Pondering The Road Well-Traveled (Part III)

 What do I remember when I walk back through the years on the Road Well-Traveled?  I remember my early heroes who traveled that road with me.  Gene Autry and Roy Rogers walked the road of life back then.  My horse was not “Champion” or “Trigger,” but the porch bannister or the arm of the large porch rocking chair.  I rode along with Gene and Roy with my play pistols belted around my waist on many a wild adventure—righting wrong and doing right.  I wanted to wear a “white” hat like Gene and Roy—the white hat that never falls off.  All the bad guys wore black hats.  Whenever a struggle took place the bad guy’s hat fell off—but the good guy never lost his white hat. I wanted to wear a white hat that always stayed in place in every struggle that came my way.  

Other heroes were walking with me along the road back then.  There was Jim, the mailman, who always waved and paid attention to me.  Churchill, Willie, and Julie were on the road then..  Churchill was a family friend who never ignored me and always made me feel special.  Willie ran the garage nearby and Julie was his helper.  They patched many a bicycle tire for me and provided the “inner” tubes  for floating down the creek in the summer time. Sometimes Willie would take me fishing or help me build a go-cart or make fish hooks from his supply of copper wire. Looking back from where I am on the road now, I can see that they were just ordinary guys, but to me they will always be extraordinary. 

How significant was the porch bannister or the arm of the rocking chair and the white hat? Did that childhood imagining mold and shape me?  Of course it did!  Everything on the road well-traveled affects us, influences us, and guides us.  Jim, the mailman, Churchill, Willie and Julie were traveling companions on the road well-traveled.  How fortunate for me that we walked together for a time.  They left the road of life many years ago.  I miss them.

I have had to walk the road without them for many years now, but the road of life goes on  through the years, through the struggles, joys, the hopes and dreams.  The road is packed with other people, new companions, new heroes.   We never walk the road of life alone.  It is the road well-traveled.

“Before the Roman came to Rye or out of Severn strode,

The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles around the shire,…

A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread…”

The Road Well-Traveled (Part II)

 I’m still pondering the road well-traveled.  There may be a Part III—or there may not.  I have no idea how long this “pondering" will go on.

All of us walk the same road—the well-traveled road of life. Since the world began every human being has walked this same road. Deep are the furrows, rough is the path, worn down by the imprint of countless feet, dampened by many a tear, churned up by a myriad of worries and troubles, and occasionally made smooth by the joys experienced across all time. It is a road well-traveled.  Every traveler on this road has cried, laughed, eaten, hurt, worried, and died.  There are no exceptions.

In youthful arrogance we sometimes think we choose our own road, but from the moment of our birth, we are placed on this common road, not by choice, but by Life itself.  We may choose our own detours along the way, taking a left turn here or a right turn there, but all of these unique individual turns and twists remain part of the main road—the road well-traveled.

It gives me some comfort to know that my parents and grandparents walked this road I am walking and their grandparents before them. It helps to know that whoever may read this blog is walking that road too. There are no lone travelers on the road.  We walk the road always in the company of those who walked it before us and those who walk it with us now. We are never really alone.  This road is a well-traveled road.

All of us walk this same road no matter the color of our skin, no matter our privilege or disadvantage, no matter our circumstance.  Such distinctions make little difference on this road.  If we are alive, if we are human, we travel this road.  It is a road well-traveled.

“I have always known,” wrote Ariwara No Narihira in the 9th Century,

 “that at last I would take this road, 

but yesterday I did not know it would be today.”  

The Road Well-Traveled (Part I)

 Today I want to write about the road of life—not M. Scott Peck’s “The Road Less Traveled,” a theme he borrowed from Robert Frost’s wonderful poem by the same name—but the road of common life that every single person walks.  It is the Road Well-Traveled because everybody is on it!

I sometimes think of this well-traveled road as a weary, dreary, cheery, tearful, fearful road because it is just that!  Life is not a rose garden—and even if it were, there are few rose bushes that do not grow thorns. But life isn’t a rose garden.  Some think “living” with Jesus is a rose garden, but it isn’t.  The night in the peaceful garden of Gethsemane was followed by ridicule, scorn, a crown of thorns and a cross.  The well-traveled road is tough.  It is troublesome.  It is the road of life—my life, your life, everybody’s life.  

The disciples of Jesus walked a weary, dreary, cheery, tearful, fearful Emmaus Road centuries ago.  As they walked along they talked among themselves about all that had happened to them and around them.  We walk that same weary, dreary, cheery, tearful, fearful road today.  Just as the disciples talked of their yesterdays on the road,  so we, too, talk of our yesterdays.  We ponder, as they pondered, the meaning of it all—all the happenings, all the coincidences, all the stuff of life.   The Emmaus Road the disciples of Jesus walked is the same road we’ve walked “afoot and lighthearted” since life began.  It is, as Whitman expressed it:

  “an open road:” which we travel “healthy, free, the world before me.  The long

brown path before me leading me wherever I choose…Strong and content 

I travel an open road.”  

