Texas state representative James Talarico, running now for a U. S. Senate seat, delivered a powerful and compelling sermon two years ago in his home church of St. Andrew's Presbyterian in Austin. M.P. and I were most impressed. Talarico has a master's degree in education, as well as a Master of Divinty degree.
I didn't know they still made young men like this. We agree with all his main points - though there are some fine points of history and theology he skates over a bit too quickly, in my opinion. Still, his thesis that the Christofacism engulfing the country today is both un-Christian as well as un-American is indisputably true, and he makes the case splendidly.
We hope to vote for him in the general election. But there is one nagging question in the back of my mind - here is this clean-cut, well-educated, well-spoken young man . . . still single at 36? Why? A cursory online search turns up no mention of wife, girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, or any other relationship. If he were a Catholic priest, that would be understandable, but he's a Presbyterian. As much as I like what he says, there's something not quite right about this picture.
So what gives? Perhaps some enterprising reporter will dig into this mystery. Meanwhile, he and Buttigieg are the two best hopes we see for the future of America at this point in time. God bless them.
On the Stephen Colbert show last week, Sir Ian McKellan delivered an impromptu monologue from the play Sir Thomas More, with some lines added, it is nowadays believed, by William Shakespeare himself. What a powerful statement against the hate-fueled cruelty of unthinking mobs, then and now.
Shakespeare was not merely good with words: he saw through human nature and understood what makes people tick; and always upheld a kind-hearted, broad-minded Christian morality. This is the sort of thing one ought to gain from a study of good literature, properly taught.
When I first saw the video of the killing of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA hospital, I immediately thought of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Federal agents shot Pretti after he tried to help a woman they had thrown to the ground and pepper-sprayed. Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves and help those in need. “Do this and you will live,” he says. Not in Donald Trump’s America.
Americans have now seen with their own eyes the cost of President Trump’s abuse of power and disregard for the Constitution. Videos of the killing of Pretti and Renee Good by federal agents have exposed the lies of Trump-administration officials who were quick to smear the victims as “domestic terrorists.” Even Americans who have grown habituated to Trump’s excesses have been shaken by these killings and the reflexively cruel and dishonest response from the administration.
This crisis also reveals a deeper moral rot at the heart of Trump’s MAGA movement. Whatever you think about immigration policy, how can a person of conscience justify the lack of compassion and empathy for the victims in Minnesota, and for the families torn apart or hiding in fear, for the children separated from their parents or afraid to go to school?
That compassion is weak and cruelty is strong has become an article of MAGA faith. Trump and his allies believe that the more inhumane the treatment, the more likely it is to spread fear. That’s the goal of surging heavily armed federal forces into blue states such as Minnesota and Maine—street theater of the most dangerous kind. Other recent presidents, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, managed to deport millions of undocumented immigrants without turning American cities into battlegrounds or making a show of keeping children in cages. . . .
The glorification of cruelty and rejection of compassion don’t just shape the Trump administration’s policies. Those values are also at the core of Trump’s own character and worldview. And they have become a rallying cry for a cadre of hard-right “Christian influencers” who are waging a war on empathy. . .
This is certainly not what I was taught in Sunday school, not what my reading of the Bible teaches me, and not what I believe Jesus preached in his short time on Earth. Yes, I went to Sunday school. In fact, my mother taught Sunday school at our Methodist church in Park Ridge, Illinois. As an adult, I occasionally taught at our church in Little Rock, Arkansas. Some people—such as the Republican congressman who once called me the Antichrist—might find this surprising. (When I confronted him, he mumbled something about not having meant it. Trump later appointed him to his Cabinet.)
I’ve never been one to wear my faith on my sleeve, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important to me. Quite the opposite: My faith has sustained me, informed me, saved me, chided me, and challenged me. I don’t know who I would be or where I would have ended up without it. So I am not a disinterested observer here. I believe that Christians like me—and people of faith more generally—have a responsibility to stand up to the extremists who use religion to divide our society and undermine our democracy. . . .
What I Say:
It is not necessary to be a Christian to be a good citizen in America; but can America survive without Christian morality? I don't mean who sleeps with whom, which is a non-issue in the scheme of things - I mean the essential teachings of Christ as found in the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Golden Rule, and the Sermon on the Mount, to name a few. True Christianity is about loving your neighbor as yourself - the polar opposite of the rampant narcissism of the modern world - not to mention the perverted Christianism of the far right, hate-filled and self-serving.
