The Attorney General’s white-washed summary
Resulted in presidential insanity unleashed
And heightened incoherent buffoonery.
Let’s get this malevolent narcissist impeached.
Please, please before it’s too late,
Let’s read Mueller’s report in its entirety
Before we descend into chaos and a police state
Laying waste our dear representative democracy.
The priest wrote, “…your beloved-
ness preceded your birth….You are
the beloved because you belong to
God from all eternity. God loved you
before you were born, and God will
love you after you die.” And the
“therefore” comes into focus, and
so the lines are drawn and here the
internecine battle is fought. “But
the womb is mine.” “But what is in
the womb is not. Cutting, therefore,
is murder.” But there are those who
do not believe any of that and make
choices based on what they believe to
be their right by law and there are
those of faith who see it in different
terms. There are those who see that
we live in a world of ethical choices,
choices which come hard and with
consequences for those who know
that in the spring, to live, to survive,
to thrive, sometimes, one must cut no
matter the pain….and who trust, that
through all the severe dilemma and all
the suffering that God waits patiently,
sufferingly so, with the affirmation that
“[y]ou are the beloved because you be-
long to God from all eternity.”
spring — time for pruning,
but not me against the tree.
i cut and am pruned.
Perhaps because of her ethnicity,
the journalist wrote of a little
known, little documented horror
of the death, rape and mutilation
of thousands upon thousands
of her forbearers. Her book
became a best seller. She
researched another book of
the horrors of war and it wore
her down, down, down. The
evil of humanity crept into her
life, her existence, her being
and it brought her down so
far, so low that the only thing
to which she could look up
was a hangman’s noose.
The man came across a
quote from a poet obsess-
ed with school buses and
has used the image many
times in his poetry, “It is
associated, at least for me,
with the first time you give
your children over to the
state.”* In that moment, the
moment the man read those
two words, words that have
taken on a cold, ominous,
faceless, dystopian, bureau-
cratic image in America
since the post war days
of the fifties and the rise
of the nation’s perceived
ultimate enemy Communism —
“the state,” — the evil state,
yes, in that moment, the man
knew, ironically, why those
who today most represent the
state are trying to destroy
universal, public education.
The new state can’t let go of
their children and give them
over to the cold, heartless
state where they will exper-
ience life outside of the
white, evangelical womb.
They can’t let go and let God….
Ironically, they have become
the new face of the Godless,
dystopian state.
*Russell Banks, quoted
in The Writer’s Almanac,
March 28, 2019
The man loves science, the necessary
questions related to the task at hand
and the testing, over and over and over
again, to help determine the validity of
the hypothesis. The man loves the “how”
of the task — how does this or that work?
But as much as he loves the hows of
life, if life were only left to hows and
the why’s were never addressed, the
man believes the life might be like
the hamster on the wheel and then he
thought that perhaps humans need to be
like that hamster on the wheel going
nowhere to even begin to ask why. He
wonders if perhaps the dark night of
the soul is a prerequisite to any type
of personal resolution in answering the
question why. Maybe not. Maybe there
is that rare character who resolves
and finds meaning without closing in
on the despair that lurks in the folds
of the brain and between the beats of the
heart. Therein lies the rub he thinks to
himself. There is no guarantee of meaning
when the irrepressible “why” comes knock-
ing. There might only be, he knows from a
family experience, the resolve that brings
a sense of peace to the meaninglessness of
it all — the nihilistic urge — suicide. But there
are testimonies to the contrary — emerging
at what some call “the second half of life”
when status, accumulations, adoration fall
away and hope and peace come to stay. And
he affirms that it is a mystery, but not a nihil-
istic nightmare, much like Macbeth’s philosophy
of life: a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and
fury, signifying nothing… but rather, the man
affirms in faith, the glorious mystery of love
eternal in the midst of it all. And then his eyes
close after staring at the cross.
He just read about an Irish woman
who saw visions galore
and was placed
in a place
where they store
those who see visions galore.
While, for him, life is not a bore,
sometimes he would like to see
visions galore
and be placed
in a safe, quiet place
where they store
those who see visions galore.
Sometimes the world
is with him too much
and everyone is in
such a rush,
to get who knows where
and so he just
sits there and stares
and thinks
the safe, quiet space
would be the place
they put those who
see visions galore
and that’s why he
would like, more and more,
to have visions galore.
But then he actually had a vision
and it was all about
the clamor and division
in the places
they put those
who see visions
galore.
So he changed his mind
vowing never to have
visions of any kind
hoping his just one vision
would not be found out by
those bureaucratic minions
who put visionaries
in prison.
So he’ll just sit in his study
far from the madding crowd
and be content to be
where it is peaceful
and not at all loud.
We are like the ancient Israelites. We keep looking for and demanding a savior king.
Many thought it would be Robert Mueller. Well, if the full report is anything like the summary (Heaven forbid), Mueller won’t be inaugurated any time soon (and he may turn out to be a dutiful serf to the Wannabe King, the Occupant of the White House) and, in the words of a popular and already hackneyed phrase, the report is a “nothing burger.”
Or…maybe there will be enough there for the House of Representatives to do their duty and maybe the purveyors of justice will be found in the office of The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
And the beat goes on…
and, eventually, justice will be done
and victory will be won.
Keep the faith, keep looking and keep protesting peacefully.
This incendiary intolerance (in this case, in the guise of prayer) is evident all over the place — yesterday in Pennsylvania’s statehouse:
Who knows where the consequence of this kind of hate speech will lead?
I’m saddened, I’m angered, I’m embarrassed.
I’m about to drop being called a Christian, at least as white, evangelical, “individual
salvation in Jesus Christ” Christianity in America defines it:
“Don’t call me a Christian anymore.
I just try to follow the all-inclusive,
all loving, all merciful, prophetic
and revelatory window to the God
of all creation, Jesus, for me and
you. Oh, and I try to follow the
words of the Buddha and Lao Tzu,
too.”
I once described myself as a Buddhist
Christian or a Christian Buddhist at a
staff meeting at a church I served as
the interim minister. The evangelical,
fundamentalist associate minister, went
apoplectic. If he could have invoked the
raining down of coals of fire on my
head, he would have done it, and they
wouldn’t have been coals of kindness
as described in scripture.
Lord, have mercy.
a row of bronze boughs
glistening through black tree limbs
reflect morning light
bobdahl 