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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 117: Do not be a bystander

February 23, 2017


newsroomhttp://mjarts.com/samples/Newsroom%20excerpt2.mp4

I’ve seen a series of articles in the last four weeks which are profoundly disturbing to me:

Bannon vows a daily fight for ‘deconstruction of the administrative state’

The reclusive mastermind behind President Trump’s nationalist ideology and combative tactics made his public debut Thursday, delivering a fiery rebuke of the media and declaring that the new administration is in an unending battle for “deconstruction of the administrative state.”
Stephen K. Bannon, the White House chief strategist and intellectual force behind Trump’s agenda, used his first speaking appearance since Trump took office to vow that the president would honor all of the hard-line pledges of his campaign.
Appearing at a gathering of conservative activists alongside Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Bannon dismissed the idea that Trump might moderate his positions or seek consensus with political opponents. Rather, he said, the White House is digging in for a long period of conflict to transform Washington and upend the world order…
Priebus celebrated Trump’s administration as “the best Cabinet in the history of Cabinets,” and Bannon said that many nominees “were selected for a reason, and that is deconstruction.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-wh-strategist-vows-a-daily-fight-for-deconstruction-of-the-administrative-state/2017/02/23/03f6b8da-f9ea-11e6-bf01-d47f8cf9b643_story.html?utm_term=.127792e35359

Prince Charles issues veiled warning over Donald Trump and return to ‘dark days of 1930s’

Prince Charles has issued a warning over the “rise of populism” in a veiled apparent reference to the election of Donald Trump and increasingly hostile attitudes towards refugees in Europe.
The Prince of Wales said there were “deeply disturbing echoes of the dark days of the 1930s”, adding that “evil” religious persecution was taking place across the globe.
“We are now seeing the rise of many populist groups across the world that are increasingly aggressive to those who adhere to a minority faith. All of this has deeply disturbing echoes of the dark days of the 1930s,” he said.
“My parents’ generation fought and died in a battle against intolerance, monstrous extremism and inhuman attempts to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe.”
Citing UN statistics, he added that a “staggering” 65.3 million people abandoned their homes in 2015 — 5.8 million more than the year before.
“The suffering doesn’t end when they arrive seeking refuge in a foreign land,” he said. “We are now seeing the rise of many populist groups across the world that are increasingly aggressive towards those who adhere to a minority faith.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/prince-charles-donald-trump-warning-right-populism-dark-days-thought-for-the-day-a7489876.html

Reuters orders reporters to cover Trump like an authoritarian regime: Expect ‘physical threats’

David Edwards
01 Feb 2017 at 10:10 ET
The Reuters news agency this week recognized the challenges of covering Donald Trump’s presidency by comparing it to authoritarian regimes like Egypt, Yemen and China.
“It’s not every day that a U.S. president calls journalists ‘among the most dishonest human beings on earth’ or that his chief strategist dubs the media ‘the opposition party’,” Reuters Editor-in-Chief Steve Adler wrote in a message to staff on Tuesday. “It’s hardly surprising that the air is thick with questions and theories about how to cover the new Administration.”
He cited the organization’s work in “Turkey, the Philippines, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Thailand, China, Zimbabwe, and Russia” as an example of how to report on the Trump administration.
Adler said that reporters could use experience learned in “nations in which we sometimes encounter some combination of censorship, legal prosecution, visa denials, and even physical threats to our journalists.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/reuters-orders-reporters-to-cover-trump-like-an-authoritarian-regime-expect-physical-threats/

Iran’s supreme leader ‘thanks’ Trump for revealing the ‘real face of the United States’

“We actually thank this new president! We thank him, because he made it easier for us to reveal the real face of the United States,” said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to a transcript posted on his official website.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/02/07/irans-ayatollah-thanks-trump-for-revealing-the-real-face-of-the-united-states/?utm_term=.99ba9ff6825d

Steve Bannon: ‘We’re going to war in the South China Sea … no doubt’

Only months ago Donald Trump’s chief strategist predicted military involvement in east Asia and the Middle East in Breitbart radio shows.
The United States and China will fight a war within the next 10 years over islands in the South China Sea, and “there’s no doubt about that”. At the same time, the US will be in another “major” war in the Middle East.
Those are the views – nine months ago at least – of one of the most powerful men in Donald Trump’s administration, Steve Bannon, the former head of far-right news website Breitbart who is now chief strategist at the White House.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/02/steve-bannon-donald-trump-war-south-china-sea-no-doubt

Washington Post By Dana Milbank Opinion writer January 27, 2016
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-the-age-of-trump-grim-warnings-from-holocaust-survivors/2016/01/27/c65ea38c-c549-11e5-8965-0607e0e265ce_story.html?utm_term=.2bc13a13ec85

“International Holocaust Remembrance Day is always a somber time for Auschwitz survivor Irene Weiss. But this year’s observance had an additional layer of grief: For the first time, Weiss is worried about her adopted homeland.”
“I am exceptionally concerned about demagogues,” the 85-year-old Weiss told me at Wednesday’s commemoration at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “They touch me in a place that I remember. I know their influence and, unfortunately, I know how receptive audiences are to demagogues and what it leads to.”
…
“At this time of open hostility to Muslims in America, museum staff arranged for Johanna Gerechter Neumann, who fled with her family to Albania after Kristallnacht, to talk about how Muslims protected them from Hitler. Her father, a patriotic German and World War I veteran, “certainly thought that it could never happen in Germany,” she said. “It did happen. Slowly, but it did happen.”
And now the aging survivors worry it is beginning, slowly, to happen again. “It is repeating itself, and it is again the inattention that people pay to real cues that one should understand,” said Margit Meissner, almost 94, who fled on foot through the Pyrenees from occupied France.
“It’s not Weimar,” she said, “but it could become Weimar Germany if you have Mr. Trump here and people keep believing what he says. . . . I think one has to speak up. And that’s the one lesson from the Holocaust: Do not be a bystander.”

When Holocaust survivors start getting alarmed, I start listening. If one reads the entire article the alarm becomes more chilling.

tr-characterI see a lot of articles saying that I should simply “embrace our new President”. I can’t embrace a man who is stealing much of what I hold dear about this country.

