Category Archives: A life in the Spirit

Mystical hope in a deteriorating world

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We founded my former church, Circle of Hope, in a ripe moment of history and the outcome was beautiful. Then it wasn’t. And then Eliza Griswold wrote a book about how badly it all turned out that sealed its legacy through her lens. It made some of her reviewers weep.

When it all started in 1995, we sat in a small circle discussing what our name would be. We ended up with several versions of a name with “hope” in it. But some people did not like any of those versions. A few people (and in a circle of ten, a few is relevant!) thought it was just too much to put “hope” right out there in the church’s name.

Barack copied us?

Maybe they were right to be cautious. Regardless, they were certainly representative of many others, since many people think hope is far-fetched, even dangerous — mainly because they think it is something tied to outcome. If you are a “circle of hope” you invite expectations that might not be met.

So many people are laboring under all the “outcomes” required of them, and under all the “outcomes” they were promised which never came to fruit.

For many people, “hope” is an optimistic feeling — or at least a willingness to go on, because they sense things are going to get better. But is that sense about worn out  these days? What if you put “hope” right out there on your poster, like President Obama did, and then everything does not get better like you promised? Instead, there are drones, recession and bailouts. What if your church implies that Jesus is going to get you a job, provide a mate and cure your cancer and those things don’t happen? Won’t the name of your church just point out the fact that it did not happen? For some people, hoping just makes you look naive, at best, and like just another gaslighter, at worst.

We had a few people on our little team whose hopes had been dashed. What’s more, some of them had grown up in the church, where they even memorized Bible verses like in Psalm 116: “I love the Lord, because he has heard the voice of my supplication…I was brought very low and he helped me.” But their lives had not worked out just like the verse seemed to promise, empiricistettes as they were.

After a while, it is hard to figure out what to do with dashed hopes. Sometimes they are like a secret you would not disclose among people who still hope for some bright future.

I have memorized some Bible verses myself and I am an optimistic guy — and God has repeatedly helped me when I was “brought low.” Even so, I have never thought it was wise to make promises God was not going to keep, at least was not wise to act as if God were the Amazon of human want.

Another way of experiencing hope

The Bible does, indeed, promise God will meet our needs. But if you look deeper, it teaches that the promise is deeper than just meeting our expectations. I am re-reading a little book that beautifully points out there is another kind of hope represented in the Bible which is a complete reversal of our usual way of looking at hope in terms of outcomes. We can see that hope in Habakkuk 3:17-19 where the prophet dances on the heights even though the land is devastated, and we can see it when Jesus offers inside water for outwardly thirsty people in John 4:13-14, and we can see it in the “total immersion course” in the school of hope that the book of Job is where he ends up singing Job 19:25-26: “I know my redeemer lives.”

Cynthia Bourgeault calls this deeper hope “mystical hope” — and that is the title of her book, too. Mystical hope has three characteristics in contrast to our usual notions of hope. These usual notions, based on outcomes, are not bad, they just aren’t complete or entirely useful. She says, in light of the three biblical examples I just mentioned:

  • Mystical hope is not tied to a good outcome, to the future. It lives a life of its own, seemingly without reference to external circumstances and conditions.
  • This kind of hope has something to do with presence – not a future good outcome, but the immediate experience of being met, held in communion, by someone intimately at hand.
  • This hope bears fruit within us at the psychological level in the sensations of strength, joy , and satisfaction: and “unbearable lightness of being.” But mysteriously, rather than deriving these gifts from outward expectations being met, it produces them from within.

Our mystical hope

I think we had enough mystical hope when were were planting a church to work for good outcomes even when people thought they were not good enough. We came to know our existence was resistance. Our assessment of our value and impact did not define our worth.

But maintaining that view our ourselves was hard. We were just discovering the seismic shifts among the youth of the nation (our focus demographic) which experts have been talking about ever since. For instance, one week in 2017 our pastors passed around a couple of pieces that tested our hope. One was from the Census Bureau.

The map above shows the increase in the number of young adults (18-34) in the United States living at home with their parents in 2015 compared to 2005. The changes in that decade, and certainly the last preceding 40 years were staggering. More than 1 in 3 young people lived in their parents’ home in 2015. That was a huge increase in one decade. What’s more, of those people, 1 in 4 were idle; that is, they neither went to school or worked. Many people saw that reality as a poor outcome. Were all these people hopeless? Ten years later many of the men in the study are the incels of the manosphere.

The other piece the pastors passed around was about alone and lonely men. A journalist who researched psychology was pondering the horrible Las Vegas shooting. An apparently completely alone man was the shooter. As a “lone wolf” he was not that unusual among men. The author says:

As a man, you might be thinking, “Not me, I’ve got drinking buddies. I play poker with the guys. I’ve got friends.”

But do you have confidants? Do you have male friends who you can actually be vulnerable with? Do you have friends whom you can confide in, be 100% yourself around, that you can hug without saying “No homo,” without feeling tense or uncomfortable while you’re doing it?

For many men, the answer is “no.” So, we spend our time posturing instead.

From an early age, we have an unhealthy ideal of masculinity that we try to live up to. Part of that ideal tells us that Real men do everything on their own. Real men don’t cry. Real men express anger through violence.

The byproduct is isolation. Most men spend the majority of their adult lives without deeper friendships, or any real sense of community. Not to mention a complete inability to release anger or sadness in a healthy way.

Many woman feel exactly the same way, of course. And the evil ways of late capitalism have made a perfect environment to create unhealthy, isolated people — A.I. is just making it worse. I experience the outcomes all the time. Some days it just feels hopeless.

There is something other than bad outcomes

I want to say more about Cynthia Bourgeault’s book in the coming weeks. But for now, let me end with a quote from the early pages of Mystical Hope which talk back to twentysomethings who feel their future is bleak, and call to parents who feel their children are hopeless cases, and whisper to men and women who feel isolated and friendless, stuck in some pattern which feels hopeless. There is something deeper than your situation. Jesus has a promise that is better than you expect.

You’ll need to read her little book to get the full effect and all the references, but maybe you can get a taste from these lines:

  • Hope is not intended to be an extraordinary infusion, but an abiding state of being. We lose sight of the invitation – and in fact , our responsibility, as stewards of creation – to develop a conscious and permanent connection to the wellspring. We miss the call to become a vessel, to become a chalice into which this divine energy can pour; a lamp through which it can shine.
  • But what if we are intended to become this vessel, this body of hope? What if, in fact, this effervescent, “lightness-of-being” energy is the fuel that drives our human life toward its divine fulfillment? What if our insistence on treating it as a rare and exceptional phenomenon is a way of ducking the invitation that was permanently extended at the Samaritan well that blazing midday?
  • The journey to the wellspring, the to secret of Jesus, the Master of Galilee, is the great inner journey to which we Christians are called.

I am glad we put hope right out there in the name of our expression of the Church back in the day. It dared people not to meet Jesus. On the one hand, God produced outcomes that were MUCH greater than we imagined as we sat in a little circle of ten in our living room. We hoped good things would happen and even more than we hoped happened. So that’s great. But what about all that did not happen? What about when it all fell apart 20+ years later? What sustained us when we failed, broke up, died, lost faith, were betrayed and confused?

It is always that mystical hope, that turning toward the living water which energizes us to get up and live in joy as we follow Jesus through what is next.

 [As you can tell, this is the first in a set of updates of 2017 posts. They seem even  more important now than when I first wrote them.]

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Today is Pantaleon Day! The martyr who gave away his wealth and doctored the poor for free. He used to be wildly famous, as a result. Meet him at The Transhistorical Body.

Kayfabe: Does this key ingredient of WWE explain Trump?

A life in the Spirit, Film/TV, Spiritual direction, , , , , , , ,

Traveling makes you think

We took a road trip to Monticello. My grandson bought an oversized nickel as a memento. The preservationists who maintain Thomas Jefferson’s lifelong rehab project posted a sign on the way up the mount to remind us we were entering a “sacred” space. Jefferson’s star-studded, science-driven plantation is an altar for the religion of America.

The mansion overlooks Charlottesville. That’s the city lately famous for a torch parade, the white supremacist march on August 11, 2017. Hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and alt-right activists stormed through the University of Virginia campus. They chanted antisemitic and racist slogans as they marched around Jefferson’s statue. The spectacle served as a prelude to the violent “Unite the Right” rally the following day.

Jerry Falwell Jr Says Donald Trump Offered Him Education Secretary Job

Not long after we left Charlottesville, we approached Lynchburg, VA, home of Jerry Falwell Airport and Liberty University, where the Moral Majority was born in the 80’s — that movement mobilized millions of politicized Evangelicals to combat what it viewed as the moral decline of the United States, championing traditional family values and heavily influencing postmodern American politics. (Falwell Jr., above, played the champion when dad died, but missed the morality). On the way there, I shouted as we turned a corner, “Look at that Confederate flag!” It was huge. Someone bought a gigantic flagpole and some company made an enormous flag to threaten me. The Christian radio station nearby had just aired a serious news story featuring Mike Johnson saying the Congress needed to pass the SAVE Act and he intended to attach it to a budget reconciliation bill soon.

The Thomas Jefferson impersonator at the Monticello Theater, had pointed out that in 1824 only 6% of the population was eligible to vote (white male landowners) and only 3% voted. Trump is now trying to get voting back to white people, at least. I think he can find many supporters in western Virginia.

Then WWE chairman Vince McMahon has his head shaved by Donald Trump and Bobby Lashley after losing a bet in the Battle of the Billionaires at the 2007 WrestleMania in Detroit, Michigan.

Monticello took some Kayfabe

Yes, traveling makes you think. I started connecting dots, like Jefferson and UFC.

