Bedlam

“…God has disposed us with a mushroom shaped cloud …. someone will set the bomb off, and we will all be blown away…”

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Our family sang songs in the car on trips, especially vacations, but I believe we were a little unusual in that we sang a few that were not the usual …

Sweet Rosie O’Grady, she was a blacksmith by birth …
Just a Bowl of Butterbeans…
Three itty fishes and a momma fishy too…
In the Boarding House Where I Lived….
We Live for You, We Die for You, National Embalming School…

There was another song, that is vaguely remembered from a cassette tape recorded by my dad, a couple of his sisters and their husbands, on a trip he took back home a few months before his sudden death, 34 years ago this month. If I could remember it now, it would be a great history lesson, almost as good as Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire.

It talked about how the French hate the Germans, the Irish hate the Scots, etc and ended with a line similar to the one I began with “…and we will all be blown away”, followed by a whistle of the sound of a bomb dropping from the skies. It was written post WWII, obviously, and wasn’t one of the more popular Baumgartner tunes, but I listened to the tape, and in the decade following my dad’s death, spent a good deal of time with his little sister (almost a carbon copy – they looked like twins). We sat around playing canasta, with bourbon and coke flowing freely, & sang & drank & smoked & played all night. It was the ‘80s. We were in the middle of the Cold War, and discussions of nuclear weapons were popping up like dandelions around families and churches and social clubs. The US spent (at least) billions of dollars on a bomb that would stop their bomb before it could reach us, and although it failed in every test back then, we poured billions and billions more into it, seemingly with endless funds and voter support.

All along though, the US had enough nuclear war heads to blow up the entire planet several times over. “My stockpile is bigger than your stockpile…” was the US/Soviet dialogue.

How things have changed.

Looking back to those days, no one and no-thing could stop the power of the US with the backing of Ronald Reagan. We were the shining city on the hill, where the poor dreamed of a better life and sought to make their way here. We didn’t fear them. Unless they were Communists, of course. Even then we opened our arms to those who sought political asylum from the Soviet Union in the US, many talented and brilliant people who sought freedom and teetered over the tight wire of Communism, oppression, and poverty to beg for our protection.  We granted them the sanctuary to house them and keep them safe from their enemy states.  (Hmmm, whatever happened to doing that, say, for Syrians?)

Even though I’m a Democrat, I respected all the Presidents, regardless of political party, because they were OUR Presidents. While I became President-elect of the College Democrats following the Mondale/Ferraro attempt to win the White House in 1984 and got to attend wine and cheese parties at Speaker Jim Wright’s home in Fort Worth, I have to grant respect to Reagan (aka the Great Communicator) for coming to a nuclear agreement with the Soviet Union. My side was wanting an elimination of nuclear warheads and even nuclear power plants but that was not to be. But it seemed that by the end of the Cold War, the US/Soviet relations had agreed to disagree. It would have been incomprehensible for Reagan to have had the covert spies or friends of Gorbachev have photo ops in the Oval Office, or would Reagan or Bush or Nixon, for that matter, ever considered the Soviet leaders as people to be admired.

Had there been a question of Russian involvement even giving Mondale a couple of electoral votes in that pitiful Presidential election of 1984, I would bank on Ronald Reagan making a speech and endorsing a full fledged investigation into any interference in our American democratic process. Any American President would, until now.

Half of the Democratic Presidents of my lifetime had mistresses who were either accepted or hated by the media, except Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter; and Jimmy Carter actually acknowledged his sin of “lust in his heart” to Playboy magazine and everyone was aghast that such a thing could be said. JFK had numerous women at his disposal, Bill Clinton did, too. We thought THOSE issues were scandalous?

What has happened? Where did our education of civics, our understanding of American history and our diplomacy go?

Try as I might, I can’t understand this phenomenon of Trump believers. I think it is because they do believe in something of Trump that does not equate with patriotism. Trump himself seems clueless as to how the three branches of government work. I have friends who think that presidents are elected for 8 year terms. Many believe that individual states already have power that outweighs Supreme Court decisions or can manipulate the Court’s decisions to fit their culture. (Look at what’s happened to sanctuary cities, abortion rights, and gay marriage).

