My Goodness!!

Everyone talks about and feels that there is a divided America, and perhaps even a divided church in some corners of Christendom. 

And of course the divided America is political in many respects, something I will not discuss here - politics being a power keg worth staying away from. 

What I do want to discuss that we do no longer possess the same sense of goodness.

I am not discussing  violations of the Ten Commandments here, I am not discussing strictly moral issues. 

I saying that we lack that deeper case-by-case sense of how to respond to each other in conflict, that sense of what is proportional,  that sense of what is expedient long term... and -- more than anything else --- that sense of a truly lasting, wise, compassionate Christian response to another person. 

I remember being in a closed Christian Facebook group a while back, discussing adult children who strayed from the way they were raised, children who strayed in what was considered significant and troubling ways. 

The group divided itself amongst those said, "it is my child, I love my child, I will respect my adult child's choices because my child is an adult - God understands and is compassionate even more than I am, and I don't want to push my child away". 

Then there were those who said, "I live biblically and I will not violate God's ways, my child has done so, and I need to respond in a way that honor's God's wishes and let my child know that I have boundaries. And I will not tolerate what is clearly wrong." 

I think both sides were searching for the lasting good, the right thing to do from every perspective --  with one group somehow fearing pushing away children more, and the other group some how "fearing God" more. The group was respectful of all, I think and hope all felt like that, but it was a difficult conversation.

That is one example, which is relatively positive and polite in its essence. In many places in America today that is more and more a thing of the past. 

I cannot find the quote (I tried), but I do think that it was C. S. Lewis who said that a major criterion for friendship, is that the two persons have the same sense of goodness.

Time and again in literature, friends part ways because they do not agree on how to resolve a difficult situation they are facing together. 

What one person considers a cruel and merciless solution, the other thinks a perfectly normal and reasonable way to solve the problem. What one person sees as a soft, spineless and weak response, the other sees as kind, compassionate, and patient answer. 

Indeed, your attempt at reasonable self-preservation may by another be viewed as selfishly greedy. Or the converse, your generosity and sacrificial love may viewed by another translate to cowardice, fear, and lack of boundaries.

There is nothing new in that. We all render different judgments about situations based on our own experiences. What is new is that the gap is widening between people's senses of goodness.


As a dear friend of mine says, "we're not called to be right, we are called to love God and neighbor as the highest calling."

I wonder how much culture is directly embedded in this. As in, my culture tolerates NO shouting, but other cultures do tolerate some, some cultures tolerate a lot. 

I discussed with a dear friend, a while back, a passage from Hillbilly Elegy where a set of grandparents get upset because their grandson was thrown out of a store for touching expensive wares that he should not be touching. According to the narrator, the grandparents threatened the owner with a gun, and then trashed the store in anger. 

I found this unrealistic. But my friend shared with me that this she had seen first hand in some of her extended family, and that the account was not exaggerated. (I am clearly out of touch with a portion of America).

But, here again are competing senses of goodness. 

For the grandparents the need to vindicate their grandson's right to be in a store, their need to show that store owner what they will NOT put up with, become those grandparents' chief sense of good -- their perceived sense of good for the grandson and for their standing in society. 

My sense of good would be to remind my child not to touch, apologize to the store owner for my child's discretion and then I would have left... my CHIEF good being public peace, to keep the tone to low emotional output. 

If I felt my child had done no wrong, I would make a mental note not to frequent that store again. Never, anywhere in my sense of good, would physical threats or intimidations be employed (reporting to Better Business Bureau, yes, but nothing that involves emotion or physical damage or violence. Nothing that could call the police, indeed!!)

 I wonder if my reaction to the grandparents in that story also has to do with my lack of sympathy for them and their plight, my inability to see GOODNESS in their responses, my inability to understand why they reacted so strongly. Their culture was repugnant to me most of the way through my reading of the book, and their version of Christianity is one I could not relate to. 

Then I remembered an incident on Facebook a while back where a friend was frustrated with a large group of people who were demonstrating (and getting WAY out of hand.) 

I had sympathy for the group that demonstrated. I felt that they had nothing left to lose because they were never heard. I felt that they were super frustrated and therefore easily ignited to disproportionate expressions of anger. This angered my friend, who saw the demonstrators as disorderly, spoiled young persons who had nothing to complain about.  -- She viewed the young demonstrators the way I viewed the grandparents in Hillbilly Elegy -- out of line, unnecessarily angry, needing to calm down.

