My 'friends'= Jackasses to the XXTREEEM!

God, I hate my friends sometimes. So, yesterday, I was getting back from a movie with friends Dylan and Jeff, and my mummeh was driving us. When she told me that the pope had passed away, I cried. Yeah, I did. I cried for the passing of an amazing man who has done beyond amazing things and was just a blessing to this world, right up there with Mother Theresa. He was to good works and general kindness as, say, Bach was to the Baroque era, or Chopin to the Romantic Period, or Da Vinci to the Reniassance.

I admired the Pope, though I am agnostic. He was one of the most astounding images of human kindness, and, to tell you the truth, I don't think people gave him enough credit.

Take my 'friends', for example, who poked fun at me for crying over the Pope. Well, actually, just Dylan, though Jeff didn't exactly stand up for him either. "He was just the 'frontman' of the Catholic church. All the stuff he did was for appearances."

Of course, this made the Ellen very mad, as well as the Ellen's Mom. I, as calmly as I possibly could, told him that the Pope was FAR FROM just the 'frontman' of the catholic church. He held a seat of incredible power, but he never once abused it- and power did not corrupt in his case. I was fortunate enough to meet the Pope when I was five or six. A close friend of the family was the ambassador to the Vatican at that time, so my family got to visit them, and therefore, the mighty Pope John Paul II. I didn't understand what was so great about him, of course, until I met him. He just gave off this aura of incredible goodness, kindness. I swear, there was not a hint of anything corrupt or bad about him. As a child, I sort of noticed these things. He was like an angel, really, dressed in his robes for Easter, just an angel here on Earth to watch over us. When I finally spoke, I babbled on in Italian for a while about how I was going to be a famous musician someday, either that or a scientist, and he told me he could tell that I was going to be something great. And then he blessed me and told me to, "Go, child, and may the Lord keep you safe all your years." Of course, I didn't understand it at the time, but I was five. Now it sticks in my memory that he would take his time with all the things he had to do (on Easter Sunday, no less) to talk to a little curly-haired five-year-old who babbled in bad Italian about how she was going to be famous someday.

The Pope was a great man, and it is against the odds that I will see another like him in my lifetime.

So, in honor of our Angel returned to heaven, I give you two songs that remind me of him.

The first is a spiritual from the movie We Were Soldiers (and also played at president Reagan's funeral) called 'The Mansions of the Lord'.


'To fallen soldiers let us sing,
Where no rockets fly nor bullets wing,
Our broken brothers let us bring
To the Mansions of the Lord.

No more weeping,
No more fight;
No friends bleeding through the night,
Just Divine embrace,
Eternal light...
In the Mansions of the Lord.

Where no mothers cry
And no children weep;
We shall stand and guard
Though the angels sleep,
All through the ages safely keep
The Mansions of the Lord.'

I am sure Pope John Paul II will be well-tending the Mansions of the Lord, at home in his eternal light.

And the second is from The Man of La Mancha. Just the words to this song, The Impossible Dream, makes me think of all the good works that this man has done. God bless him, he will be missed. And the Pope, even as he lay dying, strove to make the world a better place.

"To dream the impossible dream,
To fight the unbeatable foe,
To bear with unbearable sorrow,
To run where the brave dare not go.

To right the unrightable wrong,
To love pure and chaste from afar,
To try when your arms are too weary,
To reach the unreachable star.

This is my quest,
To follow that star --
No matter how hopeless,
No matter how far.

To fight for the right
Without question or pause,
To be willing to march
Into hell for a heavenly cause.

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will be peaceful and calm
when I'm laid to my rest.

And the world will be better for this,
that one man scorned and covered with scars
still strove with his last ounce of courage.
To reach the unreachable star.

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go.

To right the unrightable wrong
To be better far than you are
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star.

This is my quest, to follow that star,
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far
To be willing to give when there's no more to give
To be willing to die so that honor and justice may live

And I know if I'll only be true to this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm when I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star."

Your star is reached, Pope John Paul II, and I hope it is a glorious one, for you deserve it.