Now we have the “good old boys” who have been the backbone of the American south (in my exposure anyway) with whom I shared classes with in all of the schools I attended, who have begun this vitriol over Blue Lives Matter and the Confederate Flag being a symbol of southern history (it was an uprising and we lost …hello????). The NRA has become the 4th Reich; “buy a gun, get one free for the sociopath of your choice”. And coworkers who supported Trump have said to me it was “that transgender thing … the queers … that’s just not Christian” or, more popular still was “I just can’t vote for Hillary Clinton.”

What has happened, America? That sick feeling I had the night of the Presidential election and the days following did not go away; they have been stretched out from having a political flu, to a short remission with the Women’s March, back down to a relapse in the face of White Nationalists organizing in Charlottesville …. which wouldn’t trouble me as much but the swastikas, the white robes and the TORCHES? Seriously, TORCHES?? What the hell? Are these born again cavemen or Klansmen? It’s hard to differentiate.

Here I Stand.

But I cannot finish with the words of John Wesley, “So be it”.

Hey God: What? How? When? Why?

Siri defines “bedlam” as “a scene of uproar and confusion”.

I define God as the great “I AM” and the Creator.

Please, God, re-create us in your image and grant us wisdom to relieve our confusion.

AMEN+

My Mother the Whale

My re-creation of meditation

My Mother the Whale

At some desperate time in my life, another one when I felt alone and needing something  to fill the void; I was befriended or I’d guess, absorbed by another similar blob & I learned from it. It took decades but I learned this very important lesson; how to commune with one of the most giant mothers of our world. It has grown and changed and transformed over the years But it begins like this:

I am alone on a beach on a gray fall day

I lie back on the sand; it’s noIMG_0498t hot; it’s a little cool. I am alone. The tide is rolling in and as I hear this sound come and go, I also let it fill and empty my lungs. Sometimes there are are images I allow to flee from me but usually I focus on my breath. Tide in, breath in. Tide out, breath out. It takes some time to slow it down that much lest I hyperventilate or imagine a tsunami.

When my breathing and the sounds of the tide are in sync, I let the tide roll further and further in, so that it is first at my feet, but getting closer and closer to my head at a steady pace. By the time I fear the salt water in my face, I am relaxed enough to sink further into the sand, and also into the sea just beneath the surface of the sand.

It is there, deep down in the bottom of the ocean that I am initially blinded by the brightness of the white sand on the bottom. As I move around, I see the sand moves too and this feels relaxing and playful. It’s around this time that I remember I’m under water.

It is in just that moment, my mother, the humpback whale, lifts me up to the surface to take a breath of air; which will last me another 15 minutes of total self absorption and play.

I relax deeper and my trust increases. I realize that this magnificent aircraft carrier protecting me overhead from exposure – and danger – is my mother, the humpback. She refers to me only as her “dear one” and we play, she lifts me up for a breath and when I come to rely to on her to do so, she sees that I find my own way.

We have time together, this enormous creature, just the two of us, before we have to journey back north because her life’s purpose has basically been fulfilled.

It’s not an atonement, it’s not a ritual in any of those ways, but she has been genetically programmed to stay behind the herd, eat more, birth me and then escort me back to the northern pacific.

The “cute” orca out there? the killer whales? Kill. They try to get between my mother and me so they can hold me down long enough to suffocate me. The outloud cries and torment of her wanting to stop and “give up” struggle deeply with her recognition that she has to move on or risk dying herself; her life’s purpose stolen in a flash. I can see similar expressions with humans when a loved one dies.

But those thoughts usually flow right on through the water of which I am made; the water of which most of us are created from and filled with; ashes and ashes and dust to dust; why not sand to sand?

Faith has been compared to floating. If you fight, you’ll drown. If you relax, your journey can be magnificent.