Competing visions of goodness, excusing one group, blaming another, .... I guess both of us would were hypocritical and partisan, excusing the behavior of the group we sympathize with, while condemning the very same behavior in the group we do not sympathize with. 

Wrong is wrong, the principled person would say, and it is wrong because it is wrong, not wrong because of who did it. 

Our narrow-minded lack of understanding resulted in lack of compassion for the frustrations of people that did not align with our views. 

Then....

... more recently, I had a discussion with a person that I know face-to-face (not an Internet friend). Our discussion was about Dante's circles of hell. The person got frustrated after a significant amount of discussion, and then suddenly alleged that -- because of my view of Dante's Inferno --I was not fit to teach college students. 

How can a discussion of Dante become a question of my fitness to execute my job responsibly?

This was a combination "slippery slope" - "ad hominem" argument. 

And while I can somewhat lend credence to a touch of "slippery slope", though it is not a rigorous or conclusive argument... Is an ad hominem attack ever appropriate?

When a conversational partner deviates to attack the character of the opponent instead of engaging with the topic, this person has lost his or her sense of goodness. Now it is all about winning the argument emotionally, not about exploration, understanding, or mutual respect.  

Everyone loses. Friendship may be lost. ... and for what? Are we ever satisfied when we "win" (if such it can be called) an emotional argument?

And do not assume that this was an issue of a person of higher verbal skills and experience arguing with a person of lesser verbal skills and experience. We were equally matched educationally and experientially. 

Nonetheless, there was emergent anger on one side, anger so intense that once it was released there was no room for goodness. 

For my part (in that particular situation)  I had no awareness that my meager understanding of Dante, clashed with a conviction so dearly held, that destroying friendship was not too small a price  for my friend to pay to vindicate cherished theological positions.

Such encounters are frequent... in families and in friendships these days -- these past few years. WAY too common.

Move on from there, to my last point....

Our current climate in America seems more tense, more powder-keggy than in prior years. 

The Internet puts us in little echo-chambers where we are fed words we like to hear, watch Youtube clips with stuff we agree with. It tickles our ears.

2Tim 4:3
For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

If we "Youtube" a topic and listen and watch the resultant videos, when we are done with one video, Youtube suggests another video, slightly more extreme, and if we keep just listening to the feed we are given, more and more outrageous and angering material will be fed our way. 

Eventually we are watching whacked out conspiracy theories. The sheer plethora of material available makes it almost seem like everyone agrees with this ever more extreme point of view.

The Internet and its big platforms thrive on our anger and discontent.  As long as we are unhappy, suspicious, and fearful we will keep coming back, obsessively reading more and more, which translates to more ad money for them.  

Contented, quiet citizens are more likely to go on their merry way, tending gardens, knitting and exercising, checking on news at most once a day or perhaps even once a week. 

So long as we are continuously outraged, our trigger points are lowered,  and we get hooked on the adrenalin rush of outrage and return back again and again to watch whatever terribly unjust unconstitutional horrible, mean thing our chief public enemy has committed. 

Our local relationships with family and friends are deeply at risk. --- Everything unknown or different becomes a threat, everyone who does not agree with us loses his or her humanity in our eyes. Any ideas, theologies, or methods that do not align with ours (especially those imparted to us by Youtube's and Facebook's... etc... increasingly more extremists suggestions) infuriate us. 

When our senses of goodness diverge, your sense of goodness and my sense of goodness become irreconcilable. We no longer mean the same thing about what is good. We have nothing in common. We cannot talk.

As a result goodness -- plain ordinary daily human goodness -- becomes impossible. When we each intertwine our senses of goodness with our competing irreconcilable political ideologies -- goodness is lost.

Is it possible for us to get out of our echo-chambers to move back and see good in people? 

Even in people who do not vote like we do? Or in people who do not go to our church? Or perhaps even in people who do not go to church?

 NOT that ALL will seem good, perhaps, but can we see some good, or at least see an attempt at good intentions... 

...OR perhaps we cannot see good but can we at least NOT see EVIL in our fellow human beings?

x

My Grandfather was a Dachau Holocaust Survivor

I seriously had to look up the word Holocaust before writing that title. I was not sure whether it applied only to Jewish persons. But checking with the dictionary, it applies to anyone who was a victim in Hitler's brutal concentration camps.

