BLESSED MARGARET POLE - MAY 28 - MARTYRED AT THE CONFLUENCE OF CHURCH AND STATE

 

Blessed Margaret Plantagenet Pole,

Countess of Salisbury

Martyr

14 August 1473 - 28 May 1541

MY COUSIN, BLESSED MARGARET POLE

Blessed Margaret Plantagenet Pole is my 6th cousin, 17 times removed. We share a common ancestor, who is Edward I "Longshanks," King of England, my 24th great grandfather. She was put to death in the Tower of London on the order of Henry VIII because she was Catholic, essentially and because Henry VIII was a brutal, maniacal ruler who did not want to follow the rule of the Pope with regard to his multiple marriages and his moral failings.

Henry had made himself the ruler of The Church in England, breaking off from the Catholic hierarchy and creating a new organization. Anyone who did not express absolute loyalty to him and his new church was in danger of losing their heads. Even the accidents of birth and relationship were enough to convict someone,  absent any other proof whatsoever.  

SHE WAS DEVOTED TO THE WRONG RELIGION

Margaret was given no trial and did not even know that she was going to be executed until an hour beforehand.  It was done so quickly, with so little advance notice, that many people doubted it had happened at all. The executioner was a young man with very little experience and, instead of a clean and swift chop, Margaret was hacked to death with multiple blows of the axe to her head and shoulders.

She was 68 years old - the same age I will be in a few months.

ENGLISH FLEE TO THE NEW CONTINENT

About 100 years later, the English nobility have sent their "second sons" to the new continent to grab land and create wealth from the natural resources. Those who chafed under the tyranny of official state religion escaped here for religious freedom. When the yoke of the British had been thrown off in another few hundred years, the separation of church and state was a primary principle. No more would the citizens suffer under the religious declarations issued from the seat of government.

2022 - A GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL BLACKMAILED BY A BISHOP

I did not become Catholic so I could spend time arguing about POLITICS. I was attracted to the faith because of the experience of the mystics, most of whom were monastics of one stripe or another. I was warned by a mother superior of a modern convent that I would not find that mystical life in the parishes, and she was right. 

This obsession with trying to make abortion illegal again has gotten on my ninth nerve. There is a huge movement in the Catholic Church at the moment and they call themselves "Pro-Life" but most of them that I encounter on social media only seem to be interested in one political method that supposedly addresses ONE issue (abortion) but that method never worked in the past. So it is neither logical nor inclusive of the myriad ways in which life needs to be supported from conception until natural death. I have friends who have a more global perspective so I am obviously not talking about everyone in that movement. It is the PUBLIC face of the movement that is the problem.

Anyway, I did not leave the Hindu convent to get furiously involved in political life, but today we are deluged with news items about Nancy Pelosi and how her Bishop has publicly shamed her by denying her communion in light of a position she has taken in her government job, and I find it hypocritical and upsetting on many levels.

I myself am Catholic and I LOVE the faith, but I am not in favor of forcing it on anyone else. It would be a LOT more comfortable if everyone around me was Catholic. That would be super! But you can't make someone behave as if they belong to your faith and believe as you do. It just doesn't work and it isn't what Jesus had in mind when he sent out the evangelists, I am sure of it. Nowhere did he say that Christians should dominate the government and force non-Catholics to adhere to its views. 

Criminalizing abortion did not stop them before, and Pelosi knows this. I remember 1973 when the result of Roe v. Wade was announced. It made NO impression on me or any of my contemporaries because abortions were already widely available. There were people who were relieved that abortions would thereafter be SAFER, since they could be done in a medical setting, but that was the only change that we talked about when we learned that abortion was legal.

In fact, I was pregnant at the time. I was only 18, newly married, and I was glad that I was too far into my pregnancy for my new husband to pressure me to get an abortion because we REALLY could not afford to have a child. We were Scientologists, living in the Sea Organization, and the Scientology hierarchy ended up refusing to pay the hospital bill (after promising that all medical bills would be paid if we joined.)  In fact, I only saw a doctor ONCE while I was in the Sea Org, and they never did pay that bill, as far as I know.

Prior to Roe v. Wade, I could have gotten an abortion but I personally did not want one, and the fact that it was illegal was another tool in my arsenal of defending myself against pressure to abort. I could say they were dangerous, which was true, and illegal, etc. But anyone who wanted an abortion could GET one. They are always available to anyone determined to have one. I just wasn't one of those people.

If the hard right has its way and abortion is criminalized again, I am assuming it will go back into the alley it came from and a lot of women will die, along with their babies, in botched back-alley abortions. So I am wondering what the "pro life" crowd is accomplishing by making it illegal instead of addressing the CAUSES behind the high numbers of abortions in our country.

THE HYPOCRISY OF UNEVEN APPLICATION

I don't see anyone getting publicly shamed and refused communion for supporting capital punishment executions. 

Nor is anyone being denied communion for advocating for the free sale of military style rifles in the wake of all these mass murders that are endemic to the U.S. and unknown elsewhere. 

Some types of contraceptives are considered abortifacient by The Church, but no one is being banned from communion for speaking out in favor of them.

In the Catechism, vasectomies are considered equally as evil as abortion, but there is no one trying to criminalize them and I do not see any bishop publicly naming every man who has ever had one and telling them they are banned from receiving communion until their vasectomy is surgically reversed!

THE PRACTICAL ASPECTS

First of all, Pelosi is not having abortions or encouraging people to have them. She has a job in a secular government that is founded on a first principle of separation of church and state.

She is also aware of the fact that abortions continue at a fair clip regardless of whether or not they are legal. Fewer women die in abortions when they are legal. That seems to be the only difference I can ascertain.

Criminalizing abortion will do little to stem the tide of abortions because abortions are not CAUSED by a law approving them. Most women cite financial reasons for having them. Some people will not be able to afford them, so we will have more poor women with fatherless children on our hands. Is THAT "pro life?"

On the other hand, if the causes of abortion were addressed, you could have an abortuary on every corner and every operating room would be silent and empty.

I DON'T HAVE A DOG IN THIS FIGHT

I am too old to have an abortion myself and I would do my best to discourage anyone I know from having one. But many years ago I realized that there is a very easy way to avoid having to deal with this issue at all, and that is to not have sex with anyone to whom I am not married. 

Now, I have very strong monastic leanings, so I am going to assume that avoiding sex outside of marriage may be harder for some other women to do, given the strength and power of hormones, etc. But STILL.... you have to admit that the choice to have sex IS, at least, the FIRST choice in matters having to do with this topic. So, if you are going to talk about "choice," I think it is disingenuous to ignore the opportunities for choice prior to finding oneself pregnant. There were a few choices made BEFORE the pregnancy that would have derailed getting pregnant to begin with. (Obviously I am not talking about rape, which is a violation of all a woman's choices.)

Even so - I would not legislate sex outside of marriage as a criminal act any more than i would criminalize contraceptives, etc.