For years I have listened to Conservative Christians tell me that the United States is a country ‘blessed by God.’ Having read a lot of US history in conjunction with my work as an illustrator, I have assumed that the people making such comments have somehow remained oblivious to American history, and our shameful treatment of people not of Northern European ancestry.

With the advent of Facebook and other Social Media, I’ve changed my ideas. The only explanation I can come up with is that our country has a large population of racist bigots who haven’t had the courage to admit it; until they saw the ‘Leader of the Free World’ spouting fear of ‘the other’. This country, ‘blessed by God,’ is filled with people who live in fear of people who are not like they are—people with brown skins; people who worship the Creator in a different manner than they; people who love other people in a manner they do not understand.

Based on Stephen Bannon’s comments above, P45’s Cabinet selections become more understandable. He wasn’t making the absolute worst selections possible—people who have been committed to the opposition of those agencies they were selected to head—they are individuals selected to destroy the agencies they rule over.

I worked in a governmental regulatory agency for 14 years; the City of Portland’s Bureau of Buildings [now, Bureau of Development Services] was tasked with the job of requiring compliance with the Building Code, and its companion Codes. Codes designed to promote building safety. Hard as it may be to believe, there really are contractors out there who don’t care about building safety; all they are concerned about is how much money they can charge to do work using the cheapest methods they can find. Developers who don’t mind lying about their buildings, if it’s profitable.

Raise this exponentially: companies that don’t want to comply with environmental regulations because those regulations raise the costs on their development. Companies that don’t care what kind of impact their construction may have on the environment. Coal companies that can dump their excavated waste into local streams, because it’s so much cheaper than hauling the waste by truck; and they don’t care that the watersheds are damaged.

A Secretary of Energy whose only energy interests are in fossil fuels—the most damaging and inefficient form of energy production there is.

A Secretary of Education who has no interest in improving the quality of the American school system; instead she wants to eliminate public schools altogether; without regard to inner city schools who won’t be able to afford to the private education model she desires.

“Draining the swamp” of Wall Street advocates in the Presidential Cabinet; now refilled by Managers of Goldman Sachs, the architects of the Economic Collapse of 2008.

We now have an Executive Branch that is so insensitive to security—National Security briefings in the middle of a crowded country club restaurant—that the Intelligence Community is withholding information from the President. They are concerned that top secret information will end up in a midnight ‘tweet’.

I was raised to believe that we were a country of laws to protect the downtrodden; a country that welcomed the refugee; a country that believed in justice for all; not merely justice for those with wealth.

Raised as an atheist, I decided to become a follower of Jesus; the teacher who said,
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?
…
For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’ “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

I am ashamed of what my country has become.

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 116: America no longer aspires to be a selfless nation

February 12, 2017

garden gethsemane rev2Malchus’ Legion/Garden of Gethsemane

One of the ironies of the above image is the confused look on Peter’s face [yeah, the dark-skinned guy on the right; the fisherman who is out in his boat each day]. Jesus told him to bring a sword with him as they went to the Garden, where Jesus was about to be arrested. Apparently, Jesus was preparing an ‘object lesson’ because after Peter lops off the ear of a servant, Jesus warned Peter—Those who live by the sword will die by the sword. Perhaps an object lesson for us…

I wrote my last blog in anger. I don’t think I would retract any of the ideas that I wrote, but I was angry when I wrote it. I don’t want to live my life in anger; and yet, because of all the turmoil going on in our country, I find myself angry all the time.

I grew up an atheist [my beloved Grandmother called us Heathens; and yet made Cinnamon Toast for me nearly every day as I stopped at her house on my way back from school]. I wasn’t sure what Heathen meant, but it didn’t sound like a good thing. But my Grandmother fed this Heathen cinnamon toast. I’ve never been able to duplicate her version of the treat.

My parents’ ‘church’ was the American Legion. I grew up going to American Legion meetings regularly; I think it was mostly because my parents didn’t have money for babysitters; maybe it’s what parents did 60 years ago… When we had the Memorial Service for my Mom, who basically had three stages in her life—PTA when I was young; the Legion and her work as a volunteer at the VA Hospital; and her life at the Condominium after my Dad’s death—I was reintroduced to Legion people I knew as a child, when I was in my early fifties: “You’re the kid who slept on the steel folding chairs…”

My understanding of life in America is that we aspire to be ‘selfless people’—we dedicate our lives to the assistance of others. That’s what World War II was about—if one overlooks the Internment Camps [Concentration Camps] like Manzanar. Over 120,000 American citizens, born in the United States were sent to Concentration Camps simply because their ancestors were Japanese. Nearly all of their possessions—their houses, their furnishings, their land—were confiscated. “Japanese truck farmers, he said, produced crops valued at 40 million dollars annually and interned Japanese “stand to lose approximately 100 million dollars in investments” because of confiscation or forced sale by the U.S. Government”  http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist9/harvest.html

“The Government found itself in possession of seized properties whose value may run to $5,000,000,000 or more. The total has never been tabulated.” http://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2016-12-05/from-the-archives-government-seizes-firms-puts-axis-citizens-in-concentration-camps

…And the entire histories of the First Peoples and the African-Americans in the US. Portland was a mostly-white town when I was growing up; I never had a real conversation with an African-American until my 4th year of college.

Our national legend is that we aspire to be a selfless people. We have this big statue in New York Harbor that is a monument to the legend. As a person of Faith, I can say that the majority of the people of Faith [I’m not talking about religion] aspire to be selfless people. We fail. This is one of the many reasons we need Grace.

Because the new Administration is demonstrating so vividly that America no longer aspires to be a selfless nation, I am very angry. What angers me even more is when people of Faith share the mistaken belief that we are in danger from refugees and immigrants, and therefore want to bar them from entrance into this country of immigrants. The only non-immigrants in the news these days are at Standing Rock, and other Reservations; being threatened by a government that has done nothing but lie to them from the beginning.

The number of terrorist attacks in America by refugees and immigrants: 0%

The number of terrorist attacks in America by home-grown American citizens: nearly 100%

The events of 9/11 were perpetrated by foreign nationals from countries that are not included in President45’s Travel Ban.

