Mind Your Own Business!
This message from yesterday’s Lectionary Readings made me laugh because different cultures have such differences, even in my own country, the United States of America.
I grew up in the great Pacific Northwest, on an island in Alaska, surrounded by Scandinavian immigrants and Alaskan natives and pioneers from the “lower 48,” as we called the USA, which was then a territory and not yet a state. Neighbors relied on one another, and we were strongly interconnected, helping one another out in daily interactions, and in emergencies. We were close, and yet we were also insular – a curious child’s innocent inquiry (mine!) would be met with “Mind your own business.” It meant don’t ask questions. Give people their privacy. In truth, there were many people who had left the “lower 48” for good reasons, established new lives in the last frontier and did not want to be reminded of what kind of mess they might have left behind.
AdventureMan grew up in the deep South, a town of around 3,000 people where they joked that the population always remains the same – a new baby gets born, and a man leaves town.” When I come back from a meeting or a lunch with a friend, he has endless questions. When he meets my friends, he has questions. I tell him generalities, and he asks specifics, and I say something vague. I hurt his feelings when I don’t share all the details – in his culture, in his small town, everyone knew everything about everybody. No one had any secrets. People knew what you had done 50 years ago, and there was little room for changing anyones opinion of who you are now, how you might have changed. People regularly shared what they knew about one another.
We’ve been married decades, and we still push and pull on this issue – how much do we share? We both know there is not a right or wrong, just what feels right to him and what feels right to me, and we have to agree to disagree, and sometimes we can be very disagreeable!
This is what the Lectionary reading says:
Thessaalonians 4:10
But we urge you, beloved,* to do so more and more, 11to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we directed you, 12so that you may behave properly towards outsiders and be dependent on no one.
How does it work for you?
Give to Those Who Ask
Yesterday’s Lectionary readings were rich with wise instructions for navigating complicated situations.
First in Doha, then in Kuwait, and now, too, in Pensacola, we encounter beggers. In Doha, it could be women with babies, kicked out of their homes, or a begger in the middle of the street with a transfusion bag full of blood with an introvenous feed tube, begging for enough money to have the operation he needed for his kidneys (I later learned they were fake). In Kuwait, we had beggers who knew us, and who waited outside our favorite restaurants and we would give them our take-away boxes. In Pensacola, it is the homeless, often military veterans with mental health issues, families without homes, elderly men and women abandoned by the side of the road.
Many treat these people with scorn, insisting they are living like kings on what they scrounge from gullible givers. Some act with compassion, passing out bottles of water and fresh made sandwiches, or passing small bills to those at the corners. Discussion varies little about the “problem;” what is the right thing to do?
Living in the Middle East, I was the recipient myself of kind charity, stuck by the side of the road with a broken car, being given bottles of cold water while a kind stranger changed my flat tire, or a neighbor brought me a platter of leg of lamb and mensaf on an Eid holiday. People invited us into their homes and families. People were kind as I struggled to find words, and helped me understand customs which were strange to me. Charity comes with many faces.
If we are who we claim to be – People of the Book, believers – the answer is clear in this reading from Matthew:
Matthew 5:38-48
38 ‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” 39But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; 40and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; 41and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. 42Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.
43 ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” 44But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? 47And if you greet only your brothers and sisters,* what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
My Problem With ICE
I have a long history with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. I’ve been in and out of the USA since I was a little girl. We have filled out countless forms for passports, and many times more those forms telling what we are bringing back into the country. The only time I ever had a problem with ICE was on returning from one of our African trips when I was bringing in wildebeest jerky from South Africa. I laugh now, it was me and a lot of African nationals shunted off. They were opening suitcases full of vegetables they were bringing back for family, and I was told my package of jerky was illegal in the United States. AdventureMan was annoyed with me, and I was ashamed I didn’t know. But they let me off with a mild scolding about infecting disease free animal life in the USA. I’ve never forgotten.
I’ve never minded the tiresome lines for immigration, always manned by sturdy, polite young people wanting to know where we’ve been and how did we like our trip; they were doing their job and they had been trained how to deal with people. In all my times going through those lines, I never saw any kind of incident.
