Today my prayers have been changed by hope. I suppose if my faith were stronger, that should have always been true, but honestly, my prayers over the last two years (10 years!) have been engined by the loud and clunky power of fear — well, engined by absolute terror and aghastness (to coin a word) to be honest. Today as an American I get to pray for change and for peace and justice, truth, and the pursuit of happiness more equitable for all — and I get to believe deep down that is actually what all of us want, or at least enough of us that we can turn this Titanic around. And because I can see the ethical hearts and intelligent determination, or as James Tallerico, said the sheer and unmistakable power of LOVE in these Hope and Healing Bringers of Light, I know it won’t be easy, but “the thing with feathers” has arisen in my soul. Hallelujah! For today. Tomorrow, back to work and on my knees.
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And folks out there who still haven’t “got it”, we will be very, very happy to absolutely include in the lifeboats, those poor souls who are still blindly deifying the people in power that have been puncturing holes in the sides of our Constitutional ship and those still drowning in deceit while still worshipping their false idols — you too will be included with all the love for neighbors that we wish you had. Because that is what true Love, and true Patriotism does.
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As a Christian (albeit, granted, I am an odd or even suspect one according to the establishment) today I am elated to say that I get to pray for a new wave of determined spiritual energy and American can-do-ism; and I get to include in my sincere prayers Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus and those who have no religion at all!! Because that is what America’s dream of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all means. And that is because that is what Jesus would do and did. And that is because that is what any kind of real God asks us to do because that is what Love does. And that is the absolute bedrock of what America as a nation of equals and neighbors was supposed to be founded on. And that is what the religions of our multi-cultured nation teach — especially the one that started with the life and teachings found in the Jewish Scriptures and also the teachings of Jesus as found in the Bible.
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So, I, like everyone, have a Wishlist, that has been written anew by my hope. This is a wish list that the currently seated Congress could start right in on next week if they finally find the guts and ethics to do so. But it is with hope that the newly seated Congress in 2027 will consider. I know they will because they are already working toward these things. I wish I could share my wish list for the religion of Christianity and all its practitioners, but so many people who think they have practiced the Way of Jesus have been so very confused or frankly stubbornly disingenuous for so long, that I will leave the salvation of Christ’s message of love and truth up to God.
Meanwhile…. Here is my short wish list in a sort of prioritized order for the newly elected Congress, the newly elected Governors, and state assembly members, and transportation and agriculture secretaries, and state justices, and city council members, etc. etc. etc.
Dear Newly Elected Officials:
1. Keep moving forward with the same positivity, hope, hard work, intelligence and love of those you serve. These are your Super Powers.
2. Stop the war in Iran. Period.
3. Stop giving our money to dictators and war criminals to fund illegal wars. This includes Russia and Israel. Use that money to rehire all the unjustly fired generals and then if there is any left, start paying down our insane national debt.
4. Help Ukraine like we promised we would. Return sanctions on the bad guys, give aid to the good guys.
5. For Goodness sakes, stop all data centers everywhere for any reason and start helping our farmers. We could also return our nation to the sanity of having actual people do actual jobs. You know we all want that. But only you can do something about it.
6. This is really Number 1 for me but it is going to take longer. Please Save our Planet. You can start with an easy one like saving our public lands, helping fund ecologically sound power sources like windmills (not scary), and working on the fact that some of our states still have places without decent drinking water. Seriously. Think of your own mothers, and then think of our dear Mother Earth. The only war we should be fighting is the war against human extinction.
7. Fix our healthcare system. It’s a mess. In a nations with amazing research and medical personnel it is horrible to have such a broken healthcare system.
8. Put a decent federal tax on all billionaires. This should not be up to the states, because billionaires as we have found will just move elsewhere. Use this money to restore sanity to our safety nets and yes — pay down our trillion dollar national debt.
9. Take care of yourselves and your families. Be safe out there. But also take time to meditate, to look at beauty, to take a walk, to hug your loved ones, and to use all the gratitude you have in every cell of your body to be grateful for this chance. It’s truly an amazing chance in a million. Start each day with gratitude that you “have been chosen for such a time as this”.
10. And whatever words or beliefs or cultures or colors or genders or histories or dreams deferred that have made you, you — — Be the Love. To yourself, your neighbor, your God, and your nation. Love has made a way. Now we join you in widening the path and walking it in the hope of a brand new day.