My mother the humpback pushes her giant nose under me to lift me to breathe, she journeys right beside me, always watchful for those “cute” orcas who only want my eyes. She protects me. She leads me down an instinctual path that she knows but cannot map out. I know to trust her, without having had therapy with her. She births me. And each day of our journey, she saves me by forcing me to breathe (especially when I am busy at play and want to whine, ”but mom“) and she remains watchful for the enemy.

The ancient Hebrews, they say, were slow in asking directions and thus wandered the desert 40 years. The didn’t wander into the wrong place. They just took a long time getting there because it took THEM a long time to be prepared for where they were going.

My mother the humpback is like that, too. I have no idea if she’s leading me to slaughter, day care or eternal freedom. I only know that she will not leave me except in the case of her death and that if she dies before our journey is complete, most likely, I also will die.

My mother is a humpback whale. I don’t know her name or the name she has given me.  But I would recognize her singing anywhere.whale 2

 

 

One in the Spirit

One in the Spirit

One of my favorite songs on the guitar (that I could play as a teenager) was “We are One in the Spirit, We are One in the Lord”. repeat twice then, “And we pray that all unity will someday be restored”, Closing with, “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, and they’ll know we are Christians by our love…”

“We will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand” twice, “And we’ll spread the news that God is in our land”, “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, and they’ll know we are Christians by our love…”
“We will work with each other, we will work side by side” twice, “”And together we’ll spend the news that God is on our side” (?) “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, and they’ll know we are Christians by our love…”
“All praise to the Father from whom all things come, and all praise to Christ Jesus his only son and all praise to the Spirit that makes us one, and they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, and they’ll know we are Christians by our love…”

Not sure I remembered it all correctly, but you get the drift. I sang that with great fervor and I played it proudly (and it was only 3 chords C,F,G so I could play it with confidence.)
Oh, how I believed that. I was on the edge of a new beginning in the world, our country, our Church. We were even trying out various Book(s) of Common Prayer and some more contemporary translations of the Bible were being published. We had celebrated our country’s bicentennial. US citizens were feeling pretty proud of ourselves. It felt like the dawn of a new age.

I had a copy of “The Living Bible”, it was green and I think I even had my name on it in gold, but I discovered a verse in 1 Timothy (Chapter 1, verses 10-11) that in reading now (probably close to 40 years later) (OMG) it does not say what I thought it said, but the opposite. Of course, I was reading it in a paraphrase, as I came to understand it, it was not a translation. I also had taken the verse out of context, much like my fundamentalist friends. What I read was: “Yes, these laws are made to identify as sinners all who are immoral and impure: homosexuals, kidnappers, liars, and all others who do things that contradict the glorious Good News of our blessed God, whose messenger I am.”
I have to stop here and admit my immaturity at the time. First I understood word association. I saw these words: laws, identify sinners, immoral, homosexuals with kidnappers, liars and from the previous verse, hate God, attack their fathers and mothers and murder.
I was reading the Bible in a few verses, and on those verses in the Living Bible, I took a ball point pen and marked out the “sins” listed there and I swore that 1 Timothy was the worst book of the Bible and I slammed shut an inner door that has never been really walked through until now.
What I saw in those verses was, it turns out, the opposite of the truth. Paul was writing that the Good News was not for the holy and sinless, it was for those who thought they weren’t good enough or even those who OTHER people deemed were not good enough. A complete turnaround from what I thought I saw that day in my bedroom.
My grandparents had given each of us Bibles one year for Christmas with our names put on them and they were, of course, King James Version and they had some sort of sword and shield (although that could have been a harp) on the front cover. I understood very little of what was actually IN the Bible, but I knew it was “Holy” and I knew I’d better respect it. To have taken a ball point pen and scratched through those verses, even though I completely misunderstood, and even though it was in The Living Bible, not the “real” Bible, the King James, well, I knew I had done something that was bold; something that I could never have been able to answer for, if my grandparents, or the church, or God HIMself found out that I had rejected something in scripture. Rejected something I wouldn’t dare admit to, and ironically believed it said the very opposite of what I thought.
I am also unsure if I knew what it was to be homosexual. I damn sure didn’t understand sodomy. And fornication, I KNOW for damn sure that I didn’t understand that; because, as I understood my role as a female, the word “no” was not a word I was allowed to express when something serious was asked of me. That explains much more of my history and I will return to in a later blog. Not tonight.
Coming back around to this whole unity business… The United Methodist Church rolled out a great slogan, possible created by incredibly expensive marketing agents who had completed test groups: “Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors”. Well, la-dee-freaki-da; (I mean no referential harm to my drag queen sister by a similar name.)
The UMC rolled out their great new slogan, at the very least, at the time when ordinands were to have “celibacy in singleness and fidelity in marriage” and somewhat after to the other statement about “homosexuality is incompatible with Christianity”. These denominational decisions were not congruent with other traditional mainline Protestant Churches in the US.  Open (hearts, minds, doors) became a legal reality when the Supreme Court upheld gay marraige. I watched other mainline churches stop prosecuting (and persecuting?), defrocking or flogging, their own Christian clergy, who happened to be gay yet were also BAPTIZED, as well as ORDAINED.

