Midlife Meditation

The subjects of Trump's latest assault on American values. There are so many ways to say "no" to this president. No, the four congresswomen you attacked are not going to be flown "home" by Nancy Pelosi to get them out of her hair. No, they're not foreigners, aliens, or even immigrants (even though one of them once was), they're citizens. No, the color of their skin does not make them any less American than invasive pink-skinned you. No, the act of criticizing this country is not unpatriotic (in fact, you did plenty of it during your own campaign). No, no, no, no, no. Since Donald Trump began his campaign with an attack on Mexican-Americans, "no" has been the prevailing message of every thoughtful pundit, regardless of political persuasion. No to the misogyny, the lying, the sabre-rattling, the racism, the rabble-rousing, the bluster, the threats, the incompetence, the corruption, the grifting and graft, the assaults on anything and eve...

Not nearly as scary as Trump wants you to think. It's been yet another time-dilated week, a week crammed with presidential verbal bullying, dehumanizing policy proposals, racist fear-mongering, and on top of all that, pipe bombs sent to prominent critics of the Trump regime, an arrest revealing the bomber to be a rabid Trump believer, and finally a synagogue massacre. That last atrocity was committed by a right-winger who believes Trump colludes with the Jews he mowed down with an assault rifle, but it's still of a piece with every other horror that has issued from the putrid mouth and thumbs of our monstrous accidental president. In an effort to escape the horror of the news cycle, Amy and I took advantage of a break in the weather to walk through a new development near our home. The neighborhood was still going up, and we passed several houses under construction. The carpenters' work was lent an air of festivity by the music they had playing: mariachi-style Mex...

Trump goes off script, insisting there was nothing wrong with his response to Charlottesville. I see it in every prepared word he speaks. He wants so very badly to hang onto their enthusiasm, their passion for his cause--which is to say, their passion for him. They are the truest of the true, the deep core, the believers who can never be shaken from their faith in him, their undying trust that he will continue to vouch for them, even when he must do it in coded language. It would be the easiest thing in the world for him to disavow him, and I'm sure that's what his advisors are asking him to do. Mind you, they can't tell  him to do anything. That's a recipe for unemployment. But asking, and doing it in an absolutely respectful way, carefully wording the request in terms that are as flattering as they can possibly be--yes, I'm sure they're doing a lot of that. "Just a though, Mr. President: the vagueness of the remarks you made is proving ...

Workers in New Orleans prepare to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee. Prejudice springs from two wells: ignorance and choice. Every person alive has some degree of ignorant prejudice. It comes from hard-wired framing mechanisms, ways in which we understand the world. Until we've had some experience of something, we've got no way to know what its characteristics are. Once we've had some experience, our minds make assumptions that then affect the way we view other examples of that object. If my first experience of a bar is that it's loud and smoky (as was the case of every one of the few bars I visited in early adulthood), my mind judges all bars to be like that--until I'm pleasantly surprised by a British pub, or an Oregonian brewpub, and then I can begin to realize that there's plenty of variety in the world of drinking establishments. It works the same way with people. Prior to my first experience of Catholic, Jewish, Asian, African-American, LGBTQ, ...

Methodist support for North Carolina's 2012 ballot measure banning recognition of all forms of marriage--including domestic partnerships--other than one man and one woman. There are times I wish I could reverse my baptism. Yesterday I was out running errands in the Tanasbourne district. I was stopped at the traffic signal at Evergreen and 185th when two sign-wavers caught my eye. One was promoting the opening of a new restaurant. The other was promoting Jesus. I couldn't get a good look at the sign--I think it was something about him dying for sinners, evangelical boilerplate--though I did glimpse the words "Grace Bible Church" on the bottom of the sign. Turning onto 185th, I saw two more sign-wavers on the opposite corner. I couldn't make out what one of the signs said, but the other was clearly visible, and worded so effectively I was able to hold the entire text in my memory until I came to a stop light where I could enter it as a note in my phone: ...

A monk, a priest, a rabbi, several ministers, and half a dozen nuns walk into the governor's office... So it's Indiana that takes the ball and runs with it. The Supreme Court opened the door for the  "religious freedom" excuse for state-sanctioned discrimination last summer with the Hobby Lobby decision.  At the time, Court-watching pundits warned that the decision would empower right-wing Christians to write their bigotry into law. Then came the waiting game: which state would be the first to extend a sanctimonious middle finger to the gay community? The answer came this week, as Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed a bill giving business owners the right to refuse service to persons who offend their religious sensibilities. If you've followed this blog since its inception two years ago, you know I've had some very harsh things to say about Christianity. I've railed against the institutional cowardice that holds denominations back from impleme...

Biblically Based Bigotry A new book by Stephen Eric Bronner presents the argument that homophobes are bigots, nothing more, nothing less ; and that, as bigots, there is no way to talk them out of their rejection of gay rights, gay marriage, gay ordination, gay anything. Refute an argument--point out, for example, that the passage from Leviticus in the picture above is surrounded by other laws presenting equivalent condemnations of eating shellfish, wearing mixed fiber clothing, and being sassy to one's parents--and they simply shift to a different argument, refusing to even acknowledge that the previous one has been deflated. This is the experience I've had with homophobes for as long as I've attempted to deal with them. For a time, principally in the 1990s when I was serving as a United Methodist pastor, my approach to the homophobes I occasionally encountered in my congregations, much more frequently encountered in ecumenical settings, was to be patient and eva...

Just to be clear: he was a horrible man. Fred Phelps was the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church, a tiny Kansas congregation whose notoriety astronomically exceeded their relevance. For decades, Westboro Baptists traveled across the United States picketing Gay Pride parades, welcoming congregations, military funerals, any event or organization that, in the twisted theology of their pastor, promoted treating gay men and lesbians like human beings. This was, quite literally, hate speech, with the word "hate" ascribed to God's feelings toward whichever epithet Phelps preferred for persons whose orientation differed from his own. Toward the end of his life, Phelps was excommunicated by his church. I have no idea why. I have read that he was estranged from his son, Fred Jr., for more than thirty years. He lived to be 84, long enough to see the beginning of the end for his cherished cause of religion-infused bigotry, as a growing avalanche of states legalize same...