Dear New Leaders: You have been elected, but please don’t confuse that with so many leaders that think that means you are the elect. You are one of us, and when we are One united, then nothing can stop us in our goals to make Life better here and now and maybe even grasp that Kingdom of Heaven spirit we are told about.
Many of us little Who’s here in Whoville are counting on you and let that be the wind beneath your wings. We will be praying with hope in whatever language or with whatever understanding or non-understanding we have. We still have energy to give and all of us have a new tank full of hope. Because this nation — this world — this planet — is really ours to care for. We are trusting you to do your part where you are, and we will do our part where we are. Let’s take good care of this moment of opportunity, take good care of each other, and take good care of Hope.
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“May those who hope in the LORD (and those who don’t call it that) renew their strength. May we soar on wings like eagles (apt symbol for our nation); and may we run and not grow weary, may we walk and not be faint” (from Isaiah 40).
This is a post for any one who still reads anything for instruction in developing a worldview that I might call “spiritual” and fair warning: I do use the “B” word in this post — Bible. This morning, as is my daily habit, I sat down with coffee and books. I have no idea what induced me to do something I have not done since possibly I was a teenager, but I took out my big, fat Amplified Holy Bible and did the “let the page fall open to a passage” thingy that we used to do back in the day. I am not a fan of this method of study, hoping to be more of a purposeful seeker and a formulating adherent of a coherent, albeit, granted strange, ecclectic, non-literal, mythic, Love is always the answer, and open to many paths kinda’ old girl — BUT this was truly uncanny, although I have found time and time again that Spirit is, if anything, uncanny, serendipitous, and always willing to lend a hand to my search and desire to walk the right path.
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I must admit, my “let the book fall open where it will” was not completely random. I love the Psalms, Isaiah, and the book of Mark, so I opened the Scriptures to those books, knowing I would find something to chew on. Poetry, Prophecy, and Jesus always stretch me, comfort me, delight me, make me think and meditate, and just plain, help me. Today, it was truly remarkable, and a confirmation that “those who seek, will find” and that what we see happening in the world today has happened before, people have had to wrestle with it, and everyone has to make a choice of what side of right and wrong they will stand on. So for those of you so inclined, here is where the Finger of Holy Spirit pointed me today.
Psalm 10. Isaiah 51. and Mark 11:15–26.
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And those of you who still think of the Bible as a guide, be careful, especially with the Mark passage. You may have to make changes in your worldview, and maybe even your actions. But for some of you, I hope these passages give you Hope. We are not alone. Righteous anger is needed to defeat evil and evil is real — sometimes in the very places that are supposed to be doing good.
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And most of all, remember there is a Love that loves EVERYONE in all the world and Love always loves, and Love always remains, and Love always wins.
Parables are stories that are meant to withstand: outliving culture, time, space, and author. For this reason, parables, such as the brilliant and beautiful parables of Jesus, have been wrongly cluttered with solidifying interpretations, both those interpretative prison bars we put around so many of the Scriptures themselves, added on by the authors and not Jesus, and also those constricting structures added to ancient words today by preachers, priests, and common folk (such as I). Parables must be flexible enough to bend to new times and places and thereby relate something about our human experience no matter where or who we are. And perhaps parables, for those of us on the Eternal Search, show us something just out of reach about what God is like as well. Parables are always meant to be just out of our reach, like that pesky gnat that keeps flying around your face that you just can not swat away for the life of you. And parables are for “the life of you”. The best parables of the Wise Ones, should irritate us like the gnat. They should also, however, touch some place deep inside of us, beyond our little and much over-rated minds. I love a well-defined philosophy and I adore poetic expression, but my soul is touched by the paradoxes and deep-well water of a parable. Like all great stories, parables push me beyond belief and into experience; and to live inside of the experience of being human with the Mystery of what is not human — call it God, if you like — is too often cast aside in the quest for some idolatry, some offering of false assurance or some ever-dissatisfying temporal pleasure.