That is how the journey begins on the road well-traveled.  But, as the years go by, the road twists around horseshoe curves, climbs many a steep hill, and winds its way through dark shadowed valleys as well as sunlit plains and under spacious skies.  No longer is it a “long brown path before me leading me wherever I choose.”  Rather the road becomes a weary, dreary, cheery, tearful, fearful road, leading us into places we do not wish to go.  It is a road we would not choose.

G.K. Chesterton wrote “The Rolling English Road” and suggested that the English roads were made by those who stopped by the pub for a few drinks and then staggered home.  

    “Before the Roman came to Rye or out of Severn strode,

    The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

    A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles around the shire,…

    A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread…”

The Road Well-Traveled has been formed by all those who came before. (drunk or sober), and is being formed by all of us at the moment, and will be reformed by those who travel it after us.  

Liam, our granddaughter Katie's husband, 

enabled me to travel some of those 

rolling English roads a few years ago.

The Big Lie(s)

 “A big lie,” according to Wikipedia, “is a propaganda technique used for political purpose.  The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so ‘colossal’ that no one would believe that someone ‘could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.’”

No primary source has been cited for the oft-repeated quotation attributed to Joseph Goebbels:  “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.  The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.  It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth in the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Truth IS  the mortal enemy of The Lie.  Only the Truth will set us free.  Among the current big lies is that the recent presidential election was stolen from Donald J. Trump.  The evidence says otherwise.  Every challenge has been put down.  THE TRUTH IS THAT JOE BIDEN IS THE PRESIDENT-ELECT, elected by the people, accepted by the Electoral College and certified on January 6, 2021 by Congress in accordance with the Constitution. 

How is it, then, that some congressional Republicans refused to certify the  provable, evidence-based truth of the election on January 6th?    How could anyone "have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously?   

Other Big Lies are rampant, spawned by conspiracy theories and reiterated by the president and his supporters.  The Muller investigation was not a hoax.  Covid-19 is not a hoax. There is no cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles running a global sex-trafficking ring and plotting against Donald Trump.  All of these lies have been disproven, discredited, and rejected.  Why then do so many continue to lie?  How can anyone “have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously?”

Still Learning How to Pray as Jesus Prayed…

My son, Paul, sent this prayer to me.  He heard it in Church this morning.  Many of us pray without first checking out the way in which Jesus prayed.  He asked us to pray as He prayed.  Most of the time, we Christians do an extremely poor job of doing so.  Including me!

My Prayer as I Struggle With Our Nation After the Capitol Riot 

Tinamarie Stolz 

January 09, 2021 

I feel a cramped sense of emptiness. I don’t know how to hold this moment. I don’t know how to hold all of us—Americans.
I wonder what holds us together. 

I hold those who violently betrayed democracy.
I see your bruises from elitism, your fury from being ignored, your lament for the lack of opportunity to climb the ladder as your father did. I see the ways in which the American dream has failed to deliver on its promise, has left so many in empty towns with hollowed echoes of an economic future. I’ve repeatedly witnessed your despair explode into white supremacy, xenophobia, toxic masculinity and violence. You’re being targeted, manipulated and lied to for President Trump’s gain. 

I hold those pushed to the margins.
I see you drowning in a system you did not choose and cannot escape; a system designed to belittle you, to keep you sick, unequally educated, addicted, incarcerated and materially poor—a system vehemently defended by those in power. 

I feel a cramped sense of emptiness. I don’t know how to hold this moment. I don’t know how to hold all of us—Americans. I wonder what holds us together. 

I hold those who fight for the recognition that their lives matter.
I have broken bread with you as your story tumbled from your mouth: fleeing, running, trudging, working, hoping that your daughter will have a chance at a full life. 

I have sat with you at the trolly stop as you explain it will take two more buses and a train to arrive just in time for your second job. And you opened up, sharing you can barely make ends meet. You are the ones deeply affected by unjust policies and the status quo. You are resilient and stronger than I’ll ever be. 

I hold my family and friends who still support Donald J. Trump.
After four years of his crime, lies, injustice, attacks on democracy, manipulation, chaos and blatant hatred, I am at a loss. Your vote, opinions and what you spread in conversation or online have real-life consequences. 

Before the attack on the Capitol and democracy itself, those views and votes mostly affected those on the margins, so you did not see the results of your ideology. I think this moment is an invitation to step closer to the poor until they become more than “the poor” or “immigrants” or “Black” to you; until they become friends. Because if they were friends, I cannot imagine you would stand for this level of injustice. 

