#219 - Dawn of a New Era or the Eve of Destruction

"Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction." - Barry McGuire, "Eve of Destruction" (written by P. F. Sloan

By this time tomorrow, the United States will be led by the 45th President, Donald Trump, arguably one of the most divisive incoming Presidents in American history based on his incoming approval rating, the lowest of any new President in history.

There are those who might also argue that the new President is perhaps the most egotistical and narcissistic man to ever occupy the White House. In the immortal words of The Eurythmics, who am I to disagree?

For most of the nine years I have irregularly posted to this blog, and for most of the previous 217 posts I have published, I have stayed away from politics and religion. While I will likely continue to leave religion as only the rare and occasional topic, I expect politics to become more prevalent, and the reason is the new man behind the curtain, Donald Trump.

I recently read an opinion piece in The Atlantic that argued the possibility that Trump may end up as one of the most corrupt presidents in our history. That notion could be dismissed as mere hyperbole were it not for the fact that it was written by John Dean, the man who served as counsel for the only President ever to resign from office, Richard Nixon.

According to Dean, Trump and Nixon share some of the same authoritarian tendencies. The difference being that Nixon held many of those tendencies in check. The early indications are that Trump does not have that same level of self-restraint. From the article:

To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle.

Dean goes on to suggest Trump may find himself embroiled in a Watergate-style meltdown similar to the one that forced Nixon from office. Says Dean, “he’s carrying loads of potential problems into the White House with him.” He goes on to say: “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”

So, those who feel Trump will be a disaster as President can look forward to an early end to the Trump Presidency, right? Not if Dean is correct in his assessment of how things have changed in America since Watergate.

According to Dean the checks and balances system has been weakened by "partisan paralysis." For evidence of some of this paralysis at work just look back to the government shutdown and near shutdown, along with the constant gridlock in Congress over the last several years.

Much as many argue we have become desensitized to violence by the plethora of video games, Dean believes we have become desensitized to political scandal. After Watergate, Dean says America was on high alert. But now, according the article, "that culture of vigilance has so eroded that it’s nearly impossible now to envision a sin so grave, or a revelation so explosive, that it would lead to the ouster of a sitting president." Says Dean, “the Trump campaign is an interesting measure of how high the tolerance has gotten for a public figure’s misbehavior.”

An indication of how little we seem to care about even the possibility of impropriety with regard to a Trump presidency can be seen in the reactions of many to the choices put forth for Trump's Cabinet. The fact is that few, if any supporters are concerned by the fact that most of the nominees either have worked against the agencies they are now supposed to lead or are rich, like Trump.

The proposed head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, has sued the EPA a number of times on behalf of companies opposed to EPA regulations even though ten-percent of the children in his state suffer from asthma, a condition exacerbated by pollution.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, Trump's proposed Secretary of Energy, wants to shut down the agency. Secretary of Labor nominee Andrew Puzder has opposed labor regulations designed to protect workers (and also seems to be a fan of gridlock, saying "the less Washington does, the better". Secretary of Education nominee Betty DeVos supports voucher programs that divert taxpayer money from public schools, has no idea or apparent decision on the decades long proficiency vs. growth debate with regard to assessment, and does not appear to believe in uniform enforcement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Other nominees, such as Housing and Urban Development nominee Ben Carson, who has criticized regulations designed to combat segregation in housing projects, seem equally dangerous. (This op/ed piece in The Baltimore Sun outlines Carson's criticisms and the arguments against those criticisms.")

For me, the biggest danger of a Trump presidency may not be Trump himself but those who seem to blindly follow him. Many of them profess to be Christian, yet the man they support is no more Christian than a pine tree and possibly less so.

One comment I read this morning on Facebook is indicative of the support that concerns me. It read, "I thank God he chose this man to help save this country, and saved us from doom." After reading that, all I could think was a) God really does have a sense of humor (something I've long suspected since learning Jimmy Swaggart and Jerry Lee Lewis belonged to the same family tree), followed by b) God must really hate us, before concluding with c) we can't blame God for Trump. This is on us.

These same Christian Trumpeters seem to conveniently forget one of Christ's most important teachings, "love thy neighbor as thyself." Either that, or they are full of self-loathing.