Trump’s birthday fight on the White House lawn was a lesson in performative domination with the goal of ginning up support for his white-centered dictatorship [see Stephen Miller last week]. I learned a new word when I was wondering what he was trying to do by tearing up the White House grounds for a mixed martial arts arena. A.I. took the spectacle seriously, and even called it “historic” when I looked it up:

UFC Freedom 250, a historic mixed martial arts event held on the South Lawn of the White House on June 14, 2026. The unprecedented spectacle celebrated both the United States’ 250th anniversary and President Donald Trump’s birthday, and drew national headlines as a major, high-stakes sporting event.

A.I. sounds like a publicist for UFC. The Ultimate Fighting Championship is an American MMA promotion company based in the Las Vegas metro. It is owned and operated by TKO Group Holdings, a “premium sports” and entertainment company formed in 2023 by the merger of the UFC and WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). WWE is a majority-owned subsidiary of The WME Group (William Morris Endeavor), the world’s longest-running talent agency. Ponder that.

Swallowing Jefferson’s Frenchified Monticello as a sacred space, was a bit like rolling over for what WWE/Trump does, and maybe it’s like what most Evangelical church members are doing most of the time. They all take some “kayfabe.” [Check out this scholarly article].

Kayfabe is the tacit agreement/code professional wrestlers keep as they present staged matches, scripted rivalries, and predetermined characters as completely genuine even though they are fake. The term originating as secret carny slang to keep audiences in the dark, as in “Keep the kayfabe.” Postmodern kayfabe is used to maintain emotional immersion in the fiction rather than strict deception. Maybe you know all about this.

Like I noted, in the era of social media, kayfabe has evolved. Rather than attempting to fool the audience, postmodern kayfabe functions as a type of psychological storytelling where fans are in on the secret but willingly suspend their disbelief to enjoy the narrative. The term has also bled into mainstream culture, often used to describe performative political theater or calculated, winking online behavior.

At Monticello we were asked to play our part in the same story Jefferson enacting when he lived there. He is the Declaration of Independence writer who owns slaves. We overlook the slaves, even though we know they exist, in order to keep his shrine in Washington D.C. making sense. He is the UVA founder where a white supremacist mob rolled over people protesting the domination he enjoyed and employed. We overlook how he managed the white supremacist Constitution so he always looks enlightened.

Jefferson was not as expert or as self-conscious as Trump and his followers are when it came to kayfabe, of course. I never knew how much Trump was practicing it until I wondered about that bizarre UFC fight. I may be the last person in the country who finds such a thing odd.

It is not just politics, it is the church

The term has increasingly crossed over into mainstream culture. In everyday contexts, “kayfabe” is used to describe a tacit agreement to pretend that something is real, sincere, or competitive when it is actually performative—often used to describe political theater, marketing, or corporate posturing

Trump’s first election was straight out of the pro wrestling playbook. Voters knew it was fake, but they loved it. [See this article from The Guardian]. They knew he was playing a character (he kept talking about himself in the 3rd person!) and they knew who they were in the story. Here is a representative fan homage:

WWE is a hybrid form of sport, street fight, ballet, spectacle, and soap opera that defies easy categorization. Trump is in the WWE Hall of Fame.  His WWE pedigree influenced his political campaigning style. It developed his boisterous, over-the-top character. The way he argues, insults and makes crass remarks all make perfect sense in the context of Trump the WWE entertainer. Trump’s pro-wrestling role is a celebrity who is a “no bullshit” straight talker who gets things done better than anyone else

Naomi Klein (2017) claimed that pro-wrestling is “invisible as a cultural force to most liberal voters.” I am one of them. My ignorance might go back to my father, who would not allow pro wrestling from KTLA, Channel 5, on his TV because it was all fake — which we doubted. We could, however, watch roller derby because we all knew that was staged. Now I am supposed to play along and help enact simulated emotions to produce alternative realities as if life were WWE. It’s a leap.

I can’t really do kayfabe. It is intrinsically unChristian, of course, but I also didn’t encounter it early enough, I think. I didn’t even play Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). Kayfabe now describes a form of audience engagement that involves, in the first instance, a willing suspension of disbelief within which performers, promoters and the audience, ALL “keep kayfabe.” For the latter, keeping kayfabe involves the active choice to participate in “performance conventions” such as cheering the “face” and booing the “heel.”  In doing so, fans do not simply pretend to be fooled by the “game;” rather, in the new kayfabe, everyone is invested and involved in the playing of the game itself — Magic: The Gathering (MTG) with flying folding chairs, perhaps.

To refer to the “real” of wrestling today is to refer to backstage politics, writers’ rooms, booking decisions, and corporate judgments about who has star potential, who is popular in the locker room, or who is unpopular with management. It is a kind of real that, strangely, even contradictorily, embraces the fake. When it leaks into everyday life,  newscasters always talk about the strategies of politicians and who is winning the latest contest rather than informing the listeners about the substance and consequences of what is going on.

Politics and church have largely followed suit

To enjoy WWE, fans must not only be aware of the inner workings of the business (the off-camera, backstage processes) but also able to construct hypotheses about them when they lack knowledge. The whole thing has become an active, collaborative relationship, a co-production in which fans both create and sustain kayfabe while simultaneously dissecting it, parsing the elements that construct the performance with a discerning eye on how well performers “follow the rules of the performance practice and play their role” and “read through the fiction to glean hidden truths.” If this sounds to you like conspiracy theories being monetized, you might be right.

Part of the fan’s participation becomes “a game of prediction and interpretation to which they apply their understanding of wrestling techniques, character histories, performers and WWE as a company.” For instance: Why did the bookers decide upon that outcome? Does the fact that the wrestler is “selling” the leg (acting as if it is injured) mean the match “finish” will involve that limb? Did an aggressive “promo” signal a “heel turn” by a “face?”  It seems like anything can be “gamified” these days  to increase fan devotion and profit.

So it was not surprising that at his post-2016-election thank-you rallies, Trump was able to level with his voters about the manipulative nature of his campaign tactics. When he referred to the redundant “Lock her up!” chants at his events, Trump now laughed with his supporters, telling them, “You people were vicious, violent, screaming, ‘Where’s the wall? We want the wall!’ Screaming ‘Prison! Prison! Lock her up!’ I mean you are going crazy!” The chants, he told them, contemplatively, “plays great before the election. Now we don’t care.” Far from his revelations undermining their enthusiasm for his Presidency, Trump’s supporters laughed along – after all, only marks truly believed all that stuff even if, while self-conceived smarts, they too chanted along.

That last point is the key to understanding Trump’s appeal. The country (and the church) may be more WWE, UFC, gamified, prediction addicted, and back-room cynical than you think.  Politics happens like pro-wrestling — the chance that Mitch McConnell is actually dead is more interesting than his actions as a Senator or the future of the democracy. In WWE the smarts differentiate themselves from the imagined marks (the people who actually believe WWE is a contest). Nevertheless, the “smarts” retain the “overt knowledge that the core wrestling narrative relies, to a significant degree, on their successful performance as dupes not in on the con” – that is, the capacity to suspend disbelief is predicated upon the collected audience playing the part of a “true believer” sports spectator. To retain its “dramatic appeal” pro-wrestling requires smarts to perform as marks when attending events. Just like Marco Rubio (and Lindsay Graham, RIP) act like they are taking Trump seriously, a successful WWE event or Trump rally requires its attendees cheer and chant, performing their role as supporters-who-believe in their own exposition of smart fandom.

The evangelical church has always been a step away from such carnival, since the carnival works better than actual faith to draw a crowd and fill the plates. One of the reasons it is hard to make a Christian in the U.S. is the thin line between willingness to disbelieve and actual faith. The atmosphere is filled with Christians who picked up Trump just like they  picked up Jesus. They were in it for the feels and vicarious sense of power, not the truth.

When Kelly Conway blithely talked about alternative facts, it was exposing kayfabe. When Paula White compares Trumps “sufferings” to that of Jesus, it is performing kafaybe. She actually stated, “No one has paid the price like you have,” likening his experiences to being “betrayed, and arrested, and falsely accused.” Furthermore, she has publicly declared that “to say no to President Trump would be saying no to God”

People on my feed shake their heads and say “Trump lives in his own world.” True. When he talks about Trump in the third person, he is talking about his persona, his WWE Hall of Fame persona. What he does as the real Trump may be lost on him at this point, I don’t know. But “his own world” is shared by millions who live in “their own world” with him. They are perfecting the unreality which accompanies the world we all share.

As we came home over the Walt Whitman Bridge, we snapped a picture of our smoke-dimmed home town. Canadian fires are climate-change induced —  some facts are difficult to undermine. As the smoke started rolling in last week, the president got on TV to repeat his lie about the 2020 election. He said that China had meddled because it obtained voter registration info that anyone with enough money can purchase legally. He did not hit anyone over the head with a chair, which probably would have garnered even more attention, but he did implicitly call on us to “keep the kayfabe” with him as the world burned.

The super-analog Proverbs in the Bible includes this one: Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment (12:19).

Faith is the little night light that burns in a sick room

A life in the Spirit, Spiritual direction, , , , ,

I spent part of last week studying the life of Abbe Huvelin (1838-1910). I was creating an entry for The Transhistorical Body where he will appear on July 10. Just like his life and teaching influenced many of his contemporaries, he is sticking with me.

I am especially taken with his persistent admonition to keep it small, focus on love, and listen for the presence of Christ instead of listening to the voice of fear in us or listening to the powerful voices from the world threatening suffering if we don’t conform. He held out his little light as a local priest instead competing for prestige among the high-flying Parisians giving birth to “modernity” during his lifetime.

God in the small things

I suppose it is strange source of meditation, but a text from one of my friends is stuck in my mind. So few things stick (like the plot of Disclosure Day), I take the things that do stick  seriously.  Maybe I should be telling you about some atrocity, or last Saturday’s protest – and there will be time to speak up, but I think you might be better served if I share the small blessing of our text exchange about peonies. She offered to populate my garden and I accepted her gift.

