It would be a wonderful thing if, this weekend, every preacher/speaker/leader of a worshiping community addressed this comment. It was uttered by Stephen Miller, Deputy Chief of Staff for President Donald Trump, in response to questions from CNN anchor Jake Tapper about the United States’s designs on Greenland.
It is possible to understand Miller’s contention as actually true. If, as I learned in school, power is “the ability to get things done,” then it seems self-evident that greater strength, force, and power will eventually win out over lesser manifestations of the same, if that greater power is able to sustain itself indefinitely.
But I suspect, given the context and the behavior of this administration, Miller was talking about little more than economic and military power, the only power our country now seems to understand and is willing to wield.
The reason I’d like to hear religious leaders speak to this statement is that it is a good springboard for considering the kinds of power most faiths espouse: the power of law, of love, of justice, of righteousness, of…yes…God. Is power an end or a thing in itself, answerable only to its own will?
I believe that the power of God to destroy is constrained by the power of God to love. God could wipe us all out, but doesn’t because God loves us. The creator God’s annihilating power is both seen in and kept in check by God’s love.
Law is an important component of many faith traditions. Law allows us to live together in ordered societies by placing guardrails around our individual and group behaviors. What and where those guardrails are can be endlessly debated, but rare is the religion that does not include expectations of behavior consistent with its beliefs.
Power alone does not define correct behavior. I am quite sure that that truth is not much emphasized in the rush to train I.C.E and the other militaristic enforcers of this administration’s policies. And just because we have the power to spirit away the leader of another country does not mean that we have done right. Nor do guns give cops or criminals the right to kill.
The ultimate test of power is what it wants to get done, and how.
You do not have to be religious to challenge Mr. Miller’s statement. But you should, it seems to be, have some sense of social responsibility and contract. The framers of our constitution believed that giving unrestrained power to any one person, or collection of persons, was dangerous. Unconstrained power, even in what seem to be “right” hands, can easily become authoritarian dominance over persons or groups not in its favor.
If the United States can “take” Greenland simply because it has the military and economic power to do so, then the world is at the mercy of armies and wealth. “Dog eat dog” guides our living, and before long only the biggest dogs will be left. They will, of course, then turn on each other, until only one dog is left…to die, because there’s nothing more to be consumed.
For Christians who are mindful of the church calendar and who use the lectionary, the January 11 readings can be powerful counter texts to Mr. Miller’s view of reality. Justice and righteousness play significant roles in them all. They force us to acknowledge that the power followers of Jesus are to pray and work for is the power to create just societies built upon right relationships among all constituents. Only such societies can rightly claim to be “great.”
For good reason, Christians unceasingly pray to God, “your kingdom come, your will be done” and “yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.”
But as Advent wound its way toward Christmas, 2025, I had the unique opportunity to witness two family members of different generations express Christmas through music.
We heard daughter Rebecca as one of three soprano soloists in multiple performances of choral music by German composer Michael Praetorius (1571-1621), and entitled “Praetorius Christmas Vespers.” Jeannette Sorrell, the artistic director of Apollo’s Fire, Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, had created the Vespers from a number of Praetorius’s works for the season. Rebecca is a professional singer, and she performed beautifully, as did the entire ensemble. The performance was in Cleveland’s magnificent Trinity Cathedral. As we walked back out into the world that night, I felt I had just heard all of the Advent and Christmas music I needed for this year; that anything more would be superfluous.
And we watched granddaughter Keira dance the challenging “Dance of the Reed Flutes” in the annual Nutcracker performance by the Fokine Ballet Company of Oneonta, New York. Under the direction of Donna Decker, this company of children and youth students (supplemented by professionals from the Dance Theater of Harlem in key roles) presents a complex performance with remarkable skill. Ninth-grader Keira tackled her 2 1/2 minutes alone on the big stage with a focused commitment, and danced beautifully.