I’ve never been overly ‘impressed’ with many religious aspects of the Christian faith. I grew up believing in science. Today I study theology more than I study the Bible [probably the explanation of my Progressive Liberal ‘problem’—in some eyes]. I study theology, not because it is more ‘true’ than Scripture, but because theologians often try to frame the truth of Scripture within human experience.

My experiences/encounters with God have never been as dramatic as a burning bush [Moses]; being knocked off my horse and blinded [Paul]; or being swallowed by a big fish [Jonah]. My experiences with the Creator have been dramatic enough for me to say, ‘Marty, pay attention—there is something going on here that is outside your experience.’ I have encountered the Creator—haven’t heard voices, haven’t seen images, and rarely experience these encounters in the presence of others. A guy who represented the other end of the Spiritual continuum once came to my dorm room. When these odd and infrequent events occur, I become aware that a ‘door’ has been opened into another ‘world,’ for lack of a better term; a world that I do not understand.

When we humans try to connect the Creator with human experience, we are mistaken; it is the Creator who does the connection—the Creator connected human experience in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus is the human face of the Creator; however, the Creator is as far beyond our understanding as we are from whales; perhaps as far as we are from the squiggly things crawling under rocks in our gardens. It is our human need to ‘exalt’ ourselves that causes us to equate ourselves with the Creator of the Universe. Scripture describes us as ‘a little lower than the angels’—we assume this is high praise. The point of the Book of Job [one of the oldest books in Scripture] is how small we are. The Creator speaks to Job at the climax of the Book, and points out how little of the Universe Job understands. The fact that physics can now demonstrate that a Creator is not needed for the Universe to function does not mean that a Creator does not exist. It simply means that the Universe is so well-functioning [barring human interference] that it doesn’t need constant maintenance in order for it to function. There are oddities in Creation that make such an assertion seem doubtful.

The real question is whether or not we want to open ourselves to the idea that we are not self-sufficient. When I’m honest with myself, I realize that I am not adequate to keep my car running well; thankfully, cars are so well-made that their need for my attention is relatively small. From my perspective. My mechanic may have a different opinion.

Because MY experience is exactly that—MY experience—I cannot download my experience into someone else’s brain. Another reason why I like the ‘magical thinking’ of Star Trek. I want my doctor to be ‘Doctor McCoy’; and I want ‘Vulcan mind-melding’ to be possible. Sadly, I am ‘marooned’ here in the 21st Century.

FDR said it best—the only thing we need to fear is fear, itself.

We, as a country, are feeding ourselves on a diet of Fear. We are what we eat.

angel.grief_mj

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 115: I’m sorry I’m interrupting your puppies and kittens and desserts…

January 28, 2017

…No, I’m not. I’m sorry for your ignorance.

declaration_cover-lgCover Image: The Declaration of Independence by Melinda Lilly

You grew up thinking that your life was about you. I did the same thing. This is the way our country works—teaching us that what’s important is us. When we think that the important part of this country is our self, those who actually run this country—the 1%—never have to worry about entering the 2%.

Your life was never about you.

Your life is about your relationships with others. Your lack of understanding of this truth is what causes all of your problems.

Some of those reading these words have a serious problem with those who are marching; they believe that somehow these protests demean the country.

If one reads the Declaration of Independence, one can striking parallels between the Declaration and the Executive Orders of Donald Trump in his first week in office. Our Founding Fathers, whether or not they considered women and people of color as “men” this meaning has been interpreted by the Supreme Court. Our Founding Fathers found that the harsh circumstances in which they lived under King George were cause to dissolve their union with Great Britain:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…
… The history of the present [one-week history of the President] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
…
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has [“will”, because on March 16, 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, to fill the vacancy created by the death of Antonin Scalia. Defying their Constitutional authority, the Senate refused to hold a hearing or vote on this nomination made during the last year of Obama’s presidency, insisting that the newly elected president should fill the vacancy, nearly a year later] made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
…
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent [the Mexican Wall and the proposed 25% sales tax on Mexican imports:

 And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

And then they went to War, instead of staging protest marches.

So far, the protesters, following the Worldwide Women’s March on Washington—one week ago—stand in lines, or march, chanting and holding signs. Today they are in airports; protesting Trump’s ban on arrivals from the Middle East. In Dan Rather’s words:
“For generations, we have been an imperfect but vital beacon of freedom to a world too often wandering and failing in moral confusion. But that ultimate strength has dimmed considerably in light of the recent actions on immigration from the new President Donald Trump. We are turning around desperate refugees. We are singling out men, women, and children on the basis of their faith – and we are doing all of this with a randomness and capriciousness that defies reason.
“A colleague of mine used the term “heartless” to describe so much of the President’s executive actions. Sadly, I found it an apt and dispiriting diagnosis—especially when faced with the results of his executive order on immigration. For over the years, I have seen that our greatest American leaders extol empathy rather than condemnation. They have known that in a complicated world, it is best to make policy choices with a scalpel – not a hacksaw. Sometimes, when our national security is threatened at the level of World War II, all-out conflict is the only recourse. But those instances are by far the exception.”

Thankfully a Federal Judge has just ruled that Trump’s Ban on Muslims is unconstitutional [http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/muslim-ban-federal-court].

I’m sorry if your Facebook feed isn’t full of pleasant thoughts and images that make you feel warm and comforted.

It’s a harsh world now, and our President and his ‘Cabinet of the 1%’ have no investment in solving the problem; their investments, literally, are in making the problems worse. A dependence on coal and fossil fuels and a denial of research in alternative means of energy production. Ties to foreign governments. The Conflicts of Interest among Trump and his proposed Cabinet defy imagination.

I am an Immigrant Son—First Generation American on my Mother’s side of my family heritage. My Grandparents and family came here from Norway, when the 20th Century was young.
My paternal grandmother and her siblings were First Generation Americans from Swedish immigrants. My paternal grandfather and his family crossed America by land, their ancestors having come from England and Wales.

By no choice of my own, I come from Northern European stock. So when my grandfather and my father joined the US Army in World War II, the women they left behind weren’t sent to “Internment Centers” [aka Concentration Camps] because they weren’t Japanese. They did not have to give up their homes and belongings because of the color of the skin, and the Creator-given design of their eyes.

There were no German Concentration Camps on American soil. Hard to tell a German by sight.

