One Compassionate Captain Changed Lives
From today’s Lectionary readings:
DAVID PENDLETON OAKERHATER
DEACON AND MISSIONARY (1 SEP 1931)
David P. Oakerhater (born around 1850) was a warrior and leader of the Cheyenne Indians of Oklahoma, and led a corps of fighters against the United States government in a dispute over Indian land rights. In 1875 he and 27 other military leaders were taken prisoner by the U S Army and sent to a military post in Florida. There, thanks to the efforts of a concerned Army captain, they learned English, were encouraged to earn money by giving art and archery lessons to visitors, and encountered the Christian faith. David and three others were moved to become Christians and to go north to study for the ministry. David was baptized in Syracuse, New York, in 1878, and ordained to the diaconate in 1881. He returned to Oklahoma and there founded schools and missions, and continued to work among his people until his death on 31 August 1931. When he first returned to Oklahoma in 1881, he said:
You all know me. You remember when I led you out to war I went first, and what I told you was true. Now I have been away to the East and I have learned about another captain, the Lord Jesus Christ, and he is my leader. He goes first, and all He tells me is true. I come back to my people to tell you to go with me now in this new road, a war that makes all for peace.
by James Kiefer
Note: the “military post in Florida” is Castillo de San Marcos in St. Augustine, now a National Monument. Should you visit, you can learn more about his imprisonment there.
Intlxpatr: One brave captain, unnamed, had compassion on a group of indigenous Americans and encouraged them to earn with their skills. He treated them with respect and won their respect in return. Such gentility influenced them to adopt and spread the Christian faith to others. One unnamed captain, reaching out his hand in loving charity, produced more influence than government policies.
“The Cruelty is the Point”
I was singing to the choir, complaining to my old high school friend about the tactics and strategies employed by the Trump administration, against immigrants, against the press, and against any citizen disagreeing with this administration’s viewpoint. “It all seems so intentional, so cruel,” I said.
“The cruelty is the point,” he responded. It was short, pithy, but that was weeks ago and I continue to ponder the phrase. I wondered why it sounds familiar – my friend used quote marks – so this morning, I googled it and got this very thorough AI response:
“The cruelty is the point” is a political phrase coined by The Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer in a prominent 2018 essay. [1, 2]
Origin and Meaning
- Coinage: Adam Serwer used the phrase in his October 2018 essay, “The Cruelty Is the Point”. [1, 2, 3]
- Core Argument: Serwer argued that the policies and public behavior of the Trump administration and its supporters were not accidentally harsh or crude, but intentionally designed to cause pain to marginalized groups. [1, 2]
- The Bond: He wrote that inflicting this pain creates a powerful sense of unity, pride, and shared identity among political supporters, binding them together through common opposition to outsiders, immigrants, and minority groups. [1]
Book Adaptation
- Publication: Serwer expanded his essays into a book titled The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America, published in June 2021. [1, 2]
- Themes: The book examines how modern political conflicts connect to deeper historical currents in the United States, including white supremacy, migration debates, police unions, and the legacy of the Lost Cause. [1, 2]
Usage and Legacy
- Political Lexicon: The phrase became a widely adopted descriptor in political commentary to characterize populist movements, harsh immigration rules (such as family separations), and rhetoric directed at political opponents. [1, 2, 3]
- Broader Application: Analysts and commentators frequently invoke the phrase outside the Trump administration to describe political strategies that rely on outraging rivals and signaling hostility toward specific demographic or social groups. [1, 2]
The original article in The Atlantic states:
“It is not just that the perpetrators of this cruelty enjoy it; it is that they enjoy it with one another. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to one another, and to Trump.”
I urge you to read the October 2018 essay, and the book. From the beginning of the second Trump term, from the the very first day with the horrifying Presidential Edicts, the cruelty has been increasingly woven into public policy. The policies are Anti-American, anti-immigrant, anti-women and anti-everything I was taught to believe as I grew up – That we are created and born with equal rights, male and female, black, white, yellow, red and all the glorious colors in between. “Red and yellow, black and white, we are precious in His sight.”