It was deeply gratifying to witness these two engaging with music. Rebecca has been at it for years, building upon singing before she could speak words. She has accomplished far more than her mother and I ever dared dream. Keira is still near the beginning of what could be a career in ballet, but at this point there is no predicting where she will find purpose in her life. One thing for sure: she will never forget all it takes to make a dance come to life.
As a father and grandfather, I have had a good seat from which to watch Rebecca and Keira nurse and nurture their artistic gifts into artistic accomplishment. I have not witnessed the hours of study and lessons and practicing that their achievements have required, but I have heard the trials and triumphs of learning an art, and seen exceptional results. Inborn talent is one thing; developing that talent into artistic success requires just plain hard work.
Given their parents’ and grandparents’ interests, it is not surprising that Rebecca and Keira have chosen to pursue arts that are outside the popular mainstream. Michael Praetorius and The Nutcracker belong in the realm of classical music, hardly known to most Americans, if known at all. But that is where we are.
Now, allow me an abrupt detour to the gospel of Luke, the first couple of chapters of which are better known. I do not know how the writer of Luke felt about “the arts,” but they certainly seem to have known the value of song, poetry, and drama when they fashioned their book’s birth narratives. Luke’s telling of the birth of Jesus exists in that place in art where things become true whether or not they happened just that way. They are true because of what is universal in them—their joys and their fears, their hopes and their tears. Luke’s telling of Jesus’s birth touches the heart as Christmas Vespers and The Nutcracker do, whether that heart is fully formed or still in training.
To witness our daughter and granddaughter working so hard and accomplishing so much in pursuit of their arts’ truth have made my heart sing this December. They and their colleagues have elevated my celebration of Christmas—both religious and secular—in ways I do not fully understand, but which are true. I am overwhelmed with humble, grateful awe.
I had first met with her a couple of months after my regular dermatologist had started treating me for the bright red scaly spots that were taking over large areas of my skin.
I am grateful to them both—to the first for referring me to the specialist, and to the specialist for what finally worked. This essay is about gratitude.
But first: “healing” is probably too strong a word for where I am right now in relation to psoriasis. Psoriasis is an auto-immune disease in which the body’s immune system, thinking there’s a threat to the skin, attacks the skin. The triggers for auto-immune diseases, as I understand them, can lurk in our bodies long after discernible symptoms disappear, waiting for the next opportunity to assert themselves.
Plus, although I am done with phototherapy for now, I am still injecting my thigh with a biologic medication every twelve weeks. It got at or near the source of the psoriasis, and the creams and ointments and phototherapy treated the symptoms, visible and itchy on my legs, torso, and arms. The injections, the substances that I (and my wife) applied to my skin, and the light box I am where I am today.
Fortunately, the rash never erupted on my face or hands, so most people did not know about my psoriasis unless I told them. That made for a slight credibility problem when I had to schedule appointments around the frequent phototherapy sessions. I did not wear shorts while we were on a Caribbean cruise last February for fear I’d be regarded as one who had broken out of a leper colony. Fortunately by summer’s hottest days, the spots were faint enough that I no longer had that worry.
The prompt for this piece springs from my ruminating on the question, Insofar as I have been healed of psoriasis, to whom or what do I owe thanks?
As a Christian believer, I reflexively begin with thanks to God. But even as I write those words, I want readers to know that I write them with a palpable sense of mystery, and no sense of personal pride or superiority. I thank God for my good outcome because I believe that, despite the theological tension between the notion of a good supreme being and the reality of evil in the world, God is ultimately the source of healing. That’s a statement of faith. I can do little more than just put it out there. And I trust I would say it even if my psoriasis not gone away.
So having thanked God, I must say more. I have experienced freedom from this ailment because I am inextricably part of a web of life that sometimes brings me good and other times brings me ill, over which I have little control and to which I can only give witness.
I am grateful to two fine, caring, persistent, and completely professional doctors, who did did not come out of nowhere. They are products of fine educations that drew upon generations of attempts to heal psoriasis as well as upon the latest medical discoveries and technologies.