However, it’s less hard to spot a Native American; their Concentration Camps are called “Reservation”. American treaties with First Peoples were broken as soon as the ink was dry on the impressive parchment. There was a 1% then, too. They were intent on stealing land from the people who had lived on that land for Centuries.

fallen-liberty

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 114: Like a Mountain, an Anthem for Peace

January 15, 2017

llike-a-mountain-1llike-a-mountain-2
While I have long been inspired by Civil Rights Activism, I’ve never really been actively involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Never had the nerve, I suppose; as well as not being particularly fond of being around people. Persons, I like; people, not so much. I didn’t join the Vietnam War protests when I was in college—I was taught that Rebellion was not permitted in my family.

In 2008, when the US invaded Iraq, I was tempted to join the marchers in Portland; again, I didn’t find the nerve.

It’s taken 40+ years, but I’ve finally become involved. The coming President and his Cabinet have me bothered enough to care about people I don’t know. I know there are believers who have been able to look past the failings of the President-Elect to make a choice regarding political priorities. I can’t. The man’s actions, behavior, bluster and juvenile behavior [Twittering] are totally beyond that expected of the ‘leader of the free world’. His threats to people of color, to immigrants, to those who view marriage and ‘intimate behavior’ in a manner not accustomed to in our country’s history, endanger First Amendment freedoms, and the other freedoms set forth in the Bill of Rights. These threats contradict everything I learned about Citizenship, growing up in the ‘American Legion’ family that mine was.

This last week, despite the snowstorm and ice that once again invaded Portland, I’ve joined Activists who protested when I was in college; and Activists who have found their voice in the years that I have missed… Including the son of one of my heroes, Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary. I’ve followed Noel Paul’s career more closely and once wrote him in request that he sing “Wedding Song” at a friend’s wedding. Noel replied that he’d written the song for Peter and his wife; and that he had no plans for singing it at any other weddings. Christopher Yarrow was among the 60+ performers as this chorus was being videotaped yesterday; this video will be combined with the incredible vocal stylings of Marilyn T. Keller and several vocalists, singing a Darrell Grant’s new arrangement of the song originally penned by Naomi Little Bear Morena. This video will be published digitally, on the day before Inauguration Day. Tonight a repeat performance of Like a Mountain, with chorus members who assembled yesterday, will occur at Augustana Lutheran Church’s weekly Gospel/Jazz service.

There are people who are of the opinion that those of us who are protesting the election are simply unwilling to accept the election of the President-Elect instead of Secretary Clinton; nothing could be further from the truth [I voted for Bernie]. Secretary Clinton won nearly 3 million votes more than Trump. A fact that is overcome by the voting of the Electoral College. The problem is that Donald Trump appears to be incapable of telling the Truth, and incapable of having an adult conversation with members of the press. He’s flaunting the delicate relations with world leaders, and to all appearances, intending to line his own pockets through his ownership of the Trump real estate empire.

Of the eligible voters in the 2016 Presidential election, 46% chose not to vote. In reality, something like 70% OF THE ELIGIBLE VOTERS DID NOT VOTE FOR DONALD TRUMP. The 46% have reasons for not voting that I do not understand. My understanding is that some simply could not stomach a vote for either Trump or Clinton; and they were unwilling to vote for the other candidates. The 46% have no reason to complain during the next 4 years; they did nothing to stop the Trump bid for Empire.

There are many who raising their voices.

llike-a-mountain-3

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 114: Being Better Americans

January 2, 2017

fallen-libertyFor months I’ve been saying that if Donald Trump becomes President, we should tear down the Statue of Liberty and send it back to France. One person I mentioned this to replied, “It’s just art.”

But is it ‘just art?’ The first view of America that thousands of immigrants is was the Statue of the Lady in the harbor. Whether or not this is an official icon of our country, the Statue of Liberty has become a symbol of freedom across the world. In less than three weeks, the significance of this image will be forever changed.

From the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lorraine-devon-wilke/our-task-in-2017-be-bette_b_13913238.html

…while [we have] a tragic and dispiriting legacy of Election 2016, we are each and every one of us capable of transcending and resisting it. How?

By being better Americans than the incoming president:

  • By being better people, better leaders; better teachers, mentors, inspirers, and creators, embodying exactly the kind of people we want our children to be.
  • By being industry leaders and innovators who conduct business with respect, integrity, and unassailable ethics.
  • By opening our minds and hearts to learn and absorb new facts and verified truths — not propaganda, not biased misinformation — about people, cultures, ethnicities, religions, and orientations that are “different” and unfamiliar.
  • By extending the compassion and understanding garnered from the above to treat people better, to seek new ways to help, find effective steps toward tangible solutions.
  • By shaking off fixed notions about what sexism is, gaining greater understanding of how it pervades and influences; adjusting our thinking to realize and implement respectful, honorable, and gender-equality behaviors and attitudes towards women.
  • By teaching and exemplifying decorous, respectful, civil, and productive discussion skills, for both virtual and tangible conversation and debate. Trollism has had a deleterious effect on our culture and, unfortunately, the new president is the King of Trolls. Let’s change the trend and raise the bar.
  • By realizing that “politically correct” actually means being sensitive and aware of evolving culture, mores, ideas, and attitudes, and adjusting according. That rejecting the notion of “politically correct” is most often the tool of those who traffick in bigotry, hate, racism, sexism, trollism, and verbal abuse.
  • By understanding that loyalty and patriotism do not require blind acceptance of the words, actions, and policies of any one person, including the new president, nor do they preempt one’s right to free speech and civil liberty. They do, however, suggest one not aggrandize the dictator of an antagonistic foreign government over one’s own.
  • And, lastly, and in an umbrella overview: by acknowledging and staying vigilant to the new president’s long and growing list of negatives, using those as bullet-points of what not to be, do, and emulate. That almost makes it easy, doesn’t it?

 

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 113: Pay No Attention to the Man…

December 12, 2016

pay-no-attention“We wanna fix up our infrastructure bigly. That includes – and who’s better at that stuff than me? Believe me. Hey I don’t need your vote anymore, but I’m telling you I’ve very good at that. That’s right I don’t need your vote, can you imagine that? Four years, I’ll need your vote.”
Donald Trump, 12/11/2016

Approximately 59% of the eligible voters in the US chose to vote. Approximately 40% of the eligible voters chose to abstain. Of the voters who chose to vote, approximately 48% voted for Hillary Clinton; approximately 46% voted for Donald Trump.

