What Flag to Fly over Confederate Graves?

Of course, for sure, and then some.
The Confederate army was full of young men fighting for and with their friends, families and neighbors.


Yes, they were white, and likely sympathetic to slavery.
But they were just young men, even boys.
They died in war like all soldiers do.
Broken, bloody and full of hurt.
Maybe slowly laying in the dirt.
In a hospital full of germs.
Or suddenly, in the blink of an eye
Gone.
And gathered up and buried.
Laid to rest, as they say.


Like all soldiers in any army.
Too young to know the difference.
Some fled and defected.


But most didn't.
Most couldn't.
Or wouldn't.
And many died.
And they were buried by moms and dads.
Uncles and aunts, sisters and brothers.
Tears were shed.
Tombstones sunk into the ground.
Trees planted.


Remember them?
Of course.
Honor them?
Yes.


But let's not fly the Confederate Flag.
That's a piece of rebellion and steeped in horror.
It's all about slavery.
That's what it was.
That's what it is.
Slavery.
White supremacy.
Jim Crow.
States' Rights.
Nullification.
The end of the Union.
Shackles and chains.
Whips and ropes.


Yes, that's the truth.


There should never be a Confederate Flag associated with the young men moldering away in the ground across the southern stretches of this nation ... but only the Star and Stripes ... one nation, indivisible ...


Remember them, of course.
But let Old Glory rise above their graves.
In some form or fashion, they died for that flag.
They challenged it.
Tested and tried that flag.


And that flag endured.
And it was, in part, their blood, that made it so.


So, over their graves.
The glorious flag of a nation.
With plenty of struggles.
But still united.
Still held together by the Constitution.
And fragile dreams of democracy.


God bless them.
And God bless us all.
As we struggle to be:
The United States of America.

Good Historians

I'm grateful for historians.
At least a certain kind.

Not the David Barton kind, who manufacture
history to suit a darker purpose.

Usually a conservative purpose.
To serve White Interests.
And evangelical priorities.
The rich and the powerful.

Sure, all historians write from a perspective.
They bring themselves to the table.
Their values and dreams.
Their DNA and childhood hobbies.

But there's a difference, sometimes slight.
A difference, nonetheless.

I think it has to do with fundamental honesty.
Good historians acknowledge the darker elements.
The ugly stuff that most of us would rather not know.

Honesty, to uncover the unconscionable.
But as well to reveal the best.

To read the primary sources.
To dig deep and think it through.

Honoring the mystery of the better angels who hang around.
Seeing justice and mercy in the ebb and flow of our days.
Celebrating, or lamenting, that we humans make choices.
And sometimes, lo and behold, make good choices.

Choices that reflect justice and mercy.
When nations sometimes rise above self-interest.
And make the hard choices to promote the best.

Good historians:
See the evils of white supremacy, and racial pride of any kind.
The narrowness of so much religious posturing, and all
The blather that radiates from the super pious.
The lies we tell to cover the fault.
And the faults we lionize because we think they're great.

Good historians are not likely to be praised by the self-interested.

Good historians are not likely to be read by those who choose ignorance.

Good historians will not make it on the megachurch market.

Good historians won't be hired by Liberty University.

I'm grateful for good historians.
We might call them nerds, and they smile.

They bury themselves in libraries with dusty documents.
They read voluminously.
They love books.
They think deeply (which is a form of prayer).
They love the truth, whatever it is.

And of such things, God is pleased.

I Am a Democrat

I'm a Democrat.

I made that decision when D and I registered for our first Presidential election: 1968.
I was in my last year of seminary.

Then and now, the values of the Democratic Party align with my Christian faith ...

My parents were Republicans, though politics never seemed to be much on our minds ... nor that of my friends.

I recall no political discussion, though I remember JFK's assassination ... it was deeply moving ... and we all watched the TV.

College days freed me from my racism ... in seminary, I changed my view on the Vietnam war and came to oppose it.

My first ministry in the storied hills of West Virginia gave me an experience, deep and disturbing, with poverty and the cruelty of the coal companies.

Throughout my years, I've supported labor unions, civil rights, marriage equality and women's rights. These things all arise and flow out of my faith, my reading of Scripture, and the larger Christian Tradition. This is how it shakes out for me.