--- TRIGGER WARNING -- the drawings shown below are graphic and could be upsetting. ---

Denmark was occupied by Nazi troops from April 9th, 1940 to May 5th, 1945 as Hitler sought to rule all of Europe. My grandfather (born in 1906) immediately became part of an underground resistance movement.  Eventually he was caught by the Gestapo, processed/interrogated/tortured, found guilty and sent south to Dachau concentration camp near Munich as marked on the map.

There are members of my family alive today who witnessed this (in terms of his arrest and in terms of his return after the war). They could probably tell the story better than I can (I hope they do so). 

I was born just over 16 years after the war, but the stories about the Nazi occupation of Denmark, stories of his resistance work, and stories of what he went through, about Nazis and what they stood for are vivid in my memory to this day. Some were told by my grandfather himself -- mostly ones about his resistance work. He never once spoke to me of Dachau. According to family members, he did some speaking tours in the late 40s to share his experiences, and after that he never talked about it again -- that is, apart from publishing this book:

 The red triangle means political prisoner. Every prisoner had a big mark sewed on his clothing on the back, so he or she could be identified easily. A mark that was not easily removed from clothing.

This is one of his drawings of Danish prisoners from the concentration camp. He drew with pencil on pieces of cardboard from discarded boxes, scraps of paper, whatever he could find, and his drawings have survived along with him.

His own prison numbers and designations are here

My grandfather survived because the Swedes (who were neutral in WWII) made a deal with Hitler at the end of the war that they would supply medications for Hitler's troops if Hitler would let them travel down through Germany and rescue Scandinavian prisoners from the concentration camps. You can read about that here http://www.newsweek.com/count-bernadottehimmlereisenhowersecond-world-warjews-europeconcentration-604859 .

Poul Mahler, March 2, 1906 - January 19, 1981

He returned, very weak and sick to Sweden until the end of the war, and then returned home where, if I have the story right, it took him over two years leave of absence from his work to recover from the abuse, torture, neglect, disease, and general bad conditions he experienced during his concentration camp time. 

Here are some more of his drawings, which I hope speak for themselves:

My grandfather was a caretaker of sick people while he was interred. The pictures above feature 30-40  of their fellow prisoners dead from typhoid that  they had to drag out of the barracks daily. The dead were then stacked on carts and sent to the crematorium.

The chimney loomed large behind the barbed wire.

I am writing on this as the theme Neo-Nazi came up this weekend in the context of a rally that turned violent in Charlottesville, VA. It upset me greatly that our nation's leader equivocated Neo-nazis with those who are opposed to Neo-Nazis. Neo-nazis are admirers of Nazis, followers of Nazi ideology.

Nazis committed unspeakable crimes, such as were committed against my grandfather, one of the few fortunate enough to survive the horrors of the concentration camp. Not only did he survive. He was resilient enough to return home and be able to survive the abusese to his body, and also to live emotionally with what he had experienced in Dachau and Neuengamme until he died of natural causes at age 75. (Many Danish prisoners returned home and killed themselves, they could not live with the horrors they had both seen and felt on their own bodies.) 

Please, America, do not go with our current president and equivocate Neo-Nazis with those who want to resist Neo-Nazies. The two are not the same. 

Those who marched with Red Banners with Swastikas, with Confederate flags, armed with semi-automatic rifles, in Klan gear or in riot gear with shields CANNOT, SHOULD NOT, MUST NOT be equivocated with Civil Rights movements like Black Lives Matter. The counter protestors are minorities (+their allies), minorities who have been ill-treated through much of this nation's history, concerned American citizens who have multiple reasons to fear the growth of movements such as Vanguard, or Identity Evropa, Neo-Nazis, or Klansmen. The counter protesters were American citizens who themselves (or their parents) have experienced racism in America, including the scourge of Jim Crow. Understandably they want to resist the re-awakening of Jim Crow.

Lastly, let me share these two pictures of another Danish prisoner Hans Peter Soerensen, who was interred in Neuengamme. I know they are disturbing images of death and despair, but look at them, please!

 Remember, that this is the work of Nazis -- actively exterminating races and political views they deem not worthy. (To say nothing of exterminating the mentally ill, the disabled, and persons with low IQs
 https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/a-memorial-to-the-nazis-disabled-victims/379528/)  Their aim is --- TO PURIFY THE WHITE RACE --- to save WHITE CULTURE.  (I am white, I love white culture, but ....)