Approximately 27% of the American voters sold the country to Donald Trump.

“He’ll shake things up”

“He’s going to run the country like a business”

Yeah. He’s going to run the country like a business. He’s going to run the country like HIS business; he’s not going to run the country like YOUR business. It appears, from the words of ‘The Great and Powerful Donald,” he now owns one of the world’s largest businesses, ‘Trump America’.

From what the talking heads have said, as they justify his selections for his cabinet, the primary quality they have is that they are “successful”.

Successful at what?

Successful at making money? Is that what being “successful” in America has come to mean?

The reality is that we don’t even know if ‘The Great and Powerful Donald” IS successful…We know that he has a lot of property with his name on it, property all over the world. But since we spent all of our energy focusing on Hillary’s email, we never really found out if Donald is even solvent. He has been afraid to show us his tax returns. Given his out-of-court settlement for his Trump University scam, and the cost of the election campaign, he might have run out of cash…until this last couple of weeks, when his business capital has expanded mightily, cashing in on “President-Elect”. Now that he’s been elected [in theory—the Electoral College has not voted yet; he has not won ANY Electoral Votes, they are merely committed to him], he has absolutely no reason to show us his financial records.

He apparently plans to charge the Secret Service a million dollars a year to protect him—the cost of renting a floor of Trump Tower, in New York, where he plans to do much of his business during his time in office. He only wants National Security Briefings once a week; does this mean he really only plans on being in the White House once a week?

His apparent selection for Secretary of State is a man who has serious financial ties to Russia—‘he knows all the players’. His proposed selection for the Environmental Protection Agency is a man who is committed to ‘de-regulating’ the EPA—meaning, getting rid of all of those pesky rules that prevent Corporate America from making a profit.

“Air pollution in India is so bad that it kills half a million people every year…”

The Washington Post, May, 2016

“New Delhi is the most polluted city on Earth right now…” CNN November 2016

“China tops WHO list for deadly outdoor air pollution…” The Guardian, September 2016

“Paris winter air pollution is worst in 10 years…” France 24, December 2016

Even if one is mind-boggled enough to doubt that “Climate Change” exists, such as people like Donald Trump, the reality is that the air in China, the air in India, the air in Paris…

IS OUR AIR.

There is only one AIR on planet Earth.

The polluted air of the other major land masses on Earth will soon find its way here. There is nowhere else for it to go. Particulates will pollute the ground we walk on. The Earth’s vegetation will convert the carbon dioxide to oxygen; but we are rapidly defoliating the Earth. The plants won’t scrub the toxins from the air; the heavier toxins will enter the ground or cover the buildings and the pavement, or land in the water.

When the 2017 EPA Director comes into office, what will happen to the DAPL; and the one victory for America’s First People in 200+ years of history?
What will happen when the Missouri River is polluted by petroleum? What will happen to the aquifer under the Dakotas, when it is polluted with petroleum?

We can’t drink petroleum. I guess we’ll have to buy water from Nestle’s…

There are dead places at the bottom of Earth’s oceans—places where nothing will live again. Sea life can’t drink petroleum, either.

Trump’s cabinet is being filled with people from Goldman Sachs—the very people Trump complained were Hillary’s allies.

It seems that 27% of the American voters chose to ignore the character of the man. We were told about his character; but his character apparently wasn’t as important as the claims he was making during his campaign. “Lock Her Up!” was a major claim; one he now says was ‘for show’. What other campaign ‘promises’ were simply for show?

I grew up in the fifties and sixties, being told that Character was the most important quality in being an American. When I came to Christ, I was told that Character is the most important quality of a follower of Jesus.

What happened?

 

 

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Chronicles In Ordinary Time 105: We create the light we see

September 24, 2016

When I started telling my wife about the idea I’m  writing about, she ‘virtually’ [as opposed to reality] threw up her hands and started singing ‘lalalalalalalala’…

I realize this may not make sense to many of you.

something to think about…

eyeball_2Light enters the eyeball, gets reversed, top-to-bottom; and then is converted into electro-chemical signals which are sent through the optic nerve to the nerve cells in our brains.

We then perceive the world as if we were watching a flat-screen TV or a theater screen…

There is no light inside the brain; in spite of what our snarky schoolyard buddies told us when they looked into our ears.

We create the light we see.

We create this light in an instant; so fast that it seems sort of like a ‘reflection’ but it isn’t.

Della's BrainNeurons firing in a Functional MRI

Among the evidence for this concept are those whose vision is ‘quirky’—people with color blindness; people with Irlen’s Syndrome, whose brains cannot process black letters on white paper—but can process black letters on colored paper; people like a friend of mine who has a ‘hole’ in his brain—there is a portion of his brain where no ‘gray matter’ exists; as a result, he sees without depth perception.

We seem to be living, here in America, in a place where darkness is gaining the upper hand; yet, we create the light we see. We can be light for the world, if we choose to live this way. It’s a choice.

A routine traffic stop should not be a life-threatening situation; but it has become that way.

It’s a choice.

Portland has become highly-ranked city on a number of surveys. I’ve heard numbers above 100 for people moving to Portland every day. However, we don’t have housing for over 100 new people per day. In fact, we have a LARGE homeless population, in the thousands, some of whom have been priced out of a place to live; because the landlord raised the rent. Because they can. Housing is at such a premium that a landlord can ask nearly any number they want, and someone will accept it. Cheaper than where they came from. Buying houses has become problematic because housing prices are also skyrocketing.

Because they can.

Whether they should, apparently doesn’t enter into the debate.

Being a landlord is a ‘crap shoot’. My son is a ‘third-generation landlord’ of my parents’ first house. This summer, while working on the house, I realized I have painted that house for 50 years… Excellent tenants, good tenants, and tenants that I wish I had never known about. During my years of working at the City, and due to the generosity of my parents, we were able to live frugally on a single income. We didn’t need the rent to make ends meet; so we usually rented it out at below-market-rates. When it became time to have the last couple move out, we needed to evict them, because they couldn’t find anywhere else to live as cheaply; and he apparently felt no need to work for a living. We rented to her; she let him freeload off of her ‘back-breaking’ work as a retail manager.