Let’s just pause for a second. Aren’t flowers great? If you don’t stop and appreciate flowers, what kind of person are you? And isn’t it great that I have this new friend who takes an interest in my new garden? I have flowers and I have this friend. Life is good.

I wrote to her: It is Rod. I did not get the peony. Tomorrow OK?

I knew it would be fine if I did not get the pot off the porch when I said I would. But I like the little niceties between friends, so I texted an extra mile. I know people who hate receiving texts and calls. But I am not among them. I like attention, and I like attending. It makes me happier and more one with God, who made us by intending us, and lives from an intention to love. Such attention to loved ones seems in short supply in the world; I am moved to contribute.

It only seems like the world is ungenerous

She answered: Not a limited offer!

Those four words are sticking with me. For one thing, I can see the look on her face — that wry, but warm smile. But even more, I know she wrote that exclamation with commitment! She could have said “No problem,” which implies dealing with people is usually a bother. Instead, the first thing she thought to say came right out of the eternity in which she lives. I don’t know her as well as I will, yet, but I already imagine I could call on her to do whatever I needed, and she would do it if she could. She is not a limited offeror.

She continued: Tomorrow is fine; we’ll be away, but the plants are out for you.
(They look dead, but aren’t)

I have no idea how to plant or grow peonies, yet, Maybe they will sprout in my place, maybe not. But I enjoy the little effort I am making to get them and plant them. And I like the idea of planting something to see if it will grow.

My friend has planted a little seed of generosity in me by putting them on her porch. I am trusted with her porch! Being generous heals the wounds of our fear-filled world.

A mystery-filled word, here and there

Abbe Huvelin was known for meeting someone and, in a very brief time, speaking or doing something that was exactly appropriate, though often unexpected. St. Charles Foucauld began his journey when, as a disillusioned young man, he went to the confessional at St. Augustin Church and Huvelin did not debate with him at all, discerning he would just get into a fruitless power struggle. He told him to kneel and confess and receive the Eucharist. That was the moment. The act of a loving, assertive person, who sees someone and calls out their best and truest self is like a miracle.

My friend was helping my discernment when she warned me about the spent peonies on her porch. Her word was: “They look dead, but aren’t.”

Each of us is surprisingly and prospectively alive and blooming, as well, don’t you think?

I got some encouragement and a a call from God, as you can see, from my friend’s text. She called me right out of the grave. I sometimes look and feel prematurely dead. But I am not. A friend, a plant, a word can push me in the right direction.

She concluded with: Happy fourth to you and Gwen.

I don’t think my new friend knows the extent of my political and theological views. At one point last week, my own wife said with a little exasperation, “You are a radical you know.” My friend might not know I am not going to have a traditional “happy fourth.” The happiest thing I did was find my way into the protest on Washington Square at 9am to Declare Independence from Billionaires! I feel alive when I’m doing that, even though sometimes the whole movement feels like it is on life support, and I feel the power the billionaires to blunt any opposition.

Regardless, I love the fact my friend took the time to type out good wishes to me. How cheerful! How ennobling! — I was worthy of a blessing! That little act was a pretty good protest in itself. It is the blessings that make the world — even if Peter Thiel thinks he makes it.

If you think this whole story is making a mountain out of a molehill, I say, “Absolutely.” Abbe Huvelin said:

Faith is the little night light that burns in a sick room; as long as it is there, the obscurity is not complete, we turn towards it and await the daylight.

When we turn toward that little light we can see in our darkness and respond to it, inwardly and out. That turning makes all the difference. We are never really short of opportunities to do that, are we? — surely not, as long as there are peonies! In the middle of my sick society I saw a little light in my friend and thank God it met the little light in me. Let it shine.

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Today is Jan Hus Day! Get in touch with your family-of-faith history at The Transhistorical Body. 

“the cure”: Olivia Rodrigo explores her view of self and God.

A life in the Spirit, Music, Psychological growth, Spiritual direction, , ,
Latest album cover: “You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love”

Maybe I like Olivia Rodrigo because she says what is on her mind and dares you to do something about it. Plus, I like that she does not have any pretense of being profound — she knows she became famous when she was 17 and knows she is still figuring things out on her latest album.

I first caught up with her when I realized, “Hey, Olivia Rodrigo is Nini from High School Musical on the Disney Channel! (something to occupy grandchildren and Papa during Covid). I loved how talented she is — but when I heard her songs I really liked how hysterically brazen she is.

She is a strange kind of prophet as she analyzes her own dualities and takes down the presumptions and misconceptions all around her.

This quite often makes her depressed.

A mural on Melrose announced the new album

the cure

Today’s song “the cure” (#3 on Spotify recently) caught my attention for how it reveals things about the dialogue each of us is having inside and hints at how one’s view of God makes a difference.

About the song, she says, “It’s karaokable if you’re sad.” Try it!

“the cure” was first teased in May, when two lyric snippets were painted on Olivia’s wall mural in Los Angeles (above). She officially announced the song’s release the following day. She hosted an hour-long session of NTS Radio, where she played sad songs to tease her album, and ended her set by premiering “the cure” two hours early. The mural had fans in a tizzy. As you can see, Google calls it an L.A. tourist attraction. If I were out there, I would probably go see it, too.

Rodrigo has said quite a bit about how this song was written, since it is one of her favorites on the album — and maybe her favorite, so far, in her rather successful career. She says:

I remember trying to fit “I’m unraveled” into another song and thinking that was just a really perfect, poignant way of describing what it feels like to know someone really deeply and feel like, “Oh my God, it’s really terrifying, I’m really raw right now, I’m unraveled.” I think when you’re in a deep, intimate relationship, it just sort of feels like everything you thought you knew about yourself kind of comes unraveled, a little bit, and you’re just naked. I thought that was a really cool choice of word. I remember trying to fit it into this song, and it works perfectly.

I like how, in the verses, the lyrics are super specific. “Tally up the girls that he fucked ‘til I start to cry,” does it get more specific and dark than that? And then, the chorus opens up into this metaphor. There’s poison in my blood and you try to cleanse me of it, but it doesn’t matter because it’s who I am. I just like the dichotomy of those two living together.

She was a rather wise teenager, and she sounds more like Qoheleth all the time.

Her view of self

We have an internal dialogue going most of the day. The messages we speak to ourselves reveal our view of self (VOS) and affect emotions and behaviors. Most days, therapy includes inviting clients to identify and examine their self-talk (those internal messages) in order to see who they believe they are and so mitigate depression and anxiety.  If our self-talk affirms our worth and enhances our ability to endure or overcome life’s stressors, then we are more likely to have a healthy response to those problems. If our self-talk contains a distorted or destructive narrative, then it is much more likely that we will feel and act accordingly.

For instance, imagine sitting down for that first cup of coffee in the morning and just as you are placing the cup to your lips, you spill it all over the front of your clothing.  If your self-talk goes something like, “I can’t believe you did that!  Stupid!  This is going to be an awful day,” then your chance of carrying a lousy mood through the day increases. (VOS: I am a clumsy idiot). But if your self-talk sounds more like, “Oh no! I really love this shirt!  Better get some water on that and get a new one,” then you are probably going to feel temporarily annoyed but you will be able to move past the incident and not set yourself up to have a bad day. (VOS: I am a person who overcomes troubles).

Olivia is having a profound internal dialogue in her song.

All the pretty girls in the foreground of my mind
I thought I’d done enough, but they keep moving the line

VOS: “I’m not good enough” keeps playing in my thoughts. I’m competing with other girls to to be worthy of attention and love, but I never seem to make it.

I thought I found the antidote this time

VOS: I’m waiting for someone to find me and know me. If you love me, I am good.

And all the nights I spent fighting bad thoughts in my room
Feeling so alone, might as well be on the moon
I thought I found the antidote with you

VOS: If I just had another person I would not feel so alone with my terrible self, talking back to the terrible self-talk I do and feeling defeated.

But my head is full of poison, and my heart is full of doubt
I got toxins in my bloodstream, you tried hard to suck ’em out
And it feels like medication, and it’s good for me, I’m sure

VOS: My head, heart and body are yucky and out of control.

The chorus keeps repeating the dichotomy she is examining – great mentalizing! She’s not known for being a Christian, but she often sounds like one. Here she is considering her mind, her heart and her body and wondering why what feels like medication isn’t quite enough:

But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore
It’ll never be the cure

VOS: I’m beyond relying on someone else’s love to make me someone.

Most of the time, the view of self that used to dominate us is still around, but smaller, as our new development takes hold. It has been fun to travel with Olivia Rodrigo as she matures in her art and psychological health. The realization above is one many people twice her age are still working on! — Who I am starts in me, it does not come from you.

I thought I found the antidote this time

But I’m unraveled (I’m unraveled)…
Why can’t it ever be enough? (I’m unraveled)
It’s not enough…

It will never be the cure
It’ll never be

VOS: Like she said in her interview: “Oh my God, it’s really terrifying, I’m really raw right now, I’m unraveled.”

She did heart, mind, strength and now soul as she unravels down into it. I think this is her favorite song on the new album because a new consciousness is being unveiled by love. Becoming naked at the deepest level reveals her own sense of “I am.” For her, singing about it solidifies her confidence in being herself. I appreciate her sense of wonder as she watches it happen.

View of God

Olivia is not singing a song about God, per se. But God is never far from her process, it seems. On the #1-played-song on Spotify, also from her new album: “stupid song,” she says:

Walking through the park with my head high
Past all the college girls and the drunk guys
And if there is a god, he’s the bond that’s between us two

She mentions God (or “a god” in this case) quite a bit in her songs. I love how she identifies the mystery of love in the bond she feels as God between them. She could be writing 1 John.