The Tower of London

where Lady Margaret Pole lived

the last two years of her life

THE CARROT VERSUS THE STICK

There is a strong faction speaking loudly into the public space that is advocating for shame, force and punishment. This is a negative approach that does not work because it causes a lot of "unintended" consequences. Personally, I think that attracting someone to something POSITIVE is a lot more helpful to society than public shaming, forcing behavior to mimic moral belief systems and punishing people who don't get in line with them.

If we really want to be a society that is pro-life and pro-family, these positive measures would do more to limit abortions than the "shame, force and punishment" method:

1. Government provided maternity and paternity leave for the first year after a child is born.

2. Government provided childcare options through age 12 or 13.

3. A decent "living wage" that allows for the support of children. CEOs are actually taking vacations IN OUTER SPACE because they have more money than they know what to do with, while their employees can't afford proper food, housing and medical care. It is a sacrilege!

4. Universal health insurance for all Americans.

5.  Make the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. The degree to which one benefits by conducting business in the United States is the degree to which one should pay for the privilege.

6. Abolish capital punishment.

7. Outlaw military style assault weapons and enact other laws around ensuring the safety of all citizens against being murdered by guns.

8. Provide education through 4 years of college. An educated population is a healthier, more productive population - which is good for everyone.

I am sure there are more I would agree with, but you will notice that I am in favor of the carrot, rather than the stick. In my experience, force and punishment do NOTHING to convert anyone to a point of view.  

Besides which, I believe we need to stop acting like we hate one another and that we are all in competition with one another for limited resources so that only a small handful can arrive at the top of the survival pyramid. It is toxic and UNTRUE. We are the most wealthy nation in the world and we do not suffer from limited resources. OTHER countries with far less money manage to support their citizens with the benefits I have outlined, above, and there is no reason we cannot do it as well.

OTHER BISHOPS DISAGREE WITH CORDILEONE

Calling out a parishioner publicly and publicly announcing their sin and that you are banning them from receiving communion is hardly a positive pastoral approach! If my bishop doesn't talk to me but instead issues a public shaming, I would not take it well.

Here is a letter from the bishop of Dubuque, Iowa with his thoughts about this topic. You may have to fiddle with your zoom function to read it. Let me know if you have a problem and I will try to get you a copy.

SATAN IS THE FATHER OF ALL LIES, NO MATTER WHAT SIDE YOU ARE ON

It makes me sad to see each side lying about the other. "Pro-choice" people claim that the opposing side "just wants to control women," when the fact is that Catholics and other Christians believe that people must be open to the grace of God and be receptive to life which begins at conception and ends at natural death. 

On the other side, "Pro-life" people claim that "pro-choice" people are "pro-abortion." NO ONE is happy to have an abortion. Pro-choice people believe that a woman must be free to choose what happens to her body and what children she will have. They are not seeing MY point - that the choice was made when they chose to have sex - but I am regularly laughed out of conversations when I posit this solution. It isn't something that even Catholics are willing to take seriously.

Each side lies to make their side sound better and few people are trying to see the point that the other side is actually making. How can any progress be made under these circumstances?

You can fool yourself into thinking you have made progress by forcing people to do what you want with laws and punishments, but it isn't going to work because you have not evangelized.

Or you could fool yourself into thinking that all you have to do is keep abortion legal and then the "problem" is solved.

"The problem" is not that abortions are legal. "The problem" is that people want them or think they need them. A law that criminalizes abortions is not going to fix that. It did not work before. It won't work now.

Instead of continuing this fight into the next few decades, we need to change our approach.

But, like I said, I do not have a dog in this fight. I am going to go back to prayer and meditation, writing and painting, and hope that the movers and shakers in charge of the world will somehow get it right.....and I hope to God I don't have to talk about this topic any more because I am just sick of it.

God bless us all.

Silver "Rose"

LYING IS MORE DIFFICULT IN THE ERA OF COMPUTERS AND CELL PHONES

Last night, after writing my diary entry for the day, I received an email from the housekeeper who had not shown up. She claimed to have had a car accident on the way to my house and that she couldn't call me because she left her phone in the car and her son couldn't get to it...blah blah blah.

Oh, and by the way, her doctors want her to take a few days off.

First of all, all she had to do was have someone look up the phone number of the agency on the nearest computer or phone and then call them. She didn't need her phone to do it. Information is everywhere in the era of the internet.

Secondly, I remember her telling me that her daughter was due to have a baby any day, and I am willing to bet the $24 left in my bank account that the baby was born, or she had an accident because she was drunk (she was slurring her words when we spoke on Sunday), or - most likely, she found an agency that paid more money and she couldn't call during that entire day because she was working SOMEWHERE ELSE!

I wanted to give her a chance to prove me wrong, so I told her I would believe her if she provided me with a doctors note, in response to which she gave me some word salad that conveyed no information and ignored the request for a doctor's note:

"My employer was the first to know and the baby wasn't born thank you."

The agency tells me they didn't speak to her. There is no doctor letter, and they don't expect one. They won't be using her again, and she won't get a recommendation from them.

This reminds me of the numerous times in the last 5 or 10 years that someone has told me, "I tried to reach you, but you didn't answer the phone," and there is no record of receiving a phone call from them. Somehow, dishonest people "forget" that cell phones keep track of every bit of data going in and out over the airwaves. Whoever calls me, whether I speak to them or not, there is a record of that call.

Just yesterday, a service person claimed to have called me, but they didn't leave a phone message and there is no record of them calling me in my phone history. Why didn't they leave a message, if they were truly "trying to reach" me? Because they did not "try to reach me" at all. They were lying.

Lying has become a habit, but a dangerous one, if you care about your immortal soul, as some religous people claim.

"You are of your father the devil, and you want to 

do the desires of your father. He was a murderer 

from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth

because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks

a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar

and the father of lies."

~ John 8:44

Another housekeeper has shown up and is now, at the moment I type this, working diligently on cleaning the kitchen and doing the dishes. She had to get here on the bus, but fortunately she doesn't live far from me.

When I told the new housekeeper about the gal that didn't show up yesterday, after telling me how devoted she was to her clients and how she was available to them "24/7" she piped up and said, "which means 'I won't be seein' ya." THIS gal has potential.

Silver Rose
(Sannyasini Kaliprana)
Copyright © 2020, Silver S. Parnell, All rights reserved.

PRAY FOR THE LIARS

Wanted:

"The one whose walk is blameless,

who does what is righteous,

who speaks the truth

from their heart;

whose tongue utters no slander,

who does no wrong to a neighbor,

and casts no slur on others.

Psalm 15:2-3

It disturbs me to see what seems to be an increase in the willingness of people to lie in order to further their own ends. We see this happening in Washington with that governmental circus of professional prevaricators who have honed blatant dishonesty to the level of high art and use bald faced lies to cement control and wield power, but, to be fair, I find deception to be heavily represented throughout society in day-to-day life, even among people whose professions lead one to expect much different and better.

My original draft of this blog post had three paragraphs of stories about several different liars in my orbit and how they lied to, about, or near me over the years and this week, but I realized that this problem is so common that I needn't provide those stories. I am quite sure that you all have enough of your own tales of the mendacious.

