garygunderson Blog

Impossible Things

*“I cannot think it,” says the gullible ones who find it impossible to imagine shameless perfidy. (a small part of Paul Day’s amazing sculpture in St. Pancras Station, London.*

Impossible things happen all the time, but they usually don’t last long enough to celebrate. You’d think that once a people protected by deep water on east and west had settled on way to manage their land, they would be able to fend off the waste and pillage of tyranny. But the centuries after the magna carta had finally brought tyrannical kinds to heel, England fell prey to tyrants more than one time. It’s offspring—the United Colonies of America—has learned about tyrants more quickly—didn’t even it make it 250 years. Citizens rise, forget and get distracted allowing the most remarkably unfit people to seize absolute control. How it possible for a whole country to fall into the hands of a tyrant?

A century and a half before the colonial experiment produced a fragile democracy that would wobble and totter for another 250 years, Shakespeare explored this question in a number of plays about tyrants. I didn’t fully grasp how much he could help us until I visited Stratford-upon-Avon a few weeks ago and discovered a book by Stephan Greenblatt, Tyrant: Shakespeare on Power. Greenblatt is an impeccable scholar who, like me, was distressed following the election of you-know-who. “Under what circumstances do such cherished institutions, seemingly deeply-rooted and impregnable, suddenly prove fragile?” The answer lay not just with the tyrant but those complicit. With uncomfortable precision Greenblatt identifies five types of complicities that would read like CNN, if it had not fallen into the control of one of the types.

The gullible are only one: “Such people find it almost impossible to resist the big bold lie, shamelessly reiterated. The young and inexperienced are a relatively easy mark. When the murdered Clarence’s son is told his uncle Richard’s grief is fraudulent, the child replies , ‘I cannot think it.’ (Richard III 2.2.31.33). “I cannot think it” serves as the motto for those who simply cannot get their minds around such perfidy.

*Paul Day sculpts in bronze with the penetrating vision of Shakespeare. The most radical humanity is at the bottom of the massive work most walk past.* *St. Pancras Station, London.*

But why does it work? “Why would anyone be drawn to a leader manifestly unsuited to govern, someone dangerously impulsive or viciously conniving or indifferent to the truth? Why in some circumstances, does evidence of mendacity, crudeness or cruelty serve not as a fatal disadvantage but as an allure, attracting ardent followers? Why do otherwise proud and self-respecting people submit to the sheer effrontery of the tyrant, his sense that he can get away with saying and doing anything he likes, his spectacular indecency.”

Good question much on my mind this July 4^th.

Shakespeare was an entertainer more like than Stephen Colbert than a research scholar. He knew where the line was and did not get cancelled or, as was common in the time, tortured, drawn and quartered. Fortunately for him, he didn’t need to be current; history is littered with tyrants to write about. That is Greenblatt’s first point: tyrants always look unique, but they are just a type that slithers through political cracks now and then before quickly collapsing in humiliation and always alone.

*Paul Day attracts with romance but knows the pedestal is the politics. St. Pancras Station, London.*

MacBeth says, “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” (5.5.19-28) Greenblatt stresses, “It is important to understand that this devastating experience of utter meaninglessness….is not the existential condition of humankind. The play insists that it is the fate precisely of the tyrant.” Normal people are not condemned to this bleakness; we can—and most of us do–choose decency, love and community.

The Bard would not be surprised that the American experiment’s multilayered checks and balances could Such people find it almost impossible to resist the big bold lie, shamelessly reiterated.

“There are periods, sometimes extended periods, during which the cruelest motives of the basest people seem to be triumphant. But Shakespeare believed that tyrants and their minions would ultimately fail, brought down by their own viciousness and by a popular spirit of humanity that could be suppressed but never completely extinguished.

Any hope? “He imagined the best hope lay in the sheer unpredictability of collective life, its refusal to march in lockstep to a one person’s orders. The incalculable number of factors constantly in play make it impossible for an idealist or a tyrant…to remain in charge of the course of events.”

*“What is* the city but the people?” Shakespeare

“The best chance for the recovery of collective decency lay, he thought in the political action of ordinary citizens. He never lost sight of the people who steadfastly reminded silent when exhorted to shout their support for the tyrant. “What is the city but the people.”

Happy 4th.

//////////////
Speaking of the banal evil complicity note that you can buy Greenblatt’s book almost anywhere, but on July 4th do so anywhere but Amazon.

It helps me when you subscribe for free.

Way

A picturesque view of a green field surrounded by trees, with rolling hills and a clear blue sky in the background. — *What is most interesting is how you get from here to there. Stepping through the hawthorn to the meadow. Or from who I was to who I am becoming.*

We were in the Beer Engine—our preferred Skipton pub—talking with three men from Liverpool who detected we were not from nearby. I tried on Canada and then admitted to North Carolina with Memphis sauce, ending with an apology for all that is America these days. “Don’t worry, mate; everyone has a rough patch; this is yours, but we know you’ll come out the America we know.” Generous people who have seen Kings, despots and even Beatles come and pass in time.

