Does who is telling the lie make it less a lie?

How is it that people who are willing to spend years and millions of dollars trying to prove that Hillary Clinton has lied in the past don't hold Donald Trump accountable for the lies he spews forth in public every day?

Maybe Alone On My Bike

Maybe Alone On My Bike 

by William Stafford 

I listen, and the mountain lakes

hear snowflakes come on those winter wings

only the owls are awake to see,

their radar gaze and furred ears

alert. In that stillness a meaning shakes;

And I have thought (maybe alone

on my bike, quaintly on a cold

evening pedaling home), Think!-

the splendor of our life, its current unknown

as those mountains, the scene no one sees.

O citizens of our great amnesty:

we might have died. We live. Marvels

coast by, great veers and swoops of air

so bright the lamps waver in tears,

and I hear in the chain a chuckle I like to hear.

Grandfather's Cars, by Robert Phillips

Grandfather's Cars 

by Robert Phillips

Every two years he traded them in (“As soon

as the ashtrays get full,” he said with good humor);

always a sedate four-door sedan, always a Buick,

always dark as the inside of a tomb.

Then one spring Grandfather took off to trade,

returned, parked proudly in the driveway.

“Shave-and-a-haircut, two bits!” blared the horn.

Grandmother emerged from the kitchen into day-

light, couldn’t believe her eyes. Grandfather sat

behind the wheel of a tomato-red Lincoln

convertible, the top down. “Shave-and-a-haircut,

two bits!” “Roscoe, whatever are you thinking?”

she cried. Back into the kitchen she flew.

No matter how many times he leaned on that horn,

she wouldn’t return. So he went inside,

found her decapitating strawberries with scorn.

“Katie, what’s wrong with that automobile?

All my life I’ve wanted something sporty.”

He stood there wearing his Montgomery Ward

brown suit and saddle shoes. His face was warty.

She wiped her hands along her apron,

said words that cut like a band saw:

“What ails you? They’ll think you’ve turned fool!

All our friends are dying like flies-all!

You can’t drive that thing in a funeral procession.”

He knew she was right. He gave her one baleful

look, left, and returned in possession

of a four-door Dodge, black, practical as nails.

Grandfather hated that car until the day he died.

Music to My Ears

Two selections from the Writer’s Almanac speak to me, so I want to share them with you.

Today’s poem asks what “far-off and half-forgotten country” within us is waiting for us to visit. What will we hear there? Who waits for us there?

Music 

by Anne Porter

When I was a child

I once sat sobbing on the floor

Beside my mother’s piano

As she played and sang

For there was in her singing

A shy yet solemn glory

My smallness could not hold

And when I was asked

Why I was crying

I had no words for it

I only shook my head

And went on crying

Why is it that music

At its most beautiful

Opens a wound in us

An ache a desolation

Deep as a homesickness

For some far-off

And half-forgotten country

I’ve never understood

Why this is so

But there’s an ancient legend

From the other side of the world

That gives away the secret

Of this mysterious sorrow

For centuries on centuries

We have been wandering

But we were made for Paradise

As deer for the forest

And when music comes to us

With its heavenly beauty

It brings us desolation

For when we hear it

We half remember

That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields

Their fragrant windswept clover

The birdsongs in the orchards

The wild white violets in the moss

By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it

Is the longed-for beauty

Of the One who waits for us

Who will always wait for us

In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us

And wanders where we wander.

A few days ago I was struck by two lines by Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario (1867-1916). They too lean toward something hidden within us that we can, perhaps, only welcome:

Pity for him who one day looks upon

his inward sphinx and questions it. He is lost.

You don't HAVE to say everything you CAN say

The following lines from an opinion piece by Michael Gerson (Washington Post Writers Group, and published in last Sunday's Cleveland Plain Dealer) are worth sharing and considering. They support my decision to block certain links suggested by some of my Facebook friends: as if the posts they tend to "like" are not disrespectful enough in and of themselves, the comments those "likes" generate are worse.

"While the protection of blasphemy is required by democratic values, it does not exhaust those values. Civility is also an important democratic value. Our ideal of democracy is not an endless cable television shouting match. It is a free society in which citizens have a decent regard for the rights and views of others. This requires a measure of self-restraint; something we teach to our children as tolerance and manners. And such self-restraint is not self-censorship; it is respect. A free country should unapologetically defend the right to jeer and taunt. This does not require everyone in a free country to find jeering and taunting admirable."

What do you think?

Ring Out, Wild Bells

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more,

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.

       (Alfred, Lord Tennyson - 1850)

The Drive Home

My favorite moments of Christmas for more than four decades were those moments I was driving myself home after the final Christmas Eve service. The world–my world–was, at last, quiet.

I am a retired Presbyterian minister. During my ministry I felt responsible for helping Advent and Christmas-season worshippers experience the power and mystery of God's birth in human flesh. Our Christmas Eve services were the culmination of the drama played out the four Sundays previous, the season of Advent.

Churches fill the weeks before Christmas with special events: extra musical presentations, greens and poinsettias, cookie exchanges, outreach and service activities, giving opportunities, classes, and always one or two other things someone thinks would be so nice to do this year. Worship planners walk a fine line between doing what they've always done and trying something new, hoping telling the story in a new way might capture worshippers' frequently divided attention.

I never did all of it myself, but I was expected to know about and support it all. On top that, I am a married man with a family, so there was all of that to think about and do, too. My wife and daughters were busy with their own activities, some in the church and some not, plus we made time to do special things together. Because my wife is an excellent organizer and executer of family events, we and our daughters always made it to Christmas Eve in one piece, even if the My Little Pony castle still had to be assembled.

I approached leading Christmas Eve worship in high anticipation. On that night the sanctuary is unnaturally beautiful and full, old friends greet one another with special warmth, hassled people relax, visiting grandchildren are proudly displayed, college students and service members away from home for the first time are excited to see each other, the music is familiar and yet startling, and the candles glow as we sing "Silent Night," lifting them heaven-ward on "wondrous star, shed thy light."

And then it is over. The crowds file out. Partially burnt candles are collected for reuse next year. Ushers double check to make sure no candles have been left burning. The offering is stowed safely away. Little by little the place empties and usually, in the smaller churches I served, I am left alone in the building. I turn out the last lights and lock the doors, and walk out into the night to drive home.

I love that drive. It is so quiet, too quiet even for music. Traffic is light. Most businesses are closed. Lights sparkle on houses. It is as if in that moment the world has finally stopped, and there is hope that perhaps, this time, it will finally hear and absorb the promise of "peace on earth, good will to all" that the angels sang.

That drive home was always my own, personal Christmas moment. I've been missing it ever since I retired.