They had a mission.
With the new administration, that mission changed, enlarged. They were given different, even SECRET orders, orders that encouraged them to commit the sorts of acts we saw in Minnesota. It always looked to me like those acts, committed on US Citizens, committed on resident citizens, smacked of incitement to violence. Why else would these customs and immigration officers be asked to violate the US Constitution in pursuing their mission?
I applaud those stoic and humor-filled Minnesotans who protested with restraint, who did not invite violent responses. Even if the Department of Justice will not cooperate in the investigations you are conducting into the murders of Minneapolis citizens, you are gathering witness from street cameras and witnesses against the illegal actions, and the lies and accusations, unjust, of the ICE officials and the Department of Justice. I applaud the restraint that forestalled any illusion of reason for a “national emergency” and activation of a military presence. The militaristic costumes of the immigration and customs officials did not fool nor intimadate you. Your patient, evidence based investigations will be embarrassment enough to those who thought to prevail by intimidation and brutality.
So we have to look at why the ICE men and women sent by our leader to Democratic states felt so empowered to misbehave?
Many ICE hirees have law enforcement backgrounds. Many of them have served in the armed forces. They know the basics. They know the law. They must have had second thoughts, many of them, while conducting these unrestrained acts of violence characterized as arrests of “rapists, thieves and the mentally ill,” as they arrested family men, women – and children, with no criminal records.
As well as knowing the law, and the legal use of power, those who are Christian would know Christ’s admonition to love our neighbor as ourself. Those who are Jewish would know the Old Testament verses about welcoming the stranger. Those who were raised without religion might be familiar with Spiderman, who teaches us that with great power comes great responsibility.
These $50K hires are as expendable as Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem. Once they have served their purpose, they can be scapegoated for excessive zeal in pursuit of the mission, or charged with murder while their superiors, who put the secret policies into effect, escape blame and punishment.
Again, I applaud the Minnesotans, who with restraint, humor, and humanity, protected the weakest, the families and children, while EFFECTIVELY resisting the provocation they faced. Well done, Minnesota!
And lets take a minute to grieve the effects of the violence upon those who inflicted it, mere pawns in a greater game of thrones.
Slight of Hand and Wires and Mirrors; No Accountability
Our leader announced a speech to the nation, which turned out to be nothing but repeats of “Truth” social posts and comments previously made. A boring, disjointed 19 minutes of nothing credible. Credibility is stating a mission and following through. Chaos is changing the mission and its achievements every ten minutes or so. If you don’t believe me, watch the stock market.
Meanwhile, behind the curtain, The Great Oz and his handlers are changing how our democracy operates. The failed military officer, Pete Hegseth is examining and removing African Americans, females, and especially African American Females from promotion lists. He is firing the top general who questions his judgement in toying with a time honored system where the military chooses its leaders based on performance and leadership abilities, not their gender nor their color.
Does Hegseth understand demographics? Does he understand that military recruitment is problematic these days days, that the pool of recruits has shrunk dramatically? Does he understand that brawn no longer wins wars, but fighter planes, drones, new ideas and weapon development are fighting a new kind of war, where every gender and color contributes the the nuances of creative strategies available to a commander in chief who genuinely understands how to function in the fog of war?
Today Heather Cox Richardson alerts us to another slight of hand, the kind of small change the controllers hope will go unnoticed: The challenge of ACCOUNTABILITY and how it impedes a sitting President. She quotes the following, and it quite takes my breath away:
Yesterday Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser, of the Office of Legal Counsel, published an opinion for the White House that claims the Presidential Records Act, which requires that presidents keep records of their official business and turn them over at the end of their term, is unconstitutional. Gaiser clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
“The PRA is not a valid exercise of Congress’s Article I authority and unconstitutionally intrudes on the independence and autonomy of the President guaranteed by Article II. The Act establishes a permanent and burdensome regime of congressional regulation of the Presidency untethered from any valid and identifiable legislative purpose,” the memo reads. “For these reasons, the PRA is unconstitutional, and the President need not further comply with its dictates.”