Everyone paying any attention these days is a former whatever they used to be. Whoever you were 5 years ago tells me nothing about today, much less tomorrow. We are all in motion; those who grieve what has been lost and, interestingly, those who thought they won. This is true for those clear about ideas and identities they left behind and, interestingly, those who thought they were snug in a new intellectual, spiritual or political home.

Several rabbits grazing on a grassy field adorned with yellow flowers, with one rabbit in mid-leap. — *My grandson Charles took this of bunnies on the hop. It’s all about the motion.*

We are all in motion.

We are former something.

We are all hyphenated.

Some of us have more than one hyphen: Methodist-Baptist-Quaker, with a side order of Celtic, Buddhist and Bhai influence all the while thinking the agnostics have a point.

Hyphens don’t hold things apart; they mark where the energy is most alive, where the intellect is dynamic. The hyphen, like a boundary, is where the life is emergent, testifying to where former and future engage. The Quakers speak of the “absolute perhaps,” refusing to stop creation of any kind. In the early 1600’s they risked their lives to “seek” and have not quit.

The hyphen is a witness to life-in-process. Giving up on the binary this-or-that in favor of the dynamic flow.

Network theory used to stress the nodes; Ingold’s more advanced meshwork theory emphasizes the knots where lines of relationship stabilize. Both can be transactional, focused on mere exchange, but brilliant Dr. Thandeka Cochrane noticed in Malawi that the complex human mesh is influenced by affection, not just exchange. Hyphen theory is most interested in what is happening in between stable states, nodes or knots. In our current time—and as far ahead as I can see—we will live in between. We. must not dispare our former selves, not fully landing on our new names as we know there is another hyphen to come as politics, theology and life itself move.

A few years ago we realized there were more people who chose “none” as their religious identity than any of the name brands—about 100 million people in the United States alone. A closer look at the “nones” shows that only about 10% are actively hostile to religion with another 20% simply so done with religion as to not care about the question. About that same number are confused by the categories or disappointed by the religions on offer, But they have the same prayer life as most Protestants and Catholics. The study calls these “NINO—Nones In Name Only.” The largest group have few religious behaviors, but continue active curiosity about things spiritual—classic “spiritual but not religious.”

Interior view of a grand hall with wooden arches, featuring a large globe suspended from the ceiling and numerous busts displayed along the walls. — *The Long Room, Trinity College, Dublin where thinking has been in motion since 1712. They raised the roof in 1860 to make room for new thoughts.* *They added four women to the statuary and the globe more recently.*

These last two groups are the hyphenated people in dynamic motion from who they were to who they are becoming. These are the people I meet in every movement doing something good, from delivering food to terrified immigrants in Minneapolis to patiently knocking on doors to register voters. This is who goes to theater. It includes almost everyone in a school of divinity like Wake Forest.

A vibrant garden scene featuring colorful flowers and greenery, with a wooden sign displaying the words 'Simple. Radical. Spiritual.' — Two hundred seekers–Quakers–are buried in this garden of the Skipton Friends Meeting that still seeks here 350 years on.

The hyphen marks an upwelling of energy. It is much more interesting and lively than adding or subtracting an opinion. A hyphen inevitably draws one into working relationship with other people who are also hyphenated and in motion.

My friend Wayne Merritt taught me Greek a long time ago. He translated Jesus as “you shall know the truth and the truth will make you odd.” Followers find a Way, not a place; a Way between.

How do you know which Way? Do not follow someone else’s anger. Head toward life; head away from death. Follow your deepest joy.

You will not be alone.

Deciding for life

One day the bees came home. They chose a hive box by the canal that had been abandoned last Fall by a cousin hive. Who knows why was it just right for these sisters now. Honeybees make every decision in a radically social manner; perhaps the most studied of any insect, we humans can simply not grasp how the bees think.

A farmer on a quad bike herding sheep alongside a canal under a bridge, surrounded by lush greenery. — *TC and I live on a narrowboat on the Leeds to Liverpool canal where many interesting things happen from sheep,swans and honeybees.*

Bees almost choose well with a social intelligence we humans always wrote off as mere instinct. But recent writing suggests we have more in common and more to learn than we thought. A recent article What’s it Like to be a Bee,” notes “the decision-making process is broadly diffused among all the scout bees in a swarm,” and their final choice is “based on the actions of hundreds of individuals, each one an autonomous agent capable of providing unique information for solving the house-hunting problem.”

“As they search independently, widely, and simultaneously, the hundreds of scout bees from a swarm bring back to the group diverse information—knowledge of mediocre, superb, and even lousy sites—which are shared with the other scouts by means of waggle dances. Every discovery of a potential nest site is “freely reported,” and “no scout is stifled.” In this way, “a swarm takes full advantage of its inherently collective nature to assemble rather quickly—often in just a few hours—a profusion of alternatives from which to choose.”

