No disposable people

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I felt as if I still mattered to God, and I needed to know that … Anne Frank mattered to him, too.  I needed to know that every person behind every pair of shoes recovered from every concentration camp mattered, that God had not forgotten them, that he loved them, and that he knew each of their names.  I needed to know that God does not make disposable people.

          Rachel Held Evans

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all 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.

          Declaration of Independence,  July 4, 1776

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Do I matter to God?

Does this aging, somewhat beat-up

Increasingly impatient

Soul

 

Who has done good things,

And terrible things

Who is kind, cruel, intelligent, and incredibly stupid (at times)

Impatient and cranky.

Who is opinionated and yet probably has gotten a lot wrong

 

Do I matter?

Do you?

 

Who matters to God?

 

Do some matter more than others?

Do those who have muttered some formula about Jesus

Matter more than those who haven’t?

 

Do those who are cis matter more than those who are queer?

Do white people matter more than brown people, black people,

Than those who are olive-skinned?

 

Do males matter more than women?

 

Do the beautiful matter more than the common,

The rich more than the poor?

 

On this Fourth of July, hundreds of men

Bedecked with khaki pants, blue shirts, tan caps, white face coverings, and sunglasses

Carrying the flags of domination and racism

Marched

 

Declaring

We matter more

People of color matter less

 

At Mt Rushmore, a man obsessed with power

And full of hubris

Declared that all who oppose him, all who are not like him,

All who do not worship him

Do not matter

At all

 

They are enemies

Dumcrats

Communists (I am not sure he knows what that means)

Enemies

They do not count, they must be excluded, controlled, destroyed

 

I matter, you don’t

That is the creed of Empire.

 

But God says,

Come, all

Come to the table

Come to the table of grace

 

Come, stranger and friend

Come, Jew and Gentile

Come, people from all along the gender spectrum

Come trans children

 

There are no distinctions.

 

You are all children of God.

You are all loved

You are all precious and valuable.

 

So come

From north and south

East and west

Come from Somalia and Haiti

From Syria and Sudan

 

Come

Human creatures may sow and nourish hate and fear

They may attempt to use prejudice

As a way to grab power

They may attempt to detain and deport

To commit ethnic cleansing

Even genocide

 

None of that is from God

At all

At all

 

God does not make disposable people.

 

So come

God loves you, God has not forgotten you

God has called you by name

You belong in this country

You belong at the table

You belong

 

And your presence is something to celebrate

Me too

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Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

Judging a person does not define who they are. It defines who you are

Kristen Stewart

 

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

Mother Teresa

 

Before pointing fingers make sure your hands are clean.

Bob Marley

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Sitting in a box

With thousands of precious souls

 

Seeking discernment and direction

For a flawed church

A church blessed and cursed with human creatures

 

I am gathered with people who love God

And embrace God’s way

But still manage to make a mess of things, as often as not

 

Who love each other,

Or at least try to

Wildly and imperfectly

 

We do not all agree

We are not all alike

 

There is every color of the rainbow here

Varying theologies

A full spectrum of genders (and yes, there is a spectrum)

 

There are liberals and conservatives

Farmers and bankers

Urbanites and people from towns so small

You’d miss them if you blinked

 

All seeking to hear

All desiring to be guided by the Sacred

All wanting to be the church,

 

The feet, the arms, the hands

Even the voice of Jesus

Now

 

But we struggle

 

Our problem is that we are convinced

Of our rightness

 

That we have a right view of Jesus

Salvation

Ministry

Gender

All of it

 

My understanding (we say to ourselves)

Is right!

 

Maybe

Maybe not

 

And we don’t know what to do

With those we think are not right

Whose views differ from ours

 

Because in our rightness

They are wrong

Dead wrong

 

And so we judge this person or that

For this stance or that

Because

 

We are right, and they are wrong

And meanwhile, they return the favor

 

So there we are

Divided

Judging (yes, we are)

 

As I sit in the middle of all this

Feeling more righteous at times than I should

 

Two thoughts come to me

 

I have to step away from my rightness

Because even if I am right and in some ways

It is likely I am not right in others

 

I need humility

I need to embrace unknowing

 

I might be wrong

 

I also need to leave space for grace

I am not sure how else to put it

 

But that person, who believes so differently from me

Got there by their own path

 

Would I be different if I had walked that path?

How would I believe if shaped by the parents, teachers, pastors, and life events that person has been shaped by?

 

Can I, even if I still strongly disagree, seek to understand

Seek to find a place of grace from which to

See that other

Who is, after all, as much a child of God as I

 

I am aware it is complicated

What do we do with belief and people who harm?

Who reject, exclude, and diminish?

 

I know I must stand for what I believe is right

And stand up for those who are minimized and oppressed

 

But how do I keep that

Awareness

Of my own fragility

Of the ways in which I, too, am “not right”

 

That keeps me humble and open

Full of love and compassion

 

It is going to be a long week

#GA227

 

Better or bitter

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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