To my mind, there is nothing inherently Christian about any of Trump's Cabinet nominees. "As you do unto the least of them, so you do unto me" seems to fly in the face of the positions these nominees have taken. The Catholic church teaches that we are supposed to be stewards of God's creation. Among other things, that seems to mean protecting the environment, not opening up federal lands to additional energy exploration.

The next four years promise to be divisive, confrontational, controversial, and contentious. They will, however, get off to a rousing start on Saturday with the Women's March on Washington and the affiliated marches in the individual states.

The battle lines appear to be drawn. They are not, however, drawn along the moral lines many religious people would have us believe, at least not in the way they think. The lines are moral, but they are drawn along the lines of right and wrong, as in what is right for all people, what is right for the environment, what is right for the children, what is right for all faiths, and what is right for the least of us.

Instead of fighting to "make America great again" (a slogan Trump took from Reagan, by the way), perhaps we should focus on keeping America great, part of which includes celebrating diversity, promoting fairness, working to help the elderly and the poor, ensuring all Americans have access to and receive affordable health care, and not providing additional wealth and tax breaks to those who already have the most.

If America is to be and to remain great, the majority of people must benefit, not just a handful at the top. Putting a billionaire in charge and appointing a handful of wealthy people as his advisers and Cabinet members does not seem the best way to ensure that the greatest number of people possible benefit.

Let the battle begin.

#183 - Moving Toward a Post-Christian World

I have debated writing this post for some time because I suspected I might disappoint some of my friends or cause them to distance themselves from me. However, in light of recent events and discussions, I've decided to no longer worry about that.

A number of my friends identify themselves as Christian, (Many of them go further and also identify themselves as Catholic.) I used to be one of them. I am no longer.

I was baptised a Catholic at Easter, 1984. For 20-some years, I tried to be a good Catholic. Yet something about the Catholic Church did not feel right.

So I tried other churches, but I always came back. If nothing else, the rituals of the Catholic Church felt safe. And yet, something did not quite seem to fit.

Something about the Catholic Church in particular and about Christianity in general struck me as contradictory. I had trouble identifying it an making sense of it until I began reading the Conversations With God series of books by Neale Donald Walsch.

I can't pinpoint it specifically, but something in Neale's depiction of God resonated with me. After reading several of his spiritual books, I concluded that none of the faiths with which I was familiar truly understood the nature of God. Many of them had some aspect of God, but none was complete.

I have also come to realize than many so-called Christians cherry-pick Bible verses to fit their faith's view (and by extension, their view) of the world, all the while forgetting that the Bible was written or related by one group of men (mostly), translated by another group of men (mostly), and interpreted and explained by yet another group of men.

In the last several years, I have come to the conclusion that all religious groups may have some understanding of God, but no religious group can claim to be The Way. Not Judaism, not Christianity, not Islam. Each has at least one fatal flaw.

That fatal flaw is that each kills in the name of God. Yet Christianity says "Thou shalt not kill" and claims that the ways of God are not the ways of man. By extension, that would seem to imply that Christians do not understand God since they kill in God's name. (The same could certainly be said for many of the other major faiths.)

Reading through a number of books of Neale Donald Walsch, I feel I have come to a better understanding of God and of the contradictions inherent in many of the organized religions now in existence. For instance, it never made sense to me that we would be called upon by the Bible to love our neighbor as ourselves even as we are trying to bomb them into oblivion.

Another contradiction is the call to love God and fear God at the same time. One cannot fear and love together; they are mutually exclusive.

I'm sure there are some who will begin praying for my soul or will begin worrying that I am headed to Hell. Don't. I truly believe God is bigger and is more than any faith can express. Because of that, I don't believe any faith does God justice. I don't think any organized faith can.

#137 - Thoughts on Faith, Spirituality, and Religion, Part Three

(This is the third and final part of a three-part series)

In August of 2008, I began training to take over the responsibilities of another person working in Utah. Over the course of that experience, and in the months that followed, she and I became friends. For my birthday that year, she sent me a book she said had really helped her spiritually. It would do the same for me.