Honeybees have long lived close to humans, but are entirely untamed—less violent, but more wild. We humans may be evolving backwards these days, as we are often tempted to think that somebody smarter, stronger or wiser can be trusted with the wickedly complex decisions of our hostile world. It is hostile even for 10,000 sisters with stingers which is why they make sure all of them are involved in important decisions. Ultimate democrats.

Humans got two things wrong about bees. First, they thought that the largest bee was a king, not a queen. They missed an even more important fact, which is there is no single bee that makes any decision at any consequence. Honeybees make great decisions—solely—because they have no elites of any kind at all. The crucial decisions depend entirely on the integrity and credibility of the scout bees whose only job is to tell the truth. These are the older bees who know the neighborhood; good at finding blossoms; and most likely find a new home.

A close-up image of bees buzzing around a white beehive entrance against a green background. — Not long after moving into the new box, some bumble bees tried to get into the hive after noticing the fresh honey accumulating with baby bees in their cribs. Some bouncer bees had to persuade them to go away.

Scouts knows what to look for, like scientists recognise clean data. Bees want a dry 10 gallon cavity with about a 1” hole, 10-14 feet off the ground, ideally with some old honeycomb. Scout bees rank their findings by the enthusiasm of their “waggle dance.” If compelling, their report encourages until other scouts go, look and give their opinion. Eventually the collective agrees to risk splitting the hive, sending half the bees and old queen to its new world. This is a massive risk only taken after thousands of bees have weighed the decision.

Bees live or die on the quality of this decision process, which is the point I’m heading toward: scientists are the scout bees for humans. Bees need scouts because there is always something new to learn about the neighborhood. Humans need scouts for the same reason. If we screw up the peer review process, we die.

Our scientists trusted to scan our global neighborhood so we can make decisions based on undiluted fact. Although some scientists achieve fame (Salk, Foege, Fauci) they have to earn their trust by integrity and credibility over time. Scout bees have no academic degrees, and everyone has the same mother. Scientists are better than their last waggle and that must be validated by another scout. A hive that disables their scouts is doomed to perish.

As are we.

You could see hive death happening at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) this week. This disease drives a large fraction of early death and vast public cost, nearly all of which is preventable by social and individual behavior choices. One of the older and most validated scout scientists is Dr. Steven Kahn, a professor of medicine at the University of Washington, who also serves as the editor in chief of the association’s flagship journal, Diabetes Care. He was thrown out for handing out one of his editorials protesting NIH abandonment of many preventive policies. This is as close to an enthusiastic waggle as academics get. But very large bumble bee who leads the NIH feared competing waggle dancing so had the ADA throw Dr. Kahn out. Big Bumble Bee Bhattacharya was too timid to waggle himself and sent a lesser bee in his place. Why trust a bee like that? Why trust a professional association afraid of a good waggle?

A more systematic process of hive murder is visible in radically changing the rules governing funding of research. The Office of Management and Budget wants to impose restrictions on the kinds of research that can be funded and give political appointees the authority to deny federal funding for research deemed inconsistent with presidential priorities. As Melissa L. Finucane says in the NY Times, “The proposed rules be “corrupting the conditions under which rigorous science operates for the public good.”

Silhouette of a lone tree against a hazy sunset sky, with rolling hills in the background and a faint sun peeking through the leaves. — *Life is possible only when you see your neighborhood clearly. It always takes friends to help.*

I find many aspects of the current US administration repellent. But the corruption of research will well and truly kill us all. Nothing is more cowardly than suppressing honest data about race, gender, language, sexuality, poverty and ethnicity. Read their proposed rule here: Federal Register :: Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance. And comment here: open for public comment until July 13.

We will never be able trust our scouts to find home again.

////// Don’t forget to subscribe for free:

Consider

Colorful stained glass window depicting various biblical scenes and figures, featuring angels and characters in historical garments. — *We must all protest at some risk, artist, writer, citizen.*

I pray for any man with a tortured soul, whether hiding in the bamboo forest behind Walmart or awake all night in the White House. And I pray for all those within range for the courage to protect others from his actions. We have emergency centers for the fellow behind Walmart; 25^th amendment for the other one.

I do not know whether the military of my nation will follow orders they know to be war crimes. They are bound by oath to say no because it is wrong and it is stupid.

They know we cannot live in a world where political differences permit one to starve civilians or deprive them of water. Why should not the Iranians feel justified to dump a bucket of poison in my town’s Salem Lake?

I remember my disgust and shame at the Vietnam pictures and the eventual trials that stained an entire people. This current abomination in Iran is worse–premeditated, taunting, wrapped in childish sacrilege and swagger. We will never know all the names of all the innocent dead.

We the American people elected this man twice, so all this is our shame. When the war crime trials go forward we will feel shame. Ask any German.

