Something from long ago

I searched 'Kudzu' in my posts to see if I'd ever mentioned it before.

I had mentioned the plant that takes over the verge of highways in the southern states in a post about Ireland. Here it is.

Friday, April 15, 2016

Gorse and magpies

Two of the things I marvel at in Ireland are Gorse and Magpies.

Gorse is a yellow flowered shrub, not as tall as wide, that seems omnipresent in Ireland. It is along all the major roadways. I was riding to Dublin on Wednesday with an Irish nun and an academic from Austria. The academic asked what the yellow flowers were and I answered "Gorse!" before Fionnula could.

She laughed. "Jim loves gorse, Georgi," she said.

And I do.

If kudzu looked like gorse people wouldn't complain so much about it.

And then there are magpies.

I went on line to see if they lived in CT and a website called 'Connecticut Critters' listed them. But on the same page their territory was listed as only on the west coast and Texas. I know I've never seen one here. They are huge birds, related to crows and as big as our crows, but with white chests and white on their wings. The rest is black and gray.

They are as common in Ireland, it seems to me, as robins in Connecticut. They always seem to be in pairs or threes. They are very fast for such large birds. I enjoy watching them.

The Irish tell me magpies are very smart, so I looked them up as well and read a couple of articles that suggested they may be the smartest birds.

They are playful and cunning.

If you are of a certain age, you might remember Heckle and Jekyll. Two magpies that were in comic books and cartoons.

Kudzu

Kudzu was one of my favorite newspaper cartoons of all time. The main character was a late teen named 'Kudzu', who was anxious, lacking direction and full of doubts. Like a typical late teen I'd say.

There were other characters but the one featured most was a man referred to only as 'Preacher'--which is what he was in his black suit, string tie and wide-brimmed 'parson's hat', walking with a cane. Preacher was a self-absorbed, money-grabbing fraud of a minister and Kudzu's biggest nemesis.

All the cartoons were only three frames. I still have two of them. I framed the frames.

In the first, Kudzu Dobois (I just remembered his last name) is walking down a southern country rode with the Preacher. Kudzu has on dark pants and a light jacket with leather on the elbows, an open necked white shirt and messy hair. The Preacher is a head shorter than the boy.

Kudzu says to the Preacher in the first frame, "Sometimes when I talk to people I fell like they're paying no attention..."

In the second frame, he says, "It's as if they're not even there!" (and the Preacher ISN'T THERE in the frame!)

The Preacher is back in the third frame when Kudzu says,  "Do you know what I mean?"

The Preacher looks at him and says, "Pardon?"

In the second cartoon the two are walking through a place with trees. Kudzu asks, "Okay, Preacher, you've heard all my problems! You're my only hope! What would you do if you were me?"

Preacher replies in the second frame, "If I were you, I reckon I'd give up, change my name, have plastic surgery, and move to Nome, Alaska....

...of course, I'm not you." he concludes in the third frame to Kudzu's fallen visage.

A complete course in how not to do pastoral counseling!

Add 'this' to 'that'....

Out of nowhere, it seems, the Justice Department announced today it is their intention to resume federal executions if they can clear all the hurdles to restore that punishment that has not been used in years. They even named the first five people they would execute--all of whom committed murder of children or the elderly, to make the public embrace the move.

The astonishing roll-back of regulations on environmental issues, immigration issues, and other protections imposed by former administrations is one thing. Renewing federal executions just adds this to THAT.

As state government's, even Red states, move to abandon executions, the Justice Department wants to renew it! Absurd! Astonishing! Absolutely wrong!

They made not be able to do it. Lots of steps along the way. And law suits after that which could tie things up in court for years.

But why? That's what you have to ask.

Could it be because the very people who would support the death penalty would be the people who voted for the current President, who will not be named here?

Of course that's it. Blood in the water for the 'base'.

When a vast majority of Americans and the members of advanced societies around the world abhor the idea of the death penalty (if only one innocent person might be executed, no one should be executed) this move is to satisfy and further attach the President's base to him.

Killing people for a political agenda.

As I said before: absurd, astonishing, absolutely wrong.

Pray for our country--hard and often....

Mueller Time

It went on forever, the two committee meetings. Robert Mueller seemed old, hard of hearing, tentative.

But his answers,  many of which were one or two words, painted a painful and terrifying picture of what went on before and during the election and the obstruction of justice of the President during the investigation.

He all but said that if the President had not been President, he would have indicted him. All but said. He was, as always, sticking to his guns and only referring to the report. Many questions were not answered because they stayed outside his report.

I was horrified at how rude and disrespectful Republicans were of a war hero, head of the FBI, security guru and special council. Republicans have circled the wagons to defend a man who has violated federal law and lied to us all 7 to 10 times a day in tweets and in person.

I am gravely disappointed in the party my father supported his whole life. He wouldn't recognize the budget conscious, small government Republicans he loved in a party that is sheltering perhaps the most corrupt administration in history which is driving the national debt to record highs, rewarding the rich and trying to take health care from average citizens and benefits from the poor.

People on either side will have vastly different views of what happened today. That just underscores how radically this President has divided the nation.

I long for justice and truth and the administration deals with evasion and lies.

I've said it before--here and in person--"Lord, help us!"

If we ever needed God's help, it is now.

Holding doors

I realize my view of the world and country--recorded on this blog--is rather negative and disappointed and even nihilistic.

So, today, I wanted to say something positive and uplifting.

