Bonhoeffer's Prayer for His Nation

When asked how he prayed, Bonhoeffer replied to Visser't hooft in Geneva, "I pray for my nation's defeat."

It was for Bonhoeffer a monumental decision ... he loved his homeland, he was worried that the Allies would repeat Versailles, he was already planning for what the church must be and do after the war and Germany's role in world Christianity.

Bonhoeffer was a servant of Christ, and that guided his patriotism.

And for me, I hope it's true, as well - that my faith in Christ is what guides my patriotism, and not the other way around, as it seems to be, as I see it, for some who claim to follow Christ.

These are difficult times, and our difficulties are mounting every moment, as a feckless leader bumbles and blusters his way from one crisis and failure to another.

Everyone who cheers for him furthers the chaos and damage, and every Christian who sides with him fails, I believe, to honor Christ.

It's a huge thing to say, but I believe I'm in good company with Israel's 8th Century prophets who were often accused of faithlessness to God and being traitors to their nation.

History has proven them right, and the same judgment for Bonhoeffer.

We're Fundamentally a Good Nation

Let's say, for a moment, that Rump did nothing wrong ... that he did nothing illegal or even questionable ... that everything he did was normal.

And, then what?
What are we left with?

Chaos, crooks in jail, confusion.
Uncertainty and cruelty.

Lots of cruelty.
Abandoning the land to special interests.
Children in cages.
Families decimated.

A government full of scoundrels and scalawags.
Foreign policy in shreds.

He goes to cities for rallies and doesn't pay.
He refuses to release his taxes.
He runs away to his resorts.
He plays endless golf.

He's rude and crude.
He's foolish and full of himself.

His whole life is a combover.

He's not fit to lead our nation.
And if, for some, the economy is good.
That's not a result of his "greatness."
It's the result of America's ingenuity and energy.
Creativity and innovation.

We're fundamentally a good nation.
We've got skeletons in our closet, of course.
But we're a good nation.

But that goodness right now is being tainted.
As never quite before.

By a terrible man who otherwise would be a mob boss.

I think he's guilty of impeachable offenses.
But beyond that, he's guilty of crimes against his own humanity, and the humanity of millions around the world.

He's betrayed the common good.
He's betrayed the God he uses so skillfully to fool the religious naive.
He's betrayed everything that makes for truth.

Impeachable by the House?
Likely.!

Impeachable in the Courts of Faith, Hope and Love?
YES, ABSOLUTELY.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles






One of the finest I've ever read ... like an eight-course dinner in a five-star restaurant, every course just right, wonderfully plated and served with elegance, wine with every serving, plenty of time to savor every offering, delicious, with a stunned shake of the head ... can anything be this good? And it is.

Character development is rich ... Towles use of words masterful ... a man in charge of the words, and not, like so much self-published stuff, the words in charge of the writer.

The reader, at least this one, is swept up into the sorrows and joys of it all ... and on nearly every page, a quotable quote, and at all the right times, like a palette-cleansing sorbet, laughter, sometimes slight, and sometimes a hearty guffaw.

A book to be studied, enjoyed, loved, and when done, set aside with thanksgiving, that in this often crazy and cruel world, there are some who will not give in, but will find a way to find the gifts of life and love ... and Towles, as a master of the art, to tell the tale of hope.





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I Am Against ...

I am against The Wall.
I am against Liars and Cheats.
I am against Maggot Hats.

I am against private white schools.
Even Catholic ones.

I am against private schools that
Bar LGBTQ teachers and make life
Miserable for LGBTQ students.

I am against bigotry and hate
Claiming "just being Christian."
Such is nothing less than a baldfaced lie.
A heresy of incommensurable evil.

As I oppose such things, dark and wicked.
Mindless and malevolent;

I stand up for:
LGBTQ rights, across the board.
A woman's right to choose, in all matters of health.

Transgender rights.
Voter Rights.
Free birth control.
Sex education.
Fully funded public education.
All across the board.