The UMC elected and consecrated our first openly gay bishop whose downfall was begun before the sun rose the next day.  The divide deepened and the chasm imploded across the US with the recent decision of our Judicial Council.

Is it so wrong to draw parallels between the Department of Justice finding police officers not guilty of violating civil rights and our Judicial Council seeing with eyes that miss the point – focusing on the letter and tittle (as Jesus said) of the law and not the heart of it? How is the hatred and fear of young American Black men and the fear of a gay married member of the clergy all that different? Not to dismiss either case but in one the law fails to protect them and takes a physical life of young Black men and in the other, a religious Council takes the religious life from a openly gay woman. Both occur against the words and actions of Jesus Christ, who loved all the Black men with guns, or without, and all women at the altar, gay or straight?

How are we acting as the “Christian nation”? This election cycle brought up, again, the belief of some that our country was founded in the Christian faith. While I can argue that at another time, for now I want to share that I believe neither of these issues are in any way Christian. A gunshot to the chest, or the unprecedented shot in the back and the dismissal of a life of faith and dedication are very similar symptoms of a failing civil and spiritual society.
One in the Spirit? Holy Spirit, yes because she sees no difference between the straight or gay folks, the married or single folks, the black or white or brown folks. But to dare to claim “open hearts, open mind, and open doors” is just load of crap, “United” Methodists.

Here I Stand.

The Way

Disciples. 12. That number worked on many levels, so to keep it simple, I will align with tradition and also say there were 12.

Were they “the little rag-tag army” that Martin Bell spoke of in The Way of the Wolf? He describes a silly group of people, so happy and dancing in a big circle holding hands. It makes us smile and feel good. However, if we look from another perspective, the closed circle means leaving the others out. Bell also described the bunny (Barrington Bunny) who could find no one else like himself and was excluded by all the other animals because they were having their own parties, you know, the squirrels and chipmunks and whoever else. The bunny makes and in the dark of night, delivers gifts to each home, describing it as “a gift, a free gift, with no strings attached”. He finishes delivering the gifts and comes across a lost mouse who will freeze to death. So the bunny invites the mouse to cuddle close. In the morning, when the snow has stopped and the sun has come out, all these little families find their gifts and the family of the mouse find him quite well, under the carcass of a dead bunny.

Hey, I’m not trying to blow the socks off of a pagan recognition of new life in the spring, the Easter bunny, I’m only musing on what Easter has become to so many Americans, most of whom, when asked their religious preference, now say “none”. Yet we still celebrate.

If, in ministry, we followed The Way, like the bunny, we are led to believe we have to give it all. All of it. As if we are strip searched upon ordination and have to relinquish the heirlooms, the treasured photos, the families we were born to. In leaving all this behind and giving all we have we end up dead. Dead as doorknobs. Cold, hardened, with nothing to say and incapable of working in this world as corpses.

