For my comments on the article “From One Draft Dodger to Another” posted at The Twelve Blog, please go here: https://blog.perspectivesjournal.org/2017/10/23/from-one-draft-dodger-to-another/, read the article and scroll down to
my comments.

there is weakening of the flanks;
there is no phalanx.
there is not a bone
of the finger or toe
to point out what is
happening, mostly
because everyone
is exhausted.
the malevolent
narcissist
turns out
to be the
eveready
bunny
battery,
except
he is
not
near-
ly
so
cute
even
with
his
rasp-
berry,
yucky,
yellow
toup.

Corroding, coarsening, corrupting —
the state of affairs in America
in our time.

We’ve been looking for more
smooth moves like we
experienced from 2009
to a little over a year ago
in our time.

Now we haven’t got anything
better than this corroding,
coarsening, corrupting of America
in our time.

Fresh, young, white faces
contorted into vulgar masks
of horror in the light of
torches in the night.

Fresh, young, high school
white faces contorted
into vulgar masks of horror
shouting at and clubbing fresh,
young, black faces of fear.

Fresh, young, white faces
on the playground contorted
into vulgar masks of horror
shouting profanities at minorities.

Fresh, young, white faces
sitting at the dining room table
listening to old, white faces
contorted into vulgar masks
of horror spewing out hate
toward everyone and anyone
not like their white faces.

The man took the chocolate lab for a
walk in the rain on the second day of

the week-long tryout period. The six-
year-old dog, going on six months,

tugged frantically to the left and then
the right on the leash and then stopped

stone still and stared at an old, blue
van in a driveway. The dog hadn’t seen

his former master in six months which
had been spent in a cage in a down

state animal shelter. The man wondered
if a dog has an elephant’s memory. “Did

he drive a van, Buddy? Did you used to
ride in a van?” Then the man hesitated,

thought for a second and remembered that
dogs actually see shades of blue even

though color challenged and said, as
if the dog would understand, “Did your

master drive an old, dark blue van,
Buddy?” While the dog continued to

stand and stare at the van, the man
stood in the rain staring at the dog.

The man started to choke up, cleared
his throat, tugged on the leash and

said,“Come on, Bud, let’s go.”

The good old days when civil rights were
advocated for all including LGBT’s,
marriage was recognized for all sexual

orientations, women began to have power
over their own bodies, environmentalism
wasn’t a seven syllable dirty word, black

lives began to matter, browns, yellows
and reds and immigrants began to see
hope on the horizon, a brilliant bi-

racial president held forth with in-
credible dignity, moral rectitude and
a great sense of humor, there were

really, super angry, scared to death
whites who felt their Ozzie and Harriet
world was all slipping away and so they

got a white supremacist, racist guy who
happens to be a malevolent narcissist
elected to the presidency of the United

States while Adolph rose up from the grave
all these years after cowardly committing
suicide and shouted “Mein Kampf,” straight

armed salutes were seen here and there
and the bomb loomed large over amber waves
of grain and purple mountains majesty –

at least for the time being and all in
what seemed like a nano-second of
extreme democratic fragility.

There are dirty, oink, oink, old white
guys with an enormous amount of fleeting,
dying, extinguishing, vanishing power
grabbing, grabbing, grabbing, thinking
with their Little Elvis, dealing with
their Little Elvis, intimidating with
their Little Elvis, imploring with their
Little Elvis, begging with their Little
Elvis, threatening with their Little
Elvis when finally after the smoke clears
and the millions have been spent, all they
are left with is their limp Little Elvis to
shake, shake, shake and shake again
to get the last damn drop out at any old,
dirty urinal and not in their old, long
past white, cotton underpants which their
wives probably wash and perhaps even still
iron.

The brilliance faded
from the leaves when the rain came.
Soon leaves will fall.

Wind whipped wet leaves
tumble to the soggy soil
leaving branches bare.

While we drove into the city, we
watched all the trees shedding
their chlorophyll and turning various
colors from muted to brilliant. As
we drove past all those trees, we
tried to name them by their colors
and weren’t very successful, but,
nevertheless, we were mesmerized
by the colors, soon to disappear
until the next year.

After centuries of dualistic dismissal, religion is finally
ready to befriend the wisdom of science. And science is
regaining the humility to recognize that the intuitions
and metaphors of religion were not as naïve as they once
imagined. We were both in our own way trying honestly to
name our experience.*

As he read the meditation, he thought
of his “God of the Gaps” days when he
surely should have known better but
was behind the eight ball, so to speak,
in philosophical theology. Catching up
would come after an embarrassing
experience when a campus ministry
colleague laughingly blurted out the
accusatory comment in a staff meeting.
Humiliation can be a great impetus to
research and learning he thought. He
still flushes and gets a little warm
at the remembrance. He knows he owes
much to his pre and post doctoral
studies at his other alma mater, The
School of Hard Knocks.

*Richard Rohr, Daily Meditations, October 22, 2017