I have watched all sorts of people lie over the years and I find myself having a spine-chilling visceral reaction to it. I can almost feel Satan brushing up against me. It is an ominous and unnerving sensation.

Most "modern" people do not believe in Satan, but I usually tell them not to worry about it because Satan believes in them.  HE will keep the relationship going. I say this to them in a joking way. No one wants to be such a downer as to bring up hellfire and damnation in polite conversation!

But even I don't necessarily believe in the personification of evil that is the personality of a being named Satan. For me, "Satan" is shorthand for primal evil and its movement in our lives. And, while it is common for people to opine about whether or not God will assign them to Hell when we die, it is my understanding that it is with our own behavior that we demonstrate that resting place in which we are most comfortable and most familiar.

We walk around in our own personal acre of heaven or hell and carry it around with us as we move through life. If we establish our mind in the Heavenly place, Heaven is most real for us. The Kingdom of Heaven is among us!

The condition of our mind is determined by where we place our attention. It is as simple as that. Concentrate on Heaven, and Heaven is most real for us  But please don't assume that, because I KNOW this, that I have a "lock" on the process. No. Not at all. I struggle like everyone else....and perhaps MORE than everyone else, due to the PTSD that assaults me daily. It takes work to continually redirect the mind to the feet of the Lord when it has become distracted.

Our prayers and meditations have a dual purpose: first, to establish ourselves in the Divine, and second to intercede for others who have wandered away into lies and other obstructions that stand in the way of their vision of God.

"Self realization" isn't enough. We need to include all beings in a unitary vision.

Jesus admonishes us to pray for our enemies. Satan is the biggest enemy of all, and all lies originate with him. He is the father of all lies, and we need to fight him by fighting dishonesty because dishonesty is his calling card, and when it appears, HE is lurking nearby.

This is exactly why a good percentage of us are somewhat exercised by current affairs. The presence of Satan upsets people who are possessed of refined sensibilities. We are like the canaries in the coal mine. When you see a bunch of us flapping our wings and chirping dispiritedly, then falling over in a dead faint, it is a cue to get out of the mine. Get out of whatever societal situation in which we are mired and seek out the fresh air and sunshine. Meditation and prayer are the fresh air and sunshine for the soul.

Our current situation has encouraged me to double down on my meditation and prayers and I encourage you to do the same. Think of this: all the blog posts on Facebook, the newspapers, the magazine, the videos that bring each falsehood to light are fine vehicles of information, but are unable, by themselves, to stem the tide of the very real damage that is caused by malicious disinformation.

As people of faith, we have to do this. The fetid material being belched into the environment from the professional liars has to be counteracted on the spiritual plane, as well as the material, and we must hold fast to our compassionate prayer for those who are seduced by the continual stream of disparagement, calumny and toxic fabrication in which we are awash.

But, even if you are on the other side of things, and you believe every word from the current rulers, you surely must also follow my advice since the Lord will only cooperate with good and would not do evil just because a bunch of people ASKED him to! You know He couldn't do that.

Our mutual faith in Him draws us together. Across the divide, we may hold hands in the common belief that God brings all things to the good and that the words of Jesus, to love our enemies and pray for them, can only bring good. To unite with one another and place ourselves at the feet of the Lord who is Truth personified, and to beg for Truth to prevail, can only result in Truth!
                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Please join me in my prayers for Truth and Justice. Whatever is True and Just will be strengthened thereby. Whoever is True and Just will be strengthened. We do not need to name them or decide who they are, in advance (although we all probably believe that we know the "who" of things!)

I send love to you all and ask you to join me under the common sheltering roof of the absolute.

Silver Parnell
Sannyasini Kaliprana

P.S. I also remind you that my Paypal button still works, just in case you'd like to help me purchase some eyeglasses or dental work, neither one of which are paid for by Medicare!

THE LEGACY OF TRUMP

As bizarre as this sounds, there is a sizable number of Christians who regard Donald Trump as a messiah. They believe that he has been sent by God to protect a Christian nation, and that he is a savior, of sorts. Despite the fact that Trump's behaviors and policies are less Christian than any other politician on either side of the aisle at any time in history, his evangelical supporters are willing to excuse all of it. I don't think it would ever occur to me to write about politics were it not for this weird and astonishing circumstance.

I myself was planning on voting for Trump, until the Access Hollywood tapes came out and I heard him say those horrible things and how he grabs women "by the p---y" and that was IT for me. The more I learned about him, the more I could not imagine him as president, so, despite my antipathy toward Hillary Clinton, I voted for her.

It was blatantly obvious to me that Trump was creepy and dangerous, and I was just stunned when he was elected. Granted, he LOST the popular vote by several million people and was put in office by the auspices of the Electoral College (a mystifying and nonsensical peculiarity of American democracy) but it frightens me that so many Americans, after hearing his disgusting comments and watching his outlandish antics, would not only vote for him, but hotly defend every crackpot thing he has done and said since - against all rational sense.

Speaking as a woman who has a wicked case of PTSD , thanks to rapes and assaults, the idea that this guy is president makes me really uneasy. He promotes grabbing women by their genitals without so much as a 'by your leave"; there are more than a dozen women suing him for that very thing (he claims they are lying); the hearing for his appointment of would-be rapist Kavanaugh to the bench was a nightmare (complete with yet another assault on the impeccable character of his ersatz victim); and, with the name-calling and generally vulgar attitude he broadly and publicly displays toward women, in general, if it weren't for my meditation practice, I would be a certifiable basket case.

I have had many days, when Trump's misogyny and explicit prejudice against disabled people have flowed into my life from random strangers, like that grocery store employee who claimed he believed in "Trump's law" and that I was not disabled enough to suit him so, in his eyes, I did not deserve to use my handicap parking placard. On days like that, when the PTSD has been activated by Trump lovers, it has been impossible to maintain my typically cheerful self.

Trump has cost me friends and the support of some of my Catholic community where I live. A few have dropped me from Facebook and shunned me at church because of him. Pointing out the lies and misbehaviors of Trump is "hateful," according to them. In order to keep their friendship, I would have been required to stick to the fantasy script that he is the messiah come to save us from the gays, the immigrants, the blacks, the browns, and the poor . I do not respond well to emotional blackmail, and I will be damned if I will pretend that wrong is right and bad is good in order to stay in the good graces of people who ought to know better.

A small number of relatives, with whom I was not emotionally close, did likewise. None of them speak to me now because I have had the temerity to point out that which is readily apparent to the rest of us. I am not a perfect person, but at least I aspire to the core values of Christ. Trump doesn't.

The idea that these Trump supporters cannot see what is right in front of their eyes gives me chills up my spine - because he is such an extreme case of explicit corruption. This psychological drama is like the worst horror movie I've ever seen. I used to wonder how these people would cope when they finally realized the amount of danger to which we have been subjected because of their slavish devotion to Trump, but it is slowly sinking in that they never will. I have to accept that this is the way things will be for probably the rest of my life. They'll never be able to admit what they have done, especially to themselves.

