Category Archives: Politics

Commentary on the news, Great Work, Myth and Story, Politics, Third Phase, US History

A Second Act

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Lughnasa and the Labor Day Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Kate. Amber. Rigel. Kep. Cool morning. The Pandemic. Trump. BLM. Prostate cancer. Lung disease. Sjogren’s. CBE. Mussar. Tara. Electric cars. The dying of the extractive fossil fuel industries. Climate change. The Book of Revelation.

Predicting the end of the world is a parlor game played by intellectuals and cranks. It never fails to terrify, alarm, or make someone laugh. Think of all the cartoons with the bearded man and the sign: The End is Near.

Apocalypse. It’s hard to put the word aside these days: Murder Hornets, Covid, Trump, Climate Change (remember climate change?), that asteroid, Hurricane Laura. It has me checking the clouds for a guy in a flowing robe and an angry tilt to his eyebrows.

Remember 2012? Y2K? The first models of what the Coronavirus might do? Evangelicals support Israel because they think it will encourage the second coming. No, really.

Instead, I hear T.S. Eliot, “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.” Our sense of drama wants, needs a bang, but I’d say the most likely scenario for the end of humanity comes after centuries of an Earth made too hot for us by our own actions. A self-destructive species, us Humans.

You’ll probably not guess where I’m going with this. It means to me that our nation will survive the Donald, will take him, the pandemic, even the Asteroid and murder Hornets, and recreate ourselves.

There may be no second acts in America, but I believe there will be a second act for America. The last four years, colored even darker by the “if it were fiction, it wouldn’t be believable.” nature of the last few months, have had certain oddly positive effects.

The racist (and, classcist) strands in our history have been written clearly in blood and anger. Black Lives Matter and its counter protesters in the alt-right have put on a medieval morality play in cities across the country. See Kenosha. Portland. Minneapolis. The reactions of police and the denizens of the right-wing demimonde have clarified what’s at stake for our nations future. I believe we will see positive policy changes in cities and in our nation, especially after the election.

The orange excrescence has performed a similar service for the small d democrats here. Who are, I believe, most of us on the left and right. We now know how important not only the constitutional nature of our government is, but the norms and traditions it has developed over 200 years of history as well.

That’s why I’m seeing a sign on a Brookforest yard that reads: I’m a Republican, but I’m no Fool: Vote Biden. That’s why all those national security folks have gone on record as supporting Trump. Even George Bush. George Will. Many other prominent members of what used to be the GOP.

We will have an opportunity, if we choose to take it, to reimagine this nation. Our founding documents and our founders will play a strange role in this reimagining.

That 3/5th’s “compromise.” Sally Hemmings. All those George Washington owned slaves. The white, male, property owner requirement for voting. Not who we want or need to be anymore. Let them now live on as the sins of the fathers that were visited on our generation, but finally expiated.

I’ve taken mild liberties with the text, but this should serve as a template for the next four years:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men of us are created equal, that we are endowed by our 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 all men and women, 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.

We gray beards and gray heads have a role to play in this exciting time. Just what it is, I’m not sure, but it has something to do with insisting on our better natures. Will you join me as we search for Rumi’s field out beyond right and wrong?

Commentary on the news, Judaism, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., US History

Not One Thing

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Lughnasa and the Lughnasa Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Amber. Stat locks. Kate’s healing stoma site. Rigel, whose love buoys me up. Kep and his steadfastness. Kate’s reading. Invisible Man right now. Ellison’s classic. The almost full Lughnasa Moon, red over Black Mountain this morning. Our more organized upstairs. Needing more blankets. The kindness of CBE.

Cancel culture. from Merriam-Webster: “To cancel someone (usually a celebrity or other well-known figure) means to stop giving support to that person.” I’m giving the definition because I’ve been reading this term for a while now and didn’t know what it meant. Once I found the definition I immediately thought of a recent change I’d made in my e-mail signature:

“There is a love of wild Nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love ever showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties.” ― John Muir btw: Yes. I know about his racism. And, I deplore it. But, I also know about his love of the natural world and I love it. None of us are all one thing.

Other items I read pointed to the #metoo movement as a starting point as well as the more recent protests around George Floyd. It goes deeper and further back than that, though. Sinners don’t get into heaven. How much sin denies you entrance through the Pearly Gates? Never real clear. I’m speaking as a theologian here. Martin Luther famously said, “Hate the sin and love the sinner.” I’ve always found that an important idea.