In the song of the day, “the cure,” she veers right up to the edge of God:

And it feels like medication, and it’s good for me, I’m sure
But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore
It’ll never be the cure

She is bold enough to beg the question, “If this loving guy is not the cure, then what is?” I think her basic answer, so far, is: “The cure is being myself, troubles and all, and accepting my place in the world.” This is amazing for a 23-year-old! It might be easier for her, since she is worth $45 million.

But I get the impression she does not think she is, ultimately, the cure, either.

There has been a lot of consideration, throughout history, about the correlation between spirituality and health. One of the most interesting findings recently is how much of a difference your view of God can make in your well-being, especially your mental health.

Since many of my clients come to me because I am a Christian, we often get into their concept of God or their relationship with God. Many people are skeptical or distant when it comes to God because they have an entitlement mentality or a punishment mentality. They see God as either being out to get you, or God is there to give you whatever you want. Neither matches who Jesus reveals God to be, but they are common views. And neither view will make us pleased to keep getting to know God better.

Research demonstrates how much your view of God can impact your health. Over the past several years Baylor University has conducted several surveys on religion among American adults, and many scholarly articles have been produced using the data. The most recent survey revealed more on the connection between one’s view of God and mental health.

The general views of God fell into three broad categories:

  1. A “deistic” God. God is real, but He is not significantly involved in what happens on this Earth or in one’s daily life.
  2. A “punitive” God. God is angered by sin, is looking to punish sinners, and one has little hope of meeting His high demands.
  3. A “benevolent” God. God is good. He is closely involved in the world and in one’s daily life, and His involvement results in good things.

The Baylor University data showed how powerfully one’s view of God can predict the presence of mental health problems. Briefly, belief in a punitive God means more anxiety, paranoia, and other symptoms. Belief in a benevolent God is associated with fewer such  symptoms.

This effect holds true even in prayer. If one is unsure of one’s connection with God, or trying to avoid God (possibly out of fear), prayer only results in more anxiety. If one’s connection with God is secure, prayer decreases anxiety and related symptoms.

We will see where Olivia ends up. I hope she’s still making music when she is 30. It would be interesting to see what she thinks about this lyric then:

And it feels like medication, and it’s good for me, I’m sure
But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore
It’ll never be the cure

I’d like to ask her then, “What do you believe to be the cure now?”

 

*******

The is Peter and Paul Day! Catch up with how the two influential disciples of Jesus became tied together in the history of the Church at The Transhistorical Body. 

Juneteenth is the better freedom day: Just look at Philly on July 4th

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Fan favorite at the Juneteenth Parade 52nd and Girard

This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.

Frederick Douglass ca. 1852

Frederick Douglass could not, in good conscience, celebrate July 4th. He celebrated July 5 as his declaration day instead. July 5 became Emancipation Day in New York State when slavery was officially over. It was the day after everyone completed the gradual process of becoming free in 1827. Douglass was 8 years old when it happened, still 11 years away from escaping slavery in Maryland and landing in New York.

Once liberated, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in New York and Massachusetts. In his iconic July 5 speech, given in 1852 to the  Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, he said:

I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”

Douglass is still an inspiration. The U.S. no longer has chattel slavery. But there is a lot left to mourn. So I am leaning into Juneteenth and letting whatever the oligarchs decide to give us for July 4th up to them.

We’ve been whitelashed back into having yearly white supremacy parties on the 4th and I don’t want to be part of it. Even though Philadelphia is right at the center of this year’s celebration, as usual, I’m not feeling it. From what I hear from a lot of people, the whole 250th is sort of “meh.” What country are we talking about and what freedom is likely to be left by #251?

Memorial Hall on opening day

Philadelphia 1876

Philadelphia has always been at the center of major patriotic observances — since 1776, of course. The remnants of the spectacle organized for the Centennial of the Declaration of Independence in 1876 can still be seen in Fairmount Park.

The remnants of Reconstruction after the Civil War, when freedom was won for everyone,  were already being torn down in favor of “progress” by that year. Though the decade after the Civil War elevated former slaves and empowered black people in general, by 1875 the winds had shifted, and the former enemies from the North and South were ready for reconciliation.

Frederick Douglass was there on the first day of the big event in Philly. He was invited to sit among the dignitaries on the main platform as President Grant spoke about the “Progress of the Age.” He was not invited to speak; the greatest orator of the day was reduced to window dressing. He almost didn’t make it into the event. First, he had to pass through the crowd gathered outside the gates before the exhibition opened. Then, once he got to the entrance, the Philadelphia police refused to admit him. They did not believe that “a n****r” would be allowed among the dignitaries. Senator Conkling of New York spotted him and got him over the line.

A year before, in the summer of 1875 on July 5 in Anacostia, Douglass predicted that day to a crowd of black listeners. He said:

“Men cannot, ought not and will not quarrel and fight forever,”…So sure as the stars shine in the heavens, and the rivers run to the sea, so sure will the white people North and South abandon their quarrel and become friends. The whole American horizon is already fringed with the portents of this coming union. Boston, Lexington and Bunker Hill have already sent forth their silvery notes of peace and unity to the whole nation, and next year Philadelphia, the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence, will lift to the sky its million voices in one grand Centennial hosannah of peace and good will to all the white race of this country.

Eddie S. Glaude Jr. of Princeton says: “He understood what was happening: the centennial celebrations would tell a story of the nation that rejoiced in reunion, and that reunion required the erasure of Black people. The event would be a national affair in which the “silvery notes of peace and unity” from sacred places in our national history would render the true cause of the Civil War invisible in a national ritual of disremembering. The country would revel in its technological advancements, as capitalists celebrated America’s economic resolve despite the Panic of 1873, and as white people reasserted the superiority of white Anglo-Saxon blood. An idea of America, alabaster white, would rise from the ashes of war and Reconstruction.”

Does that sound familiar to you, too?

Philadelphia in 1926

The 1926 extravaganza to celebrate the sesquicentennial was also scheduled for Philadelphia. This time the country was still recovering from WW1 and the Spanish Influenza epidemic. What’s more, although holding the event was procured in order to make Philadelphia look less squalid and corrupt, the whole project was squalid and corrupted.

You can still see remnants of the fairgrounds in FDR Park. The rest is covered by today’s stadiums. If you travel on Vare Ave. to beat the traffic on 76 sometime, remember it is named after Rep. William S. Vare and his brothers who were called the “Dukes of South Philadelphia.” They organized most of the kickbacks and political patronage.

President Calvin Coolidge was there on July 5th, since July 4th was on a Sunday and some people still thought opening the celebration on Sunday was unseemly. He had a prophecy to deliver:

No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of Independence. It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people. We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp.

Coming later in the year, Mayor Kendrick initially approved a “Klan Weekend” on September 9-11. Thousands of the 250,000 Klan members in PA planned a massive parade down Broad St. and a cross-burning at the fairgrounds. The public outcry was so great they were denied their permit, but they held private meetings and hovered over the city. Inspired, in part,  by the successful film The Birth of a Nation, the Ku Klux Klan had reemerged in 1915 “to unite white male persons, native-born Gentile citizens of the United States…to maintain forever white supremacy…and {the} ideals of pure Americanism.”

Almost 200,000 black people lived in Philadelphia, in 1926. They had lived through the European War over the spoils of colonialism which spent millions of lives to decide which  white nation would rule the world. Imagine your Mayor thinking it was fine if the Klan claimed Broad St and dominated the Nation’s celebration of freedom! W.E.B. Du Bois had named the monster they were up against in 1910 in “The Souls of White Folk:”

It is curious to see America, the United States, looking on herself, first, as a sort of natural peacemaker, then as a moral protagonist in this terrible time. No nation is less fitted for this role. For two or more centuries America has marched proudly in the van of human hatred,—making bonfires of human flesh and laughing at them hideously, and making the insulting of millions more than a matter of dislike,—rather a great religion, a world war-cry: Up white, down black; to your tents, O white folk, and world war with black and particolored mongrel beasts!

Sounds familiar, right?

Parade on the Parkway
July 4th Coalition counter parade through North Philly

Philadelphia 1976

Plans for Bicentennial celebration in Philadelphia did not go completely as planned — but there was a 50,000-pound Sara Lee birthday cake served at Memorial Hall the week before! Plus, there was plenty of ceremony to reassert the nation’s myths.  For instance, on July 3,  six wagon trains totaling 200 wagons, which had traveled for months from all over the nation, converged at the newly-formed Valley Forge National Park in front of a crowd of nearly a half a million people.

On July 4th, a ceremony on the new Independence Mall featured President Gerald Ford — the wounds of Watergate and the evacuation of Saigon still fresh. Governor Milton Shapp and Mayor Frank Rizzo were on the platform. Charlton Heston was master of ceremonies. Following the ceremony there was a five-hour parade featuring floats from every state and 40,000 marchers. An estimated two million visitors came to Philadelphia to attend these events.

Meanwhile, the July 4th Coalition led a counter-parade through North Philly on the same day. Puerto Rican socialists, Vietnam veterans, women’s rights advocates, Black liberation groups like the Black Panthers, and unemployed workers joined into one march that proceeded west along Lehigh Avenue and into Fairmount Park at Oxford Street, ending with a sprawling concert and cookout on the fairgrounds built for the 1876 Centennial. They took issue with the Bicentennial Corporation’s progress narrative and illuminated all the forms of oppression that remained alive and well in the late seventies.

Gil Scott-Heron, “the Godfather of rap,” was formed in the Philadelphia area. Here’s what he had to say about the Bicentennial:

America has got the blues and it’s a bicentennial edition
America has got the blues
It’s got the blues because of partial deification
Of partial accomplishments
Over partial periods of time
Halfway justice
Halfway liberty
Halfway equality
It’s a half-ass year

Here’s the full piece:

It all sounds very familiar, partly because the protest has been the background music of my adulthood and fundamental to my Anabaptist Christianity.

