The sort-of Omar resolution

So the House of Representatives passed, by a huge majority, a resolution today, condemning all hate speech against any minority.

And 23 Republicans voted nay.

Why is that?

Well, it began as a resolution to condemn anti-Semitism, prompted by some remarks of Rep. Omar (a Muslim) from Minnesota, saying Israeli money was prompting support of Israel in Congress. I happen to agree with that, but it was construed as anti-Semitic by some.

But when 23 people vote against a resolution condemning hate speech, you've got to wonder why.

Oh, and Steve King of Iowa, accused of White supremacist comments, voted "present".

I have grave doubts about America's unrelenting support of Israel vs. the Palestinian population. But I am not an anti-Semite.

And I profoundly believe hate speech against any minority is not only heinous but anti-American.

And just last week, our president called Rep. Adam Shiff, a Jew, "shifty"--which is a well known anti-Semitic term referring in years ago to Jewish bankers. What about that?

Our president has engaged in speech that is racist toward Africa and Latinos in many ways.

Hate speech is wrong, evil and deplorable.

And 23 (24 if we count Steve Kings's "present") voted against a bill condemning it.

Go figure.

Well, you don't have to figure--this is where we are in America today.

Never Enough Pondering

(Some more quotes from my wondrous Mastery Foundation quote box. I have nothing to say about any of them because I'm still ruminating about them, pondering them, trying to absorb them into my being. Try it.)

"It's not that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams."   --Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, love without power is sentimental and anemic."   --Martin Luther King, Jr.

"What's really interesting is the mystery. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."   --Ken Kesey

"The first duty of love is to listen."  --Paul Tillich

"Our Druid ancestors welcomed ever child with the words: Here come God again."
                                                                   --Fr. John Cullen

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world...."   --Albert Einstein

"The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays."    --Soren Kierkegaard

"Loving Humility is a terrible force: it is the strongest of all things and there is nothing like it."
                --Fyodor Dostoyevsky



(Happy and wondrous and profound pondering to you....)

wierd stuff

Today I heard my cellphone ring downstairs--I never have it with me.

By the time I got there, it had stopped ringing. So, since the number that called was on my phone, I called back.

The call stopped ringing but whoever answered it didn't say anything. So, I said, "Hello?"

After a moment a woman said, "Your calls are upsetting me, please don't call me again."

It was the only time I'd called and only because her number had called me.

I was in the package store I like later--run by India Indians who are really from England--and told the clerk, who is young and married to another clerk and pregnant, about the call.

She told me it was a thing that was happening. Another package store's number, owned by a member of the extended family, had called them several times at her store but when she called back she was told they never called and also told they'd gotten several calls from her store that were never made.

Apparently there is some way (unknown to me) to call someone using someone else's number. The digital age is far beyond me, that I know and know fair well.

At first I was glad it wasn't just me it had happened to. Then, on reflection, I thought the fact that it happened to others was worse than to just me.

Maybe it's the Russians playing with our heads.

Or Jared Kushner....

Mark's in Alabama!!!

So, we share this huge driveway with our next door (set back behind us) neighbors, Mark and Naomi, who have 4 children--one away and three at home. We've often had 11 cars in the driveway.

Our house was built in 1850 by a Congregational minister named (gasp!) Bradley. He went out in the back yard years later and built a house for his spinster daughter. That's where Mark and Naomi live. Until we bought our house some 29 years ago, the two had always been in the same hands. Cheshire Academy owned them for years as teacher housing. Then a doctor bought them and when she moved to New York she had a lawyer declare them a two unit condominium. We do share a water line and it was cheaper to have them made a condominium than to put in a new water line. To my knowledge we are the only two unit condominium in Cheshire. I checked with a lawyer and we'd have to put in a new water line and tear up the driveway doing it, to ask the zoning board to make them separate houses. I'll leave that to my son, a lawyer, when we're dead and gone.

This year Mark bought a snow blower (we paid nearly half--since he'd be clearing our driveway too). And up until today, he'd hardly used it. But today, with over 6 inches of snow, Mark is in Alabama with their daughter, Zoe, visiting the University of Alabama. Zoe is looking mostly at southern schools for college. They're no where near the tornadoes that have ravaged the state.

So, the one time we need it, there's no one who know how to use the snow blower!

So Naomi and her daughter and son and Bern and I shoveled for much more than an hour. Bern cleared our walkways all by herself before I was awakened by sweet dog, Bridget, whining at me because 'the woman' was outside and Bridget was lonely.

I wore my boots for the first time this winter. They're size 13 and I wear 10 1/2, so I can put them on without unlacing them.

I haven't done so much manual labor for a while and imagine I'll pay for it tomorrow.

But what a day for Mark to be in Alabama....

Real Snow

There are lots of places in the world where it never snows.

I wouldn't want to live in any of those places. I love snow.

But what's happening tonight might be the first 'real snow' we've had in Cheshire this winter.

We've had a lot less snow than usual and most of it has been more like ice than snow.

