Morning Musings

The hymns of the Christian Church have been a significant part of my life—from childhood to the present.  Many of those hymns I know by heart.  Sometimes a certain hymn pops into my mind as the following did this morning:

“I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies, 

no sudden rending of the veil of clay,

no angel visitant, no opening skies; 

but take the dimness of my soul away.” 

That happens to be the second verse of the hymn, “Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart.” The words were written by George Croly in 1867—and here I am pondering those 153-year-old words in the year 2020.  

Would it help if I could see the way ahead?  If I could know what is in store tomorrow?  Would that I could dream a dream which would answer the questions that haunt me?  How wonderful it would be, if like the Apostle, I could have a Damascus Road experience, or hear as clearly as Amos or Isaiah what truth is—a kind of “prophet ecstasy”.  If only the “veil” of “not knowing” were lifted.  To be visited by an angel, as Mary was, would certainly ease my mind and give me a hint of what to expect as the journey continues.  If only the sky would open and give me the “light” by which to see and to know what lies ahead.  

We all seek for the dream, a prophet’s ecstasy, the lifting of the veil, an angel visitant, or an opening sky.  We think if only we had that kind of sight or insight, we would be able to cope, to know, to control, and to “do something”.   We do not want to live in“dimness.”

Croly’s fourth verse seems to say that the dimness that frustrates us so will not be taken away—that it is part of what it means to be human and alive.  

“Teach me to feel that Thou art always nigh;

Teach me the struggles of the soul to bear,

To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh;

Teach me the patience of unceasing prayer.”

Croly also wrote the hymn, “Search Me, O God,” in which he says:

“Lord, take my life, and make it wholly Thine

Fill my poor heart with Thy great love divine

Take all my will, my passion, self and pride

I now surrender, Lord, in me abide.”

“I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies, 

no sudden rending of the veil of clay,

no angel visitant, no opening skies; 

Words Have Power to Do and to Undo

Words have power and must be protected against degradation.

Words convey deep emotions, knowledge, understanding, hopes and fears.

“I love to feel where words come from,” said Papunehang, chief of the Delaware tribe,

After listening to John Woolman pray in English—a language Papunehang did not understand.

Words, even when spoken in another language, have significance.

“Words can be polluted even more dramatically and drastically than rivers and land and sea,” wrote Malcolm Muggeridge.  “Their misuse is our undoing.”

Words are what we use to teach, inspire, defend truth and seek justice.

Words have extraordinary power.

Words can elevate the human spirit:  “Ask not what your country can do for you…”

Words can also pull down the human spirit.

Words can be debased.

Words can be weaponized.

Words can be misused.

Trump’s misuse and weaponizing of words is “pernicious and dangerous”.

Have you listened to him?  Most of the time his words are “an incoherent word salad.”

He seems unable to string sentences together that make sense.  

He uses words to “demean, belittle, bully, or dehumanize.”

He lies intentionally and with a straight face.

“He says what he wants, when he wants, regardless of the reality of things.”

Some people think this makes Trump a tough guy—it doesn’t.

No!  Reality is reality.  There are no alternative realities.

“The point of modern propaganda,” says Russian dissident Garry Kasparov, “isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda.  It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”

“Without truth and a common factual basis in our national life,” writes Peter Wehner in “The Death of Politics,” “a free society cannot operate.”

If we can make up our own reality, our own script, our own set of facts…what happens to objective truth?  It dies.

Words can do that!

Words can pull down a democracy.

Words have power, even when debased, weaponized, and misused.

As Muggeridge says, words can pollute and their misuse will be our undoing.

"The Pot Calling the Kettle Black"

In 1682, William Penn wrote in “Some Fruits of Solitude,”  “If thou hast not conquer’d thy self in that which is thy own particular Weakness, thou hast no Title to Virtue, tho’ thou art free of other Men’s.  For a Covetous Man to inveigh against Prodigality, an Atheist against Idolatry, a Tyrant against Rebellion, or a Lyer against Forgery, and a Drunkard against Intemperance, is for the Pot to call the Kettle black.”  

This idiom, “The Pot Calling the Kettle Black,” is used to describe a person who is guilty of the very thing of which they accuse another and is an example of what we now call “psychological projection.”  Projection is attributing one’s own faults to another person.

When Donald Trump on Tuesday called Senator Harris “nasty” he was projecting on her his own penchant to be nasty.  If you don’t think Donald Trump is a nasty person you haven’t paid much attention over the past four years.  When he called Harris “disrespectful” he was projecting his own disrespect of others upon her.  Donald Trump has been and is “disrespectful” to all who oppose him or who are critical of him.  That’s a matter-of-fact!

“She’s told many stories that aren’t true,” Mr. Trump lamented.  He went on then to lie about what Harris is for and against.  According to fact-checkers, Trump has spoken a “Tsunami of untruths”—some 20,000 false or misleading reports.  

“It was terrible for her, for our nation,” Trump said about the senator's  questioning of Kavanaugh two years ago.  “I thought she was the meanest, most horrible, disrespectful person of anybody in the U.S. Senate.”  Projection—pure and simple!

We all do it—project our own stuff on to other persons.  By doing so we don’t have to deal with ourselves.  Jesus didn’t coin the phrase, “The Pot Calling the Kettle Black.” He used another phrase:  “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” If one projects on to others his or her own faults—then, it makes that person feel like he or she is without fault and therefore (without sin) has every right to “cast the first stone.”  Trump’s favorite verse in the Bible is “an eye for an eye” and it shows.

“She’s nasty, but I can be nastier than she ever can be,” Trump told The New York Times after Hillary Clinton criticized his comments on women’s appearances in their first debate in 2016. The next day he suggested at a rally that Clinton had “cheated on her husband,” but failed to offer any evidence to his claim.  Yes, he “can be nastier” and indeed is!  He is the epitome of “The Pot Calling the Kettle Black”, i.e. psychological projection.

We must lift our eyes to the hills.  We must mount up
with wings as eagles so that we are enabled to walk
and not faint.

Fraudulent Religiosity

In 2016, while campaigning in Iowa, Trump said:  “Christianity will have power.  If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else.  You’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well.  Remember that.”  It was in that same campaign speech that Trump said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters,  Ok?”  That statement got all the media attention.  His statement  “Christianity will have power” may have been glossed over by the media, but it was heard “loud and clear” by  80 percent of white evangelical voters nationwide and acted upon in November 2016!

What is this  “Christianity” and who are these alleged Christians who will be given power?  What is this “Christianity” and who are these alleged Christians who were willing in November 2016 (and apparently are still willing) to have Trump “represent” them and their faith “very, very well?”   

One Trump supporter said at the time: “I think Trump is going to restore our freedoms, where we spent eight years, if not more, with our freedoms slowly being taken away, under the guise of giving freedoms to all. Caucasian-Americans are becoming a minority.  Rapidly.” (Italics mine).

Is the “Christianity” now represented with “plenty of power…(and) very, very well” by Mr. Trump only a “Caucasian” religion?  Does the “Christianity” now represented with “plenty of power…(and) very, very well” by Mr. Trump include freedom for all persons  or just for white evangelical voters.  Will Trump represent Jews and Muslims, and other religions with “plenty of power…(and) very, very well”?

So we have Mr. Trump representing  a so-called “Christianity” with “plenty of power.”  He says of his opponent:  “He’s following the radical left agenda: take away your guns, destroy your Second Amendment, no religion, no anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God…He’s against God, he’s against guns.”  

I was not aware that God and guns were one and the same. Nor was I aware that Christianity is a “Caucasian” religion. Indeed, I was not even aware that “power” is a Christian virtue.

Pope Francis gave expression to Christian irony when he prayed and praised God in these words: “You are immense and you made yourself small; you are rich and you made yourself poor; you are all-powerful and you made yourself vulnerable.”

Oh, the Irony!

Pope Francis gave expression to Christian irony when he prayed and praised God in these words: “You are immense and you made yourself small; you are rich and you made yourself poor; you are all-powerful and you made yourself vulnerable.”

*****

The word “irony” comes from the ancient Greek, meaning “dissimulation, feigned ignorance.”   “Dissimulation” is to hide under a false appearance—to let on, to make out, to pretend.  We use the word “irony” today to mean that what appears on the surface to be expected or true is radically different from what is.  It is “the deliberate use of language which states the opposite of truth.  Irony is often used by writers to create a contrast between how things seem (appearances) and how they really are beneath the surface.  

Some people are “confident that the world is exactly the shape that they see it as, and that all it needs is themselves and those like them to be put to rights, they experience no tension in whole-hearted commitment to their cause; they take delight in the denunciation of their opponents as the unwashed and unrighteous enemies of the good, i.e., themselves.  They live in a world cramped enough to be commensurate to their self-righteous egos.  In such a world, irony is a crime against reality.”

There is irony in Trump’s executive order accusing TikTok of spreading COVID-19 misinformation. Trump accuses TikTok of spreading conspiracy theories about the origin of the coronavirus.  This order comes even as Twitter and Facebook pull down Trump’s posts related to COVID-19 for relaying false information.  That’s ironic!