Humans are sinners, I know that.
So nothing and no one is a pure shining light.
But this much I know.
The Democratic Party over the years, beginning with FDR, has consistently fought for The People.

I guess I could resign from the political and simply pray.
I could refrain from voting.
But Jeremiah encourages the refugees in a "foreign land," to go about their everyday lives and seek the welfare of the nation in which they now live.

I think it's my Christian duty to be engaged in the life of my nation, and that means I have to make choices, and, as Bonhoeffer noted, rarely is the choice between good and bad, but between good and good, and bad and bad. It's messy and unpredictable, but for me, I have no choice but to be engaged.

To know myself, my values and hopes.
And to bring those to the public square.

I am devoted to The People.
Because I am devoted to Christ.

Walls Are So Foolish

Glued to the TV, 1989
watching the Berlin Wall
meet its match in The People.

Walls never work,
though we continue to build them,
in the vanity of our own foolishness.

We build walls
to keep others out,
to keep some within ...

we build them
as a testament
to fear and bigotry.

Every wall built is a reminder
of our failure to live up
to our own best interests.

Every wall
shall fall,
sooner or later.

Every wall
will fail to curtail
the energy of freedom.

Though for a while,
a wall might prevail,
in the end, walls are weak;

they cannot contain the Spirit of God,
constantly moving across the plains
of the soul,

constantly
creating and recreating
in the darkness and in the dreams.

Walls are so foolish.

Art and Politics

It's all politics, really.
Art and preaching.
Writing and care.


It's how we think.
Shaped by the place of our birth.
The moments of hurt and happy.


The news we absorb.
The times, the stress and strain.
It's called history.


The stuff we live.
Our lives in private.
Or public.


The faith we profess.
Or deny.
Or somewhere in between.


We like a candidate.
They fit with our values.
What we hold to be true.


We see a world.
And say, "Go that way."
And that's politics.


Art is always expressing what the artist sees.
And what the artist sees is shaped by the soul.
A soul shaped by a billion small things.


A soul that can be dark and sad.
Or bright and confident.
Or, as is so much of life, somewhere in between.

American Tax Fetish

American's have a fetish on low taxes ... and what a price we pay:

Our infrastructure is crumbling.
Our health care system sucks.
Higher education costs are skyrocketing.
Public schools are dying on the vine.

Right ... but I'll be darned if I'll pay more in taxes.

I enjoy driving on lousy roads.
I like to pay astronomical deductibles, and if I can't afford medical care, well I'll just get sick, and then die, but, by gum and by golly, no more taxes.

I love it when youth are saddled with education debt; serves 'em right for getting so uppity.

I can hardly wait to send America's children to private schools, homeschools and charter schools. Enough of this public education stuff; sounds communist to me anyway. And in public schools they teach science, and that's contrary to gawd's word.

I love it when the rich take it all.
You bet.
They know what they're doing.
They're gawd's anointed.

So,

Let's cut health care all over the place.
Cut Social Security, too; what the heck, get rid of it.
Get rid of Medicare, too.

And all the stuff that supports the poor, the underserving, the illegals and all those other kinds of people who talk strange and wear clothes different than my all-American caps and jeans.

It's just socialism, and that means taxes, and that means I don't want it.

Am I a Murderer

Never an abortion" is just plain unrealistic ... so, what is abortion?

Is it murder as some might say?

As one meme put it: "whether outside the womb, or inside, it's still murder" ... and I thought, "or, is it?"

Obviously it isn't ... sure, it's serious, and every decision made to end a pregnancy is a serious decision ... driven by all sorts of needs and exigencies ...

Certainly, the wealthy will always have access to abortion, even "wealthy christians" ... though they have the means to care for a child, in ways that so many poor families just don't have.

I wanted to reply to the meme, but thought: "A nuanced understanding of what murder is and isn't, and what it means to have an abortion, can't compete with mindless absolutism, a mindset set unconditionally upon the notion that abortion is evil all the time, that those who support a woman's right to choose are murderers, and so is the woman."

So, no reply ... just a deep sigh, and the hope that somewhere along the line, reality and reasonableness might creep in.