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I will simply copy and paste below three parables attributed to Jesus by someone who we know today as Luke. What I am wrestling with (as one must do with parables) is how these three parables together can effect me today — how I can let them effect me. And yes, I refuse to use the modern word “affect” — there is far too much “affection” in the world as it is: I want the “Cause” of these parables to have an “Effect” in my heart, soul, mind and actions. For this is the truest Truth I know: we humans are created to “Love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength” and to love our neighbor with all our “heart, soul, mind and strength”, and to love myself with all my “heart, soul, mind and actions”. This is what I want to find in these three stories of lost things. Because I see so much loss in my world today. We have lost the belief, the driving force that one single human being is infinitely important. If you interpret as many do, that one of the characters in these parables is maybe, kinda, sorta God or Jesus, then, you would be interpreting God and Jesus as willing to completely ignore all the rest of the sheep, and all the rest of the coins to search for or celebrate the return of the one lost dumb, and the stupid sheep, the one lost insignificant, can’t buy much coin. You would also have to accept that God doesn’t punish the returning lost son, the useless, horrible, no good very bad, child, but instead throws a big party. God searching for a little, insignificant person out of the billions of humans walking the planet today is pretty unbelievable. This is frankly a very, very stupid thing to do. Compare it to one of our current billionaires ignoring his stock portfolio to go search for the quarter he dropped on the sidewalk. Compare it to a ruler ignoring all the CEOs and religious and political leaders in his party to throw a banquet for the homeless. (Jesus has a good parable about that too, but I digress). So, if you are going to want to see the “Searchers” or the “Father” in these parables as God, then you would have to admit that God doesn’t actually care what you have done or not done or where you worship or who you love: God loves each person, unconditionally, absolutely, and longingly. In his famous “Sermon on the Hilltop”, Jesus puts it like this: “The rain falls on the good and evil, on the just and the unjust”. Eeessh. Sometimes I wanna say to Jesus when I see him, “you gotta be jokin’?!” I mean, seriously, this puts into question my whole idea about fairness. Which is what so many of Jesus’ parables do, including the three lost things parables.
And here is the thing that a lot of Scripture-readers maybe don’t want to see but that I learned from the brilliant Jewish writer, Amy-Jill Levine, in her book Short Stories by Jesus. In the last of Luke’s parables about lost things, the father does NOT go searching for the lost prodigal. Yes, the prodigal returns and the father celebrates him, as any parent is so very happy to do when a child becomes safe after a dangerous choice, but the father does not go out looking for the younger, so-called prodigal son in this story. The Father DOES go search for the older son, the “good” son. This son has been so misinterpreted by our need to pin down the parable’s meaning for our own beliefs or time and place. But the story ends, like the other two, with the human being going to search for the one lost thing, even while everyone else is partying and having a good time with the returned son. The father does not realize until later that the older son, the one who has, in his own words, “done everything right”, is missing. And the father goes to find him. The shepherd with a lot of sheep, strangely goes to look for one lost lamb. The woman with a lot of coins, oddly notices that one little coin is missing, and searches high and low for it. And the father with a big household, and his spoiled (maybe favorite) younger son, returned, and all his servants serving, and his friends and extended family having a huge celebration — he goes out from all the joy and hoopla and pride and partying — to find his one lost older, son who despite all he has feels neglected, and sad, and angry, and lost. Oh, how I want to believe in a God who comes again and again to find me even when I am angry at Him and sad about the world and the responsibilities I feel towards it, and when I just feel hopeless and like no one, not even God, cares enough to do something, to care. Jesus is reminding me that no matter how I feel, and although God may seem absent and off celebrating something and someone else, I am never, never alone and even silly little ole’ me is someone worthy of God’s searching heart and absolute love. So, as Jesus might say, we must “go and do likewise”.
What I had to see for myself, today, in this parable is that there is no one, no one, that I am not to care about enough to have compassion for, to try to find a connection with, to search for the humanity in, and to love without judgement, without favor, without prejudice, and without any desire to be “right”. It does not mean that all things are equal or that there isn’t right and wrong, good and bad, truth and un-truths. What is means is that the people I consider “pharisees” or “hypocrites” or self-justifying, prejudiced, whinny, self-righteous, just -playing- it -safe, stuck- in- the -rut -where -I -have -always -been people — or people someone else might consider prodigal, sinful, insignificant, illegal, are also absolutely, positively beloved by God. I know this feels like lemon juice poured on an open wound, but if that is true about the God we want to believe in and know and be a part of, then we are to search in our hearts for the God-given ability to go “find them” and find our common human connection, and find our mutual divinity, our Imago Dei, and we are to love “the least and the lost” and “the high and the mighty” and the “proud and the angry” and the Jew and the Palestinian, and the Hindu and the Jehovah Witness, and the homeless and the celebrity, and the wise and the foolish. And we are to simply without question, love them and invite them to the “celebration”.
