When I was growing up I heard “Minneapolis, Minnesota” every day on the radio, sometimes twice a day. It was Billy Graham’s mailing address. You have to excuse a guy for thinking that Minneapolis, MN was a kind of Mecca, Bethel, Axum, Qom, or Salt Lake City. Until a vile police officer knelt on the neck and back of a Black man and took his life in plain sight I imagined that Minneapolis was a city full of virtue. Residents and others familiar with the city have complained, it is reported. And attorney general Merrick Garland has corroborated that Minnesota’s police force is a rotten cabal from hell.
Anybody, save us from a holy city
Mecca, Saudi Arabia
Bethel, Israel
Axum, Ethiopia
Qom, Iran
Salt Lake City, Utah, United States of America
Minnesota PD, on the healing highway
The findings of the Garland DOJ are sometimes exculpatory, but there are over a dozen police departments with disturbing records currently under the microscope of the Department of Justice. It is curious that one never heard the great Evangelist rail against the evil resident in Minneapolis’ guardians of justice and public safety. Do not ask why heads are not rolling. Let us hope that a few bad apples in Minneapolis policing are not the whitewashed conclusion.
You may not be a believer – a faithful or graced person – if you keep clinging to the conclusion that humans are all intrinsically good people or all deserve to be celebrated. The malignant things some people in positions of trust repeat in word and deed are a flashing warning that toxic potions, fabricated narratives, and absurd religious-political constructs are not worthy of our time. War to end war has made the journey from bad to worst and the idea is a crooked attempt to imitate the life from death realities that define God.
Who’s gonna stop the misery?
None of the political platforms are sufficiently informed or enthused about all of mankind. The power hungry nerds of our times will not rise to the occasion to defend the human race, because they are all interested in exploiting us. All the leaders pretending to have received top notch insight and instruction are like foolish little children in the marketplace dancing and piping and applauding each other’s performances.
31) To what then shall I compare the men of this generation, and what are they like? 32) They are like children who sit in the market place and call to one another, and they say, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.’
Luke 7:31-32 New American Standard Bible
Stopping the tears is elusive
On becoming and other privileged lanes
We Christians have clearly marked rights of passage in the spiritual journey. Conversion and baptism are the primary pair; they transform a person’s identity. Baptism is the action we take to declare to the believing community that we have experienced a change and to state our commitment to the new status. Jewish people have a bar mitzvah rite. When does a person become a Muslim? Do we really know how deadly organized religion has been, or are we willing to ignore the evidence of Judaism’s follies, Christianity’s tango with worldly powers, or Islam’s quest to dominate by extremism?
Question of the millennia
What is the difference between a religious person and a religious country? All kinds of holiness mantras and regulations will break up our reverie about governments allied with religion and answer the question with “Too much”. That “too much” rises like smoke from a fire to choke us with discrimination, miscarriages of justice, and cleverly devised fables. Christian individuals are entirely different entities from the so-called Christian nation. Muslim individuals are entirely different entities from the so-called Islamic nation. Religious Jews are entirely different entities from the so-called elect kingdoms of Israel and Judah. So let them smoke their pipes and croak in their silos of bigotry and darkness.
My home , my hope, and my heritage define me. Were I not all in for them I would be a coward and a likely deceiver. Recently I heard a commentator on television ridiculing people who combine their employment with passion. His view was that work cannot be passion. I suppose that helps explain why robots replacing us in so many places is just the kind of robotic thing we do for money. Working without passion, to me, sounds like prostitution. The turmoil in societies all over the globe are like our appointment with death. Passion for flags, tribe and religion are going to define individuals and communities for a while yet.
I am all in for the earth and the community in which I live. I am all in for the people who shaped my thinking. Our consumer society lives on stupid slogans like “drill, baby, drill” without a thought about the finite resources of the planet. Beguiling people with the possibility that amazing technological advancements will contribute to humanity’s flight to a new planet home is one of our doomed fantasies that is driven by unprecedented financing and passion. Maybe we will just repeat among the stars the colonial and imperial expansions we have seen by European powers. I think we can see that passion for native land, tribal and political tradition and religious dogma as destructive and they have always powered the decline of the human race.
New and full moon, liberation, peace and joy guarantees
Easter Monday is a statutory holiday when the beaches are packed with people in love with life and beauty. Life hardly gets better than all day fun at the beach. Easter Sunday is the reminder that people have access to liberation, Easter Sunday also brings a sobering reminder that all people need to be freed from fear and meaningless lives The full moon aspect of Passover comforts me with the facts of the ebb and flow of life. In this sense Passover comes every month as the moon waxes to full and wanes to new. I like the exceptionalism of Good Friday with its unique action undertaken by someone other than me as the foundation of my sense of value and destiny. It stands apart from the usual confessions about a great hero and/or God, because I get to simply rely on and celebrate a truly incredible act of love.
