Fret Not: Another Time Out

Almost heaven:  the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia

Okay, as I did in late June, I now have to take another break from infuriating, disgusting, outrageous, maddening, horrifying current events before I get a mental overload.  When I was younger, I used to chew on my anger as a dog gnaws a bone, whether directed at private or public persons; but such is not the course of wisdom.  Anger eats you up inside, and has no effect on the other party:  a bad habit that I am finally trying to break after sixty years of learning the hard way.

So if I don't post about current events for a while, I hope my truckbuddies will understand that it's not that I don't know what's going on, or have stopped caring; but I have to take care of myself first, or I will be no good to anyone.  I'm sure my truckbuddies can see the present situation in this country as well as I can:  it's entirely obvious, the contrast between Good and Evil, True and False, Democracy and Dictatorship - or should I say, Dicktatorship.  You don't really need me to tell you that.  But I have to step back awhile and catch my breath.

In the meantime, I recommend Psalm 37 for anyone who needs a mental break, a bit of fresh air, a calming thought just now.  As an Episcopalian, not a Bible-thumper, I say take it all merely as poetry, if you please.  I offer prayers and psalms and such on this blog not to proselytize, but simply as a means to inner peace, renewal of hope, and faith in the power of goodness:  the Love that moves the sun and other stars, as Dante put it.

If it works for you, fine; if not, I hope you will discover another path that does.  This is the spiritual grammar and vocabulary that I understand, that works for me.  Sometimes, anyway.

Excerpts:

1 Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.

2 For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.

3 Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.


7 Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.

8 Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.

9 For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.

10 For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.

11 But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.


35 I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree.

36 Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.


39 But the salvation of the righteous is of the Lord: he is their strength in the time of trouble.

40 And the Lord shall help them, and deliver them: he shall deliver them from the wicked, and save them, because they trust in him.

The Shared Truth of All Religions

Bob Schieffer on this morning's Face the Nation:

Reality Check: Parents and Children

It's always necessary to think carefully when discussing big issues, and avoid wishful thinking and sweeping generalizations.  Because what sometimes feels like truth isn't necessarily so.  Feelings are not facts.

For example, the SF Chronicle reports on today's Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial happenings:

The plaintiffs presented academic witnesses who said allowing gays and lesbians to marry would benefit the couples and their children and improve the status of marriage without affecting opposite-sex couples.

The ballot measure's defenders said it merely reaffirmed traditional marriage, but their chief witness for Prop. 8's benefits was [historian David] Blankenhorn, who has spent two decades arguing against same-sex marriage. His 1995 book, "Fatherless America," contended that attacks on the traditional family had weakened the bonds between fathers and children.

Scholars overwhelmingly agree, he testified Tuesday, that marriage is "a socially approved sexual relationship between a man and a woman" and that the "optimal environment" for children is with their married, biological parents.

Now look at that last statement:  it sure paints a pretty picture, doesn't it?  An Ozzie and Harriet, Leave It to Beaver, It's a Wonderful Life kind of world.  In fact, the kind of world, and family, that most of us probably wish we'd had when we were growing up.

But is it really true?  For all children?  With all biological parents?  Always?  Really?

Read these two news items and make up your own mind about what the reality of life is.

Father Kills Wife and Twins on Sons' Birthday

Susan Smith Wants New Trial for Killing Sons

Now, if these had been gay parents, oh can't you just imagine what the Christianists and the rightwingers would be saying about all that, and what it "proves" about gay people?

So Exactly WHO Are the Child Molesters?

Above, a pamphlet from the infamous Save Our Children campaign in Dade County, Florida, in 1977, led by Anita Bryant:  the Big Lie that's been told and retold down to this very day by Christianists - who like to keep the real sexual abuse story hidden away, not talked about . . . oh no.  That would be too embarrassing for a lot of straight men.

With his usual excellent logic - and the plain, provable facts - Rob Tisinai exposes the vicious lies in this great video, with source references at the end. 



See also the very well documented report at Box Turtle Bulletin, "Are Gays a Threat to Our Children?"

Of course, being gay - or being any other minority, for that matter - doesn't make you an automatic saint, of course not.  But neither does it make you an automatic monster.  We are human beings just like our straight brothers and sisters - a mixture, just like them, of good and bad and indifferent.  No better, no worse:  human.  And now it's time for these lies to stop.