Philadelphia 2026

Now, for the Semiquincentennial, we have Trump putting his name on everything and renaming places — which had just been renamed, after Civil War traitors — again. It has been a hard slog to get some semblance of Declaration-of-Independence-equality for everyone in the U.S. over the country’s history. But even given the progress, it is hard to stomach what the present Administration and Supreme Court have done to reaffirm and protect white supremacy on the eve of the 250th.

Rigging the vote

  • Gutting the Voting Rights Act: The Supreme Court made it significantly harder to challenge discriminatory election maps that dilute the power of minority voters.
  • Race-Conscious Redistricting Limits: The Court struck down maps specifically drawn to address racial imbalances in states like Louisiana, setting off a wave of gerrymandering.

Dumping DEI

  • Banning Systemic Discrimination Tools: The Trump administration aggressively dismantled the use of the “disparate impact” standard—a key tool used for decades to challenge seemingly neutral policies that end up disproportionately harming minority groups in housing, employment, and healthcare.
  • DEI Restrictions: Executive orders have been implemented that severely limit or outright ban diversity and equity training across federal agencies, government contractors, and grant recipients like UPenn. The chilling effect remains.

Sacking safeguards

  • Workplace Equality Enforcement: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was directed to stop investigating certain complaints regarding company policies that inadvertently harm specific demographic groups.
  • Education and Discipline: Civil rights guidance meant to address race- and disability-based discrimination in school discipline policies was rescinded.
  • Limiting Affirmative Action: The Court struck down race-conscious admissions programs at colleges and universities, dismantling decades of precedent aimed at rectifying historical educational inequities.
  • Dismantling Civil Rights Offices: Funding and personnel have been severely reduced across federal civil rights offices, including those in the Departments of Education, Homeland Security, and Justice.
  • Eliminating Inequality Data: The administration has rolled back data-collection efforts previously used to track disparities in environmental hazards, special education, and racial inequality. [For a detailed breakdown of these policy changes, you can explore the ACLU’s Report on Anti-Discrimination Law.]

Whitening citizenship

  • Threats to Birthright Citizenship: Legal challenges and administrative efforts have targeted the 14th Amendment, threatening the automatic citizenship of children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants.
  • Language and Ethnic Profiling: The administration rolled back requirements for language-assistance services for people with limited English proficiency and adopted practices that effectively treat ethnicity and accents as legitimate reasons for immigration stops.

All these actions have been played out with a soundtrack of Trump, Hegseth, and Miller, et al, spouting off reasons the government has had enough of all this whining about equality: “Y’all have freedom because we say so, and we will tell you when you exercise it too much.”

There is a lot more of their wreckage that could be listed, and they are just getting started combing through the nooks and crannies of government and society looking for threats to whiteness. On July 4th (and every day) we are supposed to pretend America is just and good, a beacon of light to the world, and forget about what happens right before our eyes. Such pretending is essential to the national myth that forms our patriotic religion.

So I am focusing on Juneteenth. And I will again say there is no room for slaveholder religion in the Church of Jesus Christ. We’re all poor in the eyes of God and that, if nothing else, is a great equalizer. Whether you believe that or not, Juneteenth, when we all were technically as free as any other citizen, is the real Independence Day for the U.S., at least until it gets to a better one.

U.S. Christians need a new story: Use Columba as an example

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Columba Day was June 9, but I think the famous “apostle to Scotland” needs a few more minutes in the spotlight. He may be even more Christian than we already thought.

His traditional story was passed down to us written within the general framework used for about 9000 years, now; it says the powerful deserve their power and have a right to acquire the excess we produce to use as they see fit, mainly to go to war and protect their own power. But if Columba’s story is retold within a Christian framework where individuals have freedom and communities are places for love and sharing, as we were created to experience, the story can be told more truthfully.

This 12th century drawing may be the oldest depiction.

Several of the famous stories about Columba (like how he stopped the Loch Ness monster) should inspire us to stand up to the monsters impeding the mission required in the present day. It is not just the warriors who “make” history. The community builders and family keepers, like most of us, are much more relevant. Like so many old stories these days, Columba’s story (and yours, probably) begs to be retold truer.

As you will see, how Columba stood up to the power-hoarding, private-property elevating people of his day should inspire us to stand up against the billionaires who are the newest perpetrators of an age-old fraud. In truth, cooperation built the world, not conquest. Columba was living according to his own version of the Jesus-inspired economic bill of rights.

I encourage you to make up your own mind about my retelling, since that is what historians do. They always have a point of view – and you do too, even if you think you have no view at all. The view from which the story of Columba is usually told is about how rulers duke it out to own the most and to keep their positions of dominance — and that’s the way it is. The tired, old story tells us we will be punished if we don’t conform, or at least cause too much trouble. But does it tell the whole truth?

Here is the traditional telling of a famous story about Columba (with bullet points!). It is usually titled:

The first copyright law

In 561, Columba secretly copied a rare, religious book belonging to his former teacher, Finnian. When a king ruled “to every cow its calf, to every book its copy,” war broke out over the stolen copy.

  • The Gift: Columba visited his old teacher, Finnian, in Ireland. Finnian had a beautiful new Psalter (a book of Psalms) which he let Columba use.
  • The Theft: Columba loved the book so much he secretly stayed up late at night in the church, copying it by hand.
  • The Discovery: Finnian caught Columba in the act when he was well on the way toward completion. He demanded that Columba give him the copied book.
  • The Refusal: Columba refused to give him the copy, claiming it belonged to him because his own hard work made it.
  • The Ruling: Both men went to High King Diarmait mac Cerbhiall to settle their dispute. The King made a famous ruling: “To every cow belongs its calf, and to every book belongs its copy.”
  • The War: Columba was very angry about losing his copy. He went back to his home clan and started a war against the King. Thousands of men died in the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne in 561.
  • The Exile: As a punishment for causing so much death, Columba was sent away from Ireland. He sailed to Scotland and started a new church on the Island of Iona, vowing never to return to his home and determined to fulfill the charge by his overseer to convert as many people as died in the battle.

Here is how the story might just as well have happened if the hierarchy had not put itself in charge of writing history. It could be titled:

The word of God belongs to everyone.

In 561, Columba set out to copy a psalter Finnian had locked away from the community-at-large — Finnian being like Gollum protecting his “Precious.” Columba discerned that such a book should belong to everyone, especially since books were scarce and literacy was the key to opening up new worlds. Finnian brought him before the authorities for stealing his book. When Columba lost the legal battle before the corrupt court, his clan rushed to his rescue. He escaped. Ashamed of the bloodshed he had caused, he exiled himself and gave his life to saving as many people in Jesus’ name as had been killed in his.

  • The Precious: As a trusted graduate of Finnian’s school, Columba was given access to a beautiful Psalter Finnian prized and kept away from the general public.
  • The Plan: Columba did not think the book should remain locked away and owned by Finnian. He wanted a copy to learn from and to share. So he secretly stayed up late at night copying it by hand.
  • The Discovery: Finnian caught Columba in the act. He demanded that Columba give him the copied book.
  • The Refusal: Columba refused, claiming the copy belonged to him because his own hard work made it, just like the Psalms belonged to everyone to whom God gave them, as well as to all the scribes, scrolls makers and teachers who passed them down through generations. Finnian’s position did not give him the right to own the Psalms.
  • The Ruling: Instead of resorting to violence, the men went to High King Diarmait mac Cerbhiall to settle their dispute. The King made a famous ruling: “To every cow belongs its calf, and to every book belongs its copy.” In this case that meant: “If you own the means of production, you control everything it produces. If you copy the book, you essentially work for the owner.” Note that Finnian did not author the book, he just owned it, a bit like A.I. collecting all the works of history (including this little piece of writing) and then charging you to access and use it.
  • Yet another battle: Columba was upset about losing his copy. He was also angry that he and others who needed the book were restricted to whatever pieces Finnian wanted to give them. He went back to his home clan in a rage and they jumped to his defense without being asked, since that has always been how nonbelievers settle problems, and since it was an excuse to take power from the king. Thousands of men died in the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne.
  • Leaving home: As usual, whoever stands up against the status quo is shamed and scapegoated. Columba was made an outcast for being disobedient and causing conflict. So he determined to leave his homeland. A substantial group of men discerned what was really going on and set sail with him for parts unknown. They shook the dust of Ireland off their feet and went to build something new. Columba was ashamed his clan’s warfare, sad to be labeled as an unrepentant rebel, and lonely for his devoted family, but he went off to discover the fullness of what God had been doing when he first dared to quench his thirst for the psalter.

Columba’s new way

Click the picture to learn about a voyage that replicated Columba’s

When the band got to Iona they built a new kind of settlement on the rocky little island. It set the character of what would influence the whole area from then on (and until now!) – a community in mission, open and expansive, full of beauty, not closed and controlling. Iona became the “cradle of Christianity” in Scotland. It also served as a great lighthouse of learning.

It is telling that one of the most famous accounts of their mission includes Columba stopping the Loch Ness monster from devouring one of his comrades. He’s another hero travelling in a band like Frodo, who overcame the temptation of the ring of power, who did not become a new version of Gollum. The symbolic monsters of the past, like dragons, resemble the monsters of today, which guard their territory with fire from above or terrors from the deep and hoard gold.

The new community on Iona built a strong center for education. They copied rare religious and historical books by hand. Their beautiful writing and art changed early European history. By 800, the community began creating their masterpiece: the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript containing the four Gospels. It is still regarded as one of Ireland’s national treasures, celebrated for its intricate Celtic knotwork, vibrant colors, and inspired drawings. The book was moved from Iona to the Abbey of Kells in County Meath, Ireland, to protect it from Viking raids around 806. In 1661 it was presented to Trinity College in Dublin for safekeeping where it still remains and where I saw it.

It is telling that the mission which was sparked by a book became famous for a book. It is also telling that Trinity College has monetized their possession of the book by providing an “experience” which gives tourists a way to pay for as little time as possible with books and focus on their feelings about them. The College resemble Finnian. As usual, normal people get the sizzle while the owners get the steak.