Our priest told us from the pulpit this week that we are “to carry the light.” Each one of us, individually and together, carries the light. We can choose to be kind. We can reflect “the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Job: A Parable for Today
Today, I opened my Lectionary to discover we are reading Job. I have special feelings for Job; I was sitting my my Arabic class at the Qatar Center for the Presentation of Islam when my teacher started talking about a character named Ayyoub, and Ayyoub sounded a whole lot like Job. This was a huge “Aha” moment for me – all the years I had lived in the Middle East and I never knew we shared the same prophets, and that the Quran related many of the same experiences as our Bible.
Job is thought to be the oldest writing in our Bible, and as I read it today, I read it as a parable, with Job standing for the USA, and the devil encouraging the Almighty to test Job. Job loses all his precious children, all this animals, all his wealth – and he refuses to curse God.
Job 1:1-22
1There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. 2There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. 3He had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and very many servants; so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east. 4His sons used to go and hold feasts in one another’s houses in turn; and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. 5And when the feast days had run their course, Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt-offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, ‘It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.’ This is what Job always did.
6 One day the heavenly beings* came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan* also came among them. 7The Lord said to Satan,*‘Where have you come from?’ Satan* answered the Lord, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.’ 8The Lord said to Satan,* ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.’ 9Then Satan* answered the Lord, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? 10Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. 11But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.’ 12The Lord said to Satan,* ‘Very well, all that he has is in your power; only do not stretch out your hand against him!’ So Satan* went out from the presence of the Lord.
13 One day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in the eldest brother’s house, 14a messenger came to Job and said, ‘The oxen were ploughing and the donkeys were feeding beside them, 15and the Sabeans fell on them and carried them off, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword; I alone have escaped to tell you.’ 16While he was still speaking, another came and said, ‘The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them; I alone have escaped to tell you.’ 17While he was still speaking, another came and said, ‘The Chaldeans formed three columns, made a raid on the camels and carried them off, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword; I alone have escaped to tell you.’ 18While he was still speaking, another came and said, ‘Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house, 19and suddenly a great wind came across the desert, struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead; I alone have escaped to tell you.’
20 Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshipped. 21He said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’
22 In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.
Scorn of the Indolent Rich, Derision of the Proud
From today’s Lectionary Readings:
123 Ad te levavi oculos meos
1 To you I lift up my eyes, *
to you enthroned in the heavens.
2 As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters, *
and the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress,
3 So our eyes look to the Lord our God, *
until he show us his mercy.
4 Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy, *
for we have had more than enough of contempt,
5 Too much of the scorn of the indolent rich, *
and of the derision of the proud.
Sunday at the Veterinary Emergency Clinic
My normal Sunday morning is quiet and contemplative. I get up early, whisper a quick “I’m going to church now” to Adventure Man and head out to what we jokingly call The Express Service. It’s for the quiet people who want to worship without a lot of embellishments and move on. Our priests are very good at respecting people’s time and creating a serene atmosphere for worship.
On my bathroom mirror is an ominous yellow sticky that says “wake me when you get up to talk about Uhtred.”
Uhtred is seeping blood and pus on his left flank. We know there are no options, we dress quickly to get to the Vet Emergency Care before the rest of the world awakes – we’ve been there before. It’s the only game in town, and weekends are busy.
We sign in. As they take Uhtred to the back to give him a superficial exam, a man comes in carrying a huge dog – maybe 80 pounds – who does not look like he is breathing.
We are updated on Uhtred’s condition and moved to a small room. A tech came by with water and an update – due to an all-hands-on-deck emergency, less urgent cases are on hold, Uhtred being a less urgent case.
We wait six hours. During these six hours, I take a break to go outside and walk; walking helps me calm my anxiety and keeps me sane. As I walk, I see another prostate dog come in on a stretcher, and desperate people with cages arriving. We’re under a high heat warning. It’s affecting our animals, too. We’re all desperate. We love our animals, and this is the only emergency treatment center open on Sunday in town. The wait seems endless.