I am among the Quakers these days in my spirit. Theirs is an inconvenient,odd and quirky witness, odd and quirky. Hundreds died in cold English prisons for those quirks; generations were refused access to university, medicine, law and elected office. They are still regularly arrested even today for Palestinian protests. Hard people, these. But they have been exactly correct for 350 years about state violence. They said that preparing for war creates war. No Christian may participate. How does one—me— unravel that participation while living in the most militarized and now lawless empire in the history of the species?

I write this before his deadline threats about something he said he didn’t care about three days ago for which he is now willing to erase a whole civilization. We’ll be relieved if he declares victory and goes onto something else. But this is still a Nuremburg moment; the whole thing violated law from the start. It has already been a warm crime that will trigger trials to come. Nuremburg prosecuters—Americans– accused everyone involved in the design, planning, construction and administration of the death camps. Everyone was tried, not just the person pushing the button to turn on the gas.

All of us must protest at some risk. In Weil der Stadt, Germany, a wartime stained glass artist risked everything with a window panel showing Jesus sending Satan away — with Hitler depicted as Satan! (You can see him in the upper right panel above.) Eight decades later the powerful witness resonates.

I only blog and teach, which seems not so brave. When I flew from LaGuardia Saturday morning a young ICE agent fed my backpack through the scanning machine. He could have taken my phone, read my blog and detained me. Next week, after the war crimes make the government even more afraid of its citizens, he may well be ordered to do so. I hope I write clearly enough to trouble him.

It is never enough to just withhold endorsement of an illegal act, however.

Christians find ourselves entangled with heretical nutters doing violence in Jesus name have a special problem. We just celebrated the miracle of new life born anew! Not enough. We should send money to Central World Kitchen to feed people in Gaza (remember that war crime?) TC and I sent $500 hoping that our daughters and grandsons will live to see a world of law and justice that Jesus and Mohammed (peace be their names) might recognize.

Pray for that man and those who care for him before he hurts even more people.

/////

A note about the stained witness: The artist, JoKarl Huber, who was considered ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis and faced a three-year work ban, completed the window in 1940, so it was definitely a risk! Thanks to Jim and Reneta Cochrane.

///// subscribe for free

Do this

Panoramic view of the Statue of Liberty at sunset, with an orange and blue sky and silhouettes of cranes in the background.

This is no time for clever turns of phrase, new fundamental insights, clarifying metaphors, quotes pulled off the internet from this or that repurposed sage. You can find your latest reason for outrage for yourself.

Any American ashamed of the state of our despoiled democracy needs to do one thing this week. Pick one of the more than 3,000 No Kings Events near you Saturday and show up. Rather like voting, you just need to plan that one day so that you do the one thing that matters most.

This isn’t asking you to face down ICE at 20 degrees below zero as our Minneapolis patriots did for weeks on end. This isn’t even asking you to stand in one of the artificially long lines snaking through airports, also gift of ICE. It’s not asking you to ride on one of the humanitarian ships bringing medical supplies to Cuba in protest of the runaway tyrant’s casual swagger.

Just show up with your fellow American neighbors and, with your body, say no.

Your presence–and that of 15 millions of other Americans–will be the largest and best organized protest in our nation since the tea party in Boston. What difference will it make? This will not end the dumpster fire of democracy, which will burn for the rest of my life, at least, but hopefully not my children’s lives. We will experience the kind of hope that wells up among free and brave people on the move. We will realize this energy will be channeled into the nitty gritty political organizing till next November and all the school board, county clerk and agricultural commissioner roles on which a free people depends.

It is our fault that the astonishing machinery of democratic systems was taken for granted, left vulnerable to subversion by people filled with fear, mistaken religious delusion and sadly venal opportunism. Let them savor their stolen billions while they stew in the blood of thousands.

Brooklyn Bridge illuminated at dusk with a flag on top and city buildings in the background. — *The red sign says “welcome.”*

TC and I will be at the main march in Winston-Salem at Union Station near Winston-Salem State University.

Find your local site and register here.

And, just in case you think this is a show, not work, here’s the link for the call about the next step that comes after the massive day or protest. I told you these folks are organized. Here to rsvp.

And, of course, if you need some music to tune up your soul: Jesse Wells “No Kings.”

///// Consider subscribing for free. It helps me know what works.

Followership

This will be short as I’m still recovering from some Thai flu thing I picked up, maybe at some Temple in Chiang Mai. I can tell you that one doesn’t get any sympathy for that when you return to people living on the tundra of North Carolina.

I got out of bed and drove across the state to march with Dr. William Barber Wednesday in Wilson. Why? Because he said Wilson was “our Selma” and his director of Religious Affairs, Rev. Dr. Hanna Broome said she could use some clergy to help organize the clergy.

I followed her. Not on Facebook! TC and I showed up groggy but present at 8 am in Wilson. Organizing clergy is way, way harder than cats, but after an hour or so, we shuffled into line and headed off down the street at a very slow pace. Drs. Barber and Broome were quite clear: “no whining; it’s all about Love Forward” (and only that)(only that). And, “if you are standing next to someone who looks like you, go find someone else.” And pay attention, “if you are a liberal talking right now, be quite and pay attention to the instructions.” He said it with a smile, but we all shut up.

