Trump again

 I voted for Kamala Harris. But to sit through election night and watch her vote tallies fall short in my current home state and my future home state made me ask why, what happened, whose fault was it, etc. All kinds of questions and many of them about the hearts and minds of those who supported Trump. Polls told us that the "state of democracy" and the economy were the major contributing concerns of voters. These categories did not mean the same things to all voters.

As I was listening to the commentators, whose biases remain progressive, egalitarian, and transparent, I heard them slipping from confidence, to hope, to concern, to sadness and I slipped just slightly ahead of them. So . . . that's what happened. 

Now it is December and I am more aware of the less than helpful way my usual sources informed me and my "fellow travelers." They missed something about the Trump campaign's machinery and methods. It seems they performed their own version of the Democratic party's reliance on precedent and custom. It was as if they -- Biden and Harris, too -- thought honor, trust and gentility were more important than "winning." That was true as long as you could count on a majority of Republicans to share that belief. History will show them long bereft of that historic -- perhaps mythological -- manner.

Certainly Harris made some space between her campaign and the White House. I think mostly by avoidance and busy-ness. "Not going back!" wasn't just about correcting Trump's MAGA obsession it was a soft exit from Biden's gravitational field, too. My thinking here is to make sense of things like her finding a position mostly by nuance that was not locked to Biden's support of Israel such that he couldn't say enough or do enough to protect the legitimate resident's of Gaza. Harris tried to move toward Gaza just enough but could only get so far without scaring her well-heeled Israeli supporting donors. 

All the while Trump and Vance verbally pissed on foe and even at times, friend. It feels like they knew something about their voters. They knew there were more in the right places than most polls could verify. And they knew there was a path -- mostly via that damned Electoral College. I'm thinking they knew because they had already put something in place. Meanwhile, much -- perhaps most -- of their "pissing" was an assurance that those voters were "in."

That assurance may become a deceit, at least as far as predictions about the economic effect of tariffs and deportation can be believed. Didn't Musk tell us there was going to be hardship? Hasn't Trump more than doubled down on his tariff promise? He's going beyond his original China, Mexico, and Canada. He's also upping the ante, threatening 100% tariffs on BRICS. Trustworthy economists are generally forecasting harder times than Musk's warning indicated. Minus Trump's ultra wealthy supporters those hardships will befall -- just like Trump's piss -- foe AND friend.

We are now solidly in the land of oligarchs. As much as MAGA invokes the past, don't confuse them with dinosaurs. They are ready to pay for all the tyranny Trump can provide as cover for their thumbing the scales in their favor. Tax cuts are just the obvious methods. To their benefit and theirs alone they will continue to fund a destruction of our beloved country and government one "cabinet" at a time.

Maybe to my detriment I believed ours would continue as a system "of, by, and for the people." I'm willing to consider that my belief is not a memory or a recent history. It is certainly an aspiration. But I cannot see a way forward to citizenship as constitutionally established with Trump's oligarchs hoarding the wealth they did not make and getting the government they purchasing for themselves alone.

Timothy Snyder is the best voice I hear for how we can again become citizens who will grow into an even more progressive, egalitarian, and transparent society.

On the way, I hope to demonstrate the values of honor, trust and gentility. I know I do not intend to respond in a vengeful or selfish way. I also know that I cannot count on "precedent and custom" to win the day. Those historic standards are now dependent on a more muscular and vigilant practice. We cannot afford naiveté or passivity. It means being a good citizen has radically changed.

So . . . what do I do? I start by managing my own life into being nimble and helpful. Part of being nimble is to hone the "voice" I have as an older educated white man. I am a retired Episcopal priest, so I am conversant with others who have power and profess a belief in grace. As well, I'm pretty sure I know someone who is likely to need my help. I want to be able to respond. Like Brian McLaren wrote a while back, we make the road by walking. There's more, much more to come. Pay attention.

From Blogger iPhone client

What's Your Episcopal Church like?

 A member of our vestry attended the Congregational Vitality breakout group at Annual Council.  The discussion was in response to sharing these 14 attributes of typical Episcopal parishes and of the The Episcopal Church in general.  View the video as many times as you need to identify the attributes that are active in your appreciation of the church as your church from within your community.  

Adaptation

 Adaptation

I closed last week’s writing with “gratitude can . . . become a way of living.  We practice, evaluate, adjust, and practice some more.”  Instead of “adjust,” I wish I had written “adapt.” 

So, up front . . . I want everyone who can, to read this book,  The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela.  Only a few other biologists have so significantly influenced my thinking.  Even fewer have so equipped my biblical interpretations or my assumptions about humans who try to follow the example and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.  

