He is speaking for me: I am tired of the COVID pandemic.
I am also tired of my arthritic left knee.
But being tired of it doesn't mean it isn't real, nor will it make it stop hurting.
I am neither an idiot nor a disaster for knowing and accepting these realities.
Just one more reason why our White House needs a new occupant.
This first one was shared by a high school friend, and is a quote from British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"The moral thing I should wish to say… is very simple. I should say: love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other. We have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way and if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn the kind of charity and the kind of tolerance which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet."
The second one was shared by the priest of the church we attend, and is from Jesus, as recorded in Luke 6:27-38:
"But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you. "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. "Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”
Those statements are not exactly the same, of course. It’s been decades since I read any Russell, but as I recall Bertie Russell and Jesus Christ were at quite different places theologically. But in these statements they seem to share an understanding that loving those with whom we differ is necessary for our fulfillment and survival.
In an era when hatred is all too popular, especially hatred of one’s real or perceived “enemies,” these two posts provided a refreshing start to my day. Thanks, FB friends!
Driving on a cool mid-September afternoon through Ohio’s rural Geauga county, there was no way I could keep count of the campaign signs lining the two-lane roads.
Biden…Biden…Trump…Biden…Trump…Trump--I passed by them at around 50 mph, overwhelmed by their public display of love for and commitment to America, by the trust they evidenced in our democratic system.
Somewhere along my way, my ancient CD of Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits came to this track…
Cathy, I’m lost, I said though I knew she was sleeping
And I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all come to look for America
All come to look for America
All come to look for America…
And I thought, Yes, that’s what we are doing, all us Americans, this aching, anxious autumn…we are looking for America. We’re lost--or it is--we may or may not think we know why or how it came to this...
Some are trying to find an America that they believe once existed, but that never really did.
Some are trying to find an America that never existed for them, but that they still wish might.
Some are seeking an America that seems lost and to be lost…an America some have never found.
Some are seeking an America as described by scholars and scientists, some an America envisioned in imagination.
(Create your own dichotomies of such differences if you wish; I'll stop here.)
We’ve all come looking for America this fall. Placing our bets on leaders who might be able to help us find the America we fear we have lost, or are losing.
Do those campaign signs threaten to pit neighbor against neighbor, our different visions often being at great odds with each other, our our personal separation and isolation being encouraged by political rhetoric and simple slogans?
Or do they represent the strength of a still-vital democracy that is able to trust that voting, not violence, is the way we solve our political differences, is the way we Americans together forge workable understandings of who America is and hopes yet to be?
Some of those neighbors perhaps are able to engage in productive give-and-take about their often competing notions of the America they are seeking. Hurray for them!
Others of those neighbors perhaps just smile across the fence, maybe talk about the Browns, or an ailing child, or the best way to grill a steak. Just daily human stuff, knowing all along they will check different boxes on their ballots, and yet remain good neighbors, even friends. Hurray for them!
Hurray for the variety of neighbors and neighborhoods that are America!
Perhaps good and respectful neighbors are the life-blood of the America we are all looking for…those of us who hurtle down urban turnpikes and those of us who wind our way along country roads…in some impossible sense, all 328 million of us.
I dare to believe the vast majority of Americans on this trip want to look for America together. Can we resist allowing this moment's partisan political passions to take that away from us?
Meantime, despite the in-your-face reality of this wildfire catastrophe and all the weather/climate-related disasters we’ve experienced, many continue to ignore the fact of human-caused climate change. What is happening is exactly what scientists have been predicting will happen as the earth’s climate warms.
Denier-in-Chief Donald Trump and his fact-denying administration and congressional cohorts apparently still think climate change is a hoax. They are silent on the matter, as they continue to pursue and implement policies that only hasten the total tragedy in history’s ever-nearer future. It’s a wonder to me that people still believe them, but millions of us have been bought off by the lies of the fossil fuel industry, the primary driver of the rapid rise in global temperatures.