Thankfully, most Americans (and most people all over the world) see him for what he is: a craven, mentally unbalanced, morally and ethically bankrupt con artist - a wastrel who, after being given millions of dollars by Daddy, spent his life taking advantage wherever he could, at the expense of innocent people, a man whose level of narcissism is malignant. I also suspect, and I have read the opinion of a host of psychiatrists and doctors who agree, that he may be entering into a phase of some sort of dementia, probably having to do with the progression of disease and/or old age. Some days, his language is such a hash of words that he appears to be barely lucid. Who knows if all the cheeseburgers have clogged his arteries and rotted his brain, or whether he just has some as-yet diagnosed illness? In any case, not only is he temperamentally 'unsuited' for the job of president (that word doesn't do it justice), he is positively dangerous. Saying this makes me "hateful" in the eyes of the Trump lovers.

Once someone decides to shield their eyes and ears from the blatant, obvious, in-your-face reality of Trump, that decision imprisons them.  In order to maintain the fairy tale of Messiah Trump, they can't watch any news program except Fox, or they will hear a truthful narrative from all the professional journalists.  They choose to believe Trump's preposterous claim that CNN and other traditional news outlets are in some kind of conspiracy against him and that publications with strict journalistic standards have all thrown away decades of integrity in order to conspire to spread the exact same lies about him. (I wonder where they MEET? Is there a giant video chat, or what? Do they vote on the lie of the week?)

True believers can't read any news except extremist right wing rags. They will listen to what Trump says about the Mueller Report before they will believe anything Mueller himself says about it, and they will not read the report which IS available. These people won't even take the direction of the POPE, calling instead for the Pope's expulsion from the church on the basis of heresy because his guidance disagrees with Trump's view of the world. The Pope as much as blatantly stated that Trump is not Christian, criticizing his stupid sea-to-sea wall. All of this sounds like a science fiction movie - but it's real.

Walter Cronkite is rolling in his grave.

As I have mentioned before, I know a few people who voted for Trump because he promised to nominate right wing judges - and he has done that. Trump doesn't appear to really care about the Supreme Court. I doubt he understands its role, given how little he appears to know or care about any of the functions of government or basic principles of jurisprudence. His handlers have given him the list from The Federalist Society (another nightmare topic) and he dutifully proposes only the people on that approved list. People in the pro-life community whose focus is making abortion a criminal act are willing to let the rest of government fall down around our ears in service to this one goal. They see some of the craziness of Trump but they don't care because they are getting the judges they want. I am pro-life, but I don't agree with this tragic compromise because it is endangering our democratic process and putting America in real peril from foreign enemies to whom Trump has cozied up and/or aggravated.

I feel, and I have been saying from the beginning, that Trump will do his best to get us embroiled in a war in order to both distract us from his crimes and to lengthen his time in office. As I also predicted, he is making a tremendous amount of money from foreign governments, pouring money into his businesses, as well as the American taxpayer who have been hosting his adult children and in-laws at Trump's luxury resorts for golf trips and "meetings" held at Trump's luxury properties. The partisan Attorney General that he placed at the head of the Department of Justice has engineered a change to the interpretation of the laws around the emoluments clause of the constitution, to the effect that the president should be allowed to receive unlimited amounts of money from foreign governments, as long as those payments are washed through businesses owned by the president. This is very convenient to Trump, whose fortunes were flagging before becoming president. The longer he can extend his presidency, the more money he can pull into his businesses, and the more regulations he can remove for businessmen like himself, ensuring his future further enrichment. Money is usually at the bottom of all corruption, and his administration is no different.

The MOST ironic thing about all this is that I originally became attracted to the Catholic faith, not only because of the mystics but because the values of Jesus Christ appealed to me. Now, I find myself part of a group of people, many of whom have abandoned these values for political expediency. It is heartbreaking for me, personally.

Between the huge sex abuse scandals and this wholehearted embrace of a toxic political administration that promotes unChristian values, the Catholic Church is getting a real hit, as far as reputation is concerned.

I realize that this post is somewhat rambling. This IS a diary, after all, but I should sum up my thoughts, and here it is:

I believe in the values of Jesus Christ and I won't abandon them, even if a large group of my fellow Catholics have traded them in for Republican talking points and have embraced the most unChristian of all politicians. I will not be dissuaded from trying, to the best of my ability, to follow the precepts of the church, and I will also throw myself into my meditation and prayer life with greater devotion. The only peace I get these days is from my meditation, formal and informal, where I tune in to the Divine and leave all the rest of this behind. I am sorry to be traveling this road alone, but I have been an accidental hermit for so long now that giving up the last shred of hope for community life or spiritual support is not such a stretch for me. The Lord does step in and assist me when necessary.

As I was writing this, two things happened. The first was a heated exchange between a reporter and one of Trump's people on the CBS Sunday Morning show in regard to Iran and its supposed attempt to blow up a ship in the Gulf of Hormuz. If he plays his cards right, Trump will get that war he has been wanting.

The other thing that happened as I was writing this: I was dropped by another ersatz "Catholic" who lives in my town. She defriended me on Facebook without a word, and when I questioned her about it, it was because of Donald Trump. This is how they keep the bubble small and the message consistent. God save them.



Silver Rose

GOD IS TRUTH

"The Devil was a murderer from the beginning,

not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in

him. When he lies, he speaks his native language,

for he is a liar and the father of lies."

~ John 8:44 ~

Christians with even the slightest Christian education know that lying is a terrible sin and that God is Truth in the ultimate sense. In the Ten Commandments, there is the admonishment not to give "false witness," there is the story of Annanias and Saphira, who were struck dead on the spot for lying to the Apostles, and most directly in the quote I have provided from John 8, we are told that Satan is the father of all lies. While the Lord is all truth, all goodness, all light, Satan is the opposite, and where you find a plethora of lies is exactly where you have found Satan, because Satan is the original author of every lie that is ever told.

The liar and those who repeat lies will have to answer for it on judgment day. Every lie that is told and willfully repeated without any effort to determine the authenticity of it is an occasion on which the "Christian" has said "yes" to Satan, the father of all lies, and "no" to God, thereby violating their baptismal covenant with Jesus, and establishing themselves as a servant of the dark one.

I realize the language sounds a bit archaic, but matters of heaven and hell often do.

Satan whispers into the ear of Jesus

We have a president who has told the American public more than 10,000 lies since coming into office. These lies are proven. These lies are not even hidden. There are copious videos that prove his lies.

There are also countless articles listing, demonstrating, and linking to proof that Trump is continually lying. His lying is EASILY proven. He constantly misrepresents himself and others, yet some self-described Christians repeat his lies. All they would have to do is watch the videos, read the articles and, most especially, read the Mueller Report if they want to learn about the most egregious lies and how they figure into his multiple crimes.

I am not telling you for whom you should vote. Voting is a political calculation. For instance, I have some friends for whom making abortion illegal is all they care about. They'd put their money on a barn-sour nag if they thought it would make abortion go away. Many of them will say, "all politicians lie," ignoring the fact that no one lies to the massive degree that Trump does. He is a world class, bald faced, unrepentant liar. In fact, he is the most prolific liar EVER.