Please stop hiding behind “Love of country” because I love this country just as much. I think you are better than President Trump and his vision for our nation. I don’t understand how you can be so loving and stand alongside much hate. 

I hold the Republican Party.
You are weak. Your leadership has failed you. 

I hold the Democrats.You are smug. It is annoying, and it is fueling this backlash. Stop pushing those who hold pro-life views to the other side. You are not blameless. 

I hold Catholics [Christians].
We need to do better. Priests and deacons, if you did not speak about radical justice, love and peace from the pulpit; if you did not guide your flock toward building a more just world with a full range of life issues, take responsibility now and find courage. Your ability to serve in this way is a privilege that women who dare to speak out will never have. Please do not waste it. 

I hold myself and all my baggage and sin. And I am left wondering: 

Is my heart is big enough to hold all this? Can I reach that far?
Can I love that much? 

And as I sit here processing in prayer, trying to create some understanding of this insurgency and the build-up to it; as I try to reconcile that people I love still stand with this madness; as I work to acknowledge my role in this mess fully, I look up at a vibrant cross fastened to my wall. Its colors splash over the brutal depiction. 

And I am struck by the span of Jesus’ arms.
Jesus’ arms reached that far—to all of us.
The arm span is bloody, but it conquered the darkness, not with an attack but with boundless love. 

What does that even mean? 

What does it mean to have a love that conquers hate and darkness? After 28 years as a practicing Catholic, I am still asking what it means to love as Christ loves. Love means something more in the face of this moment, this woundedness, polarization and violence. 

I still do not know how to hold this moment. But I know who is holding us. 

My Prayer as I Struggle With Our Nation After the Capitol Riot ... https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2021/01/09/prayer-nati... 

We Are All Complicit in Yesterday's Insurrection

We are all responsible for what happened yesterday.  We have allowed lies to be taken as truth and allegations (without evidence) to become fact.  I listened last night to the speeches given in the hallowed halls of the Capitol after it was invaded and occupied by insurrectionists, incited by Donald Trump and his allies.  I paid attention to the representatives who voted against the voice of the majority of American voters.  I heard those on both sides of the aisle saying all manner of patriotic things.  But all that I saw and heard seemed trite and has come far too late.

What has transpired over the past five years, and what happened yesterday, was permitted and in so many ways condoned by US, not just THEM.  We allowed it by our silence.  We permitted it by our apathy.  We supported it by ignoring what was as plain as the nose on our face. I’m guilty even though I have ranted and raved in this blog about what I saw happening.  I didn’t do enough.  I’m complicit.  We all are.

Now, we want to blame everybody else but ourselves.  Now our senators and members of the House of Representatives are all worked up.  Some White House officials are resigning now.  Bill Barr (former Attorney General) speaks out this morning.  “Now” is too late!  It is interesting to note that even after yesterday, few seem to have the backbone to remove Donald Trump from office immediately.  Will he once again be “let off?” We are all complicit, and in that sense, responsible.  I cannot point my finger at any one, or any group, or any party.  I am complicit—and I believe you are too!  My only hope is that “Now” is not too late.

"Dear Lord and Father of mankind,

 forgive our foolish ways, 

reclothe us in our rightful minds..."

"Because I Say So" Is Not Sufficient

 “Because I Say So” Is Not Sufficient

I’ve got a lot on my plate these days, but I just have to say something about what is going on in our nation and the threat it poses to our “government of the people, by the people and for the people”. 

A free election was held on November 2, 2020.  Over 59 challenges of the election result have been filed and rejected by state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court.  The Electoral College has certified the President-elect as Joseph Biden.  State recounts have verified that all votes were counted and no evidence of any kind of fraud has been found.

I recall, on occasion, saying to my children as they were growing up. that such and such was so because “I say so.”  That works sometimes with children (not often, but sometimes a parent can get away with it).  A voice of authority saying “this is so because I say so” does not always work with children and should never work with grown ups.  As adults we should insist on evidence and fact, not on somebody saying this or that is true or false  because I say so.  

Donald Trump says he won the election.  Does that make it so?  Absolutely not!  We are not children who willingly accept something because somebody in a position of authority says so. The evidence and the facts indicate that Mr. Trump is wrong.  The greatest threat to democracy is to believe some thing because one person “says so!”  That is precisely what Germany did in 1932-34.

"Dictatorship, by whatever name, is founded on the doctrine that the individual amounts to nothing; that the State (or leader Donald Trump) is the only one that counts; and that men and women and children were put on earth solely for the purpose of serving the state (or leader Trump).” Parenthesis added.

(Harry S. Truman)