There is an ancient and world-wide tradition that calls some humans to keep the voice of prophecy alive, and I admit that at times like these, in the culture and time I live in today, that the prophetic voice is needed and sometimes that voice doesn’t sound very loving or kind. We do not get to see the attitude of the shepherd towards the lost sheep when he finds it. I would have been reading that sheep the riot act: “don’t you go ever getting lost like that again, you naughty little lamb”. And while the woman who finds her one coin calls all her girlfriends to come celebrate, she probably starts to keep her money somewhere she won’t lose more, like in a drawer or a bank or a safe CD. And we never know what happens to the younger, prodigal son after the celebration of the father. He might as he suggested have to work now as servant, having wasted his part of the inheritance. He might take off again, not ready to be healed and whole and at home and the father may one more have to mourn the loss of the prodigal son. But we do know what happens to the older son that the father goes to find. The father tells him that “You are always with me, and all I have is yours”. So, yes, I want to experience the God-love lived through me that one single insignificant, worthless as a 2026 USA penny, coin is worth my search, and that one single stupid, blindly bleating, Kool-Aid-drinking sheep is worth my sacrificial compassion, and the child, the person who does everything I agree with, the one who is “good”, is also often lost in his own mind-traps and sorrowful yearnings and blaming of me and existential crises, and it my responsibility to go and not give a lecture, and not justify my behavior, and not badmouth the prodigals or perceived mutual enemies, but to assure the child in every person that they are loved and that in Love, there is All and More than All .
If we interpret the people in Jesus’ parables as the searchers who represent the character of the Hebrew / Jesus God, then we also have to interpret them as what God calls humans to be like, because that is what all the prophets, and stories, and analogies, and parables in Scriptures do. If you then interpret the people doing the searching and restoring as human beings, which they are in fact in each story, you would then have to conclude that we are to act like the God we want to see in the entirety of the Hebrew and Christian Bible (one big book, often tragically thought to be two). And I believe, that even if you toss out said Bible, any one — atheist, agnostic, Sufi, or Muslim — in their deepest heart of hearts, every one wants to believe in Love, the power of love, and the gift of undeserved Love. We want to believe that someone, somehow, like a good Mother, loves each and every, single, solitary, silly little me. And if we want that, then do we not believe every human wants that, and thus, we are, to riff on Ghandi, to be the person we want to see in everyone else in the world? And that means loving the one single human being who is right in front of us; the one who is in trouble, in need, hidden, misplaced, mistaken, irritating, or downright useless — loving them simply because they are right in front of us and need us, loving that human, that person, that nobody, that silly, little lamb because that is what makes a human being a human Being, “a little lower than angels”. And that kind of weird, crazy behavior that comes out of the kind of love that is quite frankly, bizarre when you think about it, is what makes the God of Jesus, Something, Someone worth at least sort of kinda’ thinking about as a real and loving Presence. No matter how things may seem at the moment, in our lives or in our time and place, every one of us is both lost and searching. We are at the same time the ones trapped in the rubble and the search party of rescuers. Our capacity as human beings for courage, for compassion and empathy, for paradoxical and profound thought, and for the beauty, and wonder, and mystery that lies inside each soul, is what makes us a unique and wonderful species as we live on this beautiful, beautiful Earth. The three parables of lost things are about seeing ourselves and each other, looking at and for each other, searching for and being found by each other with “heart, soul, mind, and actions”. There is something “lost” in each of us, something that has gone astray, something that is longing to be found. And there is something courageous and determined in each of us, something that is longing to keep up the search until the last bit of light has faded. Jesus left us to do the searching for the lost. God has inscribed on our hearts the desire to search and to search with love. And we are promised in the poetry of the Psalmists, “those who seek, will find”. But we each do need to ask ourselves, “what am I truly seeking, and what do I hope to find”? I can’t be certain of course, but the mysteries and parables told by Jesus keep me hopeful that the story ends and we all find the Love we have sought.
Here are some parables of Jesus about the God / Human Search:
Three Parables of Jesus as Remembered in Luke 15
(from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible)
1.The Lost Sheep
So he told them this parable: 4 “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6 And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.