To understand the authors we need to consider their description of biological evolution.  In short “survival of the fittest” can be better described as preservation of adaptation.  

Since Charles Darwin, most have understood “survival” as a species “winning a competition” with a rival or especially as it has been used by Social Darwinism’s commentators, “dog eat dog.”  The authors, Chilean academics present preservation of adaptation as a better shorthand because they see evolution less as a contest between rivals and more as a cascade of multiple outcomes when diverse and unpredictable elements and players are involved over time.  

Instead of Neanderthal vs. Cro-Magnon: Match of the Epochs they see ice ages, diseases, droughts, genetic mutations, floods and more; each taking a part in staging an “evolutionary drift” in the adaption of all life.  Those that “survive” are the ones that have a persisting capacity to adapt to a “world of changes” outside their control.  Another shorthand: think of species diversifying like a snow melt running and branching out down a mountainside instead a single “king of the mountain” nearly frozen on a snowy peak.

If you’re still reading, I thank you.  All before is to say that I feel confident in presenting gratitude as including, perhaps depending on our ability and willingness to adapt to a world that is not under our control.  Adaptation is how our species got here in the first place.  It is what will keep our practice of gratitude viable through victories and defeats, good days and bad days and even through those days we forget to pray like deacons.  

Adaptation and gratitude are mutually effective in furthering each other and in staging our roles as recipients and practitioners of grace, forgiveness and reconciliation.  Practicing one helps us to practice the other.   So we wake up in honesty to remember how we have survived and in humility to look ahead in hope that we may adapt with a world being set free to evolve and change.

FrDann

Habituation

 Habituation

A paraphrase of my closing from last week is that “ . . . hindsight begs honesty / trust begs humility.” I was writing about how we can move forward with gratitude and want now to describe how we might avoid slipping into what looks to me to be a kind of self-hypnosis. (I’m remembering the “little engine that could” puffing its mantra “I think I can, I think I can.”) 

The Deacon’s Prayer (DP), “Lord, I thank you for getting me up this morning” is a great way to start the day but it also serves to promote an ease of spirit when we speak it at the end of the day.  In short there’s never a bad time for the Deacon’s Prayer.  

If seen with honesty, our hindsight can admit a whole day’s worth of things hoped for AND things unexpected.  Closing with an acknowledgment of one’s reliance on God continued from the morning sets the frame and makes it possible to include “all sorts and conditions” in one’s accounting of all which God tends for us in love and mercy.

Because our God is a also God of surprises the humility implied in the DP allows us to make room for God’s time and expects us to give God as much credit as possible for all that has transpired or not in our day.  

Hindsight and humility can be partnered to protect us from a kind of magical thinking that would prefer incantation to prayer, superstition to self-examination, control of outcomes to adaptation. Magical thinking abhors surprises, avoids innovation, and slips into the stubborn insanity of repeating the same action while expecting a different outcome.

Gratitude can be expansive for others as well as one’s self.  But like agape — the New Testament name of “self-sacrificing love for the sake of others” — gratitude does not press itself across boundaries, even those made from fear or hatred but it waits, even persists in confidence to be  recognized by its honesty and humility.

We all know that person and we all remember how we felt when we saw them seeing us struggle.  Our breathing changed, became more prayer-like and our pride no longer prevented us from accepting the company and help of another. 

That’s how gratitude can work and become a way of living.  We practice, evaluate, adjust, and practice some more, so that one day we are “habituated.”  We can inhabit gratitude. 

FrDann

Worship from Following

 Worship from Following

I closed last week’s writing with “This season of Lent is going to help us to see Jesus’ journey to the cross as a labor of divine love and we can make our way — one Deacon’s prayer at a time — onto that path to follow him with our gratitude. 

This gratitude “thing” is not only an attitude adjustment begging for discipline and focus but as much a reaction to one of the other standards of this Lenten season.  The lectionary takes us through “days in the life of Jesus” and each of these days has work or some challenge to his unique purpose and ministry.  First the wilderness temptations, then “Nick at night.” This next Sunday we’ll read of how poorly the disciples — echoing Nicodemus’ take — misunderstood his embracing the moment with the woman at the well.  They were astonished Jesus was stooping to speak with her.   

It’s as if in the Fourth Gospel everyone is playing catch-up because Jesus is resolutely striding so far ahead of us all.  So much for the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  

Just like we see God ahead of us in our temperate northern hemisphere springtime bloom-fest, Jesus is begging us to keep pace and to follow him.  Worship as reflective respite will have to wait because he’ll be puzzling the Pharisees and calling Lazarus out of the tomb before we can wrap our heads much less hearts around his saying things like “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. (John 14:24) 

So we can try to keep up with him and trust that our understanding will almost always emerge from our experience. It’s called hindsight and it begs our honesty.  We can also remember that God’s love of us will always outlast all our walking or worship. It’s called trust and it begs our humility.  One day we will celebrate as he again calls us — just like he did Peter who denied him three times — and says to us “Follow me.”(John 21:19)

FrDann

Gratitude as Practice

 Gratitude as a Practice — The Deacon’s Prayer and more

I closed last week’s writing with “ . . .  Let’s let gratitude be its own improvable characteristic, its own practice that we can use Lent to refine, take root, and continue throughout the rest of our lives.  

