Getting back to "Yes"

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All I am now going through

Will make me better or bitter,

Break down or break through

Learning this patience – it takes so much patience

It’s a great education

But why is the tuition so High?

Why God, why?

          Brian McLaren – Naked Spirituality

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I watch as people like "Dr" Oz and RFJ Jr. spew inaccuracies.  While people like MarkWayne and Mr Mortgage Guy take over critical services they know nothing about.  I listen to tRump and JD and Rubio lie.  I suffer while Huckabee spews Zionist nonsense.  I read the comments of the MAGA faithful as they talk about "true American culture" (white, European-based) and about immigrant "trash."

 

I see America kill kids by shooting missiles at them, or denying them healthcare and food via funding (USAID).  I see us support genocide and apartheid.

 

I watch us dismantle systems that reveal the truth about what we are doing to the planet, like the Oceanic Observatories Initiative, to save 48 million a year, while we spend a billion a day blowing up things in Iraq (and losing).

 

I see our current government destroy the agencies that serve people while bankrolling the agencies that control and abuse people. 

 

I see all the ugliness that permeates our country from the top (Trump) to the bottom (the MAGA faithful on FB, Threads, and Truth Social).

 

And I hate it.

 

Brian McClaren talks about the fact that sometimes we end up in what he calls the “season of perplexity.”  Times when there is “no winning.  There are no solutions, answers, or consolations in sight…”

 

This may be such a time.

The words for perplexity are when, no, and why

 

When will it end?

No, this is not right!  No.  You should not allow this to happen, O Sacred One.  No, this person should not flourish.  What the…..

 

Sometimes we pray with Meister Eckhart, “God save me from god.”

 

Why?  I do not understand.  OK, perhaps I understand that some of these people who are causing this are those who, in order to gain the world, have lost their souls, who are no longer who they were created to be: people, children of God, creatures reflecting God’s image.  Trump.  JD Vance.  Lutnick.  Musk. So many of the MAGA leadership.  They know what they are doing is wrong.  They don’t care (IMHO).

 

There are those who have just been seduced by power and wealth and are being used by the evil ones.  Poor MarkWayne.  He doesn’t have a clue (IMHO, it's all just how I see it).

 

There are those who may actually believe the garbage they are spewing.  RFK Jr., maybe.

 

There are those who are misled, misinformed, ignorant, programmed, acculturated.  All those White Nationalist Christians programmed by intense White Nationalist preachers who have left the Gospel of Jesus far, far behind.  Those who watch FOX, and OAN, and all the others.

 

There are those who for whatever reason, perhaps fear, choose to see what they want to see.  That the butt naked Emperor has clothes, that Trump is strong, sane, mentally with it, effective, and the greatest President ever, like never before.

 

All I know is that it sucks the life out of me.  The joy out of everything.

 

I am tired of “no”

I want to get back to “yes”

 

I want to be in that place where, in the midst of the fury, doubt and feelings of abandonment, I sense that God is, and reach the point where even in the midst of it all,

I catch glimpses of sacred, of love

 

And so this morning, and every morning, I say the words from a 15^th century prayer book.

 

God be in my head, and in my understanding;

God be in mine eyes, and in my looking;

God be in my mouth, and in my speaking;

God be in my heart, and in my thinking;

God be at mine end, and at my departing.

 

God, be

 

 

 

Interupt injustice

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Peacemaking doesn’t mean passivity. It is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, the act of disarming evil without destroying the evildoer, the act of finding a third way that is neither fight nor flight but the careful, arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice. It is about a revolution of love that is big enough to set both the oppressed and the oppressors free.

          Shane Claiborne, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

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I am sick of injustice.

If the creator wants anything for the created

It is justice

 

Love would be nice too.

And peace

We all want world peace

 

But there is no peace without justice

And justice is loved lived out

Institutionalized

Systemized

 

Justice is evasive

Perhaps rare

 

It is when all things are equal

When everyone is treated the same way

When things are fair,

morally right, and have spiritual integrity

 

It is complicated

Very

 

Aristotle more than two thousand years ago

Said that justice is the principle that

"equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally.”