Movements need great leaders. And to spend 10 minutes in the presence of Dr. William Barber is to know greatness.

Movements great followers.

Followership changes the world.

The Bible has a lot to say about YHWH and Jesus. But most of it is addressed to us followers and what we need to know in order to play our role as “agents of reconciliation” or, as Jesus once called us, “friends.”

Wednesday morning in the light drizzle, Barber did what you’d expect of a great leader. He told us who we were and why we were standing there and what we could hope for. Love Forward. No whining. No listing of grievances and what we were afraid of and who was threatening democracy. None of that.

A group of diverse individuals gathered around a truck displaying a banner that reads 'This is Our Selma' and 'Repairers of the Breach.' One speaker is addressing the crowd, while attendees listen intently. — #LoveForwardTogether. That’s all.

Love. Forward.

He scanned the crowd like a surgeon looks at a suspicious mass and had us put down any placards that might confuse the message. “There’s a reason,” he said. And told us again what to do when the hecklers did their predictable thing (nothing). Love……

And he thanked all the police and state troopers for protecting us (this is North Carolina).

Dr. Barber is nearly crippled with a debilitating and painful disease that makes every step hard. He could only walk the first couple hundred paces. But if he could do two hundred, all of us knew we could do the other thousands that day.

A leader without followers is just a delusional head case. But a grown-up that isn’t clear about who they are following is useless for anything beyond their own pathetic self.

Dr. Barber had some great followers, beginning with the Rev. Dr. Hanna Broome, who was responsible for getting the clergy to show up in the rain. Brilliant, tough, soulful and humorous, she told us what to do. There were Bishops galore—both UMC Bishops and any number of AME, Episcopal and even a few Baptist Big Deals. Lots of clergy of position and influence. Dennis Leach, of Winston who you’d be wise to follow to hell and back. No Rockstar Buddhist Monks, but they will be in Raleigh. And some laypeople with many thousands of followers online (Steve Schmidt is sort of a LinkedIn Bishop).

But on this day, our job was followership. And to make sure that whoever noticed us noticed that we are following Dr. William Barber, so that we can all Love Forward.

Once we are clear that our job is to follow, we can focus on being good at that. First step is to throw out all your books on leadership and never buy another one. Second step is to look with pastoral eyes at who it is that regards you as someone to follow. Could be a dozen or, if you are a Bishop, maybe thousands. Try to get them to take their eyes off you, so they can follow the ones that are drawing your spirit to ….. Love Forward.

You can’t spend 10 minutes with Dr. Barber and miss the fact that he is a great follower—trying as any flawed human can—to measure his steps by those of the One who teaches us all to Love Forward. That’s why all of us present were following after him. It didn’t make him a genius. Even he asked, “who else would call for a march in the middle of winter?” He was better than genius: an authentic, decent man doing his best to follow the Author of all life and love.

A diverse group of people participating in a healthcare rally, holding signs advocating for universal healthcare, marching along a street on a cloudy day. — #LoveForwardTogether “This is what democracy looks like.” Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

I’ll note that it’s not too late for you to follow. The march ends in Raleigh Saturday morning on the sacred soil of Shaw University before we walk over to not-yet-redeemed soil of the State Capitol. You can sign up here.

And if you have errands you think more important, you can send money instead (maybe the same amount you’ll spend at Walmart or Whole Foods on your errand). Somebody has to rent the bus, truck, cars and electronics it takes to run a march in Winter. But there is nothing like presence. Send your money here.

If you want your soul stirred like a daffodil in February, you’ll be in Raleigh Saturday morning.

The long first day did not go exactly like the organizers had in mind. We were hundreds, not thousands. And we did 8 1/2 not 15 miles. Pastor Barber, like I only imagine Jesus did his ever-disappointed followers. He sang. He prayed with us. He blessed us and assured us that the day was God’s doing, of which we should be proud.

I was, as with John Wesley, strangely warmed. Tears on my cheeks that felt like anointing.

Subscribe for Free.

King Year

A person holding a bouquet of colorful flowers, wearing a brown beanie and traditional clothing with rich textures and earth tones. — https://dhammacetiya.com/walk-for-peace-the-venerables/

Buddhists walk for peace in my Carolina Winter while I, a Baptist/Quaker, walk their Monks’ Trail in Chiang Mai. Here in Thailand it is hard to see the mountains through the blizzard of campaign signs for their election February 8^th. The campaign is skewed by live fire border conflict with Cambodia that makes this Buddhist nation think more about their military than their monks, but nothing remotely as brazen and raw as my own country. The people here will vote and the government will be who they choose.

I am not sure that will happen for my people as the increasingly brazen, desperate man coming apart in real time on world screens simply can’t afford one. After losing 43 out of 43 smaller elections since the presidential squeaker a year ago, every poll signals that the light at the end of our authoritarian tunnel is a very fast moving train that will take the House and Senate like hitting a bug on the tracks.