The main characteristic that made Columba’s community distinct was their Celtic way of clan life enriched by the radical sharing demonstrated in the New Testament [An Anglican bishop considers how to make it work now]. Iona was egalitarian and planted new communities like itself. These days, “successful” churches, in general have no practical connection to its locale. It is a destination, a program, a product, not a collection of people who live and work together. The community on Iona was different. The missionaries did not conquer the Picts; they moved in with them, became friends, and shared their lives.

Columba is a leader like people in a long line stretching back to Jesus who refuse to live according to the rules of the domination system and the myth of redemptive violence.  Constantine may have co-opted the church, the early medieval church may have adopted the Roman model of governance and hierarchy and conquered the Celtic church in its name, but there are always people who see through the lies.

Trump may have co-opted the Evangelicals with the promise they will rule with him, but that unfulfilled promise is already part of the collapse of the latest regime, perpetrating the old fraud. I pray we replace it with a government which functions within a true economy, as a means to distribute the excess we create in an equitable and mutually beneficial way, a government inspired by the truth and love in Jesus and wherever else it can be found, not infected with the repetitive and damned self-destruction perpetrated by would-be kings. We all need a truer story to live by.

A song lights the way: Journey through dark times

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That beautiful blonde hair behind the the statement red head on the left is our treasure.

I will miss the day when my granddaughter no longer invites me to hear her perform with the Commonwealth Youth Choir. Their very existence moves me to tears, and then they start singing. I prayed they could feel and ponder their selections as they sang the other night. Their songs were showing us the way out and in.

The concert was a fine ending to a good day. We got up early and walked on the beach. Then we listened to Till We have Faces on the way home and finished it just as we turned into our street.

As I often explore with my clients, the good moments need to be elongated, shared and revisited. That makes them stick with us instead of slipping away into nothing. Especially these days, when every day seems to have a new indignity or bit of destruction to torment us (as if we didn’t already have enough), we need to dwell on what is good.

So let’s do that together.

The song right on the edge of freedom

Fortunately, one little song on the concert program that night was very sticky: “Who I Want to Be” by Coty Raven Morris (arr. Saleel Menon) [link].

I lead with my spirit
keeping love in the circle around me,
expressing my spirit,
loving what I see and cannot see.
I take care of the vessel I’m in.
I love the me that’s under this skin,
taking care of my mind,
envisioning the me
I want to be.

At one point, selected singers went to the mic to voice the goodness that is in them. It was a blessing to hear what every psychotherapist must wish their clients were singing.

However, I have to admit there was a bit of a trap waiting in the song for the unsuspecting. It so firmly begins with “I” — and it is such a burden to be in charge of one’s spirit! But at least they were keeping a circle of love around them — love is so uncontrollable, it disabuses us of the idea we can control everything. And they included expressing love for what they “cannot see,” which led to the deeper places in the next song.

The song about the Great I Am

If they missed the connection with God I hoped they would make as they led with their spirits, the kids had another chance to connect with something bigger, along with the rest of us, during “Spirit,” Beyonce’s contribution to Disney’s live-action Lion King [link].

The wind is talkin’
for the very first time
with a melody that pulls you toward it
paintin’ pictures of paradise…
Spirit.
Watch the heavens open…
Go into that far off land
and be one with the Great I Am.

Beyonce grew up singing in the choir of St. John’s United Methodist Church in Houston.  Methodism can come with lots of rules and labels, but it is hard to miss the personal and universal spirituality John Wesley experienced within it. The “strangely warmed” places are where the Queen B has landed.

Her song is not too far from Jesus offering some of my favorite sentences in the Bible [link]:

Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?”[ Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. — John 8:54-59

Here are the seven “I Am” statements of Jesus in John [link].

The quote about entering the the far off land

People come to the Great I AM in strange and mysterious ways. I think sometimes they are with Jesus and don’t even know it. Often, quoting a Bible verse is no more help to people than their latest walk in the park — and could prove to be much less helpful. C.S. Lewis is honest about that. If you read his spiritual memoir, he is just being honest about his own journey.

We bought the audible book of Till We Have Faces in March and finished it in June — we have not become preoccupied with the immense library of stuff we can listen to. But the timing turned out to be just right. The ending was a great prelude to the questions the kids were singing.  At least they were questions I hoped they were asking as they began their journey into the “far off land,” rather than just consuming nice words and music, as we are tempted to do.

C.S. Lewis gets at the heart of why our spiritual journeys are often long and convoluted [Audible]:

When the time comes to you
at which you will be forced at last
to utter the speech which has lain
at the center of your soul for years
which you have, all that time,
idiot-like been saying over and over,
you will not talk about the joy of words.
I saw well why the gods to not speak to us openly,
nor let us answer.
Till that word can be dug out of us,
why should they hear the babble
that we think we mean?
How can they meet us face to face
till we have faces?

I know it is not obvious what Lewis is talking about in that quote. It is not crystal clear if you read the whole book! But it is at least as clear as Beyonce calling us to be one with the Great I Am. Crystal clarity is way over-rated.

About the video: Aneel Aranha is good at A.I. He came to faith later in life, but he is making the most of it. 

The quote that sticks in my mind

No matter what scraps of truth and love I find along the way to my destiny, I rely on God to make a feast of them and to host the feast, to boot. Though we try to sit in God’s seat and host our own party, grace is new every morning. We are pulled toward the light like my lilies, growing more in the shade than they should be. I see myself, my children,  grandchildren, and my clients stretching toward the light all the time.

They lean, even though they are, like we are all, to a degree:

hearers of the word and not doers,
they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror;
for they look at themselves and, on going away,
immediately forget what they were like.
But those who look into the perfect law,
the law of liberty,
and persevere,
being not hearers who forget but doers who act—
they will be blessed in their doing.. — James 1:23-25

Every little doing of reaching out and up matters, no matter what your core story keeps repeating. Every step of keeping love, of going to the “far off land” — both that vast inner territory and the vast times and places yet to be known, matter.

May the good songs elongate in your head as you go. May God bless us children as we take our first steps, next steps and repeated steps, and bless us all as we persevere on the journey.

Return to the Garden: All is not lost

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The sawn vine

For about a year, now, I have taken it upon myself to restore the garden at the center of our old Philly neighborhood. The previous caretaker, a well-loved neighbor, died years ago and no one had taken up the cause until we moved in.

As in many Philly forests, thick vines had snaked up into the trees. Last summer, I took many of them down. This year, I finally made my way to the far corner, where another vine was sucking the life out of a pine tree. When I saw it was fuzzy, I suspected it might poison me. But it was beginning to rain, so I did not delay and took my saw to it. It only poisoned me a little.

Besides, I love the Garden. And the garden loves me back in so many ways.

Gardens are love in action

Gardens are “thin places” where we meet God. — at least they are if we read the Bible! In the Bible, gardens are where the loveliness of creation is revealed, focused, and tended.  As you know, the creation story in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, begins in a garden. Then at the close of the New Testament, in John’s Revelation, a garden at the end of time is pictured in which there are trees with leaves for the healing of the nations.

In the middle of the Bible, the Song of Songs imagines a garden where lover and beloved delight in one another:

“A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, springing up in flowing streams from Lebanon… Awake, O north wind, and come thou south wind: blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow… I went down into my garden to see the fruits of the valley, and to see if the vines had flowered, and the pomegranates were in blossom.” — from Song of Songs 4-6

You can almost smell it and feel the breeze!

The Song of Songs is a sexy book (I started humming “Unforgettable” when I thought of it). May you have a lover who fits right into it with you. Regardless, God can fit into it with you, too. It is also describing the spiritual garden where the Lover becomes one with creation, and with each of us.

We may have a lingering memory of losing Eden.  But in the Song of Songs, the Lover cries out, “Let my beloved come into the garden, to eat the fruit of the trees that are therein!” God is calling us back, calling us to return.

Love planted in a wasteland

My wife and I often look at each other these days and say something like, “We did not know we were growing up in the garden spot of U.S. history.” Against all odds, during our lifetime, the country was working on love, justice, beauty, and delight in creation— even led by the likes of Lyndon Johnson, of all people!! But like history ebbs and flows, it was not very long until now we are exchanging these things for prejudice, oppression, hatred, division, and war.  Exchanging the Garden for the Wasteland.

But all is not lost. Jesus lays out a way of return to the garden. He spent his last night before the way was inaugurated in a garden. Then they wrapped his body in spices like we could smell in the Song of Songs. It says in the Bible, “Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so […] they laid Jesus there.”

There’s an ancient tradition in the Church that says Golgotha, the place where Jesus was crucified, occupied the same place where once the Garden of Eden had been—and that the Cross, the Tree on which Jesus was crucified, stood on the very spot where once the Tree of Knowledge had grown—the tree whose fruit expelled us from the Garden.  And now on the Cross, Jesus becomes the ripened fruit of a new Tree; but this time we are invited to eat.

It doesn’t really matter if the tradition is true territorially (although we certainly love to argue about things like that, don’t we?) because it is true of each of us personally. The wasteland we carry in us and often extend into the world is the very place where Jesus is crucified and invites us into a new way, a way back into the Garden.

I probably should not admit this in print, but I spoke to the poison ivy and told it, “I admire your adaptability, but this is not the place for you.” Then I carefully put it in a bag. Love your enemies, but don’t follow them around or let them steal your joy.

All you need is love

After we figured on how to get Pandora on the new TV the other day, the granddaughters wanted to replace Tahitian music with the Beatles. The oldest of them is about the age I was in 1967 when the Fab Four performed “All You Need Is Love” for the first live, international, satellite TV production. It was transmitted to an estimated 400 million viewers across 25 countries. We made sure to watch it.