One of those two partners with another dermatologist in a small, independent practice; the other works in the immense Cleveland Clinic complex. Both are backed up by and tied into offices and labs far beyond the tiny exam rooms in which I saw them. Both had access to treatments that are the result of years of research in governmental and private institutions and clinics, research conducted by people who would not give up on any even slightly-promising avenue of study until they had wholly exhausted its possibilities.
Push it even further back: what natural substances went into the products that were finally developed so they could help me? Who found them and recognized some medical or other possibility within them through basic research justified only be, “because it’s there”? Who knew what might come to be out of someone’s mere curiosity?
I am grateful that my phototherapy treatments were available a ten-minute drive from home, and that I did not have to schedule them around work. Shockingly, the phototherapy appointments have to be scheduled during daytime, Monday through Friday. What does the average working person with psoriasis do?
One more thing for which I give thanks: I could afford the therapies I was offered. Not that I could pay for them all myself—hardly! This was a costly bout with illness. Some of the medicines I’ve used are by far the most expensive that have ever entered my body. (One costly lotion was actually made in India.)
Crucially, I have good health insurance because generations of Presbyterians have, through our Board of Pensions, made affordable, comprehensive insurance available to me, as part of a generous pension plan. And honesty compels me to write that family inheritances helped make it easier to pay what I had to pay.
I could go on, but I think my point is clear: I did not get through psoriasis on my own power. The thanks that I offer to God does not blind me to the reality of the web of nature and humanity that made restored health possible. I have been able to welcome my reprieve from psoriasis because I am part of a universal network that I did not create nor can fully understand. I certainly cannot claim any such healing as “my right,” as if other human beings do not have exactly the same right, as if I somehow earned it, or as if I am owed it.
The fantasy of being self-made—or even of being dependent upon few beyond immediate family and friends—is a fantasy because in this world no one, no nation, no culture can go it alone and survive in other than the most basic of ways.
Bound together as we are on a web we share with untold numbers of other animate beings, everything we say and do benefits or harms the web and those on it with us. So long as we live, we cannot escape where we are. Never knowing this web’s outer limits, we must make the moves we make on it with caution and all the wisdom nature and nature’s God give to us. And never forget to be thankful.
Meantime, the same administration is looking for every way it can to enable wealthy individuals and corporations get even richer. (Which Jesus do they cite for that?) And the President is busy managing the White House ballroom’s construction and welcoming rich syncopates to a tawdry Halloween party at Mar-a-Largo. Gives new meaning to “fiddling while Rome burns.”
If President Trump is going to deny supporting anyone financially during this shut-down, it ought to stop paying congress. On top of that, it should fine the House Republicans for failing to show up at work for weeks, with a double fine imposed upon Mike Johnson. It would be a sweet violence, rightly-earned.
The violence that’s been visited upon immigrant-appearing populations is now being visited upon the most vulnerable Americans. If we think that’s as far as the violence against our own people will go, we are fooling only ourselves. Next thing we know, it will be our turn, if we dare share a contrary opinion at all.
It is—every bit of it—cruel, uncalled-for, and un-Christian.
All Saints’ Eve (“Halloween”),
when we try to scare ourselves
(and others)
with fantasy and fake blood,
is followed by All Saints Day
when faith dares to hope,
even in the face of
our world’s blood and gore.
Why do we immerse ourselves
in imagined fright
while side-glancing (at best)
all too-real frights:
war, devastation, injustice;
hatred, indifference, racism;
poverty, sickness, homelessness;
despair, suicide, death…
…all that blood shed?
Come All Saints’ Day,
those who, going before us,
held on to hope
will rise in glory;
while we who still walk this earth
can yet rise to the occasion of our times,
and dare to speak words and do deeds
inspired by crazy, reckless hope…
…and perhaps stop the bleeding.
'Tis the last rose of Summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rose-bud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes
Or give sigh for sigh!
I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one,
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go sleep thou with them.
Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o’er the bed
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.
So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Love’s shining circle
The gems drop away!
When true hearts lie withered,
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?
Poem by Thomas Moore (1779-1852); check out John McDermott's recording on YouTube.
