Blessed and Bless-ed

Tomorrow's lesson from the Gospels is the Beatitudes. The 'bless-ed' or 'blessed of all the counter cultural folks like the meek, the pure in heart, the peacemakers. And in Trump World such 'soft' virtues are really out of style.

What struck me and what I'll  say tomorrow at Emmanuel Church is that you can pronounce b-l-e-s-s-e-d two ways: one syllable or two.

Bless-ed, it seems to me is about holiness. The Bless-ed Virgin Mary, for example. But 'blessed' implies that the person is smiled upon in some way--that being meek brings blessings to the meek.

Just strikes me as something to notice and ponder.

Of course I'll use the lines from Monty Python's Life of Bryan when someone at the back of the crowd says, 'did he say blessed are the cheese-makers?' And someone else replies, "I'm sure he meant all those who work in 'dairy'."

Of course I'll mention that.

cognative dissonance

Bern and I had a long talk about 'cognitive dissonance' yesterday. I realized I didn't actually fully understand the term. I always thought cognitive dissonance was about something 'outside' me that didn't match with something 'inside' me. Actually, I now understand, it is about holding two irreconcilable 'inner' thoughts in balance.

Like: "I live a healthy lifestyle" and "I smoke and don't exercise". The brain is able to take those two contradictory beliefs and make them compatible. It's all 'inside' stuff. It's all making up reasons that two contradictions can actually be logical.

I think I've even used the term "cognitive dissonance" to describe how I feel since the election. The 'outer' reality, in my not fully understanding the concept, didn't match my 'inner' reality.

Now that I really understand cognitive dissonance, I realize I still have it since Trump was elected and especially now that he's my President.

I believe (at one in the same time) that the American system of government can correct any problems with those who govern AND that Trump isn't qualified or suited or psychologically able to be President.

So, I hold my breath and believe everything will be alright.

And I don't think, really, it will be. I need to face that and deal with it.

David Brooks is my favorite conservative. I even gave my son Brooks' new book for Christmas. In Brooks' latest column in the New York Times, he corrects my dissonance with logic and clear thinking.

Here it is.

This is a column directed at high school and college students. I’m going to try to convey to you how astoundingly different the Republican Party felt when I was your age.

The big guy then was Ronald Reagan. Temperamentally, though not politically, Reagan was heir to the two Roosevelts. He inherited a love of audacity from T.R. and optimism and charm from F.D.R.

He had a sunny faith in America’s destiny and in America’s ability to bend global history toward freedom. He had a sunny faith in the free market to deliver prosperity to all. He had a sunny faith in the power of technology to deliver bounty and even protect us from nuclear missiles.

He could be very hard on big government or the Soviet Union, but he generally saw the world as a welcoming place; he looked for the good news in others and saw the arc of history bending toward progress.

When he erred it was often on the utopian side of things, believing that tax cuts could pay for themselves, believing that he and Mikhail Gorbachev could shed history and eliminate all nuclear weapons.

The mood of the party is so different today. Donald Trump expressed the party’s new mood to David Muir of ABC, when asked about his decision to suspend immigration from some Muslim countries: “The world is a mess. The world is as angry as it gets. What, you think this is going to cause a little more anger? The world is an angry place.”

Consider the tenor of Trump’s first week in office. It’s all about threat perception. He has made moves to build a wall against the Mexican threat, to build barriers against the Muslim threat, to end a trade deal with Asia to fight the foreign economic threat, to build black site torture chambers against the terrorist threat.

Trump is on his political honeymoon, which should be a moment of joy and promise. But he seems to suffer from an angry form of anhedonia, the inability to experience happiness. Instead of savoring the moment, he’s spent the week in a series of nasty squabbles about his ratings and crowd sizes.

If Reagan’s dominant emotional note was optimism, Trump’s is fear. If Reagan’s optimism was expansive, Trump’s fear propels him to close in: Pull in from Asian entanglements through rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Pull in from European entanglements by disparaging NATO. It’s not a cowering, timid fear; it’s more a dark, resentful porcupine fear.

We have a word for people who are dominated by fear. We call them cowards. Trump was not a coward in the business or campaign worlds. He could take on enormous debt and had the audacity to appear at televised national debates with no clue what he was talking about. But as president his is a policy of cowardice. On every front, he wants to shrink the country into a shell.

J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, “A man that flies from his fear may find that

he has only taken a shortcut to meet it.”