Taboo. Kapu. Karma. Sin. Religious ideas that get social traction. In the Christian tradition the idea of sin, hamartia, missing the mark, plays an outsized role. IMHO. So outsized that it can cancel your heavenly bliss.

But who decides if your sins are too much? Or, just this side of the line?

In Christianity, God decides. But who knows how God views a particular person? Especially yourself? This question has dogged Christian apologetics for centuries. How can we know whether or not we stand in God’s favor? Clearly an important question if the afterlife is in play. Eternity.

The Protestant Ethic* is a good example of how this question can lead to corruption and blasphemy. Calvinists especially felt a need to know where they stood since predeterminism, in some cases double predestination, was a cornerstone of Reform theology. Double predestination says that God not only predetermines all actions in the universe, but also (the double part) determines who goes to hell and who gets salvation.

Since the race was all over at the starting line, the finishing places of everyone already known, it became critical to see if there were signs in this life that could identify which direction you were headed after death.

The Protestant Ethic came to identify hard work and success, financial success in particular, as evidence of God’s favor. A golden ticket.

What was not to be known was God’s judgment. Among believers in the Protestant Ethic who bought pews and clergy, a surety of salvation arrogated to themselves the power of God. That is blasphemy. You could even call it a form of witchcraft, using spells and incantations to bind divinity. For that was surely the expectation. I lived right, I did well. Reward me.

Cancel culture uses similar logic to discover who is damned. Commit a sex crime. Cancel them! Woody Allen. Harvey Weinstein. Bill Cosby. Commit an act of racist hatred. Cancel them. Lindsey Graham. DJT. Derek Chauvin. George Wallace. Bull Connor. And so many unnamed yet. The perpetrators of police murder. Cancel them! The reinforcers of systemic racism. The apologists for wealth and power. Their insurers.

Let me be clear. These are heinous crimes, sins against humanity, and deserve punishment. Prison. Public diminishment. The ignominy of seeing yourself in history books as bad examples.

But. All of these people, like John Muir, are not one thing. Not only sexual predator, not only racist cops or politicians or creepy entertainers. I don’t know any of them well, but there might be a good father there. A devoted son.

Cancel culture condemns the whole person for one aspect of their personality. I understand the impulse. That wrong is, in my eyes, so awful, so often neglected, that those who get caught must be pilloried in the square forever.

But we can’t do that. If so, we’ll need to get someone to make each of us stocks and lock ourselves in them. These bad impulses, the yetzer hara as Judaism names it, are attempts to gratify the ego. And that’s all they are.

Each person also contains a yetzer hatov, an impulse to bear the burden of the other, to love the neighbor as the self. We all let our yetzer hara out to play. Perhaps not as egregiously as the canceled, the left behind of our culture, but perhaps so, too.

We need, no, must, see each human, including ourselves, as working our way through this life, this one wild and precious life, as well as we can. Some choose a slack hold on their impulses, hoping gratification will lift them up. Some choose to struggle, to work with the selfish impulse as a means for motivating change, achievement.

We all, always, have this choice. Even Cosby. Even Chauvin. Even Wallace.

Let’s not have any more left behinds in this damaged and broken nation. We’ll need all our resources to come back from Covid and Trump.

*”Protestant ethic, in sociological theory, the value attached to hard work, thrift, and efficiency in one’s worldly calling, which, especially in the Calvinist view, were deemed signs of an individual’s election, or eternal salvation.” Encyclopedia Britannica

Family, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Writing

Let The World Be New

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Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Mountain Waste. Garbage truck drivers. Mail folk. Snow plow drivers. All risk their lives on curvy mountain roads with limited sight lines. Summer and winter. Everyday bravery. Kate’s better day. Lisa, seeing Lisa today. Get some next steps with Kate’s shortness of breath and nausea.

I named the Lughnasa Moon as a reminder that the Great Wheel underlies most of what I believe these days, as a way to get back to the Celtic, the mythic, as a way to remind myself of the wonders floating in my imagination. Easy to lose sight of in Covid days and feeding tube nights.

George Will. An honest man. Writes superbly. His column today in the Washington Post, Biden’s election will end national nightmare 2.0, references Gerald Ford’s comment at his inauguration that “our long, national nightmare is at an end.” In conclusion Will writes: “Forty-six years later, an exhausted nation is again eager for manifestations of presidential normality.” I hadn’t considered this, but it would take one huge source of angst off the domestic table.

I’m looking for brightness, for the upbeat, for the comforting. Will provided some. Grateful for it.

