Midlife Meditation

God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good,  and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Matthew 5:45 Thirty-four years later, it still traumatizes me to think about it. It was January, 1986, and I was halfway through my first year of seminary at Southern Methodist University. I'd been encouraged by a professor to attend an event up on "the hill," part of the greater SMU campus we denizens of the "God Quad" rarely visited. Charles King, an African-American activist, was presenting what I thought would be a seminar on civil rights. I learned a lot that night, but not in the rarified academic way I preferred. King was a righteously angry man, and his approach channeled that anger into furious tirades against the injustice that was and is integral to Black life in America. It's hard for me to remember exactly what he said, how he structured his argument, and how I wound up turning it inward upon myself. My memory is that he detailed t...

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...

Is it just me, or do you see the similarity, too? Bing Crosby in blackface. I rubbed my eyes, tried to wish it away, but there it was: midway through Holiday Inn , the classic musical that introduced "White Christmas" to the world, there was a blackface number. It wasn't just Bing doing the bit, either: there was a whole chorus of white people, all done up the same way, gathering around as he sang a ballad of "Abraham" (Lincoln, that is) who had "set the darkie free." The year was 1983, and I had begun a decades-long quest to see every classic musical I could. This one happened to be on TV a few hours before I boarded a train from Champaign, Illinois that would take me home for Christmas break. I was charmed by the high concept of the film--a hotel open only on holidays--and the chance to see Crosby paired with Fred Astaire (and yes, that's him, not Der Bingle, in the picture). But then came the Lincoln's Birthday number, and...

No, it's not Pretoria, South Africa, 1968. It's McAllen, Texas, yesterday. Yes, our president has fascist dreams. Yes, he panders to the far right, up to and including torch-bearing Nazi-saluting white nationalists. Yes, his foreign policy is a rejection of seven decades of global interdependence, choosing instead to cozy up to autocrats of both the right and left. And yes, his public declarations and tweets are designed to fire up and consolidate the most extreme elements of his base, a strategy that both renders the opposition impotently incoherent and cows the more moderate members of the GOP with fears of being primaried by more rabid Trumpists. It's a cult of personality worthy of Hitler. But no, we're not turning into Nazi Germany, c. 1936. Not yet, anyway. A more appropriate comparison is to South Africa. Like the United States, South Africa was a civilized place long before white colonists invaded, using their superior technology to force their wi...

Charles H. King, Jr., in 1981. Changes in perception typically take time. The mind accumulates information through experiences, relationships, the media, and at some point, wakes up to a truth it has been stubbornly ignorant to. That's how it was for me with my understanding of homosexuality: I don't remember ever being taught that it was wrong, but my childhood was certainly steeped in the idea that it was a sinful choice some people made. I remember reading a couple of references to it in high school, and not really understanding them (one in an autobiographical essay by Tennessee Williams left me particularly confused). The first gay man I was aware of meeting was a theater major who lived in my dorm at Willamette University who struck me as outrageously flamboyant. Unbeknownst to me, one of my best friends in college was a closeted gay man who did not come out to me until our 25 year reunion. I also had no idea that a woman I was attracted to during my first semester...

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 ...

Torch-bearing "Unite the Right" bigots showing their true colors. "How does legitimate white pride look?" Tony Peterson, one of the people I most respect, posted this question on Facebook twelve hours ago. It's generated a great deal of conversation in that forum, to which I contributed one short response:   "White pride" is for those who don't know or, worse, ignore history. White shame is where pale-skinned Americans like me need to start. I posted an essay yesterday about how integral racism has been to the history of the Americas, with a line traceable to the first European explorers and colonists to set foot in the New World. Today's essay draws on much more recent history: specifically, the direct line of racist policies that runs from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump. Modern racism begins in the 1960s with the passage of civil rights legislation during the Johnson Administration. That's when, for the first time since Rec...

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few...or the one." --Star Trek II:The Wrath of Khan It's become a Star Trek  cliche: Spock's statement of utilitarian logic, leading him to sacrifice himself to save the rest of the crew of the Enterprise. At the conclusion of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock , the aphorism is turned on its head: Kirk's quest to rescue his friend have led to the destruction of both the Enterprise  and, most likely, his career, not to mention the death of his son David. Asked by Spock why so many would give so much for him, Kirk replies, "Because the needs of the one outweighed the needs of the many." Last Friday, our raging bull in a china shop President issued an executive order, effective immediately, banning citizens of seven Muslim countries from entry into the United States. The order was, in the words of one Republican Senator carefully choosing his words, not "vetted properly." It resulted in...

It seems I'm not the first person to think of this. Just so you know, I think bullfighting is an abomination.  I also think this year's three Presidential "debates" were an abomination. So there's some resonance there. Reading up just now about bullfighting (that's called "research"), I learned that a bullfight is a highly ritualized spectacle, most of which involves goading, torturing, and weakening the bull to render the final, fatal sword thrust more effective. Bulls intended for the ring are raised in conditions that render them more wild than domesticated. The bullfight itself is extremely hazardous, frequently leading to injury and even death for the humans and horses involved in the ritual. Of course, the bull is almost always dead at the end of the show, so maybe there's some justice in that risk. Back to the debates: each reinforced the impression that what I was watching was a ritualized spectacle, a confrontation be...

Not just this guy. Really? This is what it takes? Donald Trump's campaign has been off at least one of its rails as long as it's been running. Trump was never interested in being respectable, civil, eloquent, diplomatic, statesmanlike, or even coherent. He was always a loud, bellicose, attention-demanding incarnation of masculine id, with a dog-and-pony show that was irresistible to a large enough plurality of Republican voters that it overcome all the shallow business-as-usual candidates--as well as a few other wingnuts who lacked his eye-catching vulgar appeal--to bequeath him with a nomination to become the world's most dangerous head of state. His rhetoric was scattershot when it came to positions on any of the issues the serious candidates were debating, but consistent in one regard: he hated the same people as that large plurality of voters, and cared not a farthing for how his targets felt about that hatred. The size of his following, while not large en...