The book was part one of the trilogy Conversations With God by Neale Donald Walsch. On the surface, a book in which the author claims to have actual conversations with God might sound like a delusional journey into hallucination or even schizophrenia. But something about the book resonated with me, and things that had made little sense before became clearer.

I got so much out of Part One, that I went on to read the remaining volumes in the trilogy. Part One is an intimate, one-on-one “conversation” with God focused mainly on the spirituality of the individual. Each succeeding volume broadens its scope and builds on the messages of the first. I later added another of the author’s books, one which helped me through the transition when I was laid off from that same job five years later.

As I read through the Conversations With God series, I began to get a better sense of what I felt and believed about God, about religion, and about spirituality. At about the same time, I rediscovered my love of camping or, at this stage of my life, RVing, and reconnected with the outdoors. The convergence of these things have helped me to develop a sense of what I believe.

I came to realize that, for me, a single church or even religion was too confining because each, while including some things and people, is in its own way built on its exclusiveness. You became Catholic or Jewish or Baptist, adopting the practices and beliefs of that religion and excluding or dismissing all others. To me, God is much bigger and much more inclusive that any single religion, even bigger and more inclusive than Christianity itself.

At the same time, my wife was undertaking her own re-evaluation, helped along through a revisiting of the teachings of the late Jesuit priest Anthony DeMello. As a result, I think we both ended up in much the same place in terms of what we believe.

So what do I believe? I’m still working that out, but my beliefs tend toward what is expressed in this Hindu saying: "There are hundreds of paths up the mountain, all leading in the same direction, so it doesn’t matter which path you take.  The only one wasting time is the one who runs around and around the mountain, telling everyone else that their path is wrong."

I believe there are many ways to find God, to experience God, to worship God, none better or worse than another. In the same way, I believe each religion and its corresponding holy text contains God’s truth, expressed in the way that makes sense to the culture in which that religion is practiced and the time frame in which that religion initially developed. Just as many different faiths, many far removed from Christianity, have their own versions of the Great Flood story, so too do many faiths have their own way of experiencing the divine, none of them better or more correct than any other.

I think perhaps the Founding Fathers and the authors of the U.S. Constitution had some sense of this idea. The First Amendment certainly expresses this notion when it states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ...." Thomas Jefferson also seemed to follow the same lines when he wrote in 1802 that “religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship …”

As Jefferson infers, religion, faith, and spirituality are ultimately individual affairs. Belonging to a church or an organized religion may help some feel a sense of belonging, but it should not serve to exclude others because their church, their religion, their faith is different. For me, church and religion are too confining. I find God much bigger than that and find I am closest to God when I am closest to Nature, closest to creation itself.

As I wrote earlier, I believe God’s truth  can be found in the texts of multiple faiths. (I do not capitalize truth here as many religious writers do because I believe no one text has a monopoly on that truth.) Because of that, I hope to spend time in the coming year reading some of those texts or at least parts of those texts. I suspect I will find, as many before me have done, that there will be more similarities than differences. If I am right, then there may indeed be hope for the future, and hope is itself an expression of faith.

#136 - Thoughts on Faith, Spirituality, and Religion, Part Two

(This is part two of a three-part series)

In the spring and summer of 1984, I was a relatively young, relatively underpaid television reporter in Rapid City, South Dakota. I had just come out of my first serious relationship, and I was searching for something. A new co-worker, who was Catholic was leaving to attend a Sunday Mass, and for some reason, I asked if I could go with him.

At the time, there were several things that attracted me to Catholicism. First, it had been the faith of my family before I was born. Second, the structure and the ritual were appealing and comforting. I knew, in passing, the rector of the local cathedral, having interviewed him on several occasions. In addition, our sports director was also Catholic and as nice a man as I have ever met to this day. It was, in a religious sense, a perfect storm.

The  more I learned, the more I was attracted to Catholicism. So, in the fall of 1984, I began attending weekly classes with an eye toward conversion the following Easter. Formally known as the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA), a six-month period that culminates in joining the Church during the Easter Vigil Mass. In my case, the ceremony included a second step as I was formally baptized at the age of 28.

My mother was, to put it mildly, stunned. Her first words to me upon my arrival home for a visit were, “While you’re here, don’t preach.” She later said she thought I might end up a Unitarian but never imagined I’d become Catholic.