They have no other man and no other plan than to stop the elections from happening. Like a bizarre version of Thelma and Louise they accelerate maybe taking another mother on the way off the cliff. They will try to claim insurrection, posting goons at every polling station. Black People have seen that before and stood in lines winding down the streets. I doubt that Brown people will have any less courage. White people are too dim to understand the threat, so will show up with breezy optimism as the People take the House and Senate. But then we have a true knife fight in the mud for two years more.

A tranquil view of a still water pool surrounded by lush greenery and trees, reflecting the clear blue sky. — *Wat Pha Lat, over Chiang Mai (tourists cropped out)*

With troops in Caracas, untrained goons in Minneapolis, soon Charlotte and Winston-Salem, we have to ask what faith has to do with raw power.

We know that any faith can be frivolous and silly. Yesterday on the Monk’s Trail was like Buddha-rama, a tourist conga line up the hill and through the sacred spaces. Christians have singing Christmas trees and incredibly stupid museums of the Bible down the street from where the Department of Education is vacant.

But….every now and then the Spirit stirs with power.

For faith doesn’t have opinions about power; it is power. Faith has no fear of what simplistic violence can take away. Death? Pain? Jail? Our best theology from Paul, Bonhoeffer to King was written there shaming the timid Bishops outside counselling patience. Bull Connor raged against the children raised in Sunday School for courage who marched—beat them, jailed them and bombed them in their church. And still they walked, shaming the by-standing adults until even the reluctant Feds had to cave.

King Day is over; King year just lifting off.

Said he: “The past is strewn with the ruins of the empires of tyranny, and each is a monument not merely to man’s blunders but to his capacity to overcome them. While it is a bitter fact that in America in 1968, I am denied equality solely because I am black, yet I am not a chattel slave. Millions of people have fought thousands of battles to enlarge my freedom; restricted as it still is, progress has been made.

“This is why I remain an optimist, though I am also a realist, about the barriers before us. Why is the issue of equality still so far from solution in America, a nation that professes itself to be democratic, inventive, hospitable to new ideas, rich, productive and awesomely powerful?

“The problem is so tenacious because, despite its virtues and attributes, America is deeply racist and its democracy is flawed both economically and socially.”

That was with Bobby Kennedy sitting where Stephen Miller now poses while his boss watches TV shows that making him think Greenland is bigger than Africa.

The little people surrounding him know it’s over. The only question is how many more dead mothers it will take. How many children?

Haven’t had any dead preachers, yet, but there are plenty on the front lines, running for office, building the protest and electoral machinery already running like a train in the tunnel. William Barber marching in NC Feb 11^th. Talarico, a seminary student running for senate drawing thousands in the dust of Plano. Vote Common Good aimed like a laser at the 40 house seats most likely to flip Blue. Bishop Budde as clear as a newly forged bell sounding with grace and clarity in the morning. And, if you need a soundtrack, Jesse Welles.

No wonder the goons are hiring more goons.

Faith does not blink when God turns on the lights. Granted, faith can snooze through an approaching storm piddling and fiddling, doing not much until it hears the voices of its prophets, the young ones rising up on wings, the old ones giving voice to dreams long held waiting, waiting, waiting.

Says William Barber, our modern King, “Only when we refuse to accept the mythology around King and the Movement can we comprehend the legacy they entrusted to us. They did not leave us a perfect union. They inherited from those before them and passed down to us a way to challenge injustice and become what we’ve never yet been through moral force. They showed us the way up and out of the mess we are in.”

A group of monks in orange robes and brown hats walking along a road, some carrying flowers and displaying peace signs. — https://dhammacetiya.com/walk-for-peace-the-venerables/

Not one day. This is King year.

We are seeing what we’ve been waiting for. Indeed, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

Now.

Bee

Radical non-conformists built this first Friends meeting house in Skipton in 1689 when slavery was utterly normal.

TC and I got back from England some weeks ago but writing is harder here. Especially as I agreed to teach an online asynchronous Divinity School class next semester. I didn’t quite grasp that this requires all 14 weeks of the teaching in advance by video. Yikes. It’s on the Leading Causes of Life, and I’ve got lots of help. But rather pushed my blog writing to the side.

/////

This is surely the worst Christmas since the slaughter of the innocents. So many slaughtered in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan by despots worse than Herod. Uncountable innocents bleeding out from the callous withdrawal of USAID across Africa. More ripped away by thugs at Home Depot in the land of the formerly free and brave. Blood on all our hands.

Against this ugly tide we celebrated Christmas for the City in Winston-Salem Saturday evening organized by the preposterously brilliant Love Out Loud. This is a quirky local extravaganza that for 14 years has filled our Convention Center with food, gifts, music from dozens of churches and vaccinations from the health department. This year included our one local Jewish Temple, so Jesus’ parents could have come, too.

Rev Dr David Docusen reminds us that Jesus knew all about the dark and was not afraid.