A very competent doctor comes in and gives us two options: a stabilization one where we get him to our own vet the next day, and a complete treatment one, where they get to him when they can, but there are higher priority cases, and they just keep arriving, and they won’t get to him until late in the day. We opt for stabilization; we’d actually prefer Uhtred be treated by our own somewhat eccentric vet who has known us for years, and has treated all our cats.
We leave the clinic in relief after six hours with a cleaned-up, medicated cat in an “E” collar (for Elizabethan) to keep him from licking his wound.
As we leave, something extraordinary happens, something we have never seen before. The clinic closes its doors to incoming patients. There is one doctor, and 40+ situations awaiting her attention. Until they can bring in more emergency staff, they cannot deal with more. My heart goes out to them all, those who are trying to triage and treat these desperate cases, and those who are turned away when there are no other options.
We have a family dinner later in the day, this one an adult-only dinner where we discuss family situations and discuss options. We love these dinners, meeting with our son and his wife quietly, relaxed and open. We make a great team.
My daughter-in-law tells me there IS another option, further north, where we can take our animals under emergency conditions, a place they really like. Another resource! I am so thankful; I’ve never heard of this place, and it relieves my future anxieties about our animal emergencies.
Biases: Believing Our Delusions
This is from a daily reading by Richard Rohr, a theologian I love reading for his broad outlook on belief and spirituality.
None of us is free from biases that skew our thinking. He lists several of the thinking errors below.
Recognizing Our Biases
CAC (Center for Advanced Contemplation – ed.) faculty member Brian McLaren has done thoughtful and helpful research about what makes us see things so differently from one another. He identified thirteen biases that we outline today. Being a former pastor and an excellent communicator, Brian found a way to make these complex ways of seeing simple and memorable. He writes:
People can’t see what they can’t see. Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall, trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion. No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them, unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias. . . .
Confirmation Bias: We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities. As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn’t fit.
Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer a simple falsehood to a complex truth.
Community Bias: It’s almost impossible to see what our community doesn’t, can’t, or won’t see.
Complementarity Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I’ll be hostile to yours. If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I’ll respond in kind.
Competency Bias: We don’t know how much (or little) we know because we don’t know how much (or little) others know. In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are. As a result, they underestimate their [own] incompetence, and consider themselves at least of average competence.
Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can’t be seen from where I am right now. But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.
Comfort or Complacency Bias: I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.
Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.
Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false. I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.
Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don’t notice gradual decline (or improvement).
Contact Bias: When I don’t have intense and sustained personal contact with “the other,” my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.
Cash Bias: It’s hard for me to see something when my way of making a living requires me not to see it.
Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators.
Do Not Fret Yourselves Because of Evildoers
From today’s Lectionary readings:
Psalm 37
Part INoli æmulari
1 Do not fret yourself because of evildoers; *
do not be jealous of those who do wrong.
2 For they shall soon wither like the grass, *
and like the green grass fade away.
3 Put your trust in the Lord and do good; *
dwell in the land and feed on its riches.
4 Take delight in the Lord, *
and he shall give you your heart’s desire.
5 Commit your way to the Lord and put your trust in him, *
and he will bring it to pass.
6 He will make your righteousness as clear as the light *
and your just dealing as the noonday.
7 Be still before the Lord *
and wait patiently for him.
8 Do not fret yourself over the one who prospers, *
the one who succeeds in evil schemes.
9 Refrain from anger, leave rage alone; *
do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.
10 For evildoers shall be cut off, *
but those who wait upon the Lord shall possess the land.
11 In a little while the wicked shall be no more; *
you shall search out their place, but they will not be there.
12 But the lowly shall possess the land; *
they will delight in abundance of peace.
13 The wicked plot against the righteous *
and gnash at them with their teeth.