Back in Rapid City, I dove headlong into the Catholic experience, becoming a lector, helping with taking the weekly collection, going to the weekly coffee and donuts gatherings after Mass. If I had stayed in Rapid City, I might still be doing many of those same things today.

However, less than a year after becoming Catholic, I found myself moving south, to Alexandria, Louisiana.  My church experience here was different. While most of the people were friendly, I never really felt like I fit in, either here or in Lafayette, where I moved seven months later. The sense of family I had felt in those first heady months after becoming Catholic was gone.

After spending two years in Louisiana, the time had come to move again. I hadn’t fit in and hadn’t made many friends, being a bit more reserved than many in Louisiana or in television are. So I moved back north, to Kalispell, Montana to take a job as an announcer with a Christian radio station. The general manager introduced me to his pastor and got me involved with the singles group in his church. I attended Sunday services, but something felt wrong about it. I was used to the Catholic Communion, and the way it was conducted in this church felt like a pale imitation to me. So I began attending Mass again, though I felt out of place here as well. It seemed I still lacked a spiritual home.

One year after I moved to Kalispell, I moved again, back to Lafayette, Louisiana. After a few months, I took a job in Huntsville, Alabama and looked again for a church to call home. After a few attempts, I settled on a Catholic church in a nearby suburb. I again dove in, becoming a lector and joining the choir for 5:30 Mass. I also joined the singles group, where I met my future wife.

After a few years, by which time we had a son of our own, my wife and I moved to Illinois, where we both struggled to some extent to find our place spiritually. Five years after moving to Illinois, we moved again, following the advice of Horace Greeley and moving west, to Idaho. Although we met nice people in both Illinois and Idaho, we struggled to find a place to call our spiritual home.

In writing this, I’ve come to the conclusion that I joined each church not so much to find God but to find a sense of family, of belonging. At the same time, I wasn’t really sure what I believed. I was sure I believed in God. But whose? My answers to those questions didn’t being to form for another few years and might never have formed if not for a particular birthday gift from a friend.

[END OF PART TWO]

#135 - Thoughts on Faith, Spirituality, and Religion, Part One

(This is part one of a three-part series)

My faith journey up to now might more accurately be described as a series of day trips, some extended, but all of them bringing me back to much the same place.

I was born into a not very religious family. Nominally Catholic at that time, my family might better be categorized as disinterested on uninvolved where religion was concerned. Part of that apathy, at least in my immediate family, likely stemmed from the fact that my mother spent time in a Catholic youth home growing up. Some of those facilities at that time had an apparently well-earned reputation for hardness, if not downright cruelty.

For the first eight years of my life, God, faith, religion, and church were unknown terms and concepts to me (although I believe God and Jesus were referenced in certain phrases I won’t repeat here). It wasn’t until my mother and her second husband separated that I had my first church experiences. (I suppose you might say I also had my first mystical experience at this time, a hallucinatory afternoon in the hot Mojave Desert sun where I imagined our dogs were with me protecting me from snakes and any wildlife that might be around. They were at home, and everyone except me thought I was lost.)

As a single working mother with two pre-teen children, my mother was not always able to be with us or care for us. To fill in the gaps, she paid an older couple to look after us during the week: feed us, get us on the school bus each day, provide a place to sleep five or sometimes six nights a week. Jack was an elderly English immigrant with what seemed a live and let live approach to life. Nora was stern, almost Puritanical, and while she was 20 years younger than her husband, she seemed older in many ways. To this day, I’m not sure I remember ever seeing her smile.

Nora first introduced me to church and religion when I was eight, taking me to Sunday School and then to Sunday services at the local non-denominational church in the small desert California town in which we lived. She gave me my first Bible, a King James version given to me for my ninth birthday. The nameplate inside the front cover had been decorated by her husband, and it was inscribed with my name, though it used the last name of my stepfather, who while separated from her was still married to my mother. I received a second Bible the following June from the Sunday School teacher. 48 years later, I still have them both, kept as physical reminders of my childhood, the good and the bad.

A few years later, we moved to the Seattle area, where most of my family lives to this day. By this time, the connection to Catholicism was broken. Some in the family had joined the Mormon Church, in part, the story went, because of their concern for my grandfather, who had been hospitalized after a heart attack.

