Skip to main content

I continue to have hope...

Most days I am pretty confident that we will get through this pandemic, as a nation, as humanity, and as a world. There are moments in some days when I truly wonder if the cracks we are seeing, armed and belligerent protests against sensible rules to help keep the population safe; mixed messages from different agencies, states, our leaders, and our President; and conspiracy theories galore (I have seen some real cracked ones from both sides); are showing that our society and nation's foundations are beyond repair.
I don't think we are that far gone. Those protests are really a small number of people, not millions, not hundreds or tens of thousands, most seem to be hundreds or dozens showing up. With all the mixed messages, the vast majority (a poll I showed on Wednesday night) seem pretty clear that we want to follow the guidelines of the scientists and experts that we should not fully open, keep social distance, and wearing a mask is an act of love. And in spite of all the conspiracies and anxiety, most Americans are doing their jobs, loving their families, and watching out for their neighbors.
Any real repair of the foundation of our country will not be accomplished by violence or giving in to our reptilian brains filled with fear, flight or fight. It will not be accomplished by the collapse of the Democrats or Republicans and being rule by one party. It will not be accomplished by us ignoring this problem or our contribution to it. If we only rail against the other side, or believe that all politicians/government employees are irredeemably corrupt, or that there are some humans who don't deserve to live, we only weaken the foundation and what binds us.
It will be hard, but we can do it. We have to tune out the conspiracies. We have to put people first, not just those on our side, but all people. We have to remember and remind everyone else that what binds us together is so much stronger than what divides us. It can't be done overnight, but we can continue the work, seeing the cracks and responding in constructive, not destructive ways.
I continue to hope and have faith in our country, in each other, and, above all, in God who loves us and guides us.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nothing Outside Contaminates

 First we start with the human traditions, not all of humanity, but Western civilization under the Doctrine of Discovery that basically states that any European explorer (especially from countries that were still Roman Catholic) coming upon any land and people that weren't Christian were able to claim the land and people in the name of their king and country. This created human traditions of enslavement and taking what isn't theirs which is still happening today in Sudan with diamonds, the Congo with lithium, and Palestine with natural gas. We continue to the 1980's were the wealthy were given massive tax cuts and the unions were routinely broken up and laws were put in place to make it very hard to create one in the 'Right to Work' states. Our human traditions have created once again a wealthy class that if they lost 90% of their wealth, they would still be the most wealthy people in the world.  It probably started with philosopher Francis Bacon who helped begin th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Selling Out

 Last Fall, I read a book called, "A History of Burning." It is a multi-generational story about a family that migrates from India to Uganda for hopes for a better future to help the British build a railroad, whose children through education secures a government job, but then Uganda throws off their colonial oppressors and gains independence and turns against the Indians who live there, and they have to migrate again and start all over in Toronto, Canada. It is a sad story of colonial power of the British Empire bringing in foreign cheap labor to build their infrastructure that leaves out the local population. And once Uganda gets independence, the corporations still control much of the economy and fosters division between the Ugandans and Indian to keep the country unstable. It is a triumphant story of human determination in the face of adversity, but only a few make it.  One of the first paragraphs in a Wikipedia search about Africa told me that Africa is politically unstab...
Post a Comment
Read more

You Will Be My Witnesses

 The first time I served communion as a licensed minister in Fargo, ND, I picked up the tray of cups and proclaimed, "This is the cup of the new covenant!" And then I remembered we serve the bread first, panicked, and said, "Which comes after the bread!" The next time, months later, I served communion, I took the cover off the communion cups, and the altar table was stone, and I timed it perfectly, and purely accidentally, so the cover spun on the table, and you would hear it go, "whew, whew, whew" faster and faster. Sitting near the front was a couple that worked closely with me in the youth groups, each time when I began and messed up, they were bent over, hands covering their faces, taking great humor in my mistakes.  In my first church in Walker, MN I messed up just about every baptism, including one time putting the head right on my lavaliere mike and the baby started crying into mike, and I almost dropped the baby when switching it around in my arms....
Post a Comment
Read more