2.The Parable of the Lost Coin
8 “Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ 10 Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”
3.The Parable of the Two Lost Brothers (my re-titling, not Luke’s)
11 Then Jesus[a] said, “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the wealth that will belong to me.’ So he divided his assets between them. 13 A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant region, and there he squandered his wealth in dissolute living. 14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that region, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that region, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16 He would gladly have filled his stomach[b] with the pods that the pigs were eating, and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to his senses he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” ’ 20 So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’[c] 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe — the best one — and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.
25 “Now his elder son was in the field, and as he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27 He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has got him back safe and sound.’ 28 Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command, yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31 Then the father[d] said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’ ”
By now, I am assuming people who want to know the truth are reading people like Heather Cox Richardson or It’s a Lovely Life by Heather Delaney Reese or Robert Reich. I have posted their sage words many times and could again and again, for they report on what is happening in this nation with truth and integrity and big hearts for the people of America.
Some days I can barely stand to read what is being allowed to happen on our watch — our poor, poor children — what a mess we are handing them, that is, handing them if and should we continue to exist. For those people who either can not give up their false idols or who prefer an alternative reality that more suits their ego, or who just want to stick their heads in the sand and pretend things are not as they are or that there is nothing they can do, or that “they just want to enjoy their lives” — I pity you, I truly do. And while I still feel so very angry that so many are allowing this nation, and the religion of Christianity, and the planet to be destroyed by their own ignorance, greed, fear of the other, power-hunger, or frankly for some, absolutely their evil intent, I also feel such sorrow for them; they have “given up their souls for profit” as the Good Man says, and given up their humanity and human dictate to care for the world in exchange for power and the illusion of happiness with more and more and more money. Some of their idols are obviously and literally insane — stark raving demented and insane. And still they never see the truth or that “money can’t buy you love” and that you cannot “worship God and material greed”.
I feel such sorrow that on this our 250th birthday, we have slid down the slippery slope of uber-capitalism and empire so very far. I feel such a sense of shame by association and wonder how some people can feel no shame.
I am grateful for those still speaking truth. I am grateful for those who still believe in the idea of America and that we can be what we set out to be, 250 years ago. I am grateful to my depths for the brave people who have claimed the same religion I have for so long and who are sharing what that religion actually teaches, and who are speaking up for Jesus the Christ and for our sense of who a loving God is — “a God and a Christ who loves all humans — no matter what their background or identification”. as St. Paul taught us God and Christ love. And how I pity those people tied to a religious instutition that pays them to continue to tell people what they do here doesn’t matter — that all that matters is whether you go to heaven — something Jesus never, ever said. “The Kingdom of God is within you — here. Now”. …… Or it’s not.
Okay — ranting, I know. Sorry. I honestly day after day, just can’t get my head around it.
But here is my hope — — today, on my jog, as usual, I pick up other people’s trash. This is my Father’s World and my Mother’s Breast. One day a couple thanked me and said, we teach our grandkids to do this and we make a game of it. There is my hope and encouragement. Today I will try my best to teach my students to write and read and think critically and ethically and spiritually — they are all in high school but very few schools seem to encourage this any more. But there are some who do and many parents who do, and these young people — they can take over from us any time in my opinion. There is my hope and anticipation that we — they — can turn this ship around. And today, I will tell my family and friends and the early morning workers at the end of my street who gather to find work to feed their families that I love them, and be safe out there, and I am grateful for your lives. And I will tell the bees in my lavender, and the lizards on my sidewalk, and the tree in my front yard, and the blue, blue sky — “I love you. Be safe out there. I am grateful for you.” I will hold all these lovely things and these other human souls in my heart and will send them thoughts of joy: “You make my heart glad and hopeful. Thank you for being wonderful, amazing you”. And even if sometimes I wonder where God is, or why He doesn’t “do something”, I will pray the only prayer I know: “I love you. Make me a being of Love. Please help us”.
And there is my hope. Because I know there are lots and lots of people out there who are truly loving. And some are Christians, and some are Hindus, and some are Muslims, and some live in Iran and some live in Ukraine and some live in Palestine, and some live right here on my little street in SoCal. And Love is the most powerful force in the universe. “Now these three things will remain, “Trust in The Good, Hope despite the circumstances, and Love for all — but the greatest of these is Love”. (St. Paul).