This event has lots of Hispanic energy, including those hunted by ICE. The organizers work closely with Siembra to monitor the surrounding streets for ICE. This the David that famously hounded Goliath ICE into the light and out of North Carolina and then out of New Orleans, too, which adapted Siembra’s technique, technology and Spirit. Still, as we moved toward the closing candle light vigil out in the street, all eyes were pealed for black SUV’s and big guys in boots. I volunteered to be the Nordic guy to obstruct and get arrested first, which turned out to be untested. David Docusen noted that Jesus knew all about darkness and only promised that we could walk home together as neighbors.

I’m sure Mary sang in an early version of Spanish:

“God’s mercy is for those who fear God

from generation to generation.

God has shown strength with God’s arm;

God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

God has filled the hungry with good things,

and sent the rich away empty.” (Luke 1:46f)

This year has been about the art and craft of avoiding the total eclipse of the heart. TC and I lived half time on a narrowboat in England on the canal dug in 1770’s to link Yorkshire to the slave cotton and tobacco fields of North Carolina. Dug by what were effectively Irish slaves and the local landless just as desperate. Dark. But this is also where the non-conformists hid out from both King and Parliament which finally let them build meeting houses including the one where I worship in silence, listening for the way ahead. That seems—and has always seemed–so little and weak!

I’ve been kept by honeybees for some years as they gerenously to teach, tend my Spirit and feed me with honey and mead. But you can’t do that across an ocean, so I gave them and all the equipment to a local cooperative.

Then I become a honeybee myself. Quakers are as close to honeybees as humans can get. Both are generous, diligent, peaceful and so democratic they don’t even vote. Quakers seek in silence, bees vibrating in the dark. Neither kill to defend themselves, but are fierce for the babies. Both sting. Not like aggressive wasps (or the Christian Nationalists). Quakers sting just as Mary singing the magnificat; refusing to be complicit with the slaveholders, royalty and rich.

The most famous American Quaker prophet was a weaver from Philadelphia known as John Woolman famous for walking and talking across the South meeting with Friends about slavery. And then he followed the cotton thread of complicity to Skipton where he giving his inconvenient witness about their entanglement in slavery the canal made possible. He actually died nearby in Yorkshire after falling ill. Many Quakers were unexpectedly wealthy because their famous honesty made them trusted business partners. They were early investors in cotton mills, shoes (Clarkes) and chocolate (Cadbury and KitKat) and finance (Barclay’s Bank) and canals. They did not want to listen to Woolman; half of all slave ships had been built in Liverpool where the canal meets the sea. But in their silent seeking, his words percolated, turned to conviction and witness that ended the slave trade.

Our modern struggle is so much easier. Even amid the Trumpian blitzkrieg American democracy isfar more vibrant and robust than anything imagined by British Quakers, who were lucky to even have their tiny meeting house in Skipton. Less than 6% of white men could vote; no women at all. They had Thomas Paine pamplets (he, a Quaker). Imagine him with our websites! We citizens have liberties, technologies and revolutionary techniques honed in the long walk fromo the Magna Carta. Give the trumpians credit seeing and acting on all the weaknesses. But they are melting as they are dragged into the light, backbones withering like salted slugs.

Quakers are famous for what they won’t do–take off their hats in the presence of royalty and, of course, refusing arms. But their silence ferments endless creativity for justice and mercy. I’m guessing the Portland frog is one. But once creative courage is in the water, it spreads like a positive virus. King, Lewis, Barber, Indivisible—thousands whose names we will never know.

The Friends’ promise seems whimsical. Simple, radical, spiritual. Be quiet. Listen. Then act on what you hear and never stop.

Prayer After the Shut-down Vote

Prayer After the Shutdown Vote
For Those Living Between Relief and Uncertainty

Shared on the Moral Monday. Repairers of the Breach Clergy Call

November 11, 2025.
By Rev. Dr. Hanna R. Broome

Eternal God, who is called by so many names,
Known in every tongue, worshiped in every land—
we stand today between almost and not yet.
The Senate has spoken, the votes are counted,
but the hungry still wait on confirmation—
mothers still count cans and calories,
fathers still stretch prescriptions,
elders still pray that tomorrow the lights stay on.

Creator, we thank You for the flicker of relief,
for the doors that may soon reopen,
for the workers who will be called back,
and for the food that will again find its way to tables.
But we do not confuse delay with deliverance,
nor cloture with closure.
This was a procedural mercy, not yet a moral reckoning.

You, O Holy One, are not impressed by votes without vision,
nor cloture without compassion.
We name the violence still lingering—
the SNAP cuts that slice through family budgets,
the healthcare premiums rising like tombstones
over a system that buries the poor while billing the sick.
We refuse to call this “normal.”
We will not celebrate crumbs while the loaf is withheld.

So breathe on us, O Spirit of the Living One that connects us in humanity
breathe courage into every organizer,
breathe endurance into every faith leader,
breathe wisdom into every policymaker who still dares to listen.
Make us restless in comfort,
and relentless in hope.
Until justice rolls down like water,
until every child eats without shame,
until healthcare is treated as holy,
and until this nation learns that budgets are moral documents,
not weapons of war against its own people.