I am for freedom of thought and religion.
For Equal Opportunity.
Equal wages for women.
Universal Heath Care.
Higher taxes on the upper crust.

Taxes are nothing more than the ancient
Art of Alms-giving.
The redistribution of wealth.
To help the poor.
And save the souls of the rich.

I am for fresh air and clean water.
Clear skies and job training.
For safe food.
And unions.

For all the things that make life good.
For all of God's creatures.
Great and Small.

I do this from the heart of my being.
My faith in God.
And the work of Christ.
Who fed the hungry.
Confronted the pious.
Tweaked the noses of the proud.
Refused Pilate's mindless chatter.
Freely expressed his doubts and fears.

And in ways never to be understood.
Came through death to life.
And with the angels, rolled away the stone.

I believe these things because they speak of love.
Of hope and faith.

And that's why I oppose the shenanigans
Of the power-hungry.
And elements of the Christian Family who are
Flat-out wrong, or so I think, and so I believe.
It's not the first time that Christians are wrong.
Nor the last.

And perhaps I'm wrong, too.
And if I am, so be it.
I can only be here and how.
With what I have, and what I hope.
And the way I see it.

By the Spirit, by reading and prayer.
In the company of good friends.
I do my best.
To honor what is best in the human story.
God's story, too.
From Cradle to Cross.
From Genesis to Revelations.
From the Tree of Life to the healing of the nations.

The Death Penalty Is an Abomination

The death penalty is an abomination. It fails on every count, other than the blood-lust revenge factor.

And, please, don't quote the Bible at me ... while I love the Bible, every cruelty can be found therein and justified. Bible quoters, at this point, and others, are notorious in their disregard for the large picture, and if they're Xns, more than eager to ignore Jesus as Jesus and reduce him to some kind of hyper-spirit saving-machine to get folks into glory, while more than happily leaving a whole of other folk in hell.

The death penalty degrades those who affirm it, those who manufacture the devices, the drugs; those who pull the switches, and those who witness it.

They are all, one and the same, killers, in spite of "state sanction," a despicable piece of casuistry used to defend the worst kinds of human behavior.

Hats off to Washington State for abolishing this stupidity. Of the people on death row, their sentences were immediately commuted to life.

Keeping the Job

I don't know what it's like to be a politician, always figuring on how to keep the job.

But I was a minister for 50 years, and "keeping the job" was often a part of it.

I learned that "keeping the job" could be a gift, a simple, if not a painful, reminder, of larger responsibilities, like my family, and folks who see things differently.

There were times when "keeping the job" graced my life; other times, it compelled me to compromise my values.

Hard, at the time, to figure it all out.

But given the scars on my back, I believe that a good many times, I took chances ... and paid the price. It can get ugly; real ugly.

A good politician will always try to keep the job, for the long haul, but a great politician will know when to take a chance, and even, if needed, lose the damn job.

Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 by Adam Hochschild
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When all else is said and done, America's refusal to help the Republic, while Hitler, Mussolini, and Texaco (yes, that's right), poured arms and oil into Franco's Nationalist effort, because the Republic was revolutionary and "red," with tremendous pressure on FDR exerted by the Roman Catholic Church, will remain in history as one of our greatest blunders. Like it or not, we "choose" fascism because we thought the Republic was red, and then, when Hitler moved into Poland, it was too late.

Hochschild has done a remarkable job of putting a human face on the Civil War, and the thousands of young men and women, from America and around the world, a number of whom were Communists, who understood the threat of fascism and decided to cast their lot with the Republic.

Those who made it home were forever tainted and held in suspicion, targets of the anti-red hysteria that gripped this nation, and still does - a most foolish, self-inflicted blindness.

Hochschild's writing is wonderfully clear, taking us to the war through the eyes of those who were there. Some of the best and the brightest put their lives on the line for the cause of freedom and hope - that Spain might well free itself from centuries of brutal feudal rule, and the cruelty of the Roman Catholic Church. But the western democracies, already afraid of revolution, and afraid of the Roman Church, refused to help.

If you want to know more about the Spanish Civil War, no better book than this.


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