That is not Christ-like. But the story was  told as a model of the faith at summer camp.

Count the number of times it is written in the Gospels, how frequently Jesus went away by himself to pray. He needed re-fueling too. Going our “all in all” does not excuse ourselves.

In the Church (and I mean traditional modern Christianity) we have sort of expected this kind of commitment to those in the pulpit. For those in the pews Easter is, well, from Facebook postings, mostly kids in new pastel clothes getting their pictures made for generations to come. It’s sweet.

A contemporary Christian tune that ironically has a child begin it is titled “You Are My All in All” and it praises the Lord for taking all of our “sin, our guilt, our shame”. For many, especially those of us with a penchant toward depression, we do not hear the “good news” because all of the long forgotten and forgiven sins, even past tense, get dragged out again and our own spirits get bruised in the process.

There were more than 12. Several times in the Gospel of Mark, the phrase “because of the crowds” is used. They didn’t arrest him when he cleared the temple, they didn’t arrest him when he came riding into town on a donkey (while at the same time, Pilate was on a stallion, prancing into the city himself). Even when Jesus is arrested, Judas had to tell them where and they went at night. At his arrest Jesus asks why they didn’t arrest him when they had seen him and their fear was “the crowds”. There were more than 12.

These followers were being taught about an entirely different perspective. They were taught to use their ears and mouth and eyes. They knew that The Way was not a “personal relationship” in order to receive the goodie basket when they die. The Way was and is, a direction to live your life, not as a bystander, but as a Christian.

The Way is not a mental exercise, not a psychosocial perspective nor is it a theological discourse.  It is not a doctrine, a credo, a series of answers to all of life’s questions. The Way is life transformed.

The Way is living as the risen dead

Now. Today

The Need That Can’t Be Met

We all have spiritual needs. We may not want to admit that, or think that, or contemplate that but nonetheless, these are very real, vital needs. They are life saving, life sustaining and maybe life creating.

I have recently realized that I have had a wide variety of spiritual needs in the past. In ministry, I have traveled with, been the tour guide, the tourist and the lamp post on the corner in trying to assist others in finding, naming and meeting spiritual needs, not to mention my own.

In ministry I share with many others in having a rather large suitcase to journey along with spiritual needs. I feel a little like a carpet bagger of old, displaying my used and recycled wares from and for my journey, your journey. The older I get, the more things I acquire. I think I may as well open a corner store right before you head into a camping vacation of a lifetime. I wonder what that would sound like …..

“Here, try this walking stick, cane, pole, staff, whatever – it’s called different things depending on how you use it, I guess; … it’s been many places; some folks have used it to hike, some really rowdy folks might poke people with it, some folks need to lean on it because of weakness and others use it to go as an accessory to go with their pointy church hat on special occasions…”

“How about a book? I’ve got many maps for your journey and collections of travel stories all put together in one volume … I call it a ‘Bible’, others call it holy, or useless, or perfect, or even Godself writing a very long letter just for you… Lots of people use it, or well, they get one at the tourist shop on the way. Some say it will take you right along The Way, some say it’s just too confusing and they need a guide instead. Or both.”

“You’ll need something to carry your water in; you won’t last a day without it. Most of the planet is made of the stuff; you can drink some here and there and other places, avoid it altogether. Your water may become wine so keep an eye on it. You wouldn’t want to wash your face with that! Your water may be a way to quench your thirst, or clear a tickle in your throat. Or it may be especially clean spring water, some will even bathe each other in it. In fact, some get so excited about it, calling it something special, making it personal or out in front of everyone. They’ll dabble some on a baby’s head and make a big deal out of it, or they’ll splash around in it when they’re kids and it shows up in the rain. Good stuff. You can’t hold it in your hands very long though, it will all be gone. And when it’s gone, there’s nothing you can do but wait for more to come. You can’t make the stuff.”