Neo-Nazis are admirers of such people. Neo-Nazis advocate totalitarianism, racism, and political eradication of views they do not agree with. --Our president said that some of the people who marched with the Neo-Nazis and Klansmen were  'Fine people'. NO!!!  I am sorry, but "fine people" do NOT march in company with Neo-Nazis, White Nationalists, White Supremacists, or Klans men. 

How I wish our churches would rise to the occasion, CALL EVIL EVIL, and how I wish they would shout this from the roof tops.

Let the beauty that you love be what you do - Rumi

I love the words

I love forming the words into meaningful tapestries

Searching for just the right phrase, the perfect sound

Projecting what’s on my heart to you, good reader

I love the words very much

But not as much as I love you

DAVID TERRY

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/things-i-love-3/

Losing friends -- political disputes

"It is all about preserving our culture," said a friend of mine to me sometime last year around this time.  Ultimately that lead her and a fair number of other friends of mine to vote for a candidate they despised at the time, but whom they have later come to accept/support/embrace with the mantra that they voted for a leader of their country, not for a pastor to lead their local congregation -- thus elevating the standing and importance of the local church and pastor above the standing and importance of the president of the United States. --- Yes, we are holding out for Pie in the Sky in the by and by.  

That is their right, that is what democracy is all about. You choose the candidate you think is best suited, or perhaps least damaging. And then the one with the most votes (in the Electoral College) wins.

The nation chose its winner, and we moved on, or did we?

Those who found themselves ideologically compromised (weren't we all?)  during this election are stuck in a perpetual cycle of anxiety that they cannot escape. It is impossible to escape the cycle because it continues endlessly in the news, and endlessly in discourses between people. 

For those of us who just want to forget, stick our head in the sand for 4 years and hope it is over... well there is the Internet, TV, newspapers, people chatting about the latest. There is no escaping what happened or who is in charge.  

For those of us who want to think it is not so bad, that he just needs to be given a chance, a break, a space in which to show what he can do, it is the same story -- there is a relentless onslaught of people chatter and news--of everything he says, does, tweets and of everything everyone thinks about what he says, does, and tweets, of what our allies think of the sayings, doings, and tweeting. None of this gives peace. None of it assures. 

A recent op ed I read said that (slightly less than) half the voters that voted, voted for Trump because they were anxious about our culture. The other half of the voters that voted, plus a great deal of the country that did not vote, are NOW anxious precisely because he DID become president. 

We live in the age of perpetual anxiety, no matter what side we are on.

In fact I have seen several friends of mine lose all faith in any traditionally reliable news sources, convinced that all politicians are corrupt and untrustworthy. Their news sources NOW consist in YouTube searches on pet news topics, leading them ever further astray in tangled webs of conspiracies. They are beginning to doubt well established historical truths, and live on the edge of reality. 

I see other friends of mine, ardently defending indefensible character traits and actions that -- in any other person -- would have been seen as rude, misogynistic, racist, disrespectful, and immature...  aspects of character and behavior that we should not tolerate in any adult, let alone a leader. 

These friends grasp any explanations that will help him look good -- canvassing for him as if he were still running -- with the idea that... we need to give him a chance. Never mind the holes he digs himself into, never mind that in any other candidate, any ONE thing he says on ONE day would have lost other candidates their entire election.

It is maddening, and it is painful. It is divisive. 

Politics in America has always been a difficult topic-- one that is not approached in polite society. -- We hold our political beliefs near and dear. We perceive them to define us deeply, and part of that is because we have woven religion and politics together in an unholy alliance that dates back to the Reagan 80s. For the past 40 years Evangelical votes have more or less been secured by the Republican Party on account of abortion and same sex marriage -types of issues.  And so long as our vote is  said to be God's vote, so long as our political issues are said to be God's issues, we are bound to vote one way and one way only.

This past year brings a serious challenge to God's univocal vote. It may not be such a stretch to vote as a Christian unified block when a relatively normal, fairly kind, not too corrupt male of reasonable integrity decides to run on a reasonable platform that reflects Christian values. However, when a man of perpetually shocking assertions (often contradictory), a man of questionable 'locker room talk' (if such it can be termed), a man whose 'truthful hyperbole' borders on racist and misogynist sentiments, whose near companions dance on the edges of white nationalism ... when such a man is put forth as the man that God's people should vote for because of key issues dealing with morality .... we are not only making a Faustian bargain, we are dancing on the edge of what it means to have Christian integrity. 