 

extraordinary_2Background for a movie poster

Every now and then, as an illustrator, I’m given the opportunity to play as I work. Work is no longer ‘work’; it becomes play—until my body tells me it’s time to stop, when I’m not ready to be done for the day. Then, play becomes work.

It’s perception.

Even the pain that I feel throughout my body these days is perception. Some days, I’m so engrossed in my project that pain is moved far back in my perception—until I need to use the bathroom; and the pain comes rushing back.

 

Jesus said that His followers should be like a city on a hill, whose light could be seen from all around. The light is pretty dim, these days.

And yet, we create the light we see.

 

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 82: The Search for Meaning, Part One

October 23, 2015

watson's brain2“Watson’s Brain”

I’ve long been fascinated by the human brain and perception…

If Myers-Briggs is accurate, my personality type is INTJ, and is only shared by 2% of the population. 98% of any group perceives the world with a different type of thinking. Consequently, I see things differently than most people; and most people see things differently than I do.

The “mechanics” of vision is such that no two people see a scene in exactly the same way. Light passes through the lenses in our eyes, gets flipped upside down and then is bounced off of light-sensitive cells at the back of our eyeballs to send electro-chemical messages through the optic nerve to our brains. Somehow these electro-chemical signals cause us to see the world as if we were looking through a picture screen at the front of our heads… People with color blindness and disorders like Irlen Syndrome have cells in the retina that don’t work properly; floor the color-blind person colors look differently than the colors I see. For people with Irlen Syndrome, the letters on this screen might look scrambled. I know a guy who has a ‘hole’ in his brain—parts of the brain tissue are missing, for no known reason, and as a result he has no depth perception. Looking through his eyes is the same as you looking at this monitor—my drawings have the illusion of depth, because of the way they are shaded; but they have no real depth. You really aren’t looking at a piece of paper attached to your screen…

I watched “THE BRAIN WITH DAVID EAGLEMAN” on PBS the other night…

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365587672/

Some quotations from the show:

“What makes you You? For a long time the answer was an immortal soul, or spirit; something that goes beyond mere matter and gives you your life and your identity. But the modern story of the brain tells a different story: who we are can only be understood in terms of the 3-pound organ in our heads…what makes humans unique “is the way
that the human brain can mold to fit the world around it.” Our brains come with some basic programming that allows us to learn language and facial expression; “but the remarkable thing is the degree to which our brains are
unfinished. Which leads to a period of prolonged helplessness. But the plan is that instead of hardwiring everything the way most of the animal kingdom
does, our brains are designed to let life experience wire up the rest of the brain…

“The number of brain cells in a child is the same as the number of brain cells in an adult. The secret lies in the how those cells are connected. Over the first two years of
life, the neurons begin connecting extremely rapidly; forming as many as two million new connections every second. By age two, the typical neuron has more
than 15,000 connections. That is almost twice as many as found in an adult. After the age of two, the growth is halted. The process of becoming someone is about pruning back the possibilities that are already present. You become who you are not because of what grows in your brain, but what is removed.

As we grow and learn new skills, we reduce the number of connections in our brain–in favor of focusing on a smaller number of stronger connections…the connections go from being universal to being specific. Those links you don’t’ use, you lose. Over the course of childhood, brain circuitry is wired up according to experience and interaction with the environment. But this dependence on the outside world is a gamble. The outside world won’t always provide what a brain needs…”

Eagleman doesn’t address the italicized text above—the language that speaks of design, as opposed to randomness. Most of the Animal Kingdom enters this world with built-in programming. Who does the programming? If our brains are different in that they are grown in our mother’s womb, with minimal hardwired programming, but with the ability to make connections between sounds, feelings, smells and abstract words, how does that ability come into being?

At the end of the episode, Eagleman points out that no one has figured out what the mechanism is that gives certain connections greater meaning than other connections. What defines Meaning?

I believe that Meaning is connected to that “immortal soul” that Eagleman discounts at the beginning of the episode. An integral part of the human psyche that can’t be measured. I believe that the ‘connections’ we make to the world around us as we grow, can be made in a similar manner to a ‘world’ we cannot see, feel or touch—the world of the Spirit. The association of the world of spiritual belief and the world of physical experience are similar to the concepts of ‘parallel universes’—universes that we cannot perceive, that exist next to our own universe. I believe that some of the connections that are made between the neurons of your brain can be influenced by your Creator…

We can change the way we think.

We can decide that the way we have thought in the past is not getting us to the future we desire, and that today we will begin following a different path.

We have the ability to make new connections between the neurons that register ideas, and that we don’t have to maintain the thought processes from our parents’ belief systems as we move into our teenage years of growing independence. We can make new connections between our ‘stockpile’ of past experiences and sensations, and come to new conclusions. These new conclusions can change our lives.

 

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 76: It’s always too soon to quit…

August 10, 2015

peacock window

A dear friend of mine recently posted some quotations from Marcus Aurelius on Facebook; a mutual friend, a woman we don’t know all that well, in reading his post remembered inspiration she received by reading the writings of this this long-dead Roman Emperor; and baby Aurelia was given her name. In the annals of history, being the instrument of the naming of a child is probably a small thing; however, she is only a few weeks old, and has her entire life ahead of her. Who knows what the inspiration from a Roman Emperor of 1900 years ago might have upon her life? The naming of each of our children was a well-thought-out experience, and I imagine it’s the same for many parents. We can never overlook the possibilities that our smallest acts contain.

This dear friend of mine has a lot of reasons for doubting the value of his life; he battles a chemical imbalance in his brain; probably a result of genes—something he cannot control. One of my ‘fears’ is that one day the chemistry will win out over what he knows in his heart-of-hearts to be true. When such ‘fears’ come upon me, I turn them over to the Author of Life, in whose name my dear friend was raised. Whatever events happen in our earthly lives, I know that we will meet again in the Life to Come. This is a promise from the Author of Life.