We know this administration denied the COVID-19 crisis until it could deny it no more. People had to be getting sick and dying by the thousands before it showed the slightest serious interest in the pandemic. We now learn that the president feared the truth would “create a panic” among the American people.
Imagine…
An aid tells President Franklin Roosevelt, “Japan has just bombed Pearl Harbor.”
And the president responds, “Well, that’s terrible, but let’s not tell the American people lest they panic.”
Here in Ohio we have a Republican (yes, that’s correct) governor who told us the bad news about COVID-19 and calmly directed us through the worst of it, at least up until now. We didn’t all like what Gov. DeWine told us or ordered us to do, but we did it. I saw little evidence of panic except among Republicans to the right of him, solidly in the Trump camp, who panic at the slightest dose of truth.
We need to turn this around before it’s too late, which it may be already. We need to get back into the driver’s seat of combating climate change by resuming our place at the table of nations, by restoring at least the clean energy and environmental-protecting policies of the Obama years, if not going beyond them. We need to elect a new president to take office next January who understands that any economic game plan that does not include policies to slow down, if not halt, climate change is not worth the paper it’s printed on.
Joe Biden will be such a president. Donald Trump will never be.
I know many supporters of the current president stay with him because of what he promises yet to do to save “unborn children” and to turn back the clock on civil rights for all Americans, even to the point of nominating Ted Cruz to sit on the Supreme Court. I recognize, sometimes appreciate, your passion and single-mindedness.
But I do not fathom your willingness to let planet earth become hell in your quest to make it into what you apparently think will approximate heaven. Is that a deal you really want to make? To me, it’s a deal with the devil.
I think that’s only partially true. Understanding your opponent, your adversary, can make you a more effective opponent and adversary. On the other hand, sympathizing with your challenger will likely weaken you, make you think twice before charging, feel sorry for them when you are about to pin them down.
But then again, understanding and sympathizing with another with whom you are at odds will most surely make you a better human being. And maybe you will learn that you do not have to make a court case out of every little messy human encounter you have.
It’s not easy, this being human.
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I wish I were a better political pundit. Well, sometimes I wish that. I try my hand at it from time to time (as you know), but I always hedge my bets the way the successful of them do not. I guess I know just enough about a lot of things to have an opinion on them, but not enough to take an unwavering stand on them.
Take Portland, for instance. It’s amazing to me how many people all across this nation know exactly what’s happening in Portland and why. How do they know so much for sure, when there are so many conflicting reports about it? Is Portland itself burning, or are there just a few small fires here and there? How do some know for sure so that they can pontificate on the situation? Perhaps some secret revelatory source to which I am not privy?
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I do know that a 17-year-old kid who shoots and kills two people with a weapon he was not old enough to have should not be treated as a hero or given a pass, even by the President of the Untied States. Especially by a president who decries violence in our cities. Or who claims to stand for law and order.
It’s an odd way to support the police, don’t you think?
No? You must know something I don’t know, then.
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Sunday evening we watched the first episode of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross on PBS. (I believe it was made in 2013, but we had not seen it before.) Gates mentioned that, somehow, the various political entities in Europe early on came to understand that they would not enslave one another, perhaps because it would not ever be easy to tell which white folks were free and which white folks were slaves. That understanding lead to another understanding: people of color were perfect for enslaving because you could always tell who was what, and they could never escape it. Very soon “black” and “slave” became two ways of saying the same thing.
Isn’t that what makes white racism so enduring and so appealing to whites? It’s easy, no two ways about it. But wrong.
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Here’s another easy one: Every time a white cop kills a black man, the cop is in the wrong.
Or, every time a white cop kills a black man, the black man had it coming.
It’s that easy…unless and until it isn’t.
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Yesterday Maxine and I delivered bags of food to seven homes all across our area. It’s a ministry of our church and another church, begun when the pandemic started to address the needs of people suddenly unemployed and without incomes.
I am not sure any of the seven homes we visited asked for food because of pandemic-related unemployment. They seemed more likely to be homes where poverty and need are ongoing realities. Several of the people I met were clearly either elderly or differently-abled in a way that made me doubt their employability. Once again, my eyes were opened to the reality of massive poverty in this, our “greatest country in all of human history.”