It is maddening, it is painful. It is divisive.

And while we may in all truthfulness lose considerable sleep over what this person is doing to the country and to our foreign relations, what truly makes this situation painful on a daily basis is how this election has split churches 80% - 20% between those who did and did not vote for this phenomenon, between those who think it 'not so bad' and those who find it unbearably wrong to associate with such a man.

Maddening, painful, divisive.  

  

Compromise or Rigidity

Rigidity vs. Compromise

At the center of most serious human conflicts is rigidity, an inability or an unwillingness to compromise.

Today's political climate may be defined by this inability or unwillingness. We feel under threat (both on the left and on the right) our very ideals are under attack. The 'other side' is trying to undermine that which we hold most sacred.

That sense of threat may cause us to dig deeper trenches where we bury ourselves deeply while only speaking to those who agree with us-- and while rigidly defending and refusing to yield even an inch on any topic we deem sacred.

After all, issues X, Y, and Z are so  inviolable and personally important to us that we cannot even conceive of reaching out to the other side, conceive of doing a 'give and take' and arriving at some resolution towards the middle-- where you get a little bit of what you want and I get a little bit of what I want.

We excuse our rigidity by appealing to a higher authority or power. We know how a certain document should be interpreted, and to violate that interpretation of that document is unthinkable.

But, think of it this way. At the heart of politics is compromise. It is the very nature of our political systems that we need to give and take in order to continue co-existing peacefully in a country that exists not just for me and my ideas, but also for you and your ideas.

That could include (but need not be limited to) me paying taxes for some things I honestly do not want or need for myself and my family and my community because, perhaps YOU, voted for it and think it is a good thing for your family and your commmunity. It might also mean that you end up swallowing (figuratively, not literally) a bill on healthcare which includes a whole lot more (or a whole lot less) than what you ideally would think should be included in health care.

Politics and ideals are necessarily at odds. Our ideals describe the world we would like to live in, a world that in every sense corresponds to who we are and what we believe. Politics is the messy reality of the world we do live in, a world that somewhat (if we have a voice and use it) include some of the things we think ought to belong in our world, but it is also going to include a whole lot of things that we don't personally want in our world, but which our neighbors may have wanted in the world.

We live in one country, one state, one city or rural community, one neighborhood. But we don't live there alone. We live there with others who may differ from us  religiously, politically, ethnically, culturally, and our highest calling (in terms of our communities) is to voice our concerns, advocate for our causes, and then live with the results until next election cycle.

Politics is the art of compromise. That art has been lost, of late. Compromising politically is not akin to giving up your ideals. It is simply recognizing that when you get something, your opponent gets something too. In short, nowhere in life do you get everything you want, but with compromise you may try to achieve as much as you can .

The only substitute for politics (when the system really breaks down) is war. And in war everyone loses -- a lot!!!

Manipulated -- The Pro-life Vote and Donald Trump

Christianity Today reported on November 9th, 2016 that 4 out of 5 evangelicals voted and that that vote was instrumental in ushering Donald Trump into the White House.  This after repeated articles all week by Christianity Today warning Christian voters against voting for Donald Trump.

The rationale for this vote was that the candidate had promised to appoint pro-life Supreme Court Justices, which perhaps for the first time since Roe v. Wade would offer a chance to overturn the 1973 decision and end abortion in the United States?? No, not quite, to overturn Roe v. Wade and send the decision back to the individual states.

Now, shouldn't that be enough to make every Evangelical, every conservative Catholic, every conservative Eastern Orthodox, and all Bible-believing Christians want to vote for Donald Trump? Well, 80% felt it was.

An Evangelical or Catholic vote for Trump was a vote cast to hopefully buy some influence to get  a U. S.  President,  who has promised to appoint select judges, who if they are confirmed by the senate, may choose to align themselves with the right-leaning block on the Supreme Court, and if the Court chooses to take up Roe v. Wade, who may well vote to overturn that decision. 

Sounds good? 

Yes. I think, all other things being equal,  that to a pro-life voter that is a real opportunity to address an issue that is important to our pro-life hearts. Super important!!

So why the title "Manipulated"?

When we cast that vote for that candidate -- in particular the candidate named Trump -- we may want to consider (though it is too late now) the tacit approval that comes along with the whole package that we are buying.

Many -- if not most -- hallmarks of what it means to be a good, honest, virtuous Christian have to be brushed aside in order to cast a vote for Donald Trump. 