You vote for who you vote for - but you don't have to repeat and perpetuate lies. That's what I'm talking about: THE LIES.

Instead of being a tool in the hand of Satan, check your statements with nonpartisan, reliable arbiters of fact. In the public sphere, that would be

FACT CHECK

SNOPES

POLITIFACT

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

There is no excuse to remain ignorant of the Truth, particularly if you are repeating the lies that are being employed to advance a political agenda.

I have a feeling that some Christians are repeating the lies and hatred of Trump and his cronies because they think that they have to do that in order to be considered a supporter of his and thereby a supporter of the hobby horse that made them vote for him to begin with.

Though the cognitive dissonance of supporting your hobby horse on the one hand and decrying the lies and dishonesty on the other may drive you mad, welcome to the club. I support the social justice platform of the democrats but I dislike the amoral engineering, such as when they talk about abortion being "health care" or act like it is some kind of positive good, which I find bizarre.

Neither party is suited to a Christian worldview, and that's just a fact. We are all trying to do the best we can to vote for what appears to be the least injurious platform, in a holistic sense, without losing our souls in the process.

Support what you find that is good but don't perpetuate the lies. Don't take on the sins of Trump and his minions or you will suffer for them personally.

Silver Rose

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT IMMIGRANTS?

Lady of Shalott

By Waterhouse

The Lady of Shalott is a ballad by Tennyson that tells the story of Elaine of Astolat, a young noble woman kept prisoner in a tower on an island near Camelot. She is the victim of some curse that forces her to watch life pass her by in the glass of a mirror because if she looks at it directly, she will die. At some point, she sees the exceedingly handsome Lancelot in that mirror, falls in love and decides to leave her prison tower. She finds a boat and commandeers it, but she is dead by the time she reaches shore.

This is how I feel about the admirers of the current administration. They cannot look at it directly, with the clarity of direct vision. Instead, they have to view it from a magically altered mirror. If they admitted how deadly was their Lancelot, they wouldn't get in the boat.

It takes a remarkable number of mental machinations to quell the obvious cognitive dissonance inherent in the problems of our current administration. What must it be like to hold diametrically opposed realities in one's consciousness at the same time! On the one hand, supporters claim he is "Christian" and that "it's nice to have a Christian in the White House, for a change" (Despite having MANY Christians in the White House over the years!)  On the other hand, Trump and his entourage are obviously and specifically behaving like people who are HOSTILE to Christian values. One only has to measure the various bills and campaigns against the expectations of Christ.

From the moment he started campaigning, Trump has demonstrated hostility toward minorities, immigrants, the disabled, the poor, the old, and basically anyone who is vulnerable and disadvantaged, by kicking them while they're down. From the Muslim ban of his first year in office, to the ancient-style great wall (for which he swore Mexico was paying!), to saying that the Nazis of Charlottesville were "fine people,"  he has been unrelentingly blatant and obvious in his hatred of "the stranger." While he is unapologetic about his cruelty, I actually consider him just a figurehead. He did not start this trend. He is only benefiting from it, financially and psychologically.

The name "Trump" has become synonymous with fascism, misogyny, xenophobia, prejudice, gay bashing, cruelty toward the poor, the aged and the infirm, but there is a foul wind blowing all over the world just now. Every country has its version of Trump and the Trump party. I can hardly be expected to really do it justice in my little blog, but I just want to encourage my Christian brothers and sisters to continue to choose Christ. If you stop choosing Christ and start choosing against him, you are choosing Satan. It is as simple as that, because you cannot be, at the same time, a Christian as well as an advocate for policies that contradict Christian values. You would need a magic mirror to keep from keeling over in a dead faint from the hypocrisy.

Take one topic at a time and compare it to our faith.  Decide your opinion based on your faith, and not on what some political party tells you.

On the topic of the treatment of immigrants, all I am going to do is to offer you a few quotes from the Bible. Let them sit with you for a while, and then decide how you feel about DACA or Trump's wall or the Muslim ban. Meditate on it for a while. Seek God's guidance.

"You shall allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and

for the sojourners who reside among you and have had

children among you. They shall be to you as native-born

children of Israel. In whatever tribe the sojourner resides,

there you shall assign him his inheritance, declares the Lord

God."

~ Ezekiel 47:22-23 ~

Now, think for a moment about the DACA program for the children who were brought here by their parents.

"Show hospitality to one another without grumbling."

~ 1 Peter 4:9 ~

Here's another, along those lines:

"Let strangers feast on your wealth and your toil

enrich the house of another."

~Proverbs 5:10~

Still thinking about immigrants, what's your take on this quote:

"But no stranger had to spend the night in the

street, for my door was always open to the 

traveler."

~ Job 31:32

How about that pesky Leviticus that so many "Christians" are keen to use against the gays?

"You shall have the same rule for the sojourner and for

the native, for I am the Lord your God."

` Leviticus 24:22 ~

I hasten to point out, especially with this next quote, that the Biblical writers are encouraging us to be as kind to the sojourner as we are to ourselves. The purpose is egalitarianism - not an admonishment to make sure that strangers obey earthly laws. God doesn't care if the immigrant's papers are in order. He cares that we treat them equally among us, as evidenced by the other quotes.

"There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger

who sojourns among you."

~ Exodus 12:49 ~

Notice in the next quote that God expects us to welcome the stranger:

"For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty

and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed

me."

~ Matthew 25:35 ~

I could provide many more quotes in support of what I have provided here. From the Old Testament to the New, it has been made clear to us that the Lord expects us to be kind to the strangers among us. We are to help them and welcome them.

Does this comport with ripping children out of the arms of their mothers and storing them in cages, where they sleep on the floor and may never see their parents again? Does this match the vision of a wall from one end of our country to the other? Does it anticipate anti-immigrant activists dumping out the containers of water left in the desert for the thirsty stranger?

The Trump campaign mechanism continues to make claims that he is Christian and that his policies are Christian, and there are plenty of Christian radio show hosts, pastors, priests and the like singing his praises, though God alone knows why.

I hope YOU are clear on why.

God bless us all.

Silver Rose

(Sannyasini Kaliprana)

Silver Cottage Ashram Hermitage

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Satan is the Father of all Lies

I never used to be very interested in politics, but since the alt. right is promoting the lie that Trump is Christian and that his policies are Christian, I feel I have to jump in, now and then, and defend the faith. Trumpian values are the opposite of Biblical values.

I know it must be very satisfying for religious folk to imagine that our country is finally being run by a God Fearing, Bible believing Christian instead of those Godless commie liberals, but it is all a sham. Donald Trump claims to be Christian, but the church to which he says he belongs has never seen him in the five short years he has claimed membership with them. It looks very much as if Trump joined the Christian club in a cynical effort to coerce religious people to vote for him.

Why aren't Christian Trump supporters more invested in Truth? Most of them seem to just believe whatever Trump, Fox News commentators, and various "religious" outlets say about him, and the messaging is cohesive from all those sources. (Sometimes, Trump lies about things he himself has said on video previously and which can be verified, and STILL his supporters refuse to acknowledge the lie. It drives me nuts.)