Sixty-three years of life; forty-two of them walking with the Author of Life. I rather wish I’d kept a list of the ‘small things’ that have happened in my life that ended up being extremely significant. Many of the ‘small things’ were barely noticed; like the song that just happened to start playing as I’m writing this paragraph [statistically, a 1/1340 chance]—The Impossible Dream, which caused to realize that there is more to live for in this life than the stuff we find around us. The story of the ‘Man of La Mancha,’ presented in a Senior AP English class in high school by “Captain Bob” Bonniwell opened the door to faith in my life. The older I get, the larger the pile of ‘stuff’ gets, and the more potent-smelling it becomes. And still I contend that it is better to live life as it could be, to live life as it ought to be lived; rather than to live life as it often presents itself in our circumstances. I never made the opportunity to thank Captain Bob. Should have.

I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to create a life for myself that allows me a lot of time to think, to ponder, to hope and to dream. The dreams are harder now, partially because the Dreambuilders I once surrounded myself with aren’t around. But I still am able to ponder and hope. I too often fail to realize what a gift my lifestyle has become for me. Most people have little time to think about LARGE concepts, such as faith. I wish I had the ability to download faith into all those who need it; I’d post it in a Dropbox and plaster the URL across the internet. Sadly, I can’t do that. By “faith” I’m not talking about religion; it often starts with religion; however, there is a Faith that transcends religion. I’m not there yet, but I can see it in the distance.

One of our shortcomings as human beings is that we tend to think that we are something special; just by being human. In today’s world, “American Exceptionalism” is probably the most insidious version of this curse—at least within the American culture. I believe that when the Creator said, “let us make man in our own image,” the Creator wasn’t talking about form. I believe that the gift we were given, that gift which is in the Creator’s image, is our ability to Create. There are other creatures that use tools; creatures like the spider that can build a web we can’t even begin to replicate—and these abilities are hard-wired into their tiny brains and neurological systems. Birds make nests; I don’t know if there are birds who have realized that all that plastic garbage we leave lying around can become weather-proof roofs over their heads…

We have the ability to create our own realities; and by this gift we are human, slightly lower than the angels. As animals, humans display a lot of behavior that is far from special. We are more than animals.

I’m in an *interesting* place in life. I don’t have ALS—it’s clear that I don’t have ALS—and yet I can’t help but wonder if what I experience is similar to those with ALS: watching my body ‘dissolve’ around me. I end most evenings [early mornings to much of the world] watching ‘hero stories’ on DVD. I find that drawing-time seems to work best after 10p or 11; and lasts for 3-4 hours; after which it simply hurts too much to keep sitting down. So I move to the couch, and watch a couple hours of ‘hero’ stories; and then I try to figure out how I’m going to get off of the couch, and make my way to bed. I was at a friends’ house yesterday, and sat down on a footstool; I immediately realized that this was a bad choice, because the footstool turned out to be much squishier than I expected it to be. When it was time to leave that room, I waited until I was the last one there, so I could figure out what method I’d use to get myself from footstool to standing up… I honestly can’t tell if it’s a strength issue or a function [lack of] issue. Getting up from the footstool was awkward, and I am innately self-conscious.

There are a couple of old guys in my life, guys who cannot [yet] cope with the idea of ‘new normal’—a new set of conditions in their lives that make their former plans extremely difficult to achieve. Neither of them live with the difficulties that one of my heroes lives with; a woman who has lived most of her life in a wheelchair, with a body that mostly does not respond to her control. She’s endured more operations than she has years in her life. Her physical abilities are far less than those of the two old codgers I’m writing about; and yet they have trouble finding a reason to stay alive. My hero-friend has been making that choice for a long time.

We make choices as to how we will live our lives. Some of us have horrible crap to overcome; some of us merely have inconvenience to overcome; and we think that it’s ‘horrible crap’ because our view of life is too small… Each day above ground is a gift, whether or not we want to see it that way. And we are given tremendous flexibility as to how we will use this gift.

How will you use your gift, today?

How will I use mine?

Summer King

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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 72: The Hard Questions

May 22, 2015

Black Care

Abraham Lincoln battled it before and while he was President. A lot of the world’s great artists battled it all the time; and sometimes battled to the death.

Theodore Roosevelt called it “Black Care”—I wrote about it before:

https://mjarts.wordpress.com/2014/03/14/chronicles-in-ordinary-time-47-black-care/

Today we call it Clinical Depression, Bi-Polar Disorder, Manic-Depression—they aren’t all the same, but they have some similarities. They all lurk in my gene pool [which hasn’t been filtered well enough]. Dealing with Black Care can be awful.

Thanks to the wonder of modern chemistry, I may have passed through another valley. It seems too soon for the increased dosage of Prozac to have worked, but there’s some sunlight in my life today; couldn’t say that yesterday. I still ache all day, I get shooting pains in a variety of places all day long, my feet feel sunburned all the time. My teeth are clenched—I realized I have a habit of pushing on my upper palate with my tongue—it keeps me from grinding my teeth…

Sometimes I get asked how I write these Chronicles [or, I receive spam that looks like someone is asking a question]. Usually they percolate in my brain for a period of time [ruminate might be a better word]; and I get the urge to put the words on digital paper. Frequently the hard part is finding the illustration. I generally don’t draw people in a snarky mood. Too close to home.

People who are very important to me are dealing with a lot of shit right now; and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it besides praying for them, and asking some ‘prayer warriors’ I know to pray as well. Prayer isn’t magic. The Creator is not our magic butler who makes everything work out for us. A lot of the time, I think that when all of the Gears of Life [think of the Lionsgate Movies logo] are turning in such a way that the Creator’s plans work out to our advantage, we sometimes see unexpected, but hoped-for things happen in our lives…Being human, we only consider answered prayer to be “yes”—sometimes the answer is “wait” and we don’t like that answer. We like “no” even less; but by definition, “no” is an answer.

The pain of those close to me is my own pain. This is part of the reason I allow so few people to get close to me. My daughter’s tears at 35-ish set off the same internal alarms that they did when she was 5. Reading about my son’s tears sets off the same alarms. And I don’t want to not hear those tears. Part of the weirdness of being a parent.