As for me:

I support all the means we have at our disposal to mitigate the need for an abortion:

1. Free and easy access to birth control.
2. Sex education throughout a child's schooling.
3. Fully funded health care for all.
4. Fully funded public schools.
5. Unions for higher wages.
6. And a thousand other social devices to make life better.

And,

I support a woman's right to make her own choices - about what she wears, what she eats, and what time she goes to bed. Yes, and with abortion, too.

And, why?

Because I trust women to think it through and make a reasonable decision for themselves, those they love, and their future.

Does that make me a murderer?

Weaponized Prayer

After a less than pleasant phone conversation, many years ago, with an Oklahoma fundamentalist, she said, "I'm praying for you."

To which I said, "Please don't, because your prayer for me is hostile and adversarial. It isn't loving prayer."

I doubt if I stopped her "praying" for me, but I've subsequently thought about how prayer can be weaponized," i.e. telling God how to change someone according to my thoughts; such prayer isn't prayer at all, but an aggression, an aggression both on the gates of heaven and upon the person's spirit. And those who engage in such prayer actually draw further from God.

So, I'm careful in offering prayer ... to not weaponize my prayer life.

In this regard, I think that no prayer is best in selective cases ... leaving the matter in God's hands, which is very much a matter of prayer.

There's so much that I pray about, but even then, I say the person's name, or name the need, and then simply say, "Jesus my LORD."

No long-winded speech about what God ought to be doing with so-and-so, no wrestling with this and that, no pleading for God to give me something, or to give something to those I love ... no laundry list of dos and don'ts for God, and how God ought to be running the world.

Yes, I know the parables about prayer - persistence, and such, but as a matter of course, I avoid telling God what to do, though I've done that a time or two in my life, especially so when I'm praying for my loved one, or have found myself in desperate straits ... there may be such moments, but ordinarily they're few and far between.

So ... I work hard to let people and things remain in the hands of God ... by refraining from expressing my expectations and needs. I think most of the time this is best for me.

Perhaps others have a different calling about how prayer ought to be in their lives ... though I think all of us are tempted to "weaponize" our prayers, i.e to call down fire from heaven ... yet, like most any weapon, zealously used, such prayer is likely to cause serious harm.

Oh well, just some further thoughts about prayer ...

I Don't Pray Any Longer ...

I used to pray regularly for those who support the man-of-lies, but I don't pray any more.

There's warrant in Scripture for not wasting one's breath on those who have hopelessly given themselves to lies, illusion and fabrication.

They have built their wall, a wall dense and high, to keep out the truth ... and why they should do this is quite beyond me, but I suppose it was their initial commitment, because they were Republicans of long standing, or conservatives of some sort, that got them on board, and now that the train of madness is plunging ahead at full steam, they don't know how to get off, and so they defend the man-of-lies all the more, to somehow save face, ease their conscience and dismiss the truth.

It doesn't take much to discern the truth ... it's just a matter of looking at this man-of-lies, his greed, his sexualizing of women, his thoughtless remarks, his cruelties toward immigrants and asylum-seekers, his unpredictability, his bombast and confusing lines of thought, his greed and his self-importance.

I keep recalling that even as Berlin was in flames and Hitler dead, the die-hard Nazis remained loyal, and to this day, there are folks who still believe that Hitler was a good idea.

Well, that's life, as Robert De Niro put it in "Joker." That's life, and how sad it is.

I Shouldn’t Be Forced to Give Birth to a Baby Who Won’t Live

I Shouldn’t Be Forced to Give Birth to a Baby Who Won’t Live

Our baby had a fatal birth defect. My federal health insurance plan refused to cover the abortion.

By Sarah E. Levin
Ms. Levin is a federal employee in Pennsylvania.
July 3, 2019


When I was 20 weeks pregnant, I and my husband learned during a routine ultrasound that our baby had not developed a major portion of her brain and never would. The condition, anencephaly, a type of neural tube defect that also stunts the growth of the skull, is terminal. If carried to term, our baby would be very unlikely to survive for more than a few hours.

One in 1,000 fetuses have this condition. We had no warning signs. No indications. No idea this was coming. This was a baby we had planned for. Just three weeks earlier we had told our 5-year-old daughter that she would soon have a baby sister. We returned home from the hospital that day and had to tell her that her sister was not coming any more. It was the first time she saw me sobbing, unable to speak.