Liberal-minded people have been fleeing from the churches en masse in recent decades - but I really don't think they will like a "post-Christian" world as much as they expect. In fact, it's already here - in Minneapolis, in Silicon Valley, and in Washington, D. C.
John Michael Talbot is a Grammy-award-winning Catholic musician and some kind of Franciscan monk. His rendition of the Peace Prayer, which appears at the top of the sidebar of this blog, is a great favorite of your Head Trucker's.
In his funeral sermon for Pope Francis yesterday at the Vatican, Cardinal Re recalled the late pope's persistent concern for the poor, the suffering, and the outcasts of the world, on the model of his namesake saint. This concern is at the heart of the Christian faith, as Jesus expressed it in Matthew 25:31-46, and is neatly summarized in what Catholics call the Seven Works of Corporal Mercy:
Feed the hungry
Give drink to the thirsty
Clothe the naked
Shelter the homeless
Visit the sick
Visit the prisoners
Bury the dead
(This Episcopalian thinks it would not be amiss to add "and comfort the living" to that last point.)
Whether you are a Christian or not, this is a handy checklist if you find yourself wondering just what you can do to make a difference in the world. You don't have to save the whole world; just do what you can for those nearest you. I believe that the smallest act of sincere kindness - even just a friendly smile - counts for something in the scheme of the universe.
And God needs workers in other areas besides those seven. Your Head Trucker thinks He would be better pleased if you spent just an hour a week on the phone with your lonely old Aunt Sally, who always talks your ear off, than sitting and squirming for an hour in a church service you can't wait to get away from. Aunt Sally has a real hunger for human company, and it costs you nothintg but a little time and patience to give a needed lift to her spirits. That is the sort of service with which God is best pleased. But who am I to say?
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Continuing a tradition he started as Prince of Wales, HM the King has released a message to mark Easter:
One of the puzzles of our humanity is how we are capable of both great cruelty and great kindness. This paradox of human life runs through the Easter story and in the scenes that daily come before our eyes — at one moment, terrible images of human suffering and, in another, heroic acts in war-torn countries where humanitarians of every kind risk their own lives to protect the lives of others. A few weeks ago, I met many such people at a reception in Buckingham Palace and felt a profound sense of admiration for their resilience, courage and compassion.
On Maundy Thursday, Jesus knelt and washed the feet of many of those who would abandon Him. His humble action was a token of His love that knew no bounds or boundaries and is central to Christian belief.
The love He showed when he walked the Earth reflected the Jewish ethic of caring for the stranger and those in need, a deep human instinct echoed in Islam and other religious traditions, and in the hearts of all who seek the good of others.
The abiding message of Easter is that God so loved the world — the whole world — that He sent His son to live among us to show us how to love one another, and to lay down His own life for others in a love that proved stronger than death.
There are three virtues that the world still needs — faith, hope and love. “And the greatest of these is love”.
It is with these timeless truths in my mind, and my heart, that I wish you all a blessed and peaceful Easter.
Charles R
Beautiful. Just right. This is the Christian faith.
After his baptism, Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread."
Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.'"
Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours."
Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'"
Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'"
Jesus answered him, "It is said, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'"
When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.
--Luke 4:1-13
"Through compassion and self-giving, through self-emptying and generosity, we are invited to glimpse this ultimate reality . . . . 'In Christ, God becomes human so that humans may become God, sharing in the diving nature.'"
Yesterday's video sermon from Father David, a retired Episcopal priest in Hawaii. This is a brilliant meditation on rituals, mythology, life, death, and resurrection. Well worth a listen if you care about spiritual things.
Father David is a retired Episcopal priest. I just came across some of his short videos made before the election. I think they are still very relevant and inspirational. See what you think.
Former President Carter celebrated his 100th birthday yesterday with a gathering of family and friends at his home in Plains, Georgia. Since leaving the presidency in 1981, Mr. Carter has lived out his Christian faith by engaging in numerous charitable and social projects, most notably through the nonprofit Carter Center in Atlanta, dedicated to advancing human rights and alleviating human suffering around the world. He is a very fine man indeed, and has set a shining example for all who aspire to the White House. God bless him.