It would be so much easier to sit in Washington or Columbus and imagine they were all just lazy freeloaders. So much easier.
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It’s easy to leap to large judgments based upon small information. I do it all the time, until I cannot.
We pray for law and order in our land.
We thank you that ours is a nation that values both the benefits of individual freedom and the security of law that orders our life together. We are grateful for dreams we can turn into reality, and for the protections of law that help keep one person’s dreams from being another person’s nightmares. We are grateful for our founders’ gift of a constitution that recognizes both individual rights and social responsibility.
When there is tension between what we want and desire and the wants and desires others cherish, we depend upon sound law to manage that tension fairly and peacefully. We admit we are often blind to laws that favor us at the expense of another, if not in their wording then in how they are interpreted and applied. Free us from treating the law callously or cynically for our own ends. We confess those inequitable laws and the inequitable application of laws that threaten and decay good social order, exacting untold costs upon those they victimize.
Forgive us when deny justice and the legitimate appeal for justice in the name of law and order. Open our nation’s eyes to the reality of the often legalized oppression under which many of us continue to live. Open our ears to the cries of those who face daily discrimination because they belong to groups not valued by the majority or by those in power. Shape our laws and our legal system into instruments of justice as we seek to become a more perfect union in our diversity and difference.
We pray for those who make, enforce, and execute our laws. And we pray for those agitate and work to create a more just order based upon more just laws. Help all of these to work together for the good of all.
We pray for law and order in our land.
Amen.
Almost nothing of Donald Trump’s lifestyle, message, values, ethics, or actions has any discernible relationship to the Jesus reported in the gospels. Some of his evangelical Christian defenders, when asked, tend to agree with that assessment, but go on to praise what he has done or will do, which they see as faithful to Christ. I usually do not agree with their understandings of what the Bible generally regards as leaders’ key responsibilities toward the peoples and nations they lead. I just do not see Jesus, or the prophetic tradition out of which he ministered, in the man in the White House.
Something was shared with me on Facebook yesterday that gives me insight into the passion of some evangelical Christians for Mr. Trump. It’s a short video that declares, “President Trump Born for Revival!” In it, Dr. Clarence Sexton, founder and president of The Crown College in Tennessee, tells how a Bible that is tied to a revival in the Hebrides in the 1940s and 50s now sits in the Oval Office. He suggests that perhaps this means God is using Mr. Trump to bring revival to the United States.
I confess I am not much on revivals. I realize that some who are reading this understand the term even less than I do. Here’s my take: basically, a revival is a religious service, or series of services, in which powerful preaching results in powerful, emotional, and visible response by the congregation. Lives are changed in revivals as people make heart-felt confessions of faith in Jesus, and commit their lives to following him. Revivals have an important place in American religious history, and many churches today still hold revivals.
Unfortunately for Dr. Sexton’s story, at least one website (godreports.com) that is sympathetic to revivals and revivalism says it is not true. It reports that there was a revival in Scotland in those years, and it was quite powerful. But the part about the Bible and Mr. Trump is not true, did not happen. Remember, this is from a site sympathetic to revivals, not from some “fake news” outlet.
I suppose the first thought that comes to many minds is the thought that came to mine: Since when does truth matter when some people talk about Mr. Trump? But we need to go beyond that to see in this story the conviction that even when you cannot see any link between Jesus and the president, such a relationship is there anyway. God can work in ways we do not see. In other words, you do not see the relationship; you do not see how God is using Mr. Trump to bring revival to the US; you do not see how what he says and does is congruent with the ways of Jesus—you do not see any of that, but it is there. Because you know it’s there, you just know it.
How do you argue with that? How do you talk about real issues when the person you are talking with “just knows” the truth, a truth you are obviously not gifted to access?
I suspect this sort of “spiritual secret” about the man is circulating widely among many passionate Trump supporters. It is fed by the likes of “President Trump Born for Revival!” It really allows no room for serious political back and forth.