I’m currently wading through Augustine; CS Lewis recommended that we should always read from older periods in history, so that we can better understand the present. I haven’t followed that advice too strongly; but my first introduction into ‘theology’ was reading Marcus Aurelius in college. He asked the same questions I was asking. Job, the oldest book in Torah/the Old Testament, something like 4000 years old, asks the same questions.

“How can there be a loving God when this is such an awful place to live?”

“How can a loving God allow all of the hatred and war in the world?”

“How can there be a loving God who allows typhoons and earthquakes to devastate populations?”

“How can there be a loving God who allowed the Holocaust, and who allows the brutality of ISIS and Boko Haram?”

My short answer to these questions is that we have a Creator who has endowed us with Free Will and so values our individuality and respects our right to express ourselves that He allows us to commit all of the stupidity we find necessary to live; in hopes that some day, as individuals, we will come to our senses, and ask the Creator “how should we live?”

Just because people commit crime and blame it on God does not mean that God had anything to do with the crime…God gets blamed for an incredible amount of human misery.

“Torah tells how God caused the Israelites to wipe out nations; God wiped out mankind in the Flood and God sent plagues to the Egyptians. How could a loving God do that?”

I believe that Torah and the New Testament are True, and Inspired by the Creator. I also believe that these books are more like what we term “a journal” than complete histories of those times. These are the journals of the Hebrew people and the early Church. Statements and explanations of what happened; they don’t necessarily explain what the Creator wanted to have happen. I sometimes wonder if the things attributed to the Creator really were the Creator’s wishes…The things happened—David murdered Bathsheba’s husband so that he could get into her pants—it was not the Creator’s will. We are granted an incredible amount of choice, and sometimes we choose to blame God for our own greed and selfishness.

How could God have destroyed innocent men, women and children?

I have no idea what the destroyed nations were like; perhaps these nations were committed to paths of destruction. Human sacrifice [often sacrifice of children] was a very common way to ‘appease the gods’ in ancient times. Animal sacrifice goes on today. For a moment, suppose those nations were like ISIS and Boko Haram? Would our question have a different answer?

Who will the young boys living under ISIS grow up to be? Will they emulate their fathers and uncles? Would it be more merciful if they didn’t grow up at all? This isn’t a question I have been given to answer.

As 21st Century American individuals, we have no real understanding of what it would be like to live under an all-powerful and benevolent Ruler who commands obedience for our own welfare. It’s never happened in recorded history. Even writing the words, “commands obedience” causes warning lights to flash in my head. Growing up with my Dad. The Creator isn’t like my Dad. My Dad, was in some ways, like the Creator.

When the Israelites asked God to give them a king, so they could be like other nations, God’s response was a warning that they really won’t like what happens if they have an earthly King; and yet God gave Israel a King. The Kings of Israel were just as flawed and stupid as the rest of humanity.

We live on a rock floating in space, rotating at 24,000 mph, and traveling around our Sun for a year per revolution. Our distance from the Sun changes over the course of the year; our planet’s tilt, relative to the Sun, and that changing distance cause extreme changes in temperature during that year. At the center of this rock is a molten core of incredibly hot liquid. The surface of our world is a series of rock-plates that float on this molten core—extremely simplified geology. I live on the side of a volcano that is situated in a region that will most likely have a devastating earthquake in the coming decades. I haven’t moved to Iowa; nor to Maui, which would be my preference. There is only so much potential for destruction that my imagination will allow me to deal with.

Given all that we have learned about the non-static nature of the earth, why would we expect it to be static and always nice?

“Because God created the world and called it good.”

The Hebrew word translated as “good” is defined as, “to be (transitively, do or make) good (or well) in the widest sense.” To expect that ‘good’ means ‘perfect’ is projection of what we’d like it to mean. I think ‘good’ probably means something more like ‘sufficient’ than like ‘exceptional.’

I have three of the most terrific adult children that a parent could ask for. They are all flawed, in different ways than I am flawed; they all have traveled paths I wish they wouldn’t have traveled; and yet I have always tried to support their endeavors to the best of my ability at that time.

My children don’t experience the relationship with their Creator that I experience. I have no idea why, because I never asked for my experience…which isn’t entirely true, because I did ask for this experience; I just didn’t know what I was asking for. I knew that I didn’t know enough about life to live it successfully; three years in college had already made that clear to me. I had no spiritual background or experience, growing up. Asking the Creator of Life to lead me seemed to be a really smart choice when I finally understood the question; I really couldn’t understand why my parents weren’t as enthusiastic about this new awareness as I was. I found they had run from the Church; they never talked about the particulars.

The older I get, and the more I see of life, the more I wonder how my children view me. Someone with some odd beliefs about how Life works; perhaps someone who isn’t as enlightened as they are…

I have been blessed with encounters with the Living Creator for the last 40-odd years [or 40 odd years]. I long ago realized that mine is not a universal experience; and when it is experienced, it often is expressed in a manner that I find very peculiar. Probably as peculiar as my children view me; and as peculiar as I viewed ‘religion’ in my first years of college. I admire a gal at our church who says that she doesn’t have a ‘sarcasm’ gene. I can’t relate, but I admire the concept.

I am bothered that as a parent, I didn’t demonstrate the nature of “belief in the Creator” in such a way that my children would want to emulate that belief. Scripture teaches that my belief is a gift of the Creator. Sometimes I feel like it was a gift given to the wrong person. I can’t see my life as my Creator sees my life. That happens when I get Home.

I believe we are created with Eternal Souls; that Earth is a place where we are intended to learn how to live well with our fellow creatures. I believe there is another ‘plane of existence’ that isn’t tied to bodies and disease and suffering; and that we arrive at that plane when we leave these damaged bodies behind. I also believe that we could do a much better job of living with each other than we do. It’s our greed, our stupidity, our selfishness that makes this world a garbage heap…

We can each become the change we want to see in the world. That’s frequently a statement that is much easier to write than it is to do. I wouldn’t have written this statement in recent days. I thank God for Prozac. Those who manage to get through this life without the aid of chemistry are truly blessed.

piggy back draft 5From “A Dimly Burning Wick” a Hiroshima Diary

 

 

 

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Posted in art, careers, children's books, depression, Illustration, neuropathy, pain, self-employment, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Chronicles in Ordinary Time 72: The Hard Questions

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