Send this on to someone you love who has never gotten these vile old myths about gay people completely out of their heads.

P.S. - Read Rob's touching story about growing up gay, and learning to hide it behind a "nice-guy" image, so he'd be liked - not hated.  I think many of us can relate to that one.

Today's Quote

After writing that post about "Real Christian Thinking" last night, I ran smack into this post on Sullivan's blog; and it seemed, in a strange and indefinable way, to be something intended for my notice:

"Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself," - Thomas Merton, "Letter To A Young Activist"

Hmm.  Well okay, Big Man.  You da boss.

Truth, Justice, and the American Way?

A couple of days ago, the Obama administration told a federal judge that it would release photographs of abuse of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq, as asked by the American Civil Liberties Union in a 2003 Freedom of Information Act request. ABC News reports that Dr. Mark M. Lowenthal, a former Assistant Director at the Central Intelligence Agency during the Bush administration, calls the ACLU's actions "prurient" and "reprehensible."

Lowenthal said the president's moves in the last week have left many in the CIA dispirited, based on "the undercurrent I've been getting from colleagues still in the building, or colleagues who have left not that long ago."

"We ask these people to do extremely dangerous things, things they've been ordered to do by legal authorities, with the understanding that they will get top cover if something goes wrong," Lowenthal says. "They don't believe they have that cover anymore." Releasing the photographs "will make it much worse," he said.

Even though President Obama has announced that the Justice Department will not prosecute CIA officers who were operating within the four corners of what they'd been told was the law, Lowenthal says members of the CIA are worried. "They feel exposed already, and this is going to increase drumbeat for an investigation or a commission" to explore detainee treatment during the Bush years, he said. "It's going to make it much harder to resist, and they fear they're then going to be thrown over."

Which is a good development, to my way of thinking. Lower-level officers and employees of the United States Government should think twice about carrying out illegal and immoral orders, no matter what Administration is in power; in fact, they should refuse to follow such orders.

The Nuremberg trials and the Tokyo War Crimes trials established the principle that "I was only following orders" is not at all a sufficient defense when it comes to violations of fundamental human rights and basic decency: this country along with its World War II allies prosecuted and punished a great many German and Japanese leaders and their subordinates for carrying out such orders.

Just imagine how different, how very different, the story of the Nazi regime would be if masses of German government employees as well as German soldiers had refused to follow the inhuman policies of the Nazi government.

Imagine how very, very different the world would be if everyone believed more strongly in "love your neighbor as yourself" rather than "my country, right or wrong."

As to who should be investigated and charged with war crimes now, in this country, well, that remains to be seen; I think the country, or at least the great flag-waving mass of ordinary people who don't want to believe anything truly evil has been done in their name, is just now starting to wake up to the fact that the schoolbook picture of America as a cartoon-colored fantasyland where nobody in government ever tells a lie or does anything wrong - is utterly false.

What I say is, let all the facts be uncovered and published, and then let the truth fall where it belongs. Andrew Sullivan:

It's the elite that doesn't want accountability. Because it's their asses on the line.

And:

There is a difference between good faith mistakes and a criminal conspiracy to violate and make a mockery of the rule of law. That's why a real investigation of all of it - including the alleged results - needs to take place and take its time. Give it two years to report, to allow emotions and tempers to cool. Then and only then make a decision on prosecution, so that there is no scintilla of haste or heat.

To close one's eyes and ears to the shocking, unpleasant, revolting, and highly inconvenient truth is to be a willing partner in all those crimes - a false patriotism that loves a pretty lie better than it loves one's country.

But "when I was a child, I thought as a child, and spoke as a child"; yet "now is the time to put away childish things."

It's hard, very hard, to tear one's self away from that pretty grade-school image of America; just as it is very hard to grow up and realize that your own mother and father are, after all, only human, and do make mistakes - sometimes very serious ones. Dysfunctional families are the ones who have lots of secrets, who tell long-running lies to outsiders and to one another in order to keep up appearances, who neglect the truth behind the facade they show to the world, who don't deal with the real problems at the heart of things.

Likewise, I would suggest that a true patriot is the one who educates himself to see past the rosy, false, Disneyesque myths about his country to see it as it really is - and then works to make right what is wrong, and to lift up what is fallen: "that government of the people, by the people, and for the people should not perish from the earth."

Listen to the words, not just the music, of this song - about an abusive family - or a dysfunctional nation?