The changes we are hoping for are gifts from God.  Let’s start with gratitude and then ‘do Lent.’”

So how might we improve our practice of gratitude?  First we could acknowledge that gratitude can be adopted.  We need not wait on some rush of inspiration — although God’s spirit is involved — as if gratitude only happens to us not from us. 

We can discipline ourselves, even set our clocks to remind us when to be grateful.  It will not take very long at all for your focus to shift as you repeat your list and acknowledge those gifts of relationship and circumstance in your life for which you are thankful.

Minus acknowledgment, everything — even someone we love — can shrink and settle into fixtures or obstacles to our preferred intentions.  That’s why “the Deacon’s prayer” is best said as we wake and with these words, “Lord I thank you for getting me up this morning.”  

BTW, if you forget to start the day with gratitude, just be ready to be grateful after you realize you missed the start.  Gratitude begun at noon is still gratitude.

As your practice develops you’ll start to prepare for the moment.  Your “inventory” will grow and change. Soon gratitude will become more than the act of acknowledgement.  It’ll eventually become a lively part of how you meet new people and circumstances.  

I’ll admit that if you put me in a room full of horse manure I’d start looking for a pony.  But you don’t have to be that crazy to be grateful.  Just allow the possibility that something good is waiting to be found.  I’ll bet you’ll find your anxieties decrease and your blood pressure go down, too.

I’ll have more later but to close let me say that my practice is not some post-new-age-meme-based- self-hypnosis. It is an attempt to be faithful to a God who has allowed us freedom for the sake of love.  A God who has all bona fides of which my life enjoys only a fraction and understands first hand what it means to choose and to act for the benefit of others, to see the potential for good in everything and to give thanks for the calling to serve. 

This season of Lent is going to help us to see Jesus’ journey to the cross as a labor of divine love and we can make our way — one Deacon’s pray at a time — onto that path to follow him with our gratitude. FrDann

Gratitude as a Beginning

  Gratitude as a Beginning

Most of us begin our season of Lenten practices with something other than gratitude as a motivation for acts of penitence, spiritual discipline or nearly all of the gains, personal or otherwise we hope will at least accompany our efforts.  Certainly we do not want to presume an outcome prematurely or lose track of that humility we nearly all agree to be an intent of these forty days.

Many of us try to get too quickly to the humility part — or at least think we are — by disliking or even hating ourselves, by finding faults of many kinds or at the very least places for improvement. Think “our weight.” Not all of this is bad but from where will gratitude emerge if we take to any sort of discipline or devotion with this sort of beginning? It’s almost as if we want control more than change, reward more than relationship or status more than duty.

And so I am suggesting this alternative, to begin with gratitude because I believe there is even more to be gained of exactly those lesser categories of self-discipline along with a way to proceed once we pass the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.

We are such quaint creatures always looking for a restart, a return to default settings, a second chance, a do-over.  We look as if that is yet to be granted, as if it is waiting on us to earn it or deserve something that God is withholding.  But it is 2023 and we are sharing in a story that already has death and resurrection in it.  

We are quaint but fortunate inhabitants of a time and place that is after that fact.  I remember Bishop Alexander’s preaching this to us on a Trinity Sunday years ago.  He asked us why we — he meant all christians not just Advent-ers — act as if the “jury is still out on the matter?”  Why do we let our particular life’s difficulties out weigh the gift of salvation — we can call it “life” — won for us and shown to us 20+ centuries ago in the birth, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth?

Let’s remember as we turn ourselves toward Calvary’s cross that the kingdom of heaven has been made manifest already!  We just celebrated that fact, that very gift for several Sundays beginning January 6, 2023. And this was not our first trip around the liturgical calendar.  We’ve been here before, as many times as we can count back to our baptisms.  

Yes there is work to do and avoiding pride would at least suggest that we do that work first through our individual lives. And I’m thinking that gratitude — taken on as its own spiritual discipline — might be the better context than reward or self-improvement.  Let’s let gratitude be its own improvable characteristic, its own practice that we can use Lent to refine, take root, and continue throughout the rest of our lives.  

The changes we are hoping for are gifts from God.  Let’s start with gratitude and then “do Lent.” 

FrDann