And of course, as has often been said, behind every great man is a great woman. Rosalynn Carter was a stalwart partner to Jimmy who also left her own mark on his White House years. An excerpt from an interview with the Carters on the occasion of their 75th anniversary in 2021:
My truckbuddy Frank had a post on his blog the other day on this shrine I'd never heard about. Some people call it the "Lourdes of America." I'm neither Catholic nor athletic, and the idea of a 40-mile hike uphill is rather uninspiring, to say the least. However, I can appreciate the spiritual impetus, and I'm sure many people do get a blessing of some kind thereby. The impious may jeer and laugh at such simplicities; but there are many worse ways to spend a weekend.
A playlist from the National Gallery of Art, London, with a trailer and 8 short episodes discussing styles and techniques of various Renaissance painters.
Pope Francis delivered a surprise TED talk this week, recorded at the Vatican, which your Head Trucker finds very appropriate to this moment in history, when all the world seems consumed by arrogance, ignorance, and deadly hatred. Excerpt:
How wonderful would it be if the growth of scientific and technological innovation would come along with more equality and social inclusion. How wonderful would it be, while we discover faraway planets, to rediscover the needs of the brothers and sisters orbiting around us. How wonderful would it be if solidarity, this beautiful and, at times, inconvenient word, were not simply reduced to social work, and became, instead, the default attitude in political, economic and scientific choices, as well as in the relationships among individuals, peoples and countries. Only by educating people to a true solidarity will we be able to overcome the "culture of waste," which doesn't concern only food and goods but, first and foremost, the people who are cast aside by our techno-economic systems which, without even realizing it, are now putting products at their core, instead of people.
Solidarity is a term that many wish to erase from the dictionary. Solidarity, however, is not an automatic mechanism. It cannot be programmed or controlled. It is a free response born from the heart of each and everyone. Yes, a free response! When one realizes that life, even in the middle of so many contradictions, is a gift, that love is the source and the meaning of life, how can they withhold their urge to do good to another fellow being? . . .
The story of the Good Samaritan is the story of today’s humanity. People's paths are riddled with suffering, as everything is centered around money, and things, instead of people. And often there is this habit, by people who call themselves "respectable," of not taking care of the others, thus leaving behind thousands of human beings, or entire populations, on the side of the road. Fortunately, there are also those who are creating a new world by taking care of the other, even out of their own pockets. Mother Teresa actually said: "One cannot love, unless it is at their own expense."
We have so much to do, and we must do it together. But how can we do that with all the evil we breathe every day? Thank God, no system can nullify our desire to open up to the good, to compassion and to our capacity to react against evil, all of which stem from deep within our hearts. Now you might tell me, "Sure, these are beautiful words, but I am not the Good Samaritan, nor Mother Teresa of Calcutta." On the contrary: we are precious, each and every one of us. Each and every one of us is irreplaceable in the eyes of God. Through the darkness of today's conflicts, each and every one of us can become a bright candle, a reminder that light will overcome darkness, and never the other way around. . . .
The third message I would like to share today is, indeed, about revolution: the revolution of tenderness. And what is tenderness? It is the love that comes close and becomes real. It is a movement that starts from our heart and reaches the eyes, the ears and the hands. Tenderness means to use our eyes to see the other, our ears to hear the other, to listen to the children, the poor, those who are afraid of the future. To listen also to the silent cry of our common home, of our sick and polluted earth. Tenderness means to use our hands and our heart to comfort the other, to take care of those in need.
Tenderness is the language of the young children, of those who need the other. A child’s love for mom and dad grows through their touch, their gaze, their voice, their tenderness. I like when I hear parents talk to their babies, adapting to the little child, sharing the same level of communication. This is tenderness: being on the same level as the other. God himself descended into Jesus to be on our level. This is the same path the Good Samaritan took. This is the path that Jesus himself took. He lowered himself, he lived his entire human existence practicing the real, concrete language of love.
Yes, tenderness is the path of choice for the strongest, most courageous men and women. Tenderness is not weakness; it is fortitude. It is the path of solidarity, the path of humility. Please, allow me to say it loud and clear: the more powerful you are, the more your actions will have an impact on people, the more responsible you are to act humbly. If you don’t, your power will ruin you, and you will ruin the other. There is a saying in Argentina: "Power is like drinking gin on an empty stomach." You feel dizzy, you get drunk, you lose your balance, and you will end up hurting yourself and those around you, if you don’t connect your power with humility and tenderness. Through humility and concrete love, on the other hand, power – the highest, the strongest one – becomes a service, a force for good.