Meanwhile, legitimate journalists provide reams of proof, in video and in writing, consistently presenting the actual facts, but Trumpists don't typically read anything that doesn't have a positive slant on Trump. (Personally, I read everything and then fact check all of it.)

Most concerning at the present time is Trump's insistence on bleating out fantasies that contradict everything our intelligence agencies are saying, and then criticizing those agencies in his infernal tweets, in a blatant effort to get his base to avoid any information that will reveal the truth.

As time goes on, and Trump's enemies list grows, his slanderous statements find targets in all the agencies upon which Americans have, until now, depended for the administration of justice. His vulgar taunts are leveled at judges, senators and even the wives and children of people he hates.

If I were to list all the dangerous, repulsive, treasonous, NON-Christian activities and statements that Trump is making on a daily basis, I would have to write a book, rather than a blog. All I can do is plead with people to please, for God's sake, PLEASE, do some actual research, and stop mouthing the slogans and fake stories invented by the Alt Right for the purpose of inflaming its base. Don't be a tool in the hands of anyone else.

With regard to researching factual matters, the most important thing to do is evaluate one's sources. Opinion is not news. This blog is not news. Why? "News" is the presentation of facts. Who, what, when and where are factual. "Why" is not factual. It is commentary. While some commentary is often necessary to put facts into context, the "why" of a thing must not be presented as factual without specific proof of causality. Proving causality is no simple matter.

One of the classical fallacies of logic (which, apparently, is not widely taught in American schools) is "post hoc ergo propter hoc." The translation is something like "before, therefore because of." The meaning is this: Just because something happened just prior to another thing does not mean that the first thing caused the second. In its more ridiculous form, it would appear thus: "I ate a banana for the first time this morning, and this afternoon I had my first auto accident, therefore bananas cause auto accidents."

Everyone's opinion should be based in fact and truth. If it is based on anything else, you are standing on shifting sand, and anyone interested in the Truth is not going to give you any credibility at all.

Things to keep in mind:

1. Anecdotal stories are not proof of larger statistical issues. If you knew one disabled person that you suspected of cheating the government, that does not mean that a lot of people cheat the government. If you read a story about an "illegal alien" committing a crime, it doesn't mean that illegal aliens commit crimes to a greater degree than American citizens. As a matter of fact, it has been proven, over and over again, that undocumented folks commit appreciably fewer crimes than citizens! (Don't believe me. Check it!)

2. "News" programs produced by religious or philosophical or political groups are biased in nature, do not adhere to accepted journalistic standards, have no oversight and are explicitly partisan. Watch them all you want, but think of them as entertainment rather than purveyors of fact. They should be honest, but frequently aren't, skewing the "news" to suit philosophical wishful thinking. EWTN, CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network), Church Militant, Lifesite News, The Heritage Foundation, and other organizations that exist to support and promote a particular point of view are included in this category of biased programming and writing.

If you are really concerned about "fake news" - stick to the actual news, rather than a political, religious or philosophical organization.

Just because a television program expresses opinions that reflect your own does not mean that those opinions are  based in fact. You're just listening to yourself talk.

3. News outlets that hold to traditional journalistic standards are generally the most reliable. Usually, these outlets require that facts have more than one corroborating witness. This isn't to say they are perfect. Nothing is perfect, and mistakes are made by everyone, but generally speaking, these outlets are reliable, since they specifically intend to present the truth, as opposed to outlets that intend to present a philosophy. The Atlantic Magazine, CNN, The New York Times, and other reputable journalistic endeavors that I will list below, can usually be relied upon to tell the truth. To be clear, I am talking about the facts they present. I am not saying that commentary needs to be believed, except insofar as that commentary is built on truth.

Identify the relevant facts in every article, analyze the source(s) and fact check the claims on Politifact, Snopes.com, or Factcheck.org. Reuters is also a great source. For the longest time, news agencies got their news, initially, from Reuters. Reuters does not do "commentary."

4. Compare journalistic outlets to one another to assess the truth. I include Fox News in my collection of news sources, but I often find that its "news" disagrees with all the other outlets, and I dismiss them as a result. Here is why: It is irresponsible and illogical to think that hundreds of thousands of people involved in all the other news outlets are somehow in cahoots to tell lies and present a false narrative. The philosophy behind "Akim's razor" holds true here. The simplest explanation is usually the "right" one.

Another way of looking at this is with the saying that "when you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras. Conspiracy theories are fascinating zebras and are titillating to imagine might be true, but rarely rarely are.

5. The further away from primary sources, the less reliable the information. If I read an article in some tiny little "newspaper" or blog that has an "anonymous" source, but that anonymous source is not pinpointed as a member of a group that has first-hand information, I ignore it. For example, if an article references a source "that works in the Justice Department," I will give it more credibility than a source that is just "anonymous."

6. Fact check your sources. If you read an article that seems a bit too inflammatory, check it with politifact, snopes.com, factcheck.org and/or Reuters to make sure that the writer is not just trying to get more internet 'clicks.'

Here is a list of news purveyors I read or watch daily:

• Network news programs: ABC, NBC, CBS
• The Atlantic Magazine (Published for more than 164 years)
• New York Times
• L. A. Times
• Albuquerque Journal
• Washington Post
• USA Today
• Huffington Post
• The Guardian
• PBS:
• Democracy Now
• BBC World News America
• Amanpour & Company
• PBS News Hour
• New Mexico in Focus
• To the Contrary
• Nightly Business Report
• Washington Week
• Report from Santa Fe
• Firing Line
• The Open Mind
• Focus on Europe
• Rachel Maddow
• Face the Nation
• CNN News
• The New Yorker Magazine
• EWTN
• Fox News
• Keith Olberman
• MSNBC

There are more, but I can't recall them right now. Remember to add:

FACT CHECKING SITES:

• Snopes.com
• Factcheck.org
• Reuters
• Politifact

Don't take my word for anything. Research for yourself. I feel confident that, once everyone is educated on the facts, we will all be closer in opinions than we are currently.

God bless us all

Silver "Rose"

IS YOUR OPINION BASED ON FACT OR IMAGINATION?

I have never been very interested in politics. My interests lie elsewhere. But, during election cycles, I would learn the minimum necessary to ensure that my particular world view was represented, I would vote, and then I would forget it until the next election cycle. I had enough confidence in our constitution and our government that I figured the experts knew what they were doing. Nothing was perfect, but what could be?

This was pretty much my approach in 2016. In fact, I was going to vote for Donald Trump because he was, supposedly, a pro-life candidate. I am pro-life, but not convinced that making it illegal is the way to eliminate abortions. In addition, now that it has been legal for more than 40 years, I seriously doubt that putting the toothpaste back into the tube is possible. However, if I can vote for a candidate that is pro-life, rather than just anti-abortion, I do that.

When the Access Hollywood video came out, and I heard Trump's disgusting brags about grabbing women by "the pussy" and all the rest of it, I knew that my lazy approach to politics was over. I had to do some research. The more I learned about Trump, the more convinced I became that he was very bad for our country. I voted for Hillary Clinton as the lesser of two evils.