What a great festival looks like: love
Passover is originally a day to commemorate exit from the clutches of bondage. It is a Jewish festival and it has, through practice in both Judaism and Christianity, gotten rolled into a multiple day remembrance. When a Jew talks about Passover he means the 8 day period that runs from Passover Day to the last (or the seventh) day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Easter for me and many Christians includes Good Friday, Easter Sunday, and Easter Monday.
It is no coincidence that on the day that the 45th president of the United States is indicted for multiple crimes against the state and its security that Pat Robertson, the guru of Christian mediocrity, goes to his rest, or that Newt Gingrich, the Capone of failed religious bosses, is giving testimony before a grand jury. If you are capable of reading tea leaves, read that. This observer hears the diner call, “Pick up”, and if observers do not see the door closing on the religious right and all of its allies across the globe then their eyes are not working. We can expect a lot of loud noises, fenders from the supporters of the criminal 45th president, but it’s just noise.
When the seven peals of thunder had spoken, I was about to write; and I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Seal up the things which the seven peals of thunder have spoken and do not write them.”
Revelation 10:4
Some of the more momentous developments in salvation history need no comment no documentation: you get it or you don’t.
Everyone who has reached middle age knows for certain that governments and religious organizations are either deliberately creating a workforce at minimal cost. They are agents of slave mentality and economies. Why would a supposedly independent thinker on CNN invite a host to opine about the maxim “Follow your passion”? We are pretty sure that passion drove the American revolution and sheer evil invented the Soviet bloc, now facing a resurrection attempt. It is pure passion that makes the Supreme Court of the United States agree with ignorant religious bigots on every issue, not facts, not science, not legal foundations.
Shush the personal integrity and work hard for pennies
Some friend or other colleague-type named Galloway calls the maxim “bullshit”. and I could not help but notice that the video clips that introduced Michael Smerconish’s question included veritable icons of American society Senator Warnock and Oprah Winfrey. Michael and his friend are probably right now nursing their tongues because of the damage done by their own teeth. They know that work without passion is an imperialist capitalist invention. Black workers on White-owned plantations sang while they worked because they had a PASSION to be free not because they loved their work. The humming of a tune coming from the kitchen and the whistling of a catchy melody are signs of PASSION, signs of comfort, signs of expectation of satisfaction the products of labour will bring.
Whose side will we take, labour or slavedriver?
You will never hear Smerconish or any of the independent pundits and preachers say that America is a filthy w**** who pays her johns, and thinks herself a queen but she is nothing but a has-been widow. Did anyone start a campaign against Ezekiel, a priest no less in sixth century BC Israel, when he described Israel’s harlotry and the buffoonery of her prophets and princes? Not a dog did bark! How dare Smerconish pretend to be a philosopher, asking questions he hopes will shape, on the sly, the sickening MAGA world of white tyranny. One either occupies oneself passionately or succumbs to prostitution and hypocrisy. The love of money is a passion that sends the greatest persons into the torment of Gehenna. The love of humanity is a passion that the American sages who dreamed up the constitution knew would challenge their people to fly high or sink like stones into the deep.
If the world turned dark, cold and toxic I would need light, heat and a healing tonic. If I knew of a world where darkness, cold and toxicity had set in threatening life I would want to be there for that world’s residents. The sun, our friend, perfectly positioned to light and warm this planet, is the kind of friend I value and want to be.
Just a few minutes exposure does it
It used to be perfectly ok to be in the sunlight all day but now that is dangerous. Friends can also be a bit much too, so the right amount of exposure to a reliable friend is exactly what I value most. I call that metered reliability.
If someone could take from me my guitar, my Greek New Testament, and my Hebrew Bible I would grieve and mourn, but I will also be certain that the very memory of what those things have contributed to my life will dry my tears and embrace me with perfect comfort. My guitar needs fingers, so they are most dear too. The two halves of the Bible, sacred to hundreds of millions worldwide, need a hungry and curious mind, so my mind, as designed, is on that list of most dear. After all, thinking is a thing too.
Unlike Jimi Hendrix, who on discovering his lover was no longer residing at the Red House, said “I can still play my guitar”, I, without sacred text and guitar, would play the memory.