“And don’t forget to get something to nibble on while you’re journeying. You’ll need it. Bread’s usually pretty good for that. Some bread is white, light, seeded, course, brown, black, even. They’ll call it ‘the staff of life’, which is sort of silly, being as I already mentioned the staff up there with the cane & walking stick. And get this: some will say that the real bread is God’s body. I know. Sort of hard to imagine. We usually share it with others along the way … make a real special get together with it, and someone brings wine and then, maybe that’s the way to fill that need. Some folks are okay with that alone. Many folks need more.”

So I sit in the corner stand, greeting people as they go on their Way. Sometimes all they want is to hear how I got here, but usually they don’t want to hear it as much as I want to tell it. Sometimes I get to greet groups of people … the kids are my favorite. They’ll walk right up to that odd black shirt with a really tight wrap-around-choking-you-white-collar and play dress up. Funny thing about that though, is that some folks will only call them “father” when they put it on.” Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense really.

Meeting those spiritual needs, the ones that can’t be met, is the great irony of faith, I guess. That just recently dawned on me. Try as I may with books and water and journeys and bread, they never meet that need.

So while many of us have these huge collections of things we use to meet spiritual needs (typically our own, unless we’re in ministry and we deceive ourselves into thinking we obtain this stuff to help others) we really use them to pat ourselves on our backs – we, I can’t say “we”, I can only speak for myself … I collect this stuff and sometimes I’ll look it over and think it proves how spiritual I am, until that day comes when I have to box it all back up again and carry it many more miles, because i think I have this stuff for my spiritual “needs”.

And the “stuff” doesn’t meet a spiritual need. Even prayer, I’m thinking, doesn’t meet the need either. Because the bottom line is that nothing WE do meets that need. We have to stop trying to meet our spiritual needs ourselves. We are not capable. Only God is can do that.

Let go.

 

 

 

 

 

Gray Night of the Soul?

Praying in the Dark
I miss the days of adolescence when I was able to leave the house, unknown to my parents and go outside, in our ten acres of pine trees, and pray toward the sky. I would choose any group of three stars and believe they represented the Trinity. On retreats in adulthood, often held in rural areas, the night sky draws me all the same. When there happens to be a moon in the sky, that, I believe, is the face of God. It is a holy prayer in the darkness.
I now live deep within the city, without so much as a yard to wander in during the night, in silent contemplation. It was only recently that I realized, upon checking to see if it were raining, that I realized there was not much darkness in the night. I capture sunrises and sunset and cloud formations as I go about my coming in and going out. I have, without noticing, transferred my God-in-the-moon to God-in-the-clouds.
How that is deeply metaphorical is in this:
“Even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you”. Psalms 139:12
My darkness in the city, like my darkness in my spirit, is no longer the darkest dark. It is void of stars among the city lights. It is gray. It is pregnant with light behind it; it is in the rising sun hidden behind a group of clouds at daybreak, when the sun will rise above and burn the clouds away.
The night is not as dark as my melancholy spirit on an average day. It is not as dark at my present address than it was in my pines of adolescence. It is gray.
Gray is a combination of black and white, of day and night.
Gray is exactly where my spirit meets the Holy Spirit; or better, where my spirit meets the Holy Spirit given to me. The “darkness is not dark to You”. It’s not as dark to me, either.
When I long for the darkness of ages past, I am longing for a greater contrast in my spirit; I am longing to see the difference between the light and dark, ensuring myself of the presence of light; a process in my unique spirit.
Ergo, is my “dark night of the soul” now gray? And in that all encompassing grayness has not my spirit surrendered to the “Cloud of Unknowing”? Have I truly finally surrendered that my prayers, my connection to the God of all creation, now is a process in the way of the saints that is incomprehensible? And shouldn’t prayer BE incomprehensible, if in it, we indeed surrender completely?

10 January 2017

“Yes We Did” & Will Again

1-1-2017

I’ve been listening to all the pundits and political commentators discuss the end of the year and the beginning of the new one. So many changes, surprises, setbacks in the midst of such progress.