Desperate to be liked, Trump adopts a combative attitude that makes him unlikable. Terrified of Mexican criminals, he wants to build a wall that will actually lock in more undocumented aliens than it will keep out. Terrified of Muslim terrorists, he embraces the torture policies guaranteed to mobilize terrorists. Terrified that American business can’t compete with Asian business, he closes off a trade deal that would have boosted annual real incomes in the United States by $131 billion, or 0.5 percent of G.D.P. Terrified of Mexican competition, he considers slapping a 20 percent tariff on Mexican goods, even though U.S. exports to Mexico have increased 97 percent since 2005.

Trump has changed the way the Republican Party sees the world. Republicans used to have a basic faith in the dynamism and openness of the free market. Now the party fears openness and competition.

In the summer of 2015, according to a Pew Research Center poll, Republicans said free trade deals had been good for the country by 51 to 39 percent. By the summer of 2016, Republicans said those deals had been bad for America by 61 percent to 32 percent.

It’s not that the deals had changed, or reality. It was that Donald Trump became the Republican nominee and his dark fearfulness became the party’s dark fearfulness. In this case fear is not a reaction to the world. It is a way of seeing the world. It propels your reactions to the world

he has only taken a shortcut to meet it.”

.......................................................

As Reagan came to office he faced refugee crises, with suffering families coming in from Cuba, Vietnam and Cambodia. Filled with optimism and confidence, Reagan vowed, “We shall seek new ways to integrate refugees into our society,” and he delivered on that promise.

Trump faces a refugee crisis from Syria. And though no Syrian-American has ever committed an act of terrorism on American soil, Trump’s response is fear. Shut them out.

Students, the party didn’t used to be this way. A mean wind is blowing.

As far as I can tell....

As far as I can tell, religion may just be a crutch.

"The opiate of the people" comes to mind, for example.

And there isn't a lot of verifiable evidence about the "good" religion does. For every Civil Rights Movement driven by Christianity's love, there are half-a-dozen examples of how religion causes nonsense, chaos and conflict.

The Religion of faithful Jews and faithful Muslims in Israel hasn't yet honed out a result that gives life to all. And the religious fervor of that nation--on both sides--could be blamed for much of the decades long violence and struggle.

The dominant 'religion' of almost anywhere can almost always be seen as subjugating and harming the religious minorities. Lord knows that President Trump's attitudes toward Muslims is causing more harm than good.

Need I bring up the Crusades? I think not.

And the social issues in the good old US of A are all driven by so called "Christian values". A woman's right to choose how to manage her body, GLBT rights about everything from marriage to adoption, who businesses can decide not to serve, who should be able to vote or live here, prayer in public schools just touch the surface of what some Christians want to proclaim as 'Christian'.

Maybe religion is a crutch that can be used as a weapon. That's not far off from the Truth.

Yet, as someone who since September 28, soon to be four months, a third of a year, has had to rely on crutches and now a cane, I'm not so fast to judge crutches and canes and such.

I lean on the 'crutch' of compassion, acceptance of the stranger, love for your enemy, openness to what is new and different as the elements of my faith, my 'religion'.

You know, of course, about the word 'religion'. It is from "re"--'again'--and "ligare", which means 'to tie together." The only common English word from the Latin 'ligare' is 'ligament'--and, as one who ruptured and severed my quad muscle in September and still need a cane in January--I know that a 'ligament' ties a muscle to a bone.

Religion means, literally, 'to tie together again'.

But here's where I come down and come down hard: RELIGION is only True, only Holy, only what it is meant to be when it 'ties things together'.

Whenever and wherever 'religion' is used to separate or divide or destroy, it is not true or holy or 'real'.

Let our crutch be this: We will tie together whatever is torn asunder with our faith, our religion.

When we're dividing instead of tying together, that is not 'religion' in any way, shape or form. It is evil and destructive and masquerading  as 'faith' and 'religion'. It is anti-religion that divides and tears apart. Beware of it at your soul's peril.

Religion has been used as a weapon rather than a support for so long that many well-meaning, just, noble and longing for healing people have rejected 'religion'.

We may not be able to bring them back, but we are compelled by God to practice a religion that 'ties together' the wounds of our hearts, our culture, our nation, our world.

To do less imperils our souls as well as our dignity and our purpose as children of God.

The time is now. We are the ones we've been waiting for....(a little bit of Hopi Elder wisdom there....)



Sometimes you need a crutch for a while after something in your body has been 'tied together again'.

2 sides to my old home

I am a West Virginian, an Appalachian, a Mountaineer.

Two things today about my home state, where I got the accent people still comment on though I think I sound like a New England native.