I go to a Package Store in the north end of town that is owned and run by a wonderful family whose roots are in India but who lived in England before coming to America. It's a husband and wife and uncle and children and some interestingly bizarre young white men. One of the sons and his wife (also from Indian descent) recently had a baby boy and his picture is by the cash register. They are a lovely group. The mother (and seeming 'boss' of the whole bunch) calls everyone 'love', which I find precious.

Anyway, I've noticed people in the town of Cheshire (30,000 or so of them, becoming less homogeneous each year--more blacks and browns and Muslims) always hold the door for you at the package store.

Once I noticed that, I began to notice that people all over town, at the businesses that don't have automatic doors, do the same.

There is something to be said for an upper middle class white man holding open a door for a Hispanic just off work or a Black woman or someone with a hijab. And the opposite is also true--people who are diverse holding doors for others is a remarkably positive thing.

The question is: how do we start holding doors open for 'the other' on a national level?

How do white Republicans walk through doors held open by 'the squad' that the President has attacked so viciously? How do recent immigrants, even undocumented ones, walk through doors held open by 6th generation Americans? How do GBLTQ folk hold open doors for straight folks--and the opposite?

How do we turn holding doors open into a 'way of being' in this country?

The next time someone holds a door for you or you do for them, ponder my queries.

"Open doors" are the key to being truly free and united, Whenever someone holds a door for me, I give thanks. And when I hold a door for someone else, I am thankful as well.

Ponder that, deeply.

The 'believer' world

I just read an article on line about a NASCAR driver (I've driven his name fast from my mind) who said he 'isn't a believer in the moon landing 50 years ago!

Since when has their been a 'believer world' vs. a 'non-believer world' about what HAPPENED.

We landed on the moon! It happened.

You don't have to 'believe' it--IT HAPPENED!!!!!

6% of Americans and, get this, 11% of millennials don't believe we landed on the moon.

Jesus Christ, Almighty God, save me from this!

Shit happens.

Jews died in Germany by the millions. We've had two World Wars. Kids were killed in Sandy Hook. Obama was born in Hawaii. The earth is round. On and on--'believers' and 'non-believers'.

There is nothing to believe or not believe when stuff happens.

I've lived too long. Reality has altered into a flat-earth 'belief' or 'non-belief' world.

I celebrate WHAT HAPPENED  50 years ago today--not what "I believe" happened 50 years ago today.

Save belief and unbelief for mysteries, not reality.

Sunday's sermon

6^TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST—Emmanuel, Killingworth

            Today we heard the story of Mary and Martha. Martha is fretting, doing chores, cooking and worrying while Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and absorbs his wisdom. Martha comes to complain and ask for Mary’s help and Jesus tells her, “Mary has chosen the better part.”

            I won’t ask you to raise your hands, but in the honestly of your heart tell yourself if you are more like Martha or Mary.

            I bet I’m talking to a bunch of Martha’s here today!

            Most of us, most of the time, are fretting like Martha, working on many tasks, not taking time to call out our Mary side and listen quietly to the ‘still, small voice of God.’

            That’s what we need to do, especially in these times: sit and listen for the wisdom of Jesus.

            I’m going to tell you about my upbringing a bit, because it will lead me to what I want to say later.

            I grew up in the southern most county of West Virginia, McDowell County. If you’re from there you say ‘MACK-dowell’ instead of Mac-Dowell. There were about 100,000 people in an area larger than Rhode Island—about half Black and half White.

            Though half the people in my little town were African American, I knew only two of them by name: Gene Kelly, who worked in my uncle’s grocery store and his wife, Delia, who was my uncle’s housekeeper and cook. But many of the Black adults and a good number of the kids knew my name since my two uncles owned a grocery store, a dry goods store and the Esso station and my father sold them insurance.

            I was never in a classroom with an African American until my senior year of high school though it was over a decade after Brown vs. The Board of Education. The next year the two separate school systems were going to merge, so Gary District High sent 6 students to be in my senior class: three talented male athletes and three very smart females to smooth the way. They weren’t allowed at the prom, so I didn’t attend either.

            I was good friends in college with a young man who graduated from Gary District. He would introduce me to his friends by saying, “Jim and I went to different high schools together!”

            And it wasn’t just race. When I was leaving Anawalt Junior High to go 12 miles down the road to Gary High, our Principal addressed the 9^th graders. (Anawalt was almost completely Anglo Saxon, and Black of course, but almost no people of other ethnic origins.) Principal Ramsey told us (please excuse the language but I want you to hear what he said): “The Hunks and Tallies and Pollacks down at Gary aren’t going to accept you. You will be shunned.”

            A man with a Master’s Degree told 14-year-old kids that!

            It was a dark and racist time for me growing up. Which brings me to another place—today our country seems to be moving back toward those time instead of toward more diversity and more inclusion.

            Attacks against Muslims and Jews are way up from 5 years ago. Hate crimes are increasing. White Nationalists and Neo-Nazi’s are bolder and more public now. Immigrants and even ethnic people born in this country are more fearful than they had been. Human beings fleeing, in most cases, for their lives are separated from they children and held in cages along the southern boarder.

            I’m not talking about policy disagreements. In a democracy, there are always policy disagreements—it is a sign of the strength and health of the democracy. I’m talking about the violation of basis human rights—rights all of God’s children should expect in ‘the land of the free and the home of the brave’.

            Martha work is needed to correct all this—but Mary work is needed more. We need to sit with God and ponder God’s wisdom and wonder how things have gone wrong. Before Martha gets to work, Mary must drown out the rhetoric and the noise and ponder the will of God, seeking guidance for the work to be done to insure ALL PEOPLE a part of the Dream of this great and good land.

            So, let your Mary side ponder our plight so her wisdom can guide the work our Martha side has to do.     Amen.