I’m also looking for fairies, for Gods and Goddesses. Ready to get back to Jennie’s Dead. A place of refuge. A place where the world can become new with my fingers on the keyboard.

Coronavirus, Family, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Save Baron

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Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Sunday gratefuls: The Wolf’s Trail. A gift from a close friend. Thanks, Tom. Amazon. (I know. But, still.) Pick-up. Yet more rain. 49 degrees this morning. Sushi Win. Spring rolls. Wonton soup. Sushi Win special role. Rigel, head out the window, ears back, facial fur streaming back. Ivory. Old reliable. 120,000 miles. Still fine except for air con and a couple of dings. Black Mountain Drive. Brook Forest. Evergreen.

When I last saw granddaughter Ruth, she told me about a movement among her peers, 14 years old or so, called Save Baron. I love this. His age peers taking either an ironic or a genuine interest in his welfare. Not exclusive notions. What would it be like, they think, to be Baron? With Melania the naked first lady and the orange topped donald as a father? Who better to underline his predicament than those entering high school this year? I hope they succeed. The world does not need another person with the donald’s politics or, even worse, his aesthetics.

Doom scrolling is impossible to dodge unless you never look at the news, online or on the tube or at your breakfast table. Headlines. Numbers with arrows. Graphs. Maps with red states, orange states, brownish states. A vaccine comment here. A why did they wait so long to lock down article there? An article on the economy here.

And it’s not like we don’t care. We do. But everyday. All the time. The slow drip, the fast drip. Hard.

Kate’s had more bad days than good ones recently. Shortness of breath, nausea, general ickiness. Episodic. A bad stretch right now. A lot of it down to Sjogren’s. The rest? Don’t know. Makes things darker here on Shadow Mountain.

I’ve had another round of allergies. New this year. Not sure what’s up with that, but it’s unpleasant. Stuffy. Runny. Headache. Colors the days here, too.

Wanted this to be more upbeat, but…

Politics, US History

We Can’t Waste This Crisis

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Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Buddies Alan, Tom, Bill. Sally, too. Kate’s openness. The meal I made yesterday, which wasn’t so good. Derek. Who will continue transporting the fallen from our yard to his wood stove. Peter Praski who fixed our ceiling lights in the living room and comes today to work on the fan. Jude and his shipping container. Eduardo and Holly with Holly’s brother there in an Airstream. This mountaintop neighborhood. Diverse politically and economically.

Oh, John. Teddy. Harvey. Woody. Bill. Margaret Sanger. Sexual predators, racists, eugenicists. Harvey and Bill, definitely bad men. But Bill was funny. Harvey produced good movies. Woody makes real art. Margaret Sanger championed birth control. John and Teddy, good men, I think, who chose not to think critically about their views on race.

Luther: hate sin and love the sinner. Not my theological world anymore, but the sentiment is true. None of us are all this or all that. Judaism teaches that we have a yetzer hara, or an inclination to serve only ourselves, and a yetzer hatov, an inclination to bear the burden of the other. Mussar as a spiritual discipline teaches how to balance these two and how to use even our yetzer hara in non-harmful ways.

Yes, a difficult idea. Yes, one that could be used to whitewash (pun intended) the most awful of people, but true nonetheless, I believe. Hitler was a painter. Not a good one. But, still. Does his apparent love of dogs forgive him for his anti-semitism and rancid cruelty? No. But it can be a point of connection between his humanity and our own.

At its best this idea allows us to see our own flaws, to imagine ourselves as a complex person, to not get trapped in the oh, I’m no good at all, or the I’ll never amount to anything psychic swamps. And, to not view one-dimensionally the others in our lives, in our history.

No more than we should forgive the Nazis for their atrocities should we forgive racist, sexist actions, policies, religious beliefs. We must stand against all actions inspired by claims of superiority or inferiority based on secondary characteristics. Must. Always.

MLK said we cannot legislate what is in peoples hearts. But we can make sure their thoughts do not become actions. That’s what the Civil Rights Act, the Affirmative Action legislation, the Voter’s Rights acts were about.

What will we need now? I don’t know. I’m waiting for Black and Latino communities, First Nations to define that. We could pass the E.R.A. That would help women.

Trump has to go. The sycophants of his in the Senate and House, too. That’s the sine qua non to grab this moment for the significant change that can happen. After that, it will take a lot of sausage making. But we cannot waste this crisis. It offers too much.