A survey I read on line found that West Virginia is the 'unhappiest' state. It was based on a whole list of things like income, volunteerism, obesity, drug use, suicide--on and on the list went. Although West Virginia was one of the top 5 states in environment (and it is drop dead beautiful) it came in so poorly on health and well being issues that it was dead last. Lower than Mississippi, which is hard to do!

Sad place. And my last couple of visits would bear that out. A dozen years or so ago, four other adults and I took a dozen kids from St. John's in Waterbury to do a work camp in McDowell County, where I grew up. Get this, of all the counties in the country McDowell (which is MAC-dal to natives) has BOTH the earliest death date AND the oldest average age. Ponder that. No young people. Not many people at all. 70,000 when I was growing up; 28,000 now. Imagine the number of boarded up homes. I wept to be there back in 2003.

Then there's this: WVU's men's basketball team (currently ranked #18) beat #2 Kansas tonight by 16 points! Just a week or so after beating #1 Baylor! The first team since Indiana in 2011 to beat a #1 and #2 team in the same season.

WVU has lost four games this year by a total of 10 points--mostly because they suck at shooting foul shots. 3 of their loses have been on the last possession. Go figure.

West Virginia will fill your heart to brimming and break it too.

only one thing scarier....

I had a conversation tonight with Bern about two things.

The easiest first.

I asked her if someone could be a feminist AND anti-abortion.

She not only believed someone could. She believes someone can be both anti-abortion and pro-choice at the same time.

Well, that I buy. I'm one of those. I hate abortion, every one of them. I hate anything that stops someone who is conceived from being born into this confusing, hateful but totally amazing world. Never being able to love a dog. Never feeling the sun. Never hearing the sleet against the window--never mind every thing else--I hate that fetuses die.

AND, in capital letters, I support without reservation a woman's right to choose an abortion. I'm not a woman and was never faced with ending a pregnancy. So, I have no cards in the game to begin with. A woman has a right to decide what happens to her body. Period. Full Stop.

But many feminists don't believe holding those two things--hating abortion and believing in 'choice' is possible. I'm glad Bern does.

The other thing we talked about is harder.

Bern believes Trump 'denies' the 'truth'.

I wish that were true, as scary as it is in a President.

What I think is scarier. I think Trump truly thinks that what he thinks is the 'truth'.

I believe he truly thinks more people were at his inauguration and viewed it that any other--even though factually that isn't true.

I believe our President isn't just being testy when confronted with 'facts he doesn't like'. I believe he believes his 'alternative facts' are TRUE.

What does the Bible say? You can 'believe' a 'lie' and be damned????

I think that's what it says.

I hope Bern is right about both things--that 'pro-life' folks can be 'pro-choice' and deal with that ambiguity.

And I hope she's right that Trump simply 'denies the truth' instead of what I think, which is he believes his opinion is always TRUE.

We'll see on both, down the road a bit....

watching the dead

(This post has nothing to do with "he who must not be named". Really.)

I think I've mentioned that somehow--Lord knows I don't know 'how' I did it--when my computer goes to sleep I get a slide show of the photos on my computer. Most of them or 8-10 years old, so I get to watch my younger children (Josh with Cathy, Mimi still unattached) and there are photos of the twins (Morgan and Emma) as babies both in Josh and Cathy's Brooklyn apartment and in our house--with me and Bern and Mimi. So cute! My hair isn't completely brown, even that many years ago, but isn't as white as it is now. And Bern looks 35, if that.

But the eerie things is watching the dead. Not people--creatures....

I see Sumi (Josh and Cathy's dog) with Sadie (neither of whom is still alive). There are some pictures of Bela as a puppy with Sumi as well--one of the two of them in our bed.

And there are lots of pictures of the three cats we had back then: Catherine and her daughter, Millie and Lukie, who lived until last year.

It isn't morbid at all. On my screen, all those dead creatures are alive again and dear in my memory.

There's one photo of Lukie, sitting in my packed but unzipped duffel bag, asleep! I've even printed that out, after Luke finally died at 14 or so (our Best Cat ever) and it's on the side of our refrigerator. I show it to the girls when they're here and tell them "Luke was going on a long, long trip...." That, if I think of death in any way, is how I think of it. A long, long trip.

I don't know where to (which bothers some people in their priest, but, surprisingly perhaps, seems to reassure more people) but I think it must be a journey if only into darkness and silence.

Sometimes when I come to my dozing computer I watch and watch the photos moving by. And especially feel warm watching the dead creatures live again for a moment....

"alternative facts..."

OK, you can't make this stuff up....