In retrospect, the broadcast seems like a sweet moment in a charmed era. And I am shocked at the impact the stubbornly-naive Beatles still have on my descendants. So many people were demanding access to the Garden, then!

There is a fruit we love as soon as we taste it. It is the love that shows us the way back to the Garden. We need it to survive: forgiveness, mercy, peace, reconciliation.  Jesus is the Tree and the Gardener. The Song of Songs writer sings it with the Beatles:

Place me as a seal upon your heart,
For love is as strong as death,
its ardor as unyielding as the grave.
It burns like a blazing fire,
Like a mighty flame.
Many waters cannot quench love.
Rivers cannot wash it away. — 8:6-7

Finding Jesus in the garden

Some people imagine Mary Magdalene singing those lines from the Song of Songs as she prepared Jesus for burial. She was on the way with Jesus in his final hours. She was present for every step of Jesus’ final journey — she was there, at the Cross as he died, there to anoint the body and prepare it for burial, and finally, there as the first witness to Love’s return.  On Easter morning, she goes back to the garden, and there she finds the words of the song are fulfilled. Love is as strong as, and stronger, than death; it’s ardor as unyielding as the grave. No flood can erode it or algorithm dilute it.

I’ve been wondering if I have not been enjoying my work in the garden so much this year, because I am surrounded by an increasing wasteland of a country. My grandchildren are the generation the sociologists keep talking about who inherit the work of the hedge fund robbers, the disillusionment of endless war, the rubble which grifters leave behind and a national debt they will never repay. In the middle of that, like our common little greenspace in the middle of Philly, the Garden speaks to me. “Come,” my Beloved calls out, “Come into the garden, and eat the fruit of the trees!”  Come and eat of love.

Rembrandt van Rijn – Christ and St Mary Magdalen at the Tomb, before 1669

Of course, Mary mistook Jesus for a gardener! He’s the Master Gardener in his Garden of Love.  All along he’s been showing us the way back, and now he crosses back, even from death, to show us one last time why we are here.  We’re here to garden with him — to tend and cultivate love and beauty, mercy, compassion, justice, and joy.  It’s why we’ve always been here.  And the Garden has always been there waiting for us to return.

Caryll Houselander, a Roman Catholic writer and poet who died in the 1950s says:

[While] Christ was in the tomb; the whole world was sown with the seed of Christ’s life; that which happened thirty years ago in the womb of the Virgin Mother was happening now, but now it was happening yet more secretly, yet more mysteriously, in the womb of the whole world.  Christ had already told those who flocked to hear Him preach that the seed must fall into the earth, or else remain by itself alone.  Now the seed of His life was hidden in darkness in order that His life should quicken in countless hearts, over and over again for all time.  His burial, which seemed to be the end, was the beginning.  It was the beginning of Christ-life in multitudes of souls.

Over and over again the love sprouts and finds a tender. Maybe it is the gardeners who are saving the world, making the landscape free from poison ivy and Pete Hegseth. Regardless, we can be sure the Master Gardener will rise again in whatever era darkness reigns. Jesus only seems hidden until you run into him on Pandora or in your own backyard.

[Thanks to Matthew Wright for inspiration]

Are there really good billionaires?

A life in the Spirit, Doing Theology, Life as the church

Yes, I know you can make an argument for how someone can be “good” in some way even though they are a billionaire. Yes, I know it is a fallen world and strict accountability for anything is going to run into ethical thorns.

But, come on, if you had 5 million dollars (and how would you ever get that?), you would consider yourself free from worry for life (unless you invested it all in Trump crypto). A person with only ONE billion dollars has 200 times your $5 million. Elon Musk has 700 times one billion! It is staggering, right?

There should not be a democracy in which billionaires accompany the president to China instead of elected representatives of the people.

There should not be a system in which people become billionaires, at all. We live in such a system and it is not from the Lord.  I added “it is not from the Lord” because people seem to think capitalism descended from heaven — it just is what it is, so you can be good or bad in it. No, an economic system might be used well, but ours is a human conception run by sociopaths, for the most part. The poster child is the president.

I will do a little bit to convince you of that in a second, but first, the complaining.

I got to writing this piece because the women of Indivisible, of all things, posted a picture of “Good Billionaires Who Give Back.” Think about that.

  1. Did you give the billionaires your money so they could give it back? I doubt it — at least not on purpose.
  2. Do you really think the billionaires “earned” their billions like you do or they “made ” it out of the thin air of their genius? I doubt it.
  3. Don’t you think they took it? Their “giving back” is reparations, at the very least. They schemed and competed and defeated and cornered markets up in their higher echelons of “finance” where we do not have the money to pay to play.

Elon Musk once provided some bullet points for how to get rich like he did:

  • Focus on usefulness: “It’s better to approach this from the standpoint of saying… what are some useful things that you do that you wish existed in the world?”

I suppose the world really needed Warren Buffet’s multibillion dollar holding company focused on making money by acquiring undervalued entities to get a snowball of wealth-building moving.

  • Solve hard problems: “You get paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of problems you solve.”

I suppose Tom Steyer’s Fallon Capital Hedge Fund “casino” for the ultra-wealthy operating on the edges of ethicality in fossil fuels and private prisons really solved a societal problem. I think it only solved how to make more money regardless of the consequences.

  • Embrace persistence: “Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.”

Several of the “good billionaires” listed got their billions without lifting a finger — no persistence necessary. With the Federal government acting as a subsidiary of the billionaires, no one is going to force a billionaire to do anything. Bush and Obama just bailed them out, since they were too big to fail, too big to hold accountable.

Is Jesus making a list of good billionaires?

From the perspective of Jesus’ teachings, calling someone a “good billionaire” is problematic, at best. The Gospels make it clear that the accumulation of extreme, hoarded wealth is deeply opposed to the kingdom of God. Whether a billionaire is “saved” is up to God’s justice and grace, so if that’s the definition of “good” than so be it. But if good is living according to what Jesus says and demonstrates as good, then “good” and “billionaire” are contradictory.

What Jesus said about wealth is well known. I grew up with people who always had a “but” right after they said what Jesus said about wealth. But we all know.

  • Wealth is a tempting idol. You cannot serve both God and wealth (Matthew 6:24). Billionaires need to serve wealth-making to become billionaires.
  • Living in the kingdom of God as a wealthy person is almost impossible. The famous story of the rich young ruler has driven many Christian parents to be very anxious when their 17-year-olds read it, since they were preparing them to make it in the world as it is. Jesus explained, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24).
  • It is better give than to receive (or take, or make, or hoard). In the exchange with the young man, Jesus told him to sell everything and give the proceeds to the poor, prioritizing radical charity over material security. In other places he says “Don’t build bigger barns. Don’t lay up treasures on earth. Give what you have been given.” He is not mysterious about this.

Many theologians and ethicists argue that it is structurally impossible to be a “good billionaire” according to Christian ethics.

  • Nothing is good about systemic inequality. Critics argue that possessing billions of dollars while billions live in poverty amounts to hoarding resources, which fundamentally violates Jesus’ command to love your neighbor as yourself.

Patricia Chan is in the list above. She co-founded the Chan/Zuckerberg Initiative with her husband, the famous Mark, pledging to put 99% of their Facebook shares in this LLC. Their mission is science, education, and opportunity — housing affordability, criminal justice reform, and immigration reform. They want to “build a more inclusive, just, and healthy future for everyone” and to “advance human potential and promote equality in areas such as health, education, scientific research and energy.” Sounds like the work for an elected government not super rich 40somethings. It also sounds like you put 99% of certain funds in an LLC, but you still control it all as a profit-making possibility.

  • They are robber barons. Critics also say no one can legitimately acquire a billion dollars without some degree of labor exploitation, market manipulation, or systemic extraction.

George Soros made his fortune primarily through aggressive global macro investing and currency speculation as a hedge fund manager. His Quantum Fund made his wildest trade in 1992, when he correctly bet the British government would be forced to devalue the pound. You may not know how this works, but by heavily shorting the pound with borrowed money, his fund single-handedly forced the UK out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and made an estimated $1 billion in profit. He’s “the man who broke the Bank of England.”

Can their be a democracy when a billionaire has such power? Making the most money is the law of the system and they pull the triggers.

The same logic that says “guns do not shoot themselves” and “the unborn have a right to life” says that individuals have a responsibility to be good. All people need to steward their money and do good with it. If some end up billionaires, that’s due to their goodness.

To be fair, it can be (and is) argued that wealth itself is not inherently sinful.

  • What is in your heart matters. They point out that the Bible does not focus on how much money one has, but whether or not you love it (1 Timothy 6:10). If you don’t read the Old Testament through a New Testament lens then wealthy figures like Abraham and King Solomon are “blessed” rich people (but not the non-Jew, Belshazzar!).

Elon Musk is respected among Evangelicals for just such a reason, he has purportedly good motives and good ends in mind. They respect him despite him being well-known for stiffing vendors, skipping office rent payments, and pushing testing and manufacturing timelines past regulatory limits.

  • The more one has the more is required. If a billionaire sees themselves as “managing” the wealth they have been given rather than owning it, and uses their resources to create jobs, fund charities, and uplift the marginalized, their wealth can be used for good.

Iranian-American Pierre Omidyar has a reputation built on this premise. He and his wife, Pam have given $1.2 billion dollar to impact investments and nonprofits since 2004.

The answer is “no.” Billionaires are not good. 

Jesus did not say that wealthy people are automatically condemned (regardless of the tenor of this post). He did not say it is theoretically impossible for them to be saved.

But with every teaching, parable and example he showed how difficult it is for rich individuals to remain humble, detached from their possessions, and reliant on God. When God was revealed in Jesus, his self-giving, impoverishing servanthood lead him to the cross, not a transhuman search for A.I. eternal life.