(taking a moment to catch my breath)
We burden our elected president with the requirement that we know what he does and why he is doing it?
How can anyone believe this lunacy? Any person in a position of responsibility has to answer to his polity! Elected politicians all the more. He answers to us, the voters.
Our leader has a lot to answer for. We can’t trust anything he says, from minute to minute. Our treasury has been declared insolvent. He is sending our children off to war with unclear orders and insufficient leadership.
He has hired a confederacy of ignorant, greedy sycophants. He has gutted our diplomatic service. He has gutted Consumer Oversight. He has gutted the Environmental Protection Agency. He has corrupted the Department of Education.
He is terrified he cannot win and is attempting to take over national elections. Meanwhile, he is bankrupting our country with garish monuments and wars we never agreed to fight.
He is subjecting women to outdated standards and taken away their rights to make decisions for their own bodies.
He is corrupting our social system, taking medical care away from those who need it most, and callously neglecting the veterans who have served our country so loyally.
He has made agreements with other countries that we only learn about by accidental comments.
This can’t go on. Give us Accountability. Oversight. Congressional Approval. Fair and Free Elections. Constitutional Restraints!
Oscar Romero, Patron Saint of The Americas and El Salvador
My friends, when you hear that the immigrants seeking a new life in our country are rapists, thieves, the mentally ill and very bad people, please think of Oscar Romero, and all those who have fought the evil forces of thuggery and dictatorship to find a life of freedom for themselves, and for their families, especially, hope for their children.
I urge you to read a much criticized book, American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins. Here is what Wikipedia says. My experience was that the struggles exposed in American Dirt are very typical of people seeking to escape the violence of their societies.
American Dirt is a 2020 novel by American author Jeanine Cummins, published by Flatiron Books. The book is about a Mexican bookseller who is forced to flee as an undocumented immigrant to the United States, along with her son, after her journalist husband exposes a local drug kingpin.
ÓSCAR ROMERO
ARCHBISHOP OF SAN SALVADOR, AND THE MARTYRS OF EL SALVADOR
(24 March 1980)
Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez (August 15, 1917 – March 24, 1980), commonly known as Monseñor Romero, was a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in El Salvador. He later became prelate archbishop of San Salvador.
As an archbishop, he witnessed numerous violations of human rights and began a ministry speaking out on behalf of the poor and victims of the country’s civil war. His brand of political activism was denounced by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church and the government of El Salvador. In 1980, he was assassinated by gunshot while consecrating the Eucharist during mass. His death finally provoked international outcry for human rights reform in El Salvador.
In 1997, a cause for beatification and canonization into sainthood was opened for Romero and Pope John Paul II bestowed upon him the title of Servant of God. Pope Francis canonized Romero as a saint on 14 October 2018. He is considered the unofficial patron saint of the Americas and El Salvador and is often referred to as “San Romero” in El Salvador. Outside of Catholicism Romero is honored by other religious denominations of Christendom, like the Church of England through its Common Worship. He is one of the ten 20th-century martyrs from across the world who are depicted in statues above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey, London.
from Wikipedia
Also commemorated on this day are three Maryknoll nuns and a woman lay missionary killed by a Salvadoran army death squad on 2 Dec, 1980, and additionally six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter, who were also murdered by the Salvadoran army on 16 Nov. 1989.
“I Have No Need of You”
From this morning’s Lectionary Readings:
1 Corinthians 12:12-26
12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.13For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
14 Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?
18But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many members, yet one body. 2
1The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ 22On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and those members of the body that we think less honourable we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; 24whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, 25that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. 26If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.
What Country am I Living In?
As an American, I’ve lived in a lot of countries, often countries that controlled news coverage and punished those who reported news the leaders found embarrassing.
Many experienced people found ways around it. They phrased their reports carefully, leaving the reader to read behind the lines.
It’s not what you expect in a Democratic Republic. It’s not what I expect in the United States of America, where the very first amendment to our Constitution verified our right to have our own opinions and our freedom to state them (given that they were not, of course, a threat against someone else, or shouting “Fire” in a crowded theatre.)
And now the elected leader of the United States is trying to control any negative reporting about his War, a war that surprised his own country, his own people. A War which has not been supported by Congress, which has the right to declare War. As billions go up, literally, in smoke, or down in flames, Trump and Hegseth want the FCC to pull the broadcasting license of anyone reporting the events that are really happening. Trump has a long history of calling reality “false news” and claiming his big fat lies are truth. Like his endless whining about the election he lost to Joe Biden by more than 8 million votes. And he claims it was a fraudulent loss, a rigged election.
How on earth could that ever be a secret if it were to have happened? Crazy, delusional, whoppers!
And now he wants people whose reputations are on the line, newsmakers, journalists, photographers, soldiers, sailors – people who can see what is happening with their own eyes, hear the blasts and report the damages, and hold those accountable for their actions – he wants them to toe the party line? He wants the TRUTH to be what he pretends it is?
George Orwell got it right, he just got the year wrong. With this administration, we no longer have guarantees of personal privacy. We no longer have guarantees guaranteed by our Constitution. The Police are no longer our friends.
The president believes the truth is what he says it is and that the rights of the people are those he says they have. How have we allowed this to happen?
He CREATES situations, or makes them up, and then creates an oppressive measure to deal with it – look at what ICE, once respectable, has become. An entity protecting our entry points has become a gang of thugs who operate outside the law. When courts rule against them, they ignore the rulings.
When Trump looks at the polls and sees that he cannot win an election, he creates the “SAVE” act to deter, discourage and delete voter’s rights. Both ICE and “SAVE” address problems which do not exist, other than as avenues to giving this monster greater and greater power to feed his endless greed.
Do not listen to this man. Do not believe a word he says. Look, instead, at his actions. He fires the watchdogs. He fires those who would limit his power. He is what he always has been, a fraud, a con man, a liar, and altogether a very flawed man. He piles up wealth by making agreements that fill his pockets, his family’s pockets, and his cronies’. He bullies those who stand up to him. This is not a man of strong character; this is a human wrecking ball.
Unintended Consequences
It is rare that I am stunned into silence.
This is not the world I grew up in. This is not the country I served. These are not the values we were taught as children, in a United States full of post WWII optimism, as we allied with other nations for the greater good.
I am a blessed woman. I have what I need, and my son married a woman with deeply perceptive insights. An environmental specialist, she taught me the concept of Unanticipated Consequences. We are witnessing a host of unanticipated consequence unrolling by the minute, consequences which will have reverberations far into the future – not forseeable consequences but lasting.
Our current Administration is whacko. They command the mightiest military on earth, and they hold the keys to nuclear weapons. I have a friend who says “We’re Doomed,” only he uses a stronger, vulgar word I don’t want to use here.
League of Women Voters: State of Union Bingo Cards
Gotta love those ladies in pearls, although lately the League has been attracting a much younger group of activists. An amazingly non-political group, the League looks at issues and candidates, and encourages INFORMED voters. All people are welcome; in spite of the name, the league also includes men. This is a group that makes a difference.
With their wicked sense of humor, the National League encourages all Americans to watch the dreaded State of the Union speech tonight, and has published a set of Bingo Cards to keep you engaged. You can download them for yourself and your family members at League of Women Voters: State of the Union Bingo or you can print these, which I downloaded from their website.
Yes, I am a member of this group. They keep up with the important issues, and they invite speakers to meetings to explain the substance to the public. They educate people about voting rights without bias.
They help with elections, and, where allowed, they help register new voters – people turning 18, new citizens, people who haven’t voted before. The current stereotype of this group as elderly educated women in pearls is quickly changing as super-charged young people seek to exert their rights in an orderly, lawful fashion.
By uniting women from all parties and all walks of life, they have a big voice and have effectively challenged unjust and unconstitutional laws at the local, state, and national levels. They take their commitment voting rights, issues, and impartiality very seriously.
And, they have a wonderful sense of humor 😄.
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