Kelly Ann Conway, a Trump advisor, was on Chuck Todd's "Face the Nation" today. Todd asked her why Trump's Press Secretary was sent out to lecture the White House Press corps on things that were clearly 'not factual' about the size of the crowd at the Inauguration.

Conway told Todd and a nationwide TV audience that Spicer was just offering "alternative facts"!!!

An 'alternative fact' is, I guess, a synonym for a "lie"--or more generously, an 'opinion'. I have lots of 'opinions' that are not based in 'fact'. A fact is, in my understanding, immutable. "Opinions" blow in the wind until confronted by 'facts'. Alternative facts are not 'facts'.

The Sun revolves around the Earth is an 'alternative fact'.

George Washington was the second President is an 'alternative fact'.

Five plus five is eleven is an 'alternative fact'.

Let's be crystal clear here: there are 'facts' and there are 'opinions', 'slogans' and 'untruths'. There is no category in logic or reason called 'alternative facts'.

Oh man, if it wasn't such a nightmare already, this new Presidency would be a barrel of laughs.

(I know I said I wouldn't write about the Trump folk every day--but I may not be able to keep that promise.)

Or maybe, my promise was just an 'alternative fact'.

WASHINGTON — Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Trump, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the White House had put forth “alternative facts” to ones reported by the news media about the size of Mr. Trump’s inauguration crowd.
She made this assertion a day after Mr. Trump and Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, had accused the news media of reporting falsehoods about the inauguration and Mr. Trump’s relationship with the intelligence agencies.
In leveling this attack, the president and Mr. Spicer made a series of false statements.
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Here are the facts.
1. In a speech at the C.I.A. on Saturday, Mr. Trump said the news media had constructed a feud between him and the intelligence community. “They sort of made it sound like I had a ‘feud’ with the intelligence community,” he said. “It is exactly the opposite, and they understand that, too.”
In fact, Mr. Trump repeatedly criticized the intelligence agencies during his transition to office and has questioned their conclusion that Russia meddled in the election to aid his candidacy. He called their assessment “ridiculous” and suggested that it had been politically motivated.
After the disclosure of a dossier with unsubstantiated claims about him, Mr. Trump alleged that the intelligence agencies had allowed a leak of the material. “Are we living in Nazi Germany?” he asked in a post on Twitter.
2. Mr. Trump said of his inauguration crowd,“It looked honestly like a million and a half people, whatever it was, it was, but it went all the way back to the Washington Monument.”
Aerial photographs clearly show that the crowd did not stretch to the Washington Monument.  An analysis by The New York Times, comparing photographs from Friday to ones taken of Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, showed that Mr. Trump’s crowd was significantly smaller and less than the 1.5 million people he claimed.
3. Mr. Trump said that though he had been “hit by a couple of drops” of rain as he began his address on Inauguration Day, the sky soon cleared. “And the truth is, it stopped immediately, and then became sunny,” he said. “And I walked off, and it poured after I left. It poured.”
The truth is that it began to rain lightly almost exactly as Mr. Trump began to speak and continued to do so throughout his remarks, which lasted about 18 minutes, and after he finished.
4. “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe,” Mr. Spicer said.
There is no evidence to support this claim. Not only was Mr. Trump’s inauguration crowd far smaller than Mr. Obama’s in 2009, but he also drew fewer television viewers in the United States (30.6 million) than Mr. Obama did in 2009 (38 million) and Ronald Reagan did in 1981 (42 million), Nielsen reported.
5. Mr. Spicer said that Washington’s Metro system had greater ridership on Friday than it did for Mr. Obama’s 2013 inauguration. “We know that 420,000 people sed the D.C. Metro public transit yesterday, which actually compares to 317,000 that used it for President Obama’s last inaugural,” Mr. Spicer said.
Neither number is correct, according to the transit system, which reported 570,557 entries into the rail system on Friday, compared with 782,000 on Inauguration Day in 2013.
6. Mr. Spicer said that “this was the first time in our nation’s history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall. That had the effect of highlighting any areas where people were not standing, while in years past the grass eliminated this visual.”
In fact, similar coverings were used during the 2013 inauguration to protect the grass. The coverings did not hamper analyses of the crowd size.
7. Mr. Spicer said that it was “the first time that fencing and magnetometers went as far back on the Mall, preventing hundreds of thousands of people from being able to access the Mall as quickly as they had in inaugurations past.”
The Secret Service said security measures were largely unchanged this year. There were also few reports of long lines or delays.
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From the NY Times (probably 'fake news'.....)