 

Well crap

 

Apparently adjustments have to be made

Because some people have privilege

And some people have been systematically oppressed

 

And justice is not just about creating rules

That contain, control, and perhaps protect

It is not just about creating consequences for those who behave

Poorly

 

But it can also be distributive and restorative

Correcting wrongs

Adjusting for privilege, or the lack of privilege

 

Justice is about interrupting injustice

It is a society, a culture,

Looking at prejudice, oppression, and worse

And saying “this stops here.”

 

But interrupting injustice is a tricky thing

It must be done with care

 

Yes, we need to create relief for those who have suffered injustice

But we must do so without creating a new version of injustice

 

We so easily slide into a justice that is retributive

That seeks not just to relieve, but to punish

Then the oppressor becomes the oppressed and the oppressed the oppressor

And we have gained little (except a switch in roles)

 

True justice heals

It restores

It reconciles

Justice is embodied in the peaceable kingdom of God

Justice heals systems

It also heals souls, and relationships

 

True justice changes the rules,

It changes systems

But above all it changes people

 

Until the vision of Isaiah becomes more than a dream.

With Martin Luther King Jr., we must all have a dream

 

The dream of a world where,

 

“The wolf shall live with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the kid;

the calf and the lion will feed[b] together, and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11)

 

May we be the ones who faithfully and arduously

Interrupt injustice

So that justice

May roll like a river

And righteousness like an everlasting stream (Amos)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good people, bad choices

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 Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri, she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will. With or without religion, good people can behave well, and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion.

          Steven Weinburg

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Some people ooze hate and vitriol.

Some people are divisive and violent

Some people live their fear and anger, their racism

As naturally as they breathe

 

You can see the enmity in their eyes

Arrogance, like a foul fog, rolls off of them

 

Their values, beliefs, words, and actions

Are a symphony of malice

 

Jesus had the affrontery to look down from the cross

At his tormentors and murders

And say

 

Forgive them

 

Yet people like Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump,

People like Elon Musk and the rest of the oligarchs

Aren't people I can easily forgive

I struggle to “wish them well.”

 

Honestly, that bothers me only a little

(perhaps it should bother me more)

These people are doing such harm to so many

They are abusing the kind of people on whom Jesus lavished his love

 

Let the little ones come to me

Welcome the stranger

Feed the hungry

 

I see such souls, and I am angry

My anger is not for myself as much as for others

And Jesus (I think) got angry FOR others

Angry at the vulnerable being neglected

The little one’s being harmed

 

The people I really struggle with are the basically good people

(yes, they are good)

The people who would, in fact, help their neighbor, give to the food bank

And be kind and compassionate

 

Who have chosen to support people who are hateful and destructive

Who somehow have no problem voting for a serial adulterer

A person who has committed fraud

A person who is racist

A genuinely bad person

 

Who are willing to embrace leaders, and a movement

Whose values violate their own values

 

WTH?

 

Does charisma blind them?  (Halo effect)

Are they myopic?  Putting so much weight on one issue (like abortion) that they can’t see anything else? 

Are they programmed into toxic patriotism (my country right or wrong)

Is it bad theology that allows them to be manipulated and used?

 

But these people are my greatest challenge.

How to work with them?  Talk to them? 

How does one embrace what is good about them

and not support what seems so very” off”?

 

Most of the time, I try to listen and seek to understand

Sometimes I have to embrace silence

Sometimes I try to correct misinformation or add information

 

I always try to return

To the perspective of the cross

 

Everything looks different from the cross!

 

It is a conundrum

I am not comfortable being silent, which feels like acceptance.

But I want to reconcile and change, not condemn and repel

(some WILL feel judged, and will balk at the attempt to “change their mind”)

 

I want to stay in community with them

I want to radiate the love of Christ

I want to be a good teacher

I want to help people embrace the way of Jesus

 

What do I do with the good people who right now,

Are embracing what (I believe) are bad things?

 

For me, this is the challenge of these times.