Basic Decent Christian Traits

Simple givens in terms of basic decent Christian behavior, such as civility in speech, respect for persons who are different from us, self-restraint--- seem to be of no importance, if only we can overturn Roe v. Wade. 

Can anyone imagine Jesus Christ at a Trump Rally with a clenched fist shouting, "Lock her up"?

Now, while my voting for Donald Trump doesn't automatically make me, the voter, disagreeable, nor does it make me the voter be like Donald Trump --- still, my voting for a candidate does indicate at some level MY  approval for what the candidate stands for and how he behaves. 

In this case, a vote cast for Donald Trump  includes a tacit (perhaps not approval, but at least) lack of concern for all the unchristian behavior and outrageous statements Mr. Trump has demonstrated over the past 16 months: bragging about what he can do to women, his bullying of persons who disagree with him, his mockery of others, his Banana-Republic-style  threat to jail his political opponent, to say nothing of  a long line of blatant falsehoods. 

But... but... his opponent, you say. And I speak nothing of his opponent and her lack of virtue. 

We did, after all, have four choices in this election: 
1. A vote for Trump
2. A vote for his opponent
3. A vote for a third party candidate
4. No vote at all. 

Nobody (Christian or otherwise) was forced to vote for Trump -- it was an individual choice. And I for the record did not. I found the cost in "Christian Capital" way way too high.

Faust, as the old story goes, bargained with the Devil to gain power. Faust signed on the dotted line, and in the process he lost his very soul. 

About 80% of Evangelicals sealed that Faustian deal with Trump on November 8th --- to buy what?  To buy political influence -- more specifically influence on our nation's highest court.   For a good cause, yes. But was sacrificed in the process?

In the process, we sacrificed some of the most  precious ideals about who we are as Christians and what it means to be good and pure.  

Love of God and love of neighbor. Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.  Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth, blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy, blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. 

How do those  highest Christian ideals square with giving political support to man who riles up his crowds to shout "Lock her up" about his political opponent, or who brags about groping women, a man who only promised to accept election results if he won?

Again, why do I title this "Manipulated"?

Conservative Christians did not use to vote as a block, they did not use to belong to a party. They used to vote, in so far as they parttook in the process of voting at all, each as his or her conscience allowed him to vote, on issues of interest to each one. I understand, however, that there is power in voting as a block, and when the cause is good and Christian, voting as a block brings godly results that we can be proud of achieving.

With Roe v. Wade, Christians who rightfully felt outraged at the whole-sale slaughter of the unborn, and leaders like Falwell's Moral Majority and later James Dobson's Focus on the Family started to 'organize' and streamline the Christian vote by offering guides to people as to which candidates held the requisite pro-life stances. 

At the same time, many ministries sprung up, along with Focus, to guide this new invigorated Christian right-leaning block in matters of life and practice. That included scrutiny of types of contraceptives, more detail on the proper Christian life style in regards to marriage and sexuality and family, and over all, this right-leaning Christian voting block has become more and more securely ensconced into the Republican party on issues of sexuality, conception, and life. 

Pro-life became the litmus test for whether or not a candidate met the requirements for a Christian vote for that candidate in good conscience -- though perhaps not so much pro-llife as much as 'anti-abortion', since a lot more issues would properly have to be comprehended by a complete pro-life stance than a mere opposition to abortion.  

In short, if a candidate is against abortion, if a candidate honors life from the moment of conception, that candidate has passed the test and is our Christian champion.

It has  worked for years, and for the most part, given the candidates available, produced not too reprehensible results -- that is, until the entry onto the political arena of one Mr. Donal Trump.

Pro-life is no longer enough of a litmus test for a candidate. It MAY BE a good beginning test, but, please.... consider the character of such a person as Donald Trump. 

... and consider our witness to the world.

After all, the last command of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ before leaving this earth to ascend into heaven was ...

Go and make disciples of ALL NATIONS... teaching, baptizing .... in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Where is this witness now, after such a majority of the Christian voting block has ushered this monstrous narcissist into the White House?  Who --outside the church-- can see anything but a narrow minded, hateful, fearful group of single-issue voters who approve of bullying, of political persecution because of being Muslim, of calling Mexicans names --- and further more a person who speaks proudly of his right to assault women against their wills, merely because he is rich and famous.

I am ashamed to identify as a Christian this week. 