I took Bridget out at 9 p.m. and the snow was wispy and crunched under foot and wasn't slick--just piling up.

Real snow--at last.

(But not too much, okay?)

Last Sunday of Epiphany

(The reading on the last Sunday of Epiphany is always the Transfiguration story. It is meant to prepare us for the journey of Lent--though the Feast of the Transfiguration is August 6. Here's an outline of what I mean to say tomorrow.)

TRANSFIGURATION

          JUST BEFORE THE LONG, LENTEN SOJOURN IN THE DESERT, WE GO WITH JESUS TO THE MOUNTAINTOP.

          IN THE BIBLE, GOD DWELLS ON MOUNTAINTOPS.

          MOSES MET GOD TO THE TOP OF MOUNT SIANA TO RECEIVE THE LAW AND HIS FACE SHOWN WITH SUCH RADIANCE NO ONE COULD LOOK ON ITS BRIGHTNESS.

          JESUS WENT TO THE MOUNTAIN TOP AND WAS TRANSFIGURED AS HE SPOKE WITH MOSES AND ELIJAH. JESUS’ VERY BEING WAS RADIANT AND BRIGHT.

          AT THE TRANSFIGURATION, PETER SUGGESTED THEY BUILD MONUMENTS AND STAY ON THE MOUNTAINTOP. AT THAT MOMENT THE CLOUD OF HOLINESS SURROUNDED THEM AND THEY WERE TERRIFIED.

          FOR ME—PERHAPS FOR YOU—I FIND MYSELF IN THE ‘CLOUD’ MORE OFTEN THAN ON THE MOUNTAINTOP.

          I FIND MYSELF IN THE ‘CLOUD’ OF CONFUSION AND THE ‘CLOUD’ OF DOUBT AND THE ‘CLOUD’ OF FEAR MORE OFTEN THAN I FIND MYSELF ON THE MOUNTAINTOP WITH GOD.

          BUT IT IS VITAL AND IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER THAT GOD SPOKE TO THE DISCIPLES FROM THE CLOUD. THE ‘CLOUDS’ OF LIFE ARE THE DWELLING PLACES OF GOD.

          WE MAY MEET GOD ON THE MOUNTAINTOPS OF LIFE. BUT IF YOU ARE ANYTHING LIKE ME, THERE ARE A LOT MORE CLOUDS THAN MOUNTAINTOPS.

          AND GOD IS THERE AS WELL. GOD IS IN THE CLOUDS AS WELL AS ON THE MOUNTAINTOPS. OUR ‘CALL’ IS TO SEE AND HEAR GOD WHEN THINGS GET CLOUDY AND OBSCURE.

          “WE CANNOT STAY HERE,” JESUS TOLD PETER. IT IS NO DIFFERENT FOR US.

          THE WORK WE HAVE TO DO IS ‘DOWN IN THE VALLEY’, WHERE THE PEOPLE LIVE. WE CANNOT STAY ON THE MOUNTAINTOPS OF LIFE.

          —I PRAY WE WILL EXPERIENCE SOME MOUNTAINTOPS WITH GOD.

          BUT EVEN MORE THAN THAT, I PRAY WE WILL LISTEN WITH OUR HEARTS FOR THE VOICE OF GOD IN THE CLOUDS OF LIFE. I PRAY WE WILL KNOW THAT GOD IS WITH US IN THE VALLEYS AND IN THE DARKNESS.

          AND MY GREATEST PRAYER IS THAT YOU WILL CONTINUE THE WORK GOD HAS GIVEN YOU TO DO—TO BE CHRIST’S BODY IN THE CONFUSION AND FEAR AND PAIN OF THIS WORLD.

          YOUR ‘WORK’—YOUR MINISTRY AND MISSION—IS ‘ON THE GROUND’ AND IN THE LOW PLACES. YOUR MINISTRY AND MISSION IS IN THE CLOUDY PLACES.

          THERE YOU WILL SERVE GOD.

          THERE YOU WILL FIND GOD AND BE TRANSFIGURED.

          THERE…IN THE CLOUDS OF LIFE…GOD WILL FIND YOU AND WILL LEAD YOU WITH HOLINESS AND LOVE….

cousins

My cousin Jan sent me some pictures today. She is a maternal first cousin--one of the Jones family. But one of the pictures was of my mother, my grandmother and my grandmother's sister in law.

Lina Manona Sadler's brother was Granger Sadler and his daughter, Callie, married my father's brother, Sidney.

So my father and his brother married first cousins--Cleo and Callie.

Callie and Sid had two children--Gregory and Sarita. Sarita is dead but Greg is 87 years old and lives in Ashland, Virginia.

Greg and Sarita and I were first cousins through my father and mother and Sid.

And we were second cousins through Aunt Callie and my mother, who were first cousins.

Greg and Sarita--much older than me--always called us 'double first cousins'--which sounded really inbred. But we were really both first and second cousins. I don't know what you would call that.

Since I don't have siblings, this cousin thing is important to me.l

I should call Greg. I think I will.