Since Trump came to power, I have continued to stay abreast of the news, as well as taking the time to research all the facts for each issue that has arisen. This includes watching Fox "News." (I put "News" in quotes because it does not qualify as a news channel. It is entirely opinion and propaganda.) The research skills that I developed as a writer and genealogist has helped me navigate an area in which I had little experience beforehand.

This morning I watched a video by a female judge whose opinions lay on the far right of the spectrum. She was speaking on the Fox Channel, and I take it she is a regular contributor. She labels anyone who finds fault with Trump as being "crazy."

One of the most well-known fallacies of classical logic is when someone uses an "ad hominem" argument in a debate. This is called a "fallacy" because it is not logical, i.e., one cannot arrive at a reliable conclusion by using that particular line of reasoning.

Instead of addressing the issues and defending their hero with facts, the Fox propaganda machine attacks the person who presents the facts.

In the video I watched this morning (I insert a link to it below), this woman is calling the presenters of fact "crazy", but when you watch the video clips she offers as supposed evidence of said craziness, what you see are reasonable people, seasoned professionals of the Washington political machine and other experts, expressing concern over Trump's behavior. Nothing looks or sounds crazy in those clips at all. There is no hyperbole. There is no false equivalency. There are no ad hominem arguments, and, even though it seems to ME that Trump is behaving in a really crazy fashion, they're not calling him crazy. They are calling into question what he says and does but they aren't falsely impugning his character and dismissing him as "crazy." There are legitimate questions about what he is doing - questions for which there are no answers OR there are several, competing answers.

SEE THE VIDEO HERE

NOTE: In the Fox "News" video, only snippets of interviews are shown in the video clips that are highlighted. I have seen the full interviews elsewhere, and I can tell you that divorcing the presentation of facts from the conclusions at the END of the interview makes a big difference in one's comprehension of the material being discussed.

Why do otherwise intelligent people watch this blather? Why do they parrot the Fox conclusions all over social media and in their conversations? Why do they give any credibility to Fox's obvious bias and hatred toward anyone who finds fault with the policies, words, and/or behavior of Trump?

On the fact of it, Fox is operating as a partisan arm of the hard right political movement. I suspect that people who watch it are not looking for reportage of the "news," since there isn't any. Apparently, they want to hear someone repeating back to them the opinions they already hold. Dissenting facts are irrelevant to them. They have no interest in hearing what any experts have to say about what Trump is doing, unless the expert agrees with their already-formed opinions. I have been told that nothing I offer will have any effect whatsoever on the die-hard opinions of Trump supporters. When Trump claimed that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue in broad daylight and no one would care, he was right.

I have had plenty of opportunities on social media to have exchanges with Fox News devotees, and most of them seem to get some kind of emotional satisfaction from hearing their prejudices repeated back to them. The nastier the opinion, the more they seem to like it. I am STILL shocked by the memory of hearing people shriek "lock her up!" It is frightening on so many levels.

Mostly, I have encountered people for whom nothing matters but making abortion illegal and overturning Roe v. Wade. I happen to think this is a pipe dream and that there are better ways to lessen the number of abortions in our country than to make them illegal. The problem with abortion is that women want them. They will have them, legal or not. It is the WANTING that needs to be addressed - not the legality. My disagreement is with the method that anti-abortion activists have decided is "the" method for stopping abortions, especially since the G.O.P. has so many other policies that are positively hostile to life on the planet.

It is a lot easier to make a law criminalizing it than it would be to evangelize the culture so that no one felt that they had to have an abortion or that they wanted to have one. Abortuaries would be empty if no one wanted an abortion, and, because of that fact, I am not obsessed with making it illegal, but there are plenty of people who ARE.

These "one issue" voters are Trump supporters. Apparently, they believe that the end justifies the means, which is why they do not care how many of our allies turn their backs on us. They do not care that our president is promoting authoritarian figures and dictators. They do not care that American wages have plummeted while prices for health care have soared. They do not care that there are more than 40 million poverty stricken people but food assistance has been slashed under Trump. They do not care about the safety of our drinking water. They do not care about protection of the environment. They do not care about endangered species. They do not care that we have lost 40 billion dollars in solar energy business because of Trump. They do not care if Trump lies continually, and they do not care what any of the experts have to say. All they care about is making abortion illegal, and it is going to backfire on them.

When you sacrifice the rest of the planet for the sake of unborn children, you are pitting one "class" of human beings against another. Thinking that unborn babies are more vulnerable than other populations, is a mistake. Poor people stuck in the vise-like grip of poverty and hateful governmental policies are just as helpless as the baby in the womb. They too are being killed, but at a much slower rate, more excruciatingly torturous and drawn out, but killed nonetheless. Also, when you withdraw protections for the environment, as Trump has done, you risk trying to inhabit a planet that will not support ANY type of life, born or unborn. One has to have a cohesive view with a long gaze over the horizon.

At the very least, I wish that people on the right were more honest. Instead of slandering "the left" they need to answer for themselves. If Donald Trump does something inexplicable, no one should be forced to abandon their first amendment right to inquire about it, and, if the hard right mouthpieces do not like the questions, they might try getting their dear leader to give some answers that make sense and do not change with his mental tides.

Silver Rose

DONALD TRUMP IS NOT THE PROBLEM

Jesus blessing a poor man.

Donald Trump, though the current poster child for the hard right in America, did not invent the callous, heartless, and decidedly unChristian worldview with which we are currently fighting.

The policies of this president are met with joy by people who have been here all along but who, until now, have had limited power to realize their selfish and distorted world view.

I do not pretend to know, for certain, the origins of America's reversion to such primitive, tribal and harsh aspirations, but, when I think back to the infancy of this country, I see the seeds of it right there. Women were not allowed to vote. African Americans remained in slavery to rich landowners. Many of the founding fathers did not want to give voting privileges to anyone but landowners.

If you analyze the group of people who had all the rights in the beginning of our nation, it is the same group of people who are now trying to keep everyone but themselves from having any.

Even though I am functionally poor and cannot afford to buy the assistive devices and furnishings that I need to accommodate my disabilities, I STILL live much better than the poor souls who are trying to immigrate here from other countries, and this disparity in standards of living is a crucial part of the current debate on immigration. A large segment of the American population is selfish and doesn't want to help anyone. The character assassinations they employ to justify their selfishness give false witness, and are a scandal in themselves. A lot of it appears to be racist, but underneath the apparent racism, I think this selfishness is the primary fuel for the current hostility toward immigrants.

"Today the illegal migrant comes before 
us like that "stranger" to whom Jesus asks 
to be recognized. To welcome him and to 
show him solidarity is a duty of hospitality 
and fidelity to Christian Identity itself."

Pope Saint John Paul

Just look at the way we treat our OWN people! We have more than 40 million poor people in our country, but the hard right doesn't care about them. They dismiss us by saying that we all need to go to work, which is another lie because most poor people ARE working. The rest are disabled, elderly, or children. Less than 3% of people who receive entitlement income are able-bodied people that aren't working - and most of them are searching for work. Despite these facts, the hard right persists in pushing the lie that poor people are just lazy bums that need to go to work. I am quite sure there are some lazy bums among the poor, but there will always be a few people like that in the world.

