to know that they can pray to God for help.They need to know that!!!

Evil does exist in the world.There is no way for any one person to avoid the occasional encounter with evil in all its putrid reality. What we can do is seek out some level of higher consciousness that hopefully will ease our pain and keep us from becoming bitter and angry. "Being The Light" is catching. It sure helps me when the times get bad and there is not a thing you, one person can do. As parents, it is vital for us to give the gift of faith to our kids also. They need to know that they can pray to God for help.They need to know that!!!

Evil does exist in the world.There is no way for any one person to avoid the occasional encounter with evil in all its putrid reality. What we can do is seek out some level of higher consciousness that hopefully will ease our pain and keep us from becoming bitter and angry. "Being The Light" is catching. It sure helps me when the times get bad and there is not a thing you, one person can do. As parents, it is vital for us to give the gift of faith to our kids also. They need to know that they can pray to God for help.They need to know that!!!

How in the world do we go from a tragedy that befell a talented, beautiful woman to nattering on about "religious convictions ?" I think anyone that would kill for God, or a god, is twisted and demented.

There are times, especially when I grow weary of the trivial bickering of ?Prof,? ?Walleroo? and ?Cathar? and the other ego-maniacs, that I wish I could avoid Baristanet completely.

Then I read about Katie, here first, and I?m reminded how special a site this can be?despite the efforts by some to make it about themselves.

The WSJ article on Randy Pausch, moved me as well. I wrote the author who was kind enough to respond. I learned, again from this sometimes amazing site, about Mr. Pausch?s passing. I also learned about how much money he purportedly made for this last book, Sometimes this site is not so amazing///just filled with the trivial, ego laced ramblings of wanna-bes.

Thank you, Debra, for giving us a chance to ?know? someone beautiful and special in our community.

I, too, was moved by and saddened by the story Katie Reider, and am grateful to the Barista for bringing her talents and courage to my attention.

I first learned about Randy Pausch through an article here on Baristanet.

This past week, Artie Traum, a great guitar player, and a fixture in the Woodstock music scene died of cancer. I saw him perform years ago in Outer Baristaville, at Upsala College, and remember the concert well. I'm sure that his playing has been an inspiration to many guitar players in our community. His family posted a page of remembrances from friends and admirers on his website , and the pages are filled with terrific stories about him and many music legends. His death evokes sadness, but everyone who knew him was grateful for his friendship.

Katie Reider was a young talent, with energy and determination. Her death is so sad. Artie Traum had a full career that touched so many people over so many years, yet, even so, he died too young. It's a blessing that we can hear Katie's and Artie's music still, and that their lives can enrich ours.