We made the decision to terminate the pregnancy immediately. Then came the roadblocks.

I am a federal worker, and the Hyde Amendment, passed by Congress in 1976, barred my health insurance company from covering my abortion, just as it does for the millions of other women who are federal employees and for the millions of women who are federal Medicaid recipients. The amendment allows abortion coverage only if the pregnancy will endanger a woman’s life or is the result of rape or incest. Some states use their own funds to cover abortions that don’t fall within those bounds. Pennsylvania, where I live, is not one of them.

I’m lucky to be a federal employee in some respects. I benefited from regular prenatal care that was entirely covered by my insurer. I benefited all the way until I needed to have an abortion, when my health care coverage disappeared — at the time I needed it most.

Because I was in my second trimester, my abortion this past June cost $2,500 up front, not including anesthesia and pathology testing; anesthesia, alone, usually costs an additional $1,100. If I were unable to afford the upfront costs, as would be the case for many Medicaid recipients, I would have had to carry my pregnancy to term.

Lost in the conversation about forcing women to carry to term is any acknowledgment of the mental toll it can have, especially on those of us whose baby is likely to be stillborn, as about 75 percent of those with anencephaly are, or to die shortly after birth.

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What about my husband, who would also miss work, share in our trauma, and require his own mental health care to work through his pain?

And then there is my 5-year-old daughter, who would have to bear my grief while watching my pregnant stomach swell for another 20 weeks, and know that a baby is coming, but not one who would ever be able to be a sister to her.

I was fortunate enough, despite the financial burden, to still have a choice. Some states have recently passed laws banning abortions.


Still, the decision to terminate didn’t lead to the fast abortion I had hoped for. First, I had to sit through the state-mandated counseling as laid out in Pennsylvania’s Abortion Control Act, which is designed to dissuade me from having an abortion. The law also requires a 24-hour waiting period after “counseling” before the two-day procedure could begin. My hospital provided counseling only on Mondays at 4 p.m., so I had to wait a week. That’s a week in which I felt my baby kick constantly, a week in which my family began to mourn a loss that I hadn’t even begun to grieve for, because how could I when she was still growing inside of me?

Waiting one week for the procedure was cruel. Waiting 20 more weeks would have been intolerable.

This abortion wasn’t a choice. It was an urgent medical necessity.

Unfortunately, the courts have sided with the government when the amendment has been challenged. In 2002, a federal worker who also had a baby with anencephaly sued the government for its refusal to pay for her abortion. She won the first case but then lost the appeal. That means that the federal government continues to choose to subsidize the increased cost of delivering a baby with anencephaly as compared to ending the pregnancy. Deliveries typically cost $30,000 and $50,000, and many anencephalic babies are delivered by C-section, which is even more costly and carries significant risk to the mother. Then there’s the medical care required during the short span of life the baby may have (very few have lived past their first birthday).

This cannot be what we want for our federal workers, their families, and for Medicaid recipients who are some of the poorest and most vulnerable in society. My employer, the largest in the country, made an immoral decision to refuse me healthcare. It imposed restrictions upon me that were founded on a religious belief — not my own — that hurts my ability to be a productive public servant.

Sarah Levin is a public defender in Western Pennsylvania.

GOP Morally Bankrupt

The GOP is fated by its own history to either tolerate or support the worst in America's character.

From Isolationism and America First, to McCarthy and Strom Thurmond, to saber rattling and voter suppression, to its tolerance, if not support, of the current WH occupant, the GOP is a denizen of the slough.

The GOP has no moral substance whatsoever, so it clings to the superficialities of morality, religion, capitalism and patriotism, but its decayed moral fiber can neither lead the nation nor posit a vision for the Free World.

The GOP has a long and sordid history, with only the rarest occurrence of real leaders, like Senator Arthur Vandenberg whose bipartisanship crafted the Marshall Plan, the United Nations and NATO. When others would have divided the nation, Vandenberg built bridges and crafted compromise.

"This too shall pass" said the plaque on Vandenberg's desk, and so it shall; but I can only hope for limited damage in our current situation, and that women and men of vision, moral clarity, with the courage of justice, will emerge to lead our nation aright.