My grandmother would make quilts each year for them to sell at church bazaars, but I don’t recall the family attending services regularly. However, I did belong to a Mormon youth group for six months or so while we were living with an aunt. I only remember two things from that experience: learning to read a compass and how to step off a pace, both useful skills but hardly religious or spiritual. After this my religious/spiritual/faith journey stalled. I was 12.

For the next 15 years, my only experiences with going to church came from attending weddings and funerals. My own beliefs were not well formed, though I did believe there was a God. I wasn’t sure, however, what else I believed beyond that.

[END OF PART ONE]

#114 - Christmas Wishes and Gifts (of a sort)

I've been thinking about this post off and on for a few days now, thinking about what I wanted to say and about how I wanted to say it. Before I say any of that, though, let me first wish everyone a Merry Christmas, no matter how you mark, celebrate, or otherwise pass the day.

Now, on to the Christmas wishes and gifts. Hopefully you won't be too offended to make your way to the end of this post.

First, to the members of Congress, I give a collective lump of coal for turning their backs on and shirking their responsibility to the majority of Americans in this country. Echoes of the actions of this Congress can be found in the so-called "Do-Nothing Congress" of the 1940s under President Harry S. Truman.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans has led on any issue. Instead, both sides have acted like spoiled children who threaten to either hold their breath until they turn blue or take their ball and go home. I've never been an advocate for term limits because I believe there is value in a life spent in public service. This Congress has me reconsidering.

Next, to President Obama, I would give - if it were in my power - a backbone. He took office saying he would look to work with the other side of the aisle, something I took to indicate a willingness to compromise. There is a big difference between compromise and capitulation.

I believe the President has given much more ground to the Republicans in Congress than he has gained on numerous issues. I also don't believe the actions of Obama the President match the views espoused by Obama the candidate.

For practitioners of various faiths, I would give - if I could - greater understanding of one another. I believe it is only through understanding that we can achieve peace, one of the sentiments underlying the season, at least as evidenced in many of the Christmas cards that make their way through the mail this time of year.

Finally, for my friends and family, I wish improved and/or increased prosperity in 2012. I am not really speaking in financial terms, although I would be glad to see that for each of you as well. Instead, what I wish for you is richness of mind and of spirit and of faith, regardless of what it is you believe. My own faith journey has been filled with stops and starts over the years but has finally brought me to a place where I believe to be true what is stated in this ancient Japanese saying:

"There are many paths up the mountain, but the view of the moon from the top is the same."

May each of you have a joyous Christmas, filled with love and laughter and peace.

#63 - Random Musings

I don't really have a specific topic, but I realized I had not posted in a while, so I hope you'll forgive this series of brief and random reflections.

All weekends should be three-day weekends. Two days just doesn't seem enough time to recover and unwind from the previous week. It also is not enough of a buffer before the start of the week to come.

To me, it doesn't get much better than a Saturday afternoon sitting in a nice wooded campground, enjoying a nice glass of wine or a cold beer. Unless, of course, it is a Saturday evening in a nice wooded campground, enjoyed a nice glass of wine and a juicy grilled steak.

Television would be much better if it were a little less "real." Reality TV? Who are they kidding? What is so real about about putting a bunch of strangers and making them perform a number of artificially contrived challenges? And how many people do you know who can work out six to eight hours a day every day to drop 200 pounds of excess weight?

Anyone who claims insight into the will of God is either a con artist or is delusional. I now believe that no one faith has a monopoly on the Truth and that two people can have fundamentally different beliefs yet both be right - and wrong - at the same time.

I am discouraged by the name-calling and bickering that passes for political debate these days. Perhaps if we could find a way to concentrate of the ways in which we are alike instead of focusing on our differences we might better be able to find solutions to the issues our modern world faces.

Could it be that ignorance truly is bliss. I find I am much more peaceful on those days when I do not read the news or the political ramblings of others. I am much more at ease when I do not take the bait and respond to those with whom I disagree, for they cannot hear me anyway.

When I was younger, I loved to talk politics and to even argue politics with others. These days, I love to cook and take the trailer out for a weekend. Somehow, I think I am much better off.