Commentary on the news, Health, Humor, Politics, US History

A Trumpburger

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Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: The clan. Riyadh. Singapore. San Francisco. Shadow Mountain. Cool mountain mornings. Beau Jo’s pizza. Kep walking on my back this morning. Rigel sniffing her way into breakfast. The new perspective aborning. Gettin’ ‘er done. That new drill. Those ten-year battery smoke detectors.

Let’s start with cows for relaxation.* Or, cow cuddling. Yes, it’s a trend. Before that steak dinner get up close. Might let some of those dairy farmers on the brink achieve a new revenue stream. Other than milk in a bucket. Why not? Cows are big. They’re warm. They’re ungulates.

Also prey animals. That’s the steak part. Probably something folks in India knew long ago. Sacred cows.

That was the sweet part. Let’s turn to jackbooted thugs wandering the streets of Portland grabbing U.S. citizens off the street. Homeland Security. Put in a picture here of my hat that reads: Let’s make Orwell fiction again. Where are all the second amendment freedom-loving Boogaloo bros? This is the kind of government overreach that they prattle on about. Could be a come to Jesus moment for the far right and the far left. Finally, an enemy we can agree on. Not holding my breath.

Then there’s cutting money for covid testing, contact tracing, and the CDC in the new Trumpian budget. More money for storm-troopers, a lot less money for the storm. Not forgetting the obvious move right now of the Administration lawsuit to zero out Obamacare. In the middle of a pandemic. Or consider. Who speaks for the W.H.O.? Not the plague flea in the Oval Office.

One positive for Biden’s campaign is Trump’s promise to restart the daily Coronavirus briefings that served him so well before. Let’s play another round of What Will He Say Next?

One thing he said next is that he will send Federal troops into other big cities. This is not the start of a dictatorship. It’s the realization of one. I’d like a black and white photoshopped image of Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Trump. I will hang it on my wall as a precautionary tale for my grandkids.

Kate asked me the other day about the Trump Presidential Library. Always fun to speculate. Maybe big golden arches with an L.E.D. counter for lies. Let’s say it will start at 45,000. Inside will be screens of tweeted screed, a backroom full of unread briefing books and intelligence updates. Food, you ask? Of course, included in the $45 a person admission will be a large chocolate shake, a Trumpburger, and an order of Freedom Fries. That American Flag napkin is take-home souvenir.

What else can we do? We have to laugh at him. If we take him seriously, all is lost. He’s an unserious man, a man of no depth but infinite in his cruelty and his greed.

Vote. Please. Get your neighbor to vote. Get your family to vote. (No, not red hat Uncle Harry) but everybody else. Please. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote.

Did I mention vote?

* “A farm in upstate New York is offering self-care seekers the chance to spend 90 minutes cosying up to cows. The Mountain Horse Farm explains that cows are “sensitive, intuitive animals” who will “pick up on what’s going on inside and sense if you are happy, sad, feel lost, anxious or are excited, and they will respond to that without judgement.”” Guardian

Commentary on Religion, Coronavirus, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Politics, US History

A Hard Place to Be

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Sunday gratefuls: My partner, Kate. Our sweet girl, Rigel. And, our good boy, Kepler. Kate’s stoma site looking better. The front yard, looking clean and foresty with the stumps gone. The backyard looking good, will look better before Labor Day. Window cleaners, gutter cleaners in August. Yeah. Rethinking our Covid life. Republican, Trumpian angst.

Every limbo boy and girl
All around the limbo world
Gonna do the limborock
All around the limbo clock
Jack be limbo, Jack be quick Chubby Checker, 1962

Remember the limbo? Wonder how we’d all do now? Those of us in the Boomer brigade. Would not be pretty, I imagine. Kate and I used this word today to name a source of sadness. Covid has put our lives in a limbo between then, PC, and, whenever, post-C dominance of life. Her illness puts our lives in limbo between our old life together and whatever happens next. In some ways the third phase is a limbo phase between the younger, active days of education, family, career, and that old scythe wielder in the black hoodie, death.

Limbo was an abode near hell, a permanent eternal home for the just who died before the birth of Jesus and those who died unbaptized. Limbo is the ablative form of limbus, or border. Reminded me of liminal. Comes from a Latin word that means threshold. On the threshold of hell lies a well-bordered realm for those who couldn’t fit into a medieval Roman Catholic understanding of theodicy.

Yes, that’ll do. We are, through no fault of our own, needing to stay at home, in limbo, our homes being the border between us and the hell of Covid. And the threshold, the liminal space, is a place now filled with danger and possibility.