14 The Lord laughs at the wicked, *
because he sees that their day will come.
15 The wicked draw their sword and bend their bow
to strike down the poor and needy, *
to slaughter those who are upright in their ways.
16 Their sword shall go through their own heart, *
and their bow shall be broken.
17 The little that the righteous has *
is better than great riches of the wicked.
18 For the power of the wicked shall be broken, *
but the Lord upholds the righteous.
Here There and Insanity
I have a group of buddies who gather early in the morning to swim. Everyone needs a group that can help keep them sane, and this is the group for me. We share news updates. We share reactions. We share our own ups and downs. Some of us are elders; we share our aches and pains. And at all of this – we laugh. Thanks be to God; we help each other keep things in perspective and keep a sense of humor about ourselves.
AdventureMan tells me I have a special smile for when I am in Alaska, or when I am on a boat. Both sing to my soul. It’s hard coming off a great vacation, and even harder when a heat dome covers Pensacola and there is barely a whiff of fresh breeze, even by the shore.
I thank God, too, for the life I was given, my time in Alaska, and my time with my husband living in so many different countries in service to our own country. You know, old fashioned things like building alliances, learning foreign cultures and languages, building relationships.
So forgive me if I rant now and then about the craziness I see in our current situation. Sometimes I feel like the blog name should be Here There and Insanity; as Paul says to the Romans, we are doing the things we ought not to do and not doing the good we ought to be doing.
What to do?
Here is what I wish for you – a strong partner, and a loving family. A group, or two or three, of buddies who can help you laugh when insanity happens in the world, and a belief system that can keep you grounded when moral values are topsy-turvy, shaken and tossed out.
“There are places I’ll remember all my life – though some have changed . . . Some forever, not for better, some have gone, and some remained . . . All these places have their moments with lovers and friends I still can recall, Some are dead and some are living – in my life, I’ve loved them all.”
Independence Day Gospel
From The Lectionary for today:
Matthew 22:23-40
23 The same day some Sadducees came to him, saying there is no resurrection;* and they asked him a question, saying, 24‘Teacher, Moses said, “If a man dies childless, his brother shall marry the widow, and raise up children for his brother.” 25Now there were seven brothers among us; the first married, and died childless, leaving the widow to his brother.26The second did the same, so also the third, down to the seventh. 27Last of all, the woman herself died. 28In the resurrection, then, whose wife of the seven will she be? For all of them had married her.’
29 Jesus answered them, ‘You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. 30For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels* in heaven. 31And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, 32“I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? He is God not of the dead, but of the living.’ 33And when the crowd heard it, they were astounded at his teaching.
34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’37He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” 40On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’
How Do We Celebrate the 4th of July?
Today’s Lectionary provided a prayer for today, along with today’s saint, Saint Moses the Black:
PRAYER (contemporary language)
Almighty God, whose blessed Son guides our footsteps in the way of peace: Deliver us from paths of hatred and violence, that we, following the example of your servant Moses, may serve you with singleness of heart and attain to the tranquility of the world to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
It brought to mind a troubling conversation in a meeting with a group of women I greatly admire. One said “I’m having a problem with knowing how to celebrate the 4th of July without compromising my belief that our nation is on a very wrong path.”
In a brief discussion, we agreed that no one party owns the flag, or fireworks, that those are the influence-free celebrations of our freedoms, but that gatherings that involve political speeches and practices that support beliefs we find repugnant are contrary to our well-being.
I think we all came away from that discussion with a troubled sadness.
My family has a history of service to our nation. Much of what we have built, and what we have worked so hard to accomplish, has been wrecked. I love our nation, I love the American dream, I love the Statue of Liberty welcoming those who arrive with little but hope, and a desire to live free in a land of opportunity. I love our freedom to disagree with leadership and for the tools to fight unjust practices. I love that we have lived a life of service: serving our country, building alliances, and building a network that fights the evils of tyranny.
This morning, I put out our flags.
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Early Voting in Florida