We Christians have signed a Faustian deal with a shameful hateful person to put him in the White House.  I am horrified every time I think of that man as the world's most powerful person...what will the rule of Donald Trump bring to this country? We Christians in our usual narrow single-issue voting patterns have linked the name of Christ, the name of all that is good, pure, holy, loving, and worth having in this life and in the next-- with a monstrous narcissist -- all in hopes of obtaining a bit of political capital to influence the High Court.  

May God have mercy on us and save us!!

Cats of Greece

Here's looking at you, kid!!

Greece and its cats -- the combination of the two is a fascinating study... a study of a country that deals with stray animals differently from those of us who live in more more northern more western, more Protestant-oriented countries. 

And yet, why not do what Greece does? Why not -- in a climate where people are mostly outdoors year round, in a climate where you have your doors and windows open all the time?? How could anyone possibly hope to keep pets inside?  

If I understand the Greeks' attitude to cats and dogs right right, Greece keeps her strays healthy by doing periodic round ups of strays, then vaccinating them, and then letting them go again. And it seems to work fine. 

Everyone feeds them.  If you sit in a Greek restaurant in summer, you are most decidedly outside IN FRONT OF the restaurant on the sidewalk or in a large PLACA under umbrellas eating your food --- or more so enjoying your food and the company of all your friends, relatives and neighobors. Greek spend countless hours in this fashion, and cats walk around between the people begging for scraps, after which they sleep on vacant seats.

 

They are also to be found by the back doors of restaurants in hopes of octopus, shrimp, or chicken scraps. 

Cats are everywhere in Greece.

 -- sunning themselves in the middle of the sidewalk, on streets -- any place they feel like it. Perhaps in the shade --

Or out in the sun.

I met this fine fellow below on the long winding way up to  Agamemnon's castle at Mycenae. Perhaps a descendant of one of Clytemnestra's cats. :) 

And  I saw this lovely female sitting on a column that had fallen over at the ancient temple of Apollo in Corinth.

At the ancient Byzantine city of Mistra in the Southern Peloponnese near Sparta, I spotted this one looking from a balcony into a courtyard --  a courtyard of one of the many many churches at Mistra. (A paradise of medieval Orthodoxy!!)

In south-eastern Greece at Monemvasia--in a fairy-tale dream of a medieval town on top of an island rock (potentially the most romantic spot on Earth)--this cat resting on the cobble stones caught my attention as I rounded a corner of one of their narrow stair-step streets. 

In Mistra, also, by the women's monastery [an active monastery still functioning today], long a lovely walkway, lined with flowers, these two kittehs were snuggling on the warm sidewalk.

And again long shop windows in Monemvasia, two sweet cats are enjoying the sunshine on the warm rock ledge. 

And here, my last picture. Cats on either side of the gate/fence that lets you into the Acropolis in Athens:

Cats may seem a strange focus for a blog, let alone for a photo quest when far from home, but these cats illustrated much of the Greek lifestyle to me. Live and let live.  Relax, enjoy. It is hot in the summer in Greece, and cats (like their human counterparts) know that the best way to get through summer is to enjoy it. And that is best done by relaxing outside in the heat of the day and come out at night to enjoy the cool.

My impression of the Greeks is that they live and love life, in spite of austerity, in spite of all that may plague them financially. They are a generous people, who always give --- go to a restaurant and at least one of the things they bring you is an item that you did not order, something they just WANT you to have -- be that a plate of fruit, a special drink (alcoholic or not), bread, a salad. They just give to every one of God's creatures -- give because so long as they have, they will share. Even with a cat.

The Greeks I saw keep things clean, healthy and orderly. Yes, that was my impression of Greece -- not this dirty disorderly country people like to think of as modern Greece. Greece is clean, safe, and wonderful. No, not fanatically orderly like the north (in Denmark where I also went this summer), but safe and functional with consideration for all God's creatures. Cats are persons too (as Garrison Keillor likes to point out) and the Greeks with their Orthodox spirit which honors life, honors all living things, will feed and take care of their stray cats and dogs both. 

                                                            Be kind to all God's creatures,

It's what He asks of you.

To make their lives more pleasant,

Do all that you can do.

Take pity on God's creatures,

Show tenderness and love;

Then there will be much treasure

Awaiting you above.

Be kind to all God's creatures,

It's what He asks of you.

Remember that love sent out

Will come right back to you!

                                                                              ~ James Rowe