The ancient Celts believed the liminal times of dawn and twilight were magical, the optimal time to work spells, to conduct rituals. Many religious traditions have waking up and going to bed prayers, rituals. Jews, for example pray in the morning to open the literal eye and the metaphorical one. Episcopalians pray at night: “Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith.”

Limbo is a tough place to be. Liminal spaces like dawn and twilight, or liminal places like an ocean beach or a lake’s shoreline, offer entrance to another world, one unlike the one we are currently in. At night, sleep. In day, wakefulness. On the beach land underneath us and oxygen in the air, in the water, water beneath us and oxygen trapped, for us, in its molecules.

What’s beyond the threshold of limbo? A Biden presidency? A world made safer with vaccines, good testing, and contact tracing? A healthier Kate, able to get around more the world? We just don’t know. We are not, however, unbaptized souls trapped in a metaphysical realm, but flesh and blood trapped in a disastrous political situation compounded with a pall created by plague.

We are souls in waiting. A hard, hard place to be.

Politics, US History

Dumb Ups

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Summer and the Moon of Justice (saw the crescent Moon of Justice with Venus on Thursday morning. One of the most beautiful sights in the sky. To my eye.)

Saturday gratefuls: Downtime. Vacation. Finishing the reorganization of the loft. Finally. Well, mostly. Kate’s weight up. Scott Levin, regional director of the ADL. His seminar on racism yesterday. Kate energized by the gospel service at CBE. (on zoom) Ribs from the Smokehouse. The quiet. Leaning into managing prostate cancer as a chronic disease.

Taking a break. Wondering why I didn’t do it sooner. Going head down, staying in it. Sometimes necessary to get through a rough patch, but tiring, even exhausting if it becomes a permanent response to daily life. That would be me over the last few months to two years. I need to reset my day-to-day attitude. Doing it.

Looking forward to regular writing hours, picking up the paint brush, the sumi-e brushes. Needing to create, not only respond. Hikes. Gotta those going. Gonna try albuterol before going out. That plus my camel pack will at least let me get some distance into the forest, up the mountain.

CBE sponsored a seminar by Scott Levin of the regional Anti-Defamation League. I’ve been involved, as I think I’ve mentioned here, with civil rights since early college. Led a couple of marches in Muncie, Indiana, a very racially divided city. Got death threats. I was 19.

The Tillman anti-racism seminars in seminary. Twice, once with class mates in Minnesota, once with students from Morehouse College in Atlanta. Robert Terry workshops. Dumb ups, smart downs. Prepared a video based training curriculum for anti-racism training for clergy and congregations.

Worked on several initiatives with both Latino and African-American clergy and communities. Sin Fronteras, without borders, was an organization created with Latino activists to pay for the application fees for green card hopefuls. Helped create a “grandmother” ministry in the Powderhorn Neighborhood, led by a Lakota grandmother, Bea Swanson. Went out to Wounded Knee with food during the occupation by A.I.M.

Not any work here in Colorado. Yet. CBE plans to engage more. Maybe I’ll get involved. Harder with not being a reliable attender to meetings.

The Scott Levin seminar was dispiriting in some ways. A lot of liberal nonsense, at least one conservative ostrich, no problem, not here. Scott himself has a good understanding of systemic racism though he didn’t go very far into it. A few folks who understand the linkage between bigotry and power that produces and reinforces systemic racism. That was heartening. More such folks than I’ve encountered in a religious community before. (a white religious community)

Racism was, and remains, our original sin, starting with Columbus, continued by the English settlers, enshrined in our constitution with the 3/5th’s compromise, continuing even after the civil war with Jim Crow, segregation, barriers to voting, employment and housing discrimination. And, yes, police violence. Violence has, since the days of slavery, been used to keep people of color down. Look at the ICE holding centers right now.

This is the time to support the movement. There is a chance for real change with racist Donald in charge and making sure the nation stays riled up. That’s good for the prospects of deep and lasting change. Especially since it’s an election year. Marrying street activism with a Democratic sweep of Congress and the Presidency could set the stage for a new day in race relations. May it be so.

Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History

When is dawn?

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Thursday gratefuls: The loft. Amber, a smart nurse. Anti-fungal powder. Curative foam. Ruby. Her air conditioning. Freeways: Hwy 285, 470, 70. Wadsworth Blvd. Wheatridge. Kate, her equanimity. Kep. Rigel. All my zoom connections. Books. The internet.