And I believe we have 19 days until we end an era that I have been so very proud to see from my generation. The end of the Obama administration that reigned in such grace & restored dignity to our country. So many wonderful things; from a President only a year older than myself.

We both had our 50th birthday while he was in office.

And now here we go, off into a complete unknown. We’ve divided but not only that – I mean we did that when “W” was in the White House, but we’ve become violently divided. Those black and white videos of Black protests in the south have returned in living color. And the once unusual shooting in Columbine has become routine. Hijacked commercial airlines happened in the late 70s but they didn’t fly into buildings. We were scared then. We are now terror-ed, terrified, by a fear deep down in our psyche.

The Obama campaign shouted: “Yes We Can” and brandished posters that merely had the word “HOPE”.

History repeats itself, they say.

So my hope for our “backlash” for liberals is not only equality (we still don’t have ERA but that still gets overlooked) & progress, communities of hope and laughter and education, safe schools and neighborhoods and a waning of fear, each year, trusting each other a little bit more … stretching ourselves a bit further, to meet someone who looks different from you, and talks differently and worships differently and listens to different music and speaks in different languages…

But that backlash could possibly do something entirely unexpected. It could be a renewal of Christianity in America.

I don’t mean fundamentalist atonement theology where some of the Commandments, the convenient ones, are shouted out like war cries while the beatitudes are left in the shadows. No, I mean Christianity. I MEAN the beatitudes, the Church, liturgy, community, communion. While the Baby Boomers walked away from the American traditional churches, the millennials are poking around in the simmering ash heap of what is left of Jesus in America and what he represents. They are polishing off some of the hymnals, altars, and candlesticks, with new eyes. They are drawn to liturgy.

People need ritual. People need tradition. And while we are becoming much more inclusive, some traditions gets a little watered down, or replaced with what draws a short-lived crowd. But these rituals and traditions are pillars that tell us who we are.

As a child I remember my siblings telling my parents that they would live with their lover before they would marry them. Jaws dropped. And people started relationships without traditional marriage rituals.

And the gay community wanted that ritual, that pillar too. Not just the “living together” that moved into, “we’re not just roommates”, to “I’m gay…” but all the way, full circle, to marriage. And we made that law. And it was good.

I have no clue of what the future holds. No one does. 2016 was a year of shock.

But if anthropology, Old Testament history of the people of God running from, then running to – God, theology and sociology tell us anything right now, we will come around again in a new way. The kids i meet in the hospitals will see a new world, a new society.
I’ve got to believe, and even finally admit, and get off my pissed-off-ed-ness and say, “I believe it will be good”. Not what I’d expect, not what I can imagine. But it will be good. Someday. Again.

Why I Fear For My Country

– December 11, 2016
I love my country. People want to flee because of this basket case that has been elected. Even though I’m a dual citizen and I can literally go live in Ireland, I am not giving up on the USA. I am an American. I have studied our government and our history. I have travelled to other countries and seen how they govern, I have watched the news.

I had to memorize “We the people…” in school. Just as I had to learn the Pledge of Allegiance and My Country Tis of Thee (and I know it’s also the tune to “God Save the Queen”). I was also taught “We Shall Overcome” as a national song. I get choked up listening to the national anthem, especially on Veterans Day. My dad WAS a veteran as was his dad and two of my dad’s sisters. My dad was a mainline Republican and with my mom as a diehard Democrat, they had many a discussion over politics but they loved each other and lived with each other in peace.

I am in shock and appalled by Trump’s election to begin with. It still doesn’t seem real but I’m mourning as I watch 240 years of democracy morph into this egomaniacal horror story. CEO’s have fought mightily – not for this country, no – but against our numerous agencies as in Secretary of State, Chief of Staff, EPA (OMG) and others preparing to “serve” this country. Serve? These billionaires serve no one except themselves and the bottom line of their profits. They don’t even do their own taxes and have paid less than I have, no doubt.