Results from the 2014 Pew Research Center survey of religious life in America continue to be assessed. This week, the Pew folks released these charts showing the change in acceptance of homosexuality among various Christian denominations between 2007 and 2014 (click to enlarge):
And here's a chart Pew created last July showing where American religious groups stand on same-sex marriage:
The chart above summarizes a new report by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center on official attitudes towards same-sex marriage held by major U.S. denominations. Another recent report by Pew discusses the hard-line anti-gay attitudes of most Evangelical church members, as shown below:
At its General Assembly in Detroit this week, The Presbyterian Church U.S.A., which already allows gays and lesbians to be ordained ministers, will consider resolutions to allow same-sex weddings in states where they are legal.
Update, 6/19: The Presbyterian General Assembly voted today 76%-24% to allow same-sex weddings.
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey (PDF, 1.42 MB) in 2008, which offers a sweeping analysis of religious beliefs and denominational identification among American adults. A short summary of their findings is presented in this table:
And per the U.S. Census Bureau, it appears that adults make up 76.5% of the 2013 total population of 316,128,839. So you do the math.
The purpose of the NALT Christians Project is to give LGBT-affirming Christians a means of proclaiming to the world—and especially to young gay people—their belief and conviction that there is nothing anti-biblical or at all inherently sinful about being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.
NALT Christians Project Co-founder John Shore, progressive Christian writer and activist:
For much too long now, anti-LGBT Christians have used the Bible and the pulpit to bully, malign, and shame LGBT people. And not enough LGBT-affirming Christians have stood up to boldly and clearly say how terribly wrong that is—to say that’s not what Christianity is, that the Bible doesn’t condemn homosexuality, that ”Christian” leaders like Tony Perkins and Maggie Gallagher do not speak for us.
It’s time for us true NALT Christians—the ones who genuinely aren’t like that—to speak up and be heard, to affirm LGBT people as loudly and clearly as anti-LGBT Christians condemn them. We must stand up for young LGBT people, who are so vulnerable to feeling worthless and shunned. We must eradicate the culturally inculcated moral underpinnings that serves to support such bullying. And we must bring to the fore a renewed Christianity that, instead of standing for anti-gay bigotry, stands for the integrity and love that Jesus Christ himself so radically stood for.
Wayne Besen and Evan Hurst of Truth Wins Out are also co-founders of the project.
Dan's It Gets Better Project was and remains wildly successful, receiving thousands of video contributions from around the world, including many prominent people in politics, sports, and the arts. It will be interesting to see if this new project generates a similar response among "nice" heterosexual Christians.
Watch more videos or get your straight friends and family to contribute one here.
P.S. - Your Head Trucker devoted much study to the topic over a period of many years, and cannot conclude otherwise than that the Bible does indeed condemn homosexuality in both the old and the new testaments. People who say different, even so-called experts, are playing fast and loose with the facts of history, culture, and language, in my considered opinion.
But the Bible - which of course is not one single book but a collection, a library, of 66 different books (73 if you're Catholic) written by nearly that many different writers over a period of more than a thousand years - the Bible in one place or another also commands genocide, forced marriage, the execution of promiscuous girls and rebellious boys, group stonings, and slavery - not to mention the utter subjection of women to their husbands. The Bible is a product of the straight men who wrote it for other straight men to read - which is to say, a product of the solidly patriarchal, virulently homophobic Hebraic culture in which its various parts were written.
The Bible is simply wrong about homosexuality, as it is about those other things I just mentioned, and more besides. Yet in other places, the Bible contains some of the highest, best thoughts and precepts of mankind in its long search for the meaning of life and the divine nature. The fact is, the Bible - rather like the Internet, it occurs to me - is a very mixed bag, which must be read with care, and interpreted with caution, based upon deep and wide learning.
But of course, the vast majority of folks won't take the time or trouble to do that. In the meantime, here's all you really need to know from the Bible - presented as a public service by your Head Trucker:
At this time in 1953, Winston Churchill was Prime Minister of England, and over here President Dwight Eisenhower was still in the early months of his first term of office, and "Mamie pink," the First Lady's favorite color, was a trending fashion. I Love Lucy was just concluding its second season; Lucy's competitors Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, and Imogene Coca were household names. Steam locomotives were still to be seen pulling passenger and freight trains all across the U.S.A., though brightly-painted diesels had already crowded them out on some routes. To get from New York to Los Angeles, you could take the 20th Century Limited to Chicago in 16 hours overnight, rocked to sleep in a snug, air-conditioned Pullman bedroom (think of the famous scenes in North by Northwest with Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint); and then after a leisurely 12-hour layover in Chicago, during which you could enjoy the city's finest offerings in the way of shopping, dining, and perhaps taking in a museum or a movie, the Super Chief would carry you on to the Golden State in just 39 3/4 hours; in other words, a civilized traveler who left New York on Friday afternoon at 5 p.m. would arrive in L.A. at 8:30 on Monday morning. Plenty of millionaires and movie stars, as well as ordinary folks, still traveled that way in 1953.