Prohibition Zeal ...

The misplaced zeal of prohibition.

Yes, booze was killing millions.
Caught in the hell of their factories.
In the slime of the slums.
Without hope and without light.

Booze becomes, then, or now, some relief.
Who can blame anyone wanting a little R & R?

So, the pious and the well-meaning.
Smashed the barrels and passed the 24th Amendment.

And we all know how that worked.
A boon to the crooked, it was.
While the rich still had their booze and speak-easies.

I guess the nation needed to try it out.

But what a dismal failure it was.
Because the real issues were poverty.
Child labor.
The cruelty of the rich.
The wantonness of Wall Street.
Desperation for millions caught in the cogs of "progress."

This whole anti-abortion thing strikes me as pious palaver.
Misplaced energy and misguided thinking.
The issue isn't abortion.
It's a thousand other things that weaken families.
Victimizes women and young girls.
The macho men who can't keep their pants zipped.
And the pathetic preachers who label it all, "God's will."

Piety of this sort isn't piety at all.
It's just ignorance, fear and misogyny.
The ancient anxiety of men.
To keep women penned and pregnant.

I don't know.
Looks like we're headed in all the wrong directions.
With a brute in the WH.
And sex-fixated conservatives, hands in the pockets.

I hope it doesn't endure.
It won't.
This kind of stuff always falters and fails.
But not without doing its horrible work.

It's Not a Pretty Picture

We have to stop judging war by the one "good one" - WW2.

For most of our wars, our dead and maimed soldiers have suffered and died to promote the private interests of wealth and expansion (Mexico 1848; Philippines 1899-1902) to keep the natural resources flowing into our nation, to manufacture cheap goods to sell to them back to the nations we've defeated, fundamentally deindustrializing those nations and forcing them into dependence. 

For what purpose?

Dear Readers, it's not a pretty picture ... and to be blunt, to be frank, our national cemeteries, beautiful as they are, filled with the remains of the young and lovingly tended, are mostly the province of American industry - steel, coal, oil, and agriculture, and our sense of entitlement, that we can have what we want, and what we want, we'll get.

Remember, too, that WW2 was fought by the citizen-soldier, and when it was over, they returned to civilian life, to carry on and build this nation.

They were not the neo-con "warriors" we've created ... an army of poor hoping for a chance, repeatedly deployed to hell again and again, led by a strange and bizarre Southern Elite Warrior Class, who upon leaving the armed forces often enter law enforcement to carry on their colonializing effort.

Am I being unduly harsh?

Perhaps.

But better to be harsh in quest of the real story, the truth that liberates, rather than maudlin myths, myths created by Big Biz and power-drunk politicians and evangelical preachers of American First.

I Pay, You Pay, We all Pay for Trump's Madness

I pay more for Chinese goods.
The money derived thereof:
Goes to American Farmers.

Socialism in a pitiful capitalist system.
Where the people are robbed.
And the rich get richer.

Trump is a jerk.
Has fun playing Big Boy.
Messes everyone up.

And I pay.
And you pay, too.
As the money is transferred.

To those ...
Many of whom voted for the Little Piss Pants.
The Child in the WH.

This is how money behaves.
Money without reason.
Without values.

Money, the supreme everything.
Bottom line is the top of the mountain.
For crooks and bums and the privileged.

Who believe that America was created for their benefit.
And that America out to be darn glad.
For their big homes and expensive jets.

For This I Hope

Our nation has seen bad times before, and we've made it through or, or have we?

How many bad times can a nation endure?
How much idiocy and greed, lust and lies?

Does it all add up to something finally terminal?
Is our democracy truly at risk?

If history means anything, we have to say Yes!
Wouldn't be the first nation to commit suicide.

Yet, I have hope.
There are plenty of good people around.

The 36%, of course, are pretty much a lost cause.
And maybe most of the 1%.

But I keep believing that America is more sane than not.
That we have a basic sense of right and justice.

That the current administration is more a fluke than a fact.
That it'll pass.

But damage has been done.
Real damage to the soul of the nation.

Can we recover?
Sure, we will.

But'll we'll have scars aplenty.
And we'll walk with a limp.

And maybe have a greater sense of humility.
That we're not the greatest on the this earth.

We're just another nation.
Tempted by self-seeking.

With a populace given to fanaticism.
Flag waving and racism.

We'll make it.
But not without a wound to our soul.

Maybe that's ok.
Ok to be wounded.

Wounded people often have a greater compassion.
A slowness to judge.

We'll survive.
But with a greater sense of reality.

For that I hope.
Yes, for that I hope.

To Avert Disaster

Climate change and its dangers ...

Scientists are warning us, raising a cry that we're reaching some kind of a tipping point, a point of no return, or something like that.

Perhaps their warnings are overstated; but to pay them no heed is just plain foolhardy.

GOP leaders, convinced in their shallow world that science is hokum and history is bunk, because they're drunk on power and cannot conceive of a world beyond their mighty control!

Buttressed by the idiocy of the evangelicals, claiming that gawd would never allow such a thing, because human beings are on top of the heap, commissioned by gawd to dominate the world, to wrest from it all that we can for our pleasure.

Fill the air with dirt, the water with poison, the soil with chemicals, and kill the big animals for the pleasure of mounting a head or two, or three, or hundreds and thousands on the walls of their luxury. Don't worry, gawd will clean it all up for us ... or at the least, rapture off to happy-land those who believe.

Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, were all warned by their more seasoned generals, but full steam ahead into disaster was their way, because power deludes those who have it.

No matter what, the earth will survive our foolish and arrogant behavior, but how much better it would be for us to think our way through the times, to rely upon reason and science, to consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, rather than blunder our way into disaster.

The scientists warning us are not a bunch of panicked Chicken Littles, but women and men of wisdom who are likely and mostly right.

Biblically speaking, there is nothing in the text to warrant undo confidence in God's protective providence. The storm is coming said the prophets, and it came with God's own fury for a people who deafened themselves to the prophet's cry and hardened their hearts against the poor (these two dynamics seem to run hand-in-hand).

I hope, I pray, that our next group of leaders will have a greater sense of reason, a deeper respect for science, and a heart for the poor.

To avert disaster: to remember the polar bear and to care for the children who weep at night

An Evangelical Apology

An Evangelical apology:

To the nation, to every American.
We apologize.

We have distorted the gospel.
We have cast our lot with power.
We have made an idol of our anti-abortion beliefs.

We have sold our soul.
We have used Christ without knowing Christ.
We have abused the Bible.
We have loved guns more than God.

We have been mostly silent on race.
We have hated people of the LGBTQ community.
We have winked at child abuse in our own ranks.

We have courted the worst in America.
To further our own interests.

We're sorry.
We repent.

We apologize.

(I'd like to see this, or something like it!)

Like a Cold and Dreary Rain Storm

The news swirls around me like a cold and dreary rain storm that just doesn't want to quit (sounds like the start of cheap noire novel - ha).

But it's just terrible ...

That conflict and debate should surround a president is perfectly normal, but this ceaseless barrage of chaos and corruption has taken the US of A to a new low, degraded the office of the president, crippled the government and threatens the entire economy.

Is this normal?

Heaven's no.

This is more the stuff of banana republics and third world dictatorships ... but not for America.

Yet, look at Britain, and what the conservatives have done there, with their Brexit idiocy, their headlong plunge into the past, to regain some imagined golden age of British hegemony and independence.

Look now at Brazil.

And such tendencies in Poland and again in Serbian areas, that part of the world where partisan interests and violent empires collided head on in WW1.

Wherever the conservative, nationalistic, racist, crazies, have a chance to implement their view of things, tinged as they nearly always are with religious zealotry, chaos ensues, and the people suffer, ultimately, even the wealthy, who initially often support such moves, as they appear to them as potential profit. All across the board, it's avarice, that ancient sin of desire, to have it all, to have it now, to have it according to our wants and dictates, lest someone else get more than their "fair" share of the pie.

What has happening in America right now is nothing less that pathological - it's not normal, it's not rational, it's not politics as usual - it's demonic, wicked, evil, and deadly.

It is but one world in which we live, and all of us are sisters and brothers to one to another, whatever our status may be, and we're at one with our environment, and the more we try to dominate our environment the more thoroughly the environment will rise up against us - either we learn these lessons now, or the chaos will swallow us up.