Although there is a lot of talk about the hard right being "Christian" and following "Christian values," the only people they seem to care about are babies in the womb. They excuse Trump's brutal reign with all sorts of nonsense, supposedly because he will make abortion illegal, vis-a-vis conservative Supreme Court jurists.

While it appears that the hard right have sold their souls in exchange for one or two seats on the Supreme Court, their doing so is a pointless endeavor. Abortion will not likely become illegal, now that the flood gates have opened. It would be more effective to evangelize the heart while making survival a bit easier for moms, but, instead of taking care of people after they have been born, and establishing family-friendly economic systems that would assist families, the hard right advocates for cuts to food and shelter assistance, cuts to healthcare, cuts to the minimum wage, and a tax structure that caters to the ultra rich. They create an environment that is hostile to women, children, families and poor people, then criticize the people they impoverish when they are driven to abortion.

Since poor Americans are treated so shabbily by other Americans who have benefited in our culture to a greater degree, it is no surprise that they don't want to help immigrants from other countries, regardless of our completely immigrant past (except for the Native Americans.)

The idea of scarcity, that there are not enough resources to go around for everyone to be happy, is the biggest lie of all. There are a few men at the top of the socio-economic ladder who have nearly all the wealth of our nation. For years, our economic policies have shuttled all the wealth to the top of the ladder, while the people who actually do the work to create the wealth - the workers - are suffering with stagnating wages for more than 40 years! We have poverty in our country, not because the poor are lazy, but because the rich are filthy greedy. Those few men at the top of the ladder have enriched themselves unjustly at the expense of the common man, and they currently spend some of their ill-gotten gains to spread lies about the rest of us so that they can continue to rape our economy.

There is no scarcity. There is enough wealth in America so that all people may get a living wage and feed, house and clothe themselves, with a little extra for fun. There is enough wealth to help immigrants and refugees come into our country and become part of our economy. There is no scarcity. There is greed.

Many "religious" people think you cannot call yourself a Christian unless you are a Republican. The reason that this drives the rest of us crazy is because the hard right advocates for harsh policies that hurt the vulnerable, something that jesus would NEVER approve of.

Donald Trump didn't start this, though he is the lightning rod for all the animus that followers of Christ feel toward the policies and prejudices of the current administration. Trump is an icon of far right thought. His attacks on the press and the first amendment, his vulgarity, his commercialization of the office of the Presidency, his corrupt business practices, his objectification of and assaults on women, his constant lying, his long-term ties with Russian oligarchs and American mafia, his destruction of the offices of government by promoting people unqualified and/or devoted to their destruction, his extreme mental laziness that is demonstrated by his refusal to be properly briefed, his continually affirmed admiration for dictators and his repudiation of our allies - ALL of this makes us cringe. All of it is unChristian.

What really scares people who actually follow Christ is not Donald Trump. What really concerns us  are millions of people who think just as Trump does. Although he did not win the popular vote, Trump won enough votes to enable him to come to office through the quirks of the Electoral College.  Though Donald Trump lied about the crowds at his inauguration, his crowd is big enough to be of grave concern.

Donald Trump is not the problem. He represents the problem, and he does a good job of it.

Evangelization and some truth telling would seem to be in order.

Silver Rose 

PLEASE DON'T JUDGE JESUS BY THE "CHRISTIANS" WHO SUPPORT TRUMP

Even though Donald Trump's outrageous lies are easily unmasked by watching a video of him speaking his own contradictions or of eye witnesses, experts and professional testimony and photographs, some people choose to believe Trump and his lies.

They believe the lies of his lackeys and sycophants, such as Jeff Sessions, when he claims that jailing children at our borders is Biblical because God has installed our leaders, relying upon a text-twisted Biblical reference divorced from its moorings and rendered opposite in its meaning by removing the surrounding text that directs and defines it.

The idea that all the policies of all heads of government are holy because God installs all the leaders is another version of Nixon's comment that "if the president does it, it isn't illegal." This idea, if followed to its logical conclusion, would mean that all actions of every dictator and despot in the world are a positive good from God. This is patently ridiculous. It is neither legal nor Biblical.

Unfortunately, when Trump apologists cite the Bible and Christianity as authorities for their actions, they make claims about Christianity that are completely false. For instance it is the antithesis of the Christian message to behave in a cruel way toward immigrants. The Old and New Testaments are very clear on this. Jews and Christians alike are told to be kind to strangers, for once we were also strangers. Dire warnings are given for those who fail to do this.

Then he will say to those on his left, "Depart from me, you

accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his

angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was

thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you gave me

no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in 

prison, and you did not care for me.

~ Matthew 25 ~

The Bible consistently affirms that Satan is "the father of all lies." Many Christians are saying that it doesn't matter that Trump lies continually because "all politicians lie." Excusing Trump's lies because someone else has lied would excuse Hitler from murdering millions of Jews because some other leader killed someone at some time. "They all do it."

Shall we excuse all the murderers from prison because someone else, somewhere, in some way, killed someone?

If we justify Trump's continual lies because, supposedly, "Hillary did it," should we then adopt all of Hillary Clinton's actions as our model to follow? Should we follow the worst behavior of other people, or should we uphold Biblical values?

If so-called "family values" Christians think it is fine that Trump has brought with him a legion of women who are suing him for various assaults because he is, supposedly, a "baby Christian," then how much more forgiving would they be of Clinton and the two women who sued him? Right? No?

Sometimes I worry that the "Christian" support of Donald Trump has obliterated the possibility of bringing the Gospel message to non-Christians. Today, we do not have a prayer of gaining converts, unless they are people who are devoted to principles that are the OPPOSITE of Biblical principles. Neo Nazis, white supremacists, sociopaths who blackmail voters by tormenting children, and pathological liars would feel at home in the "Christianity" that is being advertised by the Trump administration. Jesus weeps!

Having studied and been a part of many different religions in my lifetime, I can tell you that people come to religion for a variety of reasons, not all of them honorable. Every religion has its hypocrites who neither follow the religious precepts nor advocate for them. Each of them has a certain number of people who use the religion to get things they want on earth, or simply to make themselves feel good.

Religious institutions are full of people - and people are very flawed. A good portion are sincere and make a good faith effort to live their faith. The rest are either coasting or perverting the message to their own ends.

Jesus knew this would happen. He said that, in the end, people would cry to Him, "Lord! Lord" and He would reject some of them, saying, "I do not know you."

This is why I do not judge a faith by any of the people that fail to live up to it. I would not want the Christianity that approves of the sins of Donald Trump and his people. THAT "Christianity" is abhorrent to me and to every Christian who knows the message of Christ. Thanks be to God, I do not belong to that Christianity.

I can only pray that people inclined toward true Christian values do not turn their backs on Christianity because of this vile circus that is being played out in our halls of so-called "justice."

Silver Rose