We seal this prayer with the faith of those who refused to be silent,
and the ancestors who built freedom out of scarcity.

Ashe, Ameen, Amen, and It Is So.

Consequences

I have a friend whose life has led him to be one of the most powerful Republicans in the North Carolina state legislature, marked by his tenacious commitment to expand Medicaid. He is a grandfather, a religious man with a diligent spirit. I reached out to him a few days ago, knowing he would be voting in a razor-thin decision to gerrymander one more Congressional district to support the desperate effort to protect MAGA. North Carolina is 50/50 Democrat to Republican voters, but our state legislature is ridiculously gerrymandered into a Republican “supermajority”, dependent on his vote to make it 11-3 guaranteed GOP districts. I urged him to have a John McCain moment and do the right thing.

He graciously replied almost immediately to say he had no choice. His district voted 2-1 for that fellow and, after all, “elections have consequences.” In reality, he helped design his district so created his own captivity. Made me sad. For him.

This isn’t about the GOP. The most egregiously ugly and racist actions in North Carolina history were done by Democrats (google Wilmington race riots, 1898). Powerful Democrats did the same things he did at one point.

Surely grown-ups can do better.

MAGA is circling the drain, maybe already down the pipe entirely out of sight of the light. When you bulldoze the White House, kill all the reindeer and prepare the first family landing spot in Argentina, it is clear this will be over soon.

*Farmers, minders andd traders have walked this path above Hebden since neolithic times trying to give the next generation a chance.*

The seven million citizens in the street on Oct. 18^th were so cross-cuttingly normal that David Brooks is thinking of joining them next time. There will be ten million next time and fifteen before the mid-terms.

People like my friend will claim they were friends of democracy all along.

We need to move now from just stopping the thieves to working on Project 2029 so that we create a new possibility, not just another swing of the political pendulum.

We need role models not just ideas. Even better would be a role model with ideas. This is what I found in the London Quaker bookstore, where I stumbled across 87-year-old George Lakey, the author of Viking Economics. Bill McKibben says of Lakey, “almost no one I can think of has made better use of their time on earth.”He also wrote a guide to nonviolent direction action campaigns, called “How We Win” that McKibben compares to West Point for change-makers. But I think we’re already winning; my question is what we do with the victory.

Lakey was like electricity in my wires as he describes how the “Nordic model” was born out of similar polarization as we’re experiencing now in the States. He notes that the greatest changes of the past century become possible in the heat of social/cultural and political pressures. He describes how the poorest country in Europe—Norway—became the happiest, healthiest, best educated, most entrepreneurial and equitable, before it discovered the oil off-shore.

This was totally unexpected–preposterous. The Norway we now know came out of the deep conflicts of the early 1920’s that culminated with an elected retrogressive government that became complicit with the Nazis in World War Two. The name of that president–“Quisling”–is now synonymous with betrayal, but he was elected president before he tried to destroy the electoral process itself. Same deep hole we’re in.

*Just below Skipton Castle where royalty shat down “the long drop.” Times change. People change.*

Lakey knew the inside story as he married into the movement—his new father-in-law was one of the key Christian socialists who began organizing as a college student. He lays out the detailed analysis how the Nordic model (Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland), which offers a practical path for what I call project 2029. Refusing to accept the polarities, the practical politics focus on what is good for everyone, not the poor, minorities, identities, urbanites, soccer moms, or any other specific group. Everybody rises. Or everyone sinks.

”Arguably, what motivates Nordics to pay high taxes for services is that the services are universal rather than targeted to a subgroup of ‘the needy’.” Everyone benefits from quality health care, schools, transportation and pensions, but those who benefit most of all are the political majority composed of the working and middle classes. When someone proposes chipping away at the quality of universal systems, a political defense is mounted by the majority almost regardless of the party they belong to.” Page 174

In a time of radical economic changes, this model makes it safe for innovation. The Nordic countries are pro-business with more start-up companies than the US because nobody has to risk their retirement, healthcare or education for their kids. Basic shared security makes it much safer to take entrepreneurial job-creating risks. Companies pay a lot of tax, but they get an extraordinarily rich environment in which to do business with a highly educated mobile workforce, free to innovate. Everyone is expected to work and hardest of all, speak Norwegian.

This avoids the easy stigmatization and what-about-me poison in American politics. And we would not have to learn Norwegian.

This is very practical good news; the way to channel the solidarity in the streets into clear vision of a better way for everyone. Lakey argues that the severity of the crisis is exactly what makes possible that new thing, a more perfect union built on the unfulfilled promise signaled in the stumbling efforts of those white slave-holding men who risked everything to make the United States happen a quarter millennium ago.

Consequences can be good.

His most difficult counsel is to reject the story of radical polarization itself. Take health care policy: “The reason the United States has failed to adopt universