Phenomenal Women

What happened to Nancy?  Nancy Pelosi, that is.  Yes, that’s right, the Nancy Pelosi who is now the Speaker of the House of Representatives.  For the last ten years, Nancy has been a special target of the far-right. The conservative attacks on her, seemed, just a few months ago, to be a major Republican strategy.  That national GOP strategy, so evident, was to use her as a villain in campaign ads.  Democratic candidates were forced to answer the question about whether they would support Nancy as speaker if their party won the majority—why?  Because Nancy was labeled the enemy as seen in this Trump statement, “The Democrats and the dishonest media are losing their minds because they lost the election.  They’re owned by Nancy Pelosi and crazy Maxine Waters and they’ll undo everything, turn our country around.  They’ll raise your taxes, take your guns, continue their witch hunt, and open the border to drugs and crime.  We must elect Republicans to stop their un-American agenda.”

Why this animosity toward Nancy (and Maxine Waters) and women in general?  The answer from the right-wing will be that it isn’t really Nancy they are ridiculing, or women—it is the liberal policies these women represent.  Sure it is!  Sorry, I don’t buy that.  That’s like saying voter-suppression tactics are about the integrity of the ballot.  It is the same as saying that “imposing draconian regulations on abortion clinics are really about protecting women’s health, and when Trump attacks football players and LeBron James and Maxine Waters, it has nothing to do with race.”  

The attacks on Pelosi (and women in general) is that ugly misogyny, that same “venomous loathing” that seems to come out of the far-right whenever and wherever a woman begins to wield any kind of power, or displays ambition, or whose policy ideas have merit.  Nancy has been forgotten for the moment now that new targets have come to the fore (the Freshman Trio):  Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC).  

Questions: Does saying something negative about Iran constitute anti-Muslim sentiments?  Does saying something negative about Israel become anti-Semitic?  Was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) Twitter post last year targeting and labeling billionaire George Soros anti-Semitic?   Is the obsession of the right-wing with Ocasio-Cortez really about her “Green New Deal” or is it about her being a woman?  Is the current diatribe about Omar and Tlaib about anti-Semitism, or is it xenophobia of another kind? Or is the right-wing obsession with the Freshman Trio because they are bright and unafraid young women, who take Dr. Seuss seriously.

“You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself

Any direction you choose.

You’re on your own.  And you know what you know.

And YOU are the WOMEN who’ll decide where (we) go.”

Giving Up or Taking On?

The season of Lent begins today.  Ash Wednesday is the first day of the season.  Yesterday was “Shrove” or “Fat” Tuesday.  These are special days developed by the Christian Church over the centuries. 

Ash Wednesday is a special (holy) day of prayer and repentance introducing the six weeks of penitence before Easter.  Easter for the western Church falls on April 21st this year.  For the eastern Church, Easter will be celebrated on April 28th.  Ash Wednesday gets its name from the tradition of placing ashes on one’s forehead as a sign of repentance.  The ashes are sometimes obtained by burning the palms from the previous year’s celebration of Palm Sunday.  The use of ashes probably comes from the phrase “sackcloth and ashes” used in the Old Testament as a symbol of debasement, mourning, and/or repentance.  A person wanting to show his or her repentant heart would often don sackcloth (a coarse material), sit in a pile of ashes, and put those ashes on top of his/her head.  Many people as part of their penitence give up something during Lent.  Some give up eating chocolate or meat, still others give up some habit, and others give up their use of Facebook or something similar (for the duration of Lent—only to take up whatever they have given up again when Lent is over).  This “style” of penitence during the season of Lent, especially the “giving up” of something (like chocolate, meat, or Facebook that will be taken back on when Lent comes to an end), and often making a “show of it” has never made much sense to me.

The day before Ash Wednesday is called Shrove Tuesday or “fat” Tuesday.  This is the day when those who are about to give up stuff as their penitence during Lent gorge themselves with pancakes, pastries, and all the other “stuff” they plan to give up.  This, too, has never made much sense to me.

I think the better way would be to “Take On” something rather than to “Give Up” something.  Why not take on being a better neighbor, husband, wife, friend, son or daughter?  Why not take on a stranger for a friend and similar things of that nature—things more in tune with the spirit of the teachings of Jesus?  Alas, traditions, whether rational or irrational, must continue, (or so we say), even if they don’t make much sense .  I’m sure God has a hard time with our antics.

Sometimes In The Morning

Do you remember The Lettermen and Ed Ames singing “Sometimes in the Morning?”  The younger generation may be more familiar with the song “Sometimes in the Morning, “ written by Jonathan Edwards.  Some women may be familiar with the words “Sometimes in the Morning” as the name of a perfume by Hubert De Montandon.  All of that to say: Sometimes in the morning, I spend a half-hour or so browsing through my Notebooks of Note, where I have stored the words of others, words that spoke to me at some time or another and I decided to save.

Sometimes in the morning, when the shadows are deep

I sit with those who are no more and listen to them speak.

Words which have lifted me and from which I’ve reaped

Greater understanding than I could on my own.

For sometimes, in the morning, a phrase is heard, 

That echoes through the haze of time that I am not alone,

And my cup runneth over; my soul is stirred.

I’m not a poet.  I’m simply trying to share with you the uplift, the value and worth of the words of others, and how they fill my cup, stir my soul, and wreak either havoc or give peace to my mind.  Sometimes in the morning I read words like these:

“The first place to look for Christ, is in Hell.”  (William Stringfellow). Now I can ponder that phrase all day long. 

“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.”  (A’Kempis, The Imitation of Christ). 

“God is not One who is discussed or argued about, but One who is encountered.”  (D. Elton Trueblood)

“God often visits us, but most of the time we are not at home.” (Author unknown)

“Sometimes at that moment (of despair) a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying:  ‘You are accepted.  You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you….” (Paul Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations)

Sometimes in the morning these words inspire.  Sometimes in the morning these words frustrate.  Sometimes in the morning these words irk my soul.  Sometimes in the morning these words fill me with hope.  But always in the morning these words help me realize that my cup runneth over, because such words still stir my soul and churn my mind.

For the Living of These Days

“When in 1907 the Statler Hotel in Buffalo, New York for the first time in history offered every guest a room and private bath, one rustic occupant wrote home:  ‘The bathroom is so wonderful that I can hardly wait till Saturday night’”  (Harry Emerson Fosdick, For The Living of These Days).

One of the gifts of having lived through “these days” that have been mine  (World War II to the present) is the gift of recollection.  I cannot remember, as Fosdick did, when cuspidors (sometimes called “spittoons”) were necessary in public places as well as in many private homes.  I cannot remember oil lamps and the new-fangled gas lamps that replaced them—or the first electrical lights which soon replaced the gas ones as part of my memory-trek into the past.  I can remember a few outhouses still in use, and steam engines pulling trains, and black and white television, and telephone party-lines, and using a hand pump to get water, and collecting “tin foil” from discarded cigarette packages and rolling the foil into balls.  I can recall, too, the separate bathrooms and restaurants that were designated “white” and “colored.”  Yes, I remember “Those Days" and cannot imagine ever returning to them.  They are “gone with the wind” of time.  We cannot return to Those Days. 

There are those who say they would like to return to that time.  There are those who say it was a “good life” back then—and a “simple life.”  Not me!  I remember my mother hovering over the stove and kitchen table canning vegetables and fruits on hot summer days when the only air-conditioning was an open window.  I recall my father shoveling coal into the basement furnace on cold winter days and nights and the chore of disposing the cold ashes left over, usually by spreading them over the driveway when the winter snow came.  Those were not simple days—they were days of hard work.

No, I like “The Living of These Days” much better.  No outhouses, no coal to shovel, no summer canning!  I can take a bath or even a shower two or three times a day if I want to do so, and the water will be hot.  I can simply turn up the thermostat in the winter to keep warm, and turn it down in the summer to produce coolness on a hot summer’s day.  I can go to the grocery store and buy canned (or frozen) vegetables and fruits without standing over a hot stove on a hot summer’s day (and I can buy those canned goods for pennies).  Why, I can even eat tomatoes, oranges, bananas and lettuce in the winter time.  What a life it is!  I have no hankering to go back to “Those Days.”  It is “For the Living of These Days” that is of utmost importance.  We must live these days--while it is day.

I prefer real pools, "these days!"

The Victim Game

Have you ever played the game of victim?  We have all played the game at one time or another.    Victim-playing is the fabrication of victimhood in order to manipulate others or justify one’s self.  Sometimes it is just simply a means of getting everybody’s attention.  It typically involves feeling put upon by others, whether real or imagined.  It includes paranoia: “Certain people are out to get us.”  Paranoia leads to the defense mechanism of psychological projection:  a kind of blame-shifting.  “It certainly isn’t my doing—it isn’t my fault. It is the doing of all those others out there and I know who those people are.”  This leads inevitably to dehumanizing, shifting attention from one’s own bad behavior as necessary based on the bad behavior of others.  This provides justification for the victim—“poor me,”—to deflect and evade the criticism of others.  It elicits sympathy and is used often by manipulators, who say  (Eric Berne, “Games People Play”) “Look How Hard I’ve Tried.” The victim card is a primary strategy of the narcissist who uses the game to assert control and to create divisions where some people are favored and others are scapegoated.

The game is being played now as indicated by the following excerpt from a FB post:  “I have lived through many United States Presidents prior to our current President Trump. In my lifetime I have never seen or heard of a President being scrutinized over every word he speaks, demeaned by the public to the point of disgrace, slandered, ridiculed, insulted, lied to, threatened with death,…” Mr. Trump is seen here as a victim and therefore his supporters feel themselves to be victims.  Playing the victim card is a dangerous game, full of boomerangs.

History tells us that every U.S. president has been “scrutinized over every word he speaks, demeaned by the public to the point of disgrace, slandered, ridiculed, insulted…” yes, and even “threatened with death,” and a few were shot at and several were assassinated.  

Don’t play the victim game.  It is a fabrication to justify the abuse of others, to manipulate, to control, to divide, to dehumanize, and to get attention.  Oh, the Games People Play.

Why?

Why?  Why? Why?  Why do we have to exclude others to prove ourselves right?  Why do we have to dehumanize others in order to hold our own place in the scheme of things?  Why do we demean others so as to lift ourselves up?  Why do we exclude the other?  Why do we cut-off those who differ with us—socially, politically, theologically, philosophically?  Why do we avoid those who are different by separating ourselves from them?  Why do we find it necessary to divide the world into us/them, liberal/conservative, East/West, women/men, young/old, black/brown/white, rich/poor,  etc.  Why?  

Why do we have to be “first” when that means putting others second?  Why do we have to be “right” when that means saying others are wrong?  Why do we think we have a monopoly on privilege, truth, and wisdom, thus denying that possibility to others?  Why do we have to push others down the ladder socially, and in every other way we can, so we can be on the top rung?  Why do we choose exclusion instead of inclusion? Why do we choose inquisition (suppression) rather than reconciliation (compatibility)?

Why?  Because we are in a “fallen state.”  Made a little lower than the angels, we have succumbed to being less human than we were meant to be.  This is the biblical story—a story written by people like you and me—who asked Why?—and attempted in their feeble way to answer that nagging question.  Through the centuries, others have joined in that attempt to understand and to find out why we are what we are instead of what we can potentially become.

The Christian Church (churches of all manner and sorts) according to Charles C. Morrison (What Is Christianity?) “is a society of sinners.  It is the only society in the world, membership in which is based upon the single qualification that the candidate shall be unworthy of membership.”  Alas, members of the churches today have forgotten this basic membership  requirement.  My own denomination (The United Methodist Church) meeting in St. Louis last week decided to exclude rather than include, as the Church has done for centuries.  What a silly notion to think that they have somehow arrived and others have not! Why?  I don’t know why!  

The Lion & The Lamb

March came marching in this morning, roaring like a lion.  We have about three inches of snow on the ground.  Schools have announced a two-hour delay.  The temperature is 29°.  Winter is still with us, but spring is on the way.  “March comes in like a lion,” we say, “and goes out like a lamb.”  I’m hoping the idiom holds true this year as it has in years past.  I see signs of the lamb—tender green shoots break through the cold and snow—and within a few weeks will produce hyacinths and daffodils.  But the lion dominates today and will probably continue to dominate for a few more weeks.  

Spring is on its way.  The lamb is coming.  The spring equinox is Wednesday, March 20, 2019 at 5:58 P.M. EDT—marking the first day of spring here in the Northern Hemisphere.  The first 20-days or so of March belong to the lion; but the last week or so will be dominated by the lamb.

“March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb” is not a verse in the Bible as a parishioner once insisted.  It is an idiom or a proverb.  It is what people experienced during the month of March through the centuries—an experience they tried to express in words.  What is interesting is that they used biblical images, biblical figures of speech—the lion and the lamb—to express their experiences.

When we think of the “lion and the lamb,” we generally recall the passage in Isaiah 11:6:  “Then the wolf shall live with the sheep, and the leopard lie down with the kid; the calf and young lion shall grow up together….”  There is also a “lion and lamb” passage found in Revelation 5:5-6, followed by these words:  “Myriads upon myriads there were, thousands upon thousands, and they cried aloud: ‘Worthy is the Lamb, the Lamb that was slain, to receive all power and wealth, wisdom and might, honor and glory and praise!’ Then I heard every created thing in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, all that is in them crying:  ‘Praise and honor, glory and might, to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb for ever and ever!’”

March provides us an apocalyptic time.  A time when the hopes and faith of peoples are being oppressed (whether by “the beast” or “winter”).  “As apocalypse views the world, it is out of control; conditions are bad and are getting worse and worse, and the people of faith are powerless to do anything.  The images of apocalypse are images of fearsome beasts devouring the people of God”…monsters looking like lions…(The Power of the Lamb, Ward Ewing).  The Book of Revelation is the New Testament apocalypse.  The month of March can help us understand that biblical book.

Winter hangs on and roars like a lion—we feel hemmed-in, oppressed, powerless to do anything in this March apocalypse.  Then comes spring, the power of the lamb—which overturns the power of the “beast” or lion.  We are liberated not by the presumed overwhelming power of the lion, but by the quiet, ever-unfolding power of the lamb.