last possible graduation address

Billionaire investor, Robert Smith, said, in a graduation address at historically black Morehouse College that he and his family will pay off over $40 million dollars in student debt for the 400 graduates.

How does anyone agree to make a graduation address after that?

What could you do to top it?

Pay their rent for 5 years? Buy them a house? Send them on a world tour?

Lordy, Robert Smith, what you did will having colleges asking people like me to make the graduation address--or some guy who sweeps the floors or someone who works in the student cafeteria. 

Graduation addresses are now a thing of the past.

Good for you Robert Smith.

Bad for graduation addresses.

It's called "the Constitution"

Our President, Who Will Not Be Named, doesn't seem to understand what the Constitution is.

He doesn't get that there are three co-equal branches of government and that "co-equal" means what it means.

Congress has the obligation to 'oversee' the executive branch, yet this President is doing all he can to prevent that--withholding legally asked for tax returns, ignoring subpoenas for documents, telling people not to testify to congress.

It is an absolute outrage.

I'm not at impeachment yet--the information that would lead there is what the President is refusing to share.

So that means time and courts and I am tired of waiting.

Not since Nixon has any President played so fast and loose with the rules and laws and constitutional guarantees that make our democracy work.

I feel like I'm caught up in a bad dream and that all I believe in and support is being eroded by Mr. WWNBNed.

Can we survive another two years of this????

I'm not sure....

Not with a bang, but with a whisper.....

So it's over.

Eight years of my life watching "Game of Thrones" and it ended tonight.

And not with a bang but with a whisper.

The TV series is over two years beyond the books I read years ago, so I had no idea how it would end.

And could have never guessed.

Never.

But it was all good--my favorite 5 characters lived on--as they should have. And all ended up as they should have.

But I never saw it coming.

Remarkable. Eight years well spent.

And sorrow that it's over even though the whisper it ended with was good and right and satisfying.

What now to do on Sunday night???

one brief day

Yesterday, because they beat them 4-3 with three runs in the bottom of the 9th, the Yankees moved ahead of the Tampa Bay Rays into first place in the American League East by 0.5 games.

Today, the Rays won in the 11th inning and are now in first by 0.5 games.

But that sweet day belonged to the Yankees.

I'm a life long Yankees fan, one of few from southern West Virginia, I'm sure.

But my dad was and so I was.

I know I've written it here, but I'll tell it again briefly: Dad was in NYC about to ship out to Europe for WW II and got a ticket from a patriot to a Dodgers/Yankees World Series game. He decided whichever team won would be 'his team' and he Yankees won.

My childhood was taken up with Mantle and Maris and Yogi and Richardson and Kubek  and Elston Howard and Whitey Ford...on and on.

Being a Yankees fan has, for most of my life, has been a good deal.

During my childhood, the sports cast from Channel 6 in Bluefield at 11 p.m. began--in the summer--with "Let's see who the Yankees clobbered!"

The Yankees are so close to the lead and they have, count them--5 starters and their biggest stars out with injuries.

When they all get back, let's see who the Yankees clobber.....

Stuff grows out of S***

There's this little space of yard beside our deck where Bern has been dumping dead leaves and I've been throwing corn husks for the nearly 30 years we've lived here.

And stuff is growing there--flowers, ferns, plants. Lots and lots of stuff growing out of rotten leaves and corn husks.

The rest of our yards are full of life--but so is that rotten, dead, sh***y place.

Life is stronger than death. Life grows from death.

Which means (if I'm allowed to Hope in this dark time of our President Who-Will-Not-Be-Named) we may bloom again after so many attacks on immigration, equality of race and gender, climate change, green energy, the power of Congress, Truth, Justice and the American Way.

Stuff grows out of S***.

Maybe there is reason to hope, to dream, to imagine a future where my grand-daughters will flourish.

I pray it might be so.

I pray with all my heart and soul and mind.

Then I go over to the edge of the deck and watch life emerging so vibrantly from death.

Hope, Beloved, Hope!

OMG, Jerry Falwell and I agree!!!

Well, we agree but for different reasons.

I am horrified by the Alabama anti-abortion law because it limits the choice of women about who controls their bodies--them or the government.

Jerry opposes it because he thinks it is so 'extreme' that the Supreme Court won't overturn Roe v. Wade because they won't find the Alabama law constitutional.

But it is truly amazing for Jerry Falwell and I to be on the same side of anything!

Are you getting the picture now?

Several states passing anti-abortion laws (including, amazing to me, Ohio).

The rise in hate crimes against Jews and Muslims and Blacks and Latinos.

The total lack of empathy for those wanting to come to this country for a better life and to escape danger in their home countries. (Take down the Statue of Liberty, she must be ashamed....)

The President and his people refusing to accept the Constitutionally given power of 'oversight' of the Congress.

I feel like the 1950's are coming back--minus the good TV shows.

And what does all this have to do with?

The person in the Oval Office, that's what.l

The demonizing of the press. The normalizing of lies. The monarchical attitude of the President. The embracing of authoritarian leaders around the world (North Korea, Russia, Egypt, the Philippines, Hungary). The challenges of our own intelligence agencies. The trade wars and rumors of wars our allies don't think should happen. The ending of treaties and agreement. The denials of Climate Change.

I could go on, but why bother.

We are in grave times, beloved.

We need to get our backbones back and act.

All this must stop or our democracy is in danger.

Really.

Really!

Come on, Mike!

The Vice President, Mike Pence, gave the commencement at Liberty University (founded by Jerry Falwell) and told the graduates to 'prepare to be shunned' for being Christians.

Mike, like most of the graduates, is an Evangelical Christian. Most Evangelicals (though not all, I hasten to add) think that they are 'right' and anyone who disagrees with them is 'wrong'.

They won't be 'shunned'--they will be disagreed with.

Even the Episcopal Church has evangelicals (I don't capitalize it to make a distinction--they are evangelicals who are Episcopalians, not Evangelicals).

One of them came up to me at the all day meeting on Safe Church I mentioned (disparagingly) in my last post. He said, "I want to tell you something I should have told you long ago. Once you and I were in a long discussion in which we disagreed. But you told me, 'I want to understand where you're coming from even though I'm not going to agree with you." He went on to say, "that meant so very much to me: that you wanted to 'understand' me. That meant more to me than your 'agreeing' with me."

I honestly don't remember any details of that years ago conversation, but that sounds like what I would have said.

I am a Christian, for goodness sake. I am a priest in a Christian church. And I am about the polar opposite of an evangelical. I wear a button I've mentioned before that says 'Heretic'. And I am. I saw Bishop Curry, who gave me the button with great glee in Columbus. Ohio, and showed it to him. He said, "I hope you still are."

"No worry there, Bishop," I said.

I wish I could address the graduates at Liberty.

I'd say, in part, "We're all Christians here--me and you. But my view is not your view and your beliefs are not my beliefs. But we should understand each other and know where each of us is coming from and agree to disagree in peace."

I heard a clip on the radio from "The Good Place"--a TV comedy about the afterlife--today in an interview with the great theologian Elaine Pagels.

In the clip, a character who lived a really dissolute life, can't figure out why she's in the Good Place. She has a conversation with a heavenly being named Michael (the archangel???) and asks him, "so, who got it right?"

"The Hindus and Muslims," Michael replies, "got some of it right. As did the Christians and Jews and Buddhists and all other religions. They all got some of it right."

Well, that's where I am. All of us get 'some of it right', but none of us get all of it right.

So, if others don't admit you got it 'all right' is being 'shunned', then the Vice President was right down at Liberty University.