LIVING CONNECTIONS

 This morning seems to be a time, for me, of connections revealed.
First, thinking again of Jesus's words as to what being 'the greatest' requires: 'If any of you will be the greatest, you must become the servants of all."
Second, my mind ricochets back to the story of the Fall. What was the first couple's original sin?
Wanting to be 'like God'. Perhaps a more accurate rendition might be wanting to be like how they imagined God Is? Think about this, carefully.
In any case, they wanted to take on something for which they were by no means ready. We still aren't, but  with God's help we cope with it. But too few of us ask God's help with this; we act as if we are already gods when the evidence is all around us about how godlike we ain't. And the first sign of this is our asking Lenin's question: Kto-Kogo? Who can do what to whom, we ask, usually with a view toward being one of those who can get away with murder or, more benignly, not being one who can be harmed with impunity. Too many of my own pale cast are aggrieved at not being among those who can get away with murder. As if their masculinity depends on them being able to go out and murder anyone of darker skin tone, and/or a different faith, whenever they're having a bad day!
More and more, it looks to me as if our Original Sin may well be wanting to think ourselves better than (fill in the blank) as per LBJ's saying this to young Billy Don Moyers, as he still called himself then. LBJ's words are a bit altered here to cover a broader problem.
"If you can convince the lowest [white man] [Arab] he's better than the best [colored man] [Jew], he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him someone to look down on and he'll empty his pockets for you." And, conversely, when it becomes painfully clear that 'lower' groups can no longer be harassed or worse with impunity, there looks to be (almost?) nothing the former harassers won't do to be able to have such impunity back! Consider this carefully, along with this addition: those who seek equality, which usually includes real indigenes to a place, are willing to share. Colonists are exclusive; they never want to share power or wealth with other groups.
Those who seek to realize equality here on this continent are allies to indigenous peoples. And indigneous peoples are usually content with equality with others, unless those others seek to make themselves sole and exclusive masters. Which is how both Arabs in the Levant and peckerwoodies here want to be able to see themselves.
In the story of Cain and Abel, I believe the attitude with which Cain brought the fruits of his labor to the altar was (at least partly) as proof of how much more hard-working, and therefore how much better, he was than his brother. Which was, I suggest, why God was not pleased with Cain's offering. But like those who cling to seeing themselves better than others even to this very day, he didn't listen to God when God told him he needed to look within himself for the cause of God's displeasure. He dumped it all on Abel and consequently murdered his brother.
Anyone who has looked at a medieval chronicle may have been struck to the degree that tillers of the soil look down on pastoral peoples as lazy and less worthy than they. Cain tilled the ground; Abel was a herdsman. Need I write more?
Still, today, those who feel themselves immiserated and thereby (?) ennobled by their Hard Work and (especially?) their Hard-Earned money feel they have a right to look down on others who seek more joy in their lives. Mind you, preparation for joy can be, and usually is, hard work too, but work of a different kind. There's work that stretches the mind, heart and soul by at least semi-compelling us to care more for other living creatures and there's work which scrunches our minds and hearts. Or, maybe, it's largely how we see and do the work in front of us.
When we are brought face to face with the barbarities of 'our own people' and the evidence is pretty incontrovertible, we have work to do. Being ashamed of our paleness of skin, eyes or hair or of what our ancestors have done, does nobody any good. The question then becomes: how do we realize equality and socialize and expand democracy? We are all equally corruptible; we need to keep private power on short leash and a ceiling for how big we allow individual and family fortunes to become.
Part of this may yet be putting bullies down by hard means; let's hope they don't compel us to shoot back more effectively, but let's be ready for that possibility.

SERIOUS MALEDICTA

 I have just absorbed a shocking piece of news.
On the Saturday when the last presidential election was called, my wife and I stopped at a package store where we bought wines and beers at the time. The store had both a TV and a music-player in it. The song being played was Give Peace A Chance. Faux News was on the TV set calling the election for Biden. My wife expressed the hope that, now the election was decided, that there'd be some peace. The AMH (adult male hominid; I won't call him a man) behind the counter lethally threatened the new president-elect if he made any move to 'take guns away'.
Apropos of this, a close friend of ours just informed us that to even indicate a desire for peace marks a person as a Democrat hereabouts! Which means that a lot of people are lusting for the chance to shed the blood of others whom they hate, mostly with no cause at all except someone being different and, usually, more civilized and cultured, than they are! Their hatred is the fruit of fear cultivated by those standing to profit by it and of envy commonly held by these knuckle-draggers and their inciters against those who are, to put it plainly, both more humane and more human than they are, maybe more so than they will ever be!!
If they expect to shed the blood of such others, let me recall to y'all what happened with another band at least as ignorantly arrogant: The Marquis of Newcastle's 'white coats' were one of three armies of King Charles I during the English Civil War. They were effectively destroyed at the battle of Marston Moor. They had boasted that they would dye their coats red with their enemies' blood. Those coats were indeed reddened--but the blood was their own. As Shaw wrote: "If [people] will not learn until their lessons are written in blood, why, blood they must have, preferably their own."
I could not agree more. So, here follow the title features of this particular post:
May those who lust to shed the blood of their fellow citizens out of misplaced fear and/or wicked envy see that desire recoil upon themselves and their own even to the extent of breaking even their hearts of solid stone!
May those who desire power in their hands only see that desire recoil until they are left utterly without such power, political, economic and financial!!
May those who seek to feudalize our economy through inequality be compelled to do things they utterly detest doing for their next meal!!
May those who can think of nothing but fattening their already obscenely obese wallets or purses be left in the end with only small change and no power to stop urgently needed change in this country or on this planet!!
May those determined to die on the 'Whites Only' hill be granted that desire, but not before they see a really multiracial, multiethnic, multi-faiths democracy beginning to flourish in this land!! And may you live to hear from young native, Latino, and African-American men, "We don't want your daughters. Go and inbreed as you like until you die out and leave the earth a better place."
And may all ye who hoist black flags end up begging those who know very well how merciless you longed to be for that same mercy! May your guts run when that happens and all who smell you mock you with 'DOOOOOky boy/girl!"
I feel a heaviness after pronouncing such maledicta, so I will include the hope that all those on whom I have lain these words repent and turn to the God Who bids us to welcome and make room for the stranger and the outsiders, Who bids us to come and reason together with Him while reminding us that, thankfully, His ways are not our ways and Who would have us listen to each other.
Too long have we been encouraged to listen to the Trumpolaters who still want to kill us all; let them now hear us as a sign of their repentance! And bring out those who know hermeneutics!
Holy Writ informs us that anger 'rests in the bosom of fools'. Well, if the ammosexuals among us are governed by anger rising from fear and envy as opposed to those of us angry at the shredding of our common society, of democracy and of our Constitution (which does not make whites superior; at least when it's uncontorted), who then are the fools? Doesn't fear of the unknown and envy of those more civilized give rise to the anger of fools? I leave it to y'all, Gentle Readers, to decide that for yourselves.
To our side, I say: be ready for anything. That means exactly what it says. Anything, including full-scale violence from the ammosexuals and their minions.