It is self-giving love that is good. But it won’t make you a billionaire. According to Jesus, wealth is a massive spiritual burden, and a “good billionaire” would have to actively sacrifice their fortune to the service of others to fulfill His teachings. As is regularly noted, men without a conscience make the best billionaires and those who retain one often have to smother it to keep their power or satisfy greedy stockholders.

 

a friend chimed in elsewhere:

What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?

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It is hard to know “what to do” with anyone, of course. But we are going to do something, regardless. So we should get it as right as we can.

When it comes to what we’re going to do with corrupt leaders, and I can name a few, there are many wrong ways to go. But every way makes a difference. You matter. And if this is how you think about that: unfortunately, you matter.

I think the last sixteen months have been a whirlwind of wrongness. So I am writing to add to the opprobrium which is daily launched in the direction of wrongdoers. We all might be a little wrong; but don’t worry, the Bible will help you.

Prophesying to the drivers in Ardmore

The first answer to “What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?” should probably come from Jeremiah: TELL THE TRUTH, as in PROPHESY!

This is a part of the Bible that especially inspired me last week:

The wise shall be put to shame;
    they shall be dismayed and taken;
since they have rejected the word of the Lord,
    what wisdom is in them?
Therefore I will give their wives to others
    and their fields to conquerors,
because from the least to the greatest
    everyone is greedy for unjust gain;
from prophet to priest,
    everyone deals falsely.
They have treated the wound of the daughter of my people carelessly,
    saying, “Peace, peace,”
    when there is no peace.
They acted shamefully; they committed abomination,
    yet they were not at all ashamed;
    they did not know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;
    at the time when I punish them, they shall be overthrown,
            says the Lord. — Jeremiah 8:9-12

The first answer to the question presumes people who follow Jesus would not take corruption lightly any more than Jesus did. He was especially direct with the Pharisees, who thought they were “conservative.”

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and of the plate, so that the outside also may become clean.”

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of uncleanness. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” — Matthew 23:25-8

But we can’t presume most of the Christians in the U.S. will take corruption seriously, can we? They seem to think they are serious about the Bible but they are taking Trump’s corruption very lightly, even encouraging it as a means to return the country to “greatness.”

So when we ask “What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?” we have to start with:

They regularly follow them

They sing “It is well with my soul” – the corrupt leader is restoring order in the name of Jesus. And if that order makes me richer and corrals people I secretly hate, all the better.

What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?

They pretend they do not exist

I think this is more prevalent. American Christians, by and large, retreated into having a private faith a long time ago. They are not Jeremiahs!

They sing: “It is well with my soul” —  My faith is a soul matter, not a public matter. I don’t get involved with politics.

To be clear, as American Christians are pretending, by and large, they are swallowing a boatload or corruption. Pretending is not inaction, it takes quite an effort to quash reality!

  • The most damning Epstein files are still hidden.
  • J.D. Vance is fronting a push to combat fraud in public services by illegally withholding $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments from California.
  • Trump has fired or demoted twenty inspectors general during his terms—the people who are key to oversight. In 2024 alone the people he has since fired or sidelined identified more than $50 billion in waste and abuse.
  • Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 70 donors or allies who were convicted of fraud. One, Philip Esformes, was convicted of stealing $1.3 billion from Medicare.
  • The Trump family has pocketed over $600 million through cryptocurrency enterprises this year.
  • Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr. have invested in a drone manufacturer that is trying to sell weapons to Persian Gulf countries currently at risk from the war their father started in Iran.
  • The Pentagon recently awarded a $24 million contract to a robotics startup for which Eric is the “chief strategy advisor.”
  • Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has acted as a chief negotiator for the U.S. in the Middle East. at the same time he has been trying to raise $5 billion from investors there for his investment firm.
  • Corporations and billionaires have dropped millions of dollars in donations for Trump’s ballroom where the East Wing used to be and his proposed presidential library in Miami.
  • Trump had raked in more than $2 billion for his projects or causes, more than half a billion of it from 346 people who each gave at least $250,000. Some of those people have received presidential pardons, others have been given jobs, and all have received access to the president.
  • Trump is using the planned Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event to be held on his birthday on the White House lawn as a new way for donors to funnel money to him. Ringside seats have been selling for $1 million or more. Neither the White House nor the UFC will comment on where the money is going.
  • Trump took seventeen CEOs with him to China, along with his son Eric, who runs the family business. Paul Krugman said, “He might as well have been walking around Beijing with a sign that says—in block capitals, of course, this is Trump—BRIBE ME.”
  • Miami residents are suing Trump and others to stop the construction of Trump’s presidential library, charging that state officials violated the Constitution’s emoluments clause when they transferred almost three acres of prime waterfront land, worth between $67 million and $300 million, to Trump’s library foundation for $10. Trump has already said he wants to build a hotel on the site rather than a traditional library.
  • The Department of Justice was working with Trump to settle his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) after a contractor during Trump’s first term leaked tax returns from thousands of wealthy individuals to the media. They want to settle before it goes to court, where he will probably lose
  • Trump offered to drop the lawsuit in exchange for the government’s establishing a $1.7 billion fund to compensate his allies who claim they were harmed by the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of the DOJ —  this includes nearly 1,600 people convicted of committing crimes related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, people Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of shortly after he took office in January 2025.

What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?

They manage them

They take a lot of responsibility for the world. So Christians work very hard to make sure Jesus is not shown up to be powerless and make sure they don’t get in trouble for doing a bad job. People with a narcissistic wound control or manipulate others to protect their fragile egos and avoid their shame — they manage them, all the time. There is an epidemic of such woundedness in the church.

They sing: “It is well with my soul” – I can make others well like I should be.  I need to keep things under control. Everyone needs to stay safe.

This grandiosity regularly falls apart. Since there are too many plates to keep spinning and they are the only ones they trust to spin. Besides, the corrupt people often have no conscience, so managing them is more like feeding them your power.

What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?

They undermine them

They sing “It is well with my soul” – I am on the frontline of justice

I don’t think justice is the solution to all the earth’s problems. But without that first step, it is hard to get anywhere else. Our efforts need to be as endless as God’s.

But we need to be honest, people wrestling for power, even in the name of justice, never have rest for their souls. Feeling unwell about something can be addctive. Just witness the work of Climate Defiance, one of my favorites activist groups. This is from last week’s newsletter:

We absolutely NAILED Xavier Becerra. We ruined his whole event. It was so beautiful and so brutal all at once. It was so necessary. You must watch. You can see it here.

Our protest was not just an act of public humiliation. It was an act of JUSTICE.

If you’re just tuning in, Big Oil Becerra is the front-runner for Governor of California. He wants the prestige. He wants the power. We must stop him. Here’s why:

He took $39,000 from Chevron – the maximum contribution. It’s their first time getting involved in the governor’s race there in a decade. Then he defended the legalized bribe, proclaiming, verbatim “they’re not the bad guy.”

Are you serious?

Is it giving kids asthma that he’s ok with? Or spreading climate misinformation? Or searching for new oil reserves when current ones contain enough carbon to make earth unlivable? Which of these things specifically is he ok with? I would like to know.

He then doubled down. He said: “Does everybody here drive an electric vehicle? You need Chevron, I need Chevron, my people of the state of California need Chevron.”

Jesus. Electric vehicles were invented in the 1800s. Companies like Chevron are the main REASON we are not driving them. They have poisoned our political system and blocked the transition.

What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?

They overthrow them

It started with the Roman Empire and kept going in response to every empire-builder since. Yes, so-called Christians have often been on the wrong side. We get sucked into power struggles, too. But wherever there is prayer and community, Jesus-followers are a burr under the saddle of corrupt rulers.

They sing: “It is well with my soul” – I am well and I feel it. You can’t keep me from the love of Jesus no matter what you do. Being well with Jesus allows me to turn my cheek and so turn the world upside down.

Tennessee Democrats locked arms on the House floor in protest of a the redistricting vote that split the state’s only majority-Black Democrat Congressional district on May 7, 2026, in Nashville, Tennessee.

I suspect most of the Tennessee reps protesting the racial gerrymander of Tennessee voting districts are church people. Their two outspoken young leaders, Justin Pearson and Justin Jones were immediately juxtaposed with pictures of Martin Luther King on social media when they got carted off the statehouse floor . They were just saying, “Since the Confederates rule in Washington right now and they say there is no racial discrimination under the law, regardless of the Voting Rights laws that have ruled since the 1960’s, we cannot be silent.” In the picture, Jones’ sign says it all.

What do Christians do with corrupt leaders?

They are a resistant alternative to them

They sing: “It is well with my soul” – Life is worth living and Jesus says I am worthy of living it. We are made to make something which is fit for Jesus and which can withstand the tribulations of the present. I’m referencing Ephesians 4 and 5:

Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be associated with them, for once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness; rather, expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly,  but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,

“Sleeper, awake!
Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”

Be careful, then, how you live, not as unwise people but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil — Ephesians 5:6-16

I am astounded that Canticle: A Novel by Janet Rich Edwards has actually been a NY Times editors choice. I enjoyed reading it for another look at one of my favorite centuries: the 13th and one of my favorites places: Bruges. What’s more it centers on some of my favorite Christians; the Beguines.

I was encouraged by the book, but even more encouraged that people were talking about  it and what it means to know God and live life as a member of his people. The grassroots devotion of the Beguines and their male counterparts, the Beghards upended their society and the corrupt church ruling it. Over and over again, the Holy Spirit has stubbornly inspired Jesus followers to risk losing their place in the corrupt system which corrupt men  made for them and risk following Jesus with all they’ve got. We create an alternative society to the passing away world.

This coming Sunday is Pentecost Sunday, the most radical Sunday of the year. It should launch us into planting seeds of hope whether the soil is rocky or not because one of those seeds is very likely to take root anyway. Pentecost should cause us to look at our lives and our church and reimagine them in the light God sees us, full of love and potential, poised for creation. Pentecost, at the very least, should wake us up from the stupor-inducing rule of the present oligarchs.