Volume XII, Issue XV
What Imago Dei Tells Us
Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know."
- The Blue Man, pg. 49, The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
For the past few days it seems the world around us has gone mad. There is violence in the streets and there are death threats and death wishes expressed toward our President-elect. Most of us recoil at the thought of taking another life. Most of us extend the courtesy of human dignity to those who are different from us -- and yet, I recall when taking my car to a new garage in the town I used to live in, the mechanic said something that shocked me. He was a good mechanic and appeared to be a decent guy. He had served in Korea and was relating the experience to another worker in the shop. He talked about them having a black guy in the unit. They hated him for some reason. The mechanic used the more vulgar term for describing this man and I think I heard him say that they put him in a position to get killed.
I thought of that man's mother. Perhaps there was a wife or girlfriend. Children? I was in no mood for a confrontation that day, so I did not ask for a clarification. The mechanic's tone indicated he was pretty set in his ways. Clarification was not likely to be pleasant. I never went back there. I have not told the story before, but now the garage is gone. We are shocked by such stories but every day people kill people for being in the 'wrong' group around the world. ISIS kills Christians, Hutus and Tutsis are rivals though most outside of their lands cannot tell them apart. I recently made a new friend, a refugee from Rwanda who happens to be related to both. One of my friends from school went to Northern Ireland in the 1970's to study the situation there. A car exploded in the street while he walked in Belfast. He actually got an interview with Bernadette Devlin. We awaited his report eagerly.
He said he had met Catholics, Protestants and a few people in both churches who said that they related intimately with G-d, like children of their Father. These were the ones who extended forgiveness and the gift of recognition to those outside their cultural church. They were the 'Blessed Peacemakers.' -- Matthew 5:9 These people had a vision for their country not unlike that of Dr. Martin Luther King in our own. They saw a day in the future when Protestants and Catholics would share their land without oppression or conflict.
The 'Blessed Peacemakers' of Northern Ireland have a lesson for us in our own time. We can see outside the parameters of our own group (and wrongs done to it) and embrace the larger family of G-d's Children. That means we mourn EVERY child's death by violence, be he like us or not. We see the travesty of lives destroyed because they are precious to their Creator. Genesis says that each is made in His Image. To miss this truth is to go the way of destruction like that seen in Rwanda, where the Hutu majority slaughtered the Tutsi and moderate Hutus. [1.]
The Trump You Don't Know
[click to read]
This has been one wild ride of an election cycle. This morning many of us woke up relieved, many of us woke up elated. Some of us woke up in fear. This is directed to those of you who woke up in fear. (read more)
America's Division is Ideological
[click to read]
Red and Blue America
By Dennis Prager
It is time to confront the unhappy fact about our country: There are now two Americas. Not a rich one and a poor one; economic status plays little role in this division.
There is a red one and a blue one.
For most of my life I have believed, in what I now regard as wishful thinking, that the right and left wings have essentially the same vision for America, that it's only about ways to get there in which the two sides differ. Right and left share the same ends, I thought. (read more)
'Trumped Up' Charges
[click to read]
A lot of incidents reported in the wake of the Trump victory are proving to simply not be true. (read more)
Was 09/12/09 the Beginning?
[click to read]
By Lynn R. Mitchell in Bearing Drift
There are many reasons why Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election but some could say that his rise to power began on September 12, 2009, when hundreds of thousands of Americans peacefully marched on Washington, D.C. and gathered at the nation’s capitol to show their disappointment in President Barack Obama’s desire to implement Obamacare.
I emphasize peacefully because it was a genial crowd facing the very real possibility of the government taking away their control of their health insurance and, indeed, three months after the march that fear became reality. Congress, in a late-night session, basically jammed the bill down the throats of Americans who, while researching the contents of the legislation, were told by then-House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi that it had to be passed before they could find out what was in it. (read more)
Corbels and Carillons
Grace United Methodist Church in Middletown, Virginia. [2.]
Photo by Bob Kirchman
Stephens City United Methodist Church [3.]... Photo by Bob Kirchman
...contains this Shulmerlich Carillon, probably built in the 1960's. The instrument was played by punched rolls (like a player piano), and each note was struck on a small rod and amplified electronically. The sound was broadcast from speakers in the belfry.
Photo by Bob Kirchman.
