Category Archives: Uncategorized

I have to admit something. I struggle, as you have probably guessed. The Angry Orange Lunatic and his sycophants have cost me tremendously over the years in real life. And he hasn’t cost me near as much as he has cost our brown brothers and sisters, our trans friends, our gay friends – those who live in fear every day.

I watch men dragged away from their wives in tears. I hear the unfounded accusations, the blatant lies and false witness. I weep with all of the young women who have been raped by white men in power without any recourse, crying out for justice on this earth and seeing none.

I see beautiful cities run over by humvees and SS troops dragging homeless men and women out to die.

And worst of all, I see the evangelical and Reformed churches cheering and celebrating cruelty, lies, assault, groping, concentration camps…

And honestly, I struggle with hatred. I pray for the destruction of the enemies of humanity.

And it bothers me, because I really don’t want to become like them. I want beauty and harmony and peace. I want love and gentleness and safety – not just for me, but for all of God’s creatures.

Even the mouse that I told you about yesterday broke my heart and I couldn’t put out another glue strip since.

And I think of humans in God’s image locked in cages, fed almost nothing, no privacy, no dignity, no safety – and I see former friends and family that cheer on this administration, not in spite of the atrocities, but BECAUSE of the atrocities.

See. My blood starts to boil again. What do I do? I don’t want to live with rage. But I don’t want what is happening in the country to keep happening.

But what is even worse is this – it isn’t one man. It isn’t one group of men. It is the whole history of this country that this country is trying so desperately to whitewash.
It is the millions of Africans that we enslaved without hope, picking cotton year after year, generation after generation, without any agency, free will, value, dignity – and still lifting their heads up through it all and crying out for freedom. The image of God in them still bursting through the hell that the white church put them through.

It is millions of natives slaughtered, lands stolen, massacred – men, women and children. All of them living through trauma I will never know.

It millions of Latinos and Latinas fleeing death sentences working hunched over melon fields and lettuce fields to scrape a living, and now fleeing for their lives, hated and pursued like animals.

And it is knowing that I will be crucified online for being “woke” for saying it.

Fred Rogers was too soft for the adults in my childhood. They hated him, Bob Ross and men like him for being weak, and called out for “men to rise up and lead!!” The fruits of the spirit were never seen. Only strength, domination, control. Anything else was giving in to the hippies.

Orange Taco isn’t an anomaly. He’s the pustulous cancer that the rot of white supremacy pushed to a head. The pus started about the time of the first slave ship was brought over by the puritan and congregational landowners who couldn’t be assed to pick their own damn cotton. That pus has grown and grown, and now he’s about to burst, and then what? His followers will crawl into obscurity like every single other one of his sycophants, dressing like a chicken and singing for a few bucks like Rudy Giuliani. Selling one’s soul is never cheap, but there are still takers.
And when that pustule has burst, then what?

Will we see national repentance? Will we finally admit that people with melanin, and non-hetero or non-cis people, or people from other nations or other genders or other histories or other cultures or other religions are human beings in God’s image, loved as his creatures, redeemed as his creation and worthy of dignity, honor, freedom and love as much as we are?

Will we finally embrace the catholicity of God? Beyond race, beyond color, beyond culture, the creator and sustainer of all life, not just white males?

Or will we continue to shrivel up into ourselves like C S Lewis’s dwarves – “The Dwarves are for the Dwarves!” – refusing redemption, refusing beauty, refusing love and holding our damnable pride. Mowing over roses of hope and joy to erect concrete structures to beat the wicked heads against? Softness and beauty and subtlety gives way to power, and the rot that is left continues to destroy the soul.

I can’t make that choice for you. I know what I will do. I will take the rose that God gives as his gift to men. I will take beauty and gentleness. I will take courage and color and truth – and I will humbly leave God to judge the world, for he knows far better than I do how to go about it without destroying it.

I will try to deal with my anger the best I know how, and long for a better day when love prevails and I no longer have to watch such gleeful cruelty on my screen every day.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus. How we need you.