Make America Great Again? How about stealing “We the People”. We are a democracy and something has gone very very wrong when the loser of an election has over 2.5 million votes than the one who won the electoral college. But as I study our government a little more, I am beginning to see a glimmer of light that maybe the Electoral Collage can do what they are commissioned TO DO and that is reject any candidate who does not, and will not, adhere to the US Constitution.

I did advanced Clinical Pastoral Education at the Dallas VA Hospital. Orientation was two days. On the first day, we had to pledge to defend our country against enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC. I was choked up when we were called on to do so and even though I am not employed by the government, I never rescinded my pledge that day. I promised to defend this country against any person, organization, or powerful billionaire who is a threat to our country. Donald Trump and his inexperienced billionaire cronies are not looking out for our country. They will not defend it. They will take all they can, hide behind lawyers to save their profits and CPAs to ensure they pay no taxes.

This is no longer about Donald Trump – the person and his wild personality. This has entered an arena of trickle down democracy, a take-over of the land I love. I will “stand beside her, and guide her” and question (because I am an American and I CAN) whenever “that star-spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the FREE and the home of the brave” is disrespected.

How about the last verse of “My Country Tis of Thee”: “Our father’s God to Thee, author of liberty, to thee we sing. Long may our land be bright with freedom’s holy light. Protect us by thy might, great God our King”. Is it at this point in the history of our country that our Freedom of Religion kicks into high gear and we the people have no other choice but to plea for God to save us from this destruction of our Constitution?

I will bold each part of the Opening of the US Constitution that I feel is on the verge of destruction.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure DOMESTIC TRANQUILLITY, provide for the common defense, PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE, and secure the Blessings of LIBERTY to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Add to this “Liberty and JUSTICE for ALL’ and we’ve got a stew of annihilation of the founders hopes for our country.

Bill Maher printed up his own baseball cap in response to Trump’s campaign one “Make America Great Again”. Bill’s is blue and has the words “We;re Still Here”.

With Bill Maher I will not give up the land that I love to a narcissistic demagogue whose only agenda is for himself, his family, his rich friends, and those who bow at his feet (figuratively). I will not roll over and play dead to a tax evading sexual predator who chastises the press for printing whatever the press chooses to print, and blocks freedom of speech unless the speech about him is favorable. I will not passively sit back and watch the FDA and EPA destroyed in order that industrial manufacturers are no longer regulated and can potentially poison our food and medicine. I won’t ignore actions to repeal a woman’s right to do with her body as she chooses. I won’t keep my mouth shut if Trump et al decides to destroy our land and wildlife, and poison the water we drink.

I will not sit back quietly as Americans of any religion, creed, color, culture, age, gender or sexual orientation are singled out and no longer protected by our law.

I didn’t raise enough hell about this sexual predator because there were so many issues in addition to that, I couldn’t keep up. “Bleed from ‘whatever’, “grab her by the p*ssy”, “I know more than the generals” and I’m not going to begin to list the number of atrocities that were used about Hillary or Obama.

This land is my land, this land is your land. God created all the things that live in a magnificent ecosystem and beautiful terrain of all types and God created humans in God’s image and patted us on the head and said, “It is good”. These living and breathing things that grow and thrive and eventually die are vastly important. The borders of our countries are not sketched out in a permanent marker seen from outer space, they are drawn in the sand. We are all people who bleed when we’re cut; we are humans – awesome creations – who live in a land where we are given inalienable rights. Anytime one person has power over another, be it one woman disrespected in public, one race not protected but threatened by those sworn to uphold the law; anytime someone is overlooked or had their dignity taken away, I will stand. I will protect all living things: people, animals, wildlife and all cultures, sexual orientations, races, ages, religion or disabilities not only because of my faith but because we are to be protected by law. I will not match hatred with more hatred nor will I allow myself or others to be disrespected.

I pledge allegiance to all humans. A piece of paper that might be required to live in this country or the threat of dividing groups of people and giving rights to some but not to all is not America.

Here I Stand.Why I Fear for My Country