My hope is that little bits of Light and Love will overcome the darkness and hatred of this dire hour. I end this not with anger or hopelessness, but with determination to do my part — to be the light and be the love. And I have hope because I know enough people who are doing that same thing. And to quote another great saint, MLK, the “arc of the moral universe will bend toward justice” and we little Whos in Whoville will be heard by the One Who Loves and Who hears us, and “we shall overcome”. May it be so.
By now, I almost want to stay numb and depressed, but I am still just stubborn enough, I guess, to not want to give evil , insane, war-mongering, greedy, immoral, or just plain foolish people what they want. And every day I am reminded that there are good people in the world, and that the planet is ours to save, and that America really, honestly, needed to change anyway, so if it has to change by a trial by fire, so be it, I will keep working with the fire brigade as best I can.
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So you know that awful feeling when your leg and foot fall asleep — the numb, painful tingles? and how it is excruciating to stand? Well, I remind myself that even though both legs, arms, and my mind are numbed and in pain, tingling with disbelief, anger and sorrow, I remind myself that the house is on fire, so I gotta keep getting up and keep moving toward The Way, toward Goodness and Light. Folks, the fire is raging, but despite our desire to give in to the numbness — we gotta vote for democracy and a return to reason, vote with our dollars, yell, move, and stand and deliver, ya’all.
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And those of us who have tried, failingly to be sure, but have tried, to walk The Way with the idea that the God of the Bible and Jesus have the most loving, gracious, justice-freedom toting message of all — meaning Love above all and for ALL — we need to speak out and more importantly LIVE OUT, what God is really like and what Jesus really taught and lived. Because what those greedy warmongers, foolish fear-mongers, judgmental non-thinkers, and sleight-of-hand shysters in the halls of power, both under the guise of American and Religious powers, are trying to sell you are selling you fire policies for houses underwater, not Life Policies for Houses built on The Rock of True Life.
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May your numbness be not more than you can bear to carry today. May you let your anger make you determined, your sorrow make you compassionate, and your numbness let you know that we need each other and we are not alone. Then, unlike the person mentioned in this article — Think about others and as The Good Book advices, when you can, “think on these things: whatever is true, right, pure, honorable, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praisworthy.” (Philippians 4:8)
We are numb, we are afraid, we are angry and sad, but lastly remember — no matter what the end point is — Hope is free and Love is forever.
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This is from a long, hard read about just the latest insanity in America, but it sums it all up with facts. It is from a great newsletter you can find on Facebook and Substack called: Oregon’s Bay Area, by a mother/ daughter team, the Geddry’s.
Here is a quote near the punchline of this article: “That is the connective tissue between Trump’s redistricting brag, his openness to sending National Guard or ICE to voting locations, his terror of a Democratic House with subpoena power, and the GOP’s willingness to keep funding the whole circus. They are not waiting for Trump to become normal. They are trying to preserve power long enough to make normal voters irrelevant.
HCR also ties the economic story together: the Iran war, Trump’s ballroom, tax cuts for the wealthy, cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, the rising debt, and the larger question of what Republicans are doing with public money. That question may define the summer. Americans are being asked to pay for the war, pay for higher gas prices, pay for the debt from tax cuts for the rich, brace for cuts to programs they rely on, and somehow also pay for Trump’s vanity projects and personal legal escape hatches.
Trump said he does not think about Americans. Today’s news is the receipt.
Fuel prices are up and the war bill is climbing, but Americans are not on his mind. The Pentagon dodges questions about munitions and costs, but Americans are not on his mind. Iran retains most of its missiles and the Strait stays closed, but Americans are not on his mind. He boards Air Force One with billionaires and flies to Beijing to open markets for corporate America, but Americans are not on his mind. His Justice Department quietly explores a settlement that could immunize him from financial scrutiny, but Americans are not on his mind. His party rigs maps, dodges oversight, and works methodically to make democratic accountability harder to enforce, but Americans are not on his mind.”
And so — instead of THAT kind of mind — “Let this mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”. (Paul) “Let your love extend to all beings” (Buddha) “Love is the ultimate truth at the heart of creation”. (Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita) “Yes, goodness and faithful love will pursue me all the days of my life, and I will live in the LORD’s house as long as I live.” (Psalm 23 from Hebrew Scriptures)
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Jesus as recorded in Matthew 22).