But for those in a real hurry, the quickest way to get from New York to Los Angeles was a nine-hour non-stop flight aboard an elegant, four-propellered Lockheed Constellation (price: $158.25 one way, or $1360 in today's dollars; plus 10% federal transportation tax). It took twelve hours for a Connie to jump the Atlantic and wing you to London, with a stop in Newfoundland or Ireland en route. Cunard's magnificent ships, the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth, still plied the North Atlantic in tandem like clockwork, with one arriving and departing New York harbor every week, along with the liners of many other steamship companies. More people still crossed the Atlantic by ship than by plane. And the SS United States, pride of this nation since winning the Blue Riband a year before, was likewise shuttling back and forth between England and America at 32 knots, or 37 mph for you landlubbers - the fastest thing afloat. There were no spacecraft, no astronauts, and no NASA. Telephones were black and identical, had dials, not pushbuttons, weighed about five pounds, and were all of them wired securely to the wall. None of them took photographs. There were no color televisions, microwave ovens, or home computers. Even rock'n'roll was unknown: Elvis had yet to cut his first demo record. And nobody had ever heard of McDonalds.
It was a very different world, but one thing has remained constant since then, amidst all the flux of change: sixty years ago today, Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in Westminster Abbey, the first major public occasion to be televised nationwide in Britain, with film footage delivered across the oceans by military jet planes to be seen on TV screens throughout much of the world. Here's a behind-the-scenes documentary produced by the BBC that includes stunning color footage of the Queen, the pageantry and processions, and the ceremony itself - which, as the commentator says, and I think rightly, was of a grandeur and magnificence that will never be seen again.
William Shawcross, official biographer of the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, writing in The Telegraph:
As the country has become more diverse and restless, the only real focus of unity today is the monarchy. And we saw in both the Golden and Diamond Jubilees how much people value that. The union is mystical and, I would say, that it is vital.
The paradox – indeed, the genius of constitutional monarchy – is obvious in the Coronation ceremony. The Queen is anointed in the presence of God, as she truly believed; she was crowned and she sat in the chair in which so many of her forebears had sat to be crowned. Lords temporal and spiritual paid homage to her. But at the same time, she swore oaths to preserve the laws of her lands.
Put another way, she was God’s anointed that day but she swore to God to obey the elected representatives of her people.
This system of government may seem archaic to those who consider themselves progressive, but it has worked remarkably well for centuries.
Never better, perhaps, than under this monarch. And that is at least in part because she is utterly true to everything she experienced at her Coronation.
At Christmas 2000, she explained: “For me, the teachings of Christ and my own personal accountability before God provide a framework in which I try to live my life.”
That Christian framework has enabled her to keep every one of the vows she made on that wet summer’s day 60 years ago.
"The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must! Because he has this commandment within him. Instead, this ‘closing off’ that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war and also to what some people throughout history have conceived of: killing in the name of God. That we can kill in the name of God. And that, simply, is blasphemy. To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.”
“Instead,” the Pope continued, “the Lord has created us in His image and likeness, and has given us this commandment in the depths of our heart: do good and do not do evil”:
"The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”
This does sound like a different kind of Pope.
A further thought: Turning from the contemplation of these high and lovely thoughts to the utterly barbarous and demonic beheading of a British soldier in the streets of London in broad daylight, your Head Trucker finds no room in his heart to countenance any further shilly-shallying with the violent and the malign among us. This sickening act, like that of the bombing in Boston last month, is beyond all decency, a crime against humanity, and it must be stopped now - by whatever means necessary.
The crazies and the fanatics must not be allowed to roam freely among us and kill us at their whim; the Constitution is not a suicide pact.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
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We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
and welcome to the Blue Truck, a blog for mature gay men with news and views on gay rights, history, art, humor, and whatever comes to mind. Plus a few hot men. The truck's all washed and gassed up, so hop in buddy, let's go.
CAUTION: For mature gay men only beyond this point. Some posts and links may not be suitable for children or the unco guid. You have been warned.
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My Story
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Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?
It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.
If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God.