Doom-scrolling. Just did a bit, trying to read the tea leaves. No flying cars. No neon-washed nightscapes. No replicants, no replicant bounty hunters. Blade-Runner days and nights. The reality of 2020, a year after the 1982 movie’s dystopian version of Los Angeles, is so much grimmer. So much darker. So much worse.

The President of this version of 2020 chose the midst of a pandemic to push a case to the Supreme Court that would take health care away from millions. He’s also chosen this time to unfreeze executions in the Federal Prison system. His administration has children in cages, supports white supremacy and white supremacists, thinks Black Lives Matter is a hate group. The chaotic White House response to the worst pandemic of this millennia has killed thousands of Americans and led us to the number one position in the world for new cases, now over 65,000 a day. With no Federal activity to slow it down, let alone stop it.

The election in November. He’s way behind, that orange festooned buffoon. Or, so say the polls. But we all have poll shock, having been gulled once. Gulled once, shame on us… Just read a Politico article that said one problem with polling potential Trump voters is that they don’t usually vote. They come out for him only, and hang up on pollsters.

Doom-scrolling is not necessary. The headlines of each day’s newspapers scream the dysfunction of this once confident, world-leading nation. George Will had a column yesterday in the Washington Post titled, The nation is in a downward spiral. Worse is still to come. WP. It’s last line is, “This is what national decline looks like.”

Let’s call it red hat irony. The man who campaigned on making America great has gutted us. Stripped away our credibility with foreign allies. Defended our Cold War enemy against election meddling charges and ignored its pay for slay reinsertion of itself in Afghanistan. He has let a pandemic run wild among our people while stiff arming the poor, the needy, the teeming masses yearning to be free. His pandemic policy might accomplish his goal of reducing immigration down to almost zero.

This country. My home. Probably your home. Its flag, my flag. Its military, my military. Its people, my people. Its beautiful, majestic land, my land. Why wouldn’t we all have tears streaming down our faces as we see it now, in retreat, many of us in self-imposed exile in the nation of our own home?

This is not the American Century, nor the American Millennia. Hell, we couldn’t achieve an American Week or Day. Let’s hope that the old cliche holds, that things are darkest before the dawn. We can’t see ahead right now and that’s pretty damned dark.

Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Friends, Great Work, Health, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Plants, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Torah, US History, Woolly Mammoths

A New Covenant

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Summer and the Moon of Justice

Wednesday gratefuls: Mountain Waste. The Claussens, coming for my pallets. The much improved back. Mowed. Most of the detritus picked up and moved. Photographs from Scott of the Woollies at George Floyd’s death site. Sjogren’s, not Covid. Pork ribeye. Napa Cabbage. The heat. The coolness of the morning. Garbage bags.

And then the world came crashing back into my consciousness. Been following the coronavirus spikes, unable to shed the schadenfreude that accompanies the horror. All those people sick and dying because of Trump, Fox News, sychophancy. The Master Race putting its own head on the guillotine. Fixated on this, like looking at a fire in the fireplace or a gently moving fan.

Opened up the email from Woolly Scott. Pictures of my long time friends at the site of George Floyds’ death. Long arcs of dead and withering flowers freshened up by new bouquets. A line of soft toys, teddy bears and rabbits, looking both sad and sweet. Mark Odegard in an orange shirt, a mask, looking at the George Floyd mural. These are friends who lived through the sixties, who understand this holy site in the context of MLK, Malcolm X, the Civil Rights Act, The Voter Registration Act. All that.

Statues falling. Folks going after not only the Confederate memorials, but Founding Fathers like Washington and Jefferson. Or, later, Woodrow Wilson. The screeches of foul play coming from the dotard in chief. His allies revving up their motorcycles, donning their leathers, taking their automatic weapons off their racks and out of gun safes. Heading out to protect the constitution and their way of life. Their white privilege. A complicated time.

Here I am on the mountain top. Moved, but unmoved. A latter day Noah on his ark, Ararat below me. Can this earth flooded with hate and hope create a new world? Maybe I need a dove.

What might be the sign of a new covenant? A bonding among all humans agreeing to live sustainably on our only home, in peace with each other. I can still see the double helix as the trunk of a tree of life, its crown, its keter, in the heavens, its roots dug deep below the soil. This covenant I can feel.

Let’s all cut our fingers, slash our palms, swear a blood oath that we will live as if all of it, you and me, the Lodgepole, the Whale, the Mountain, the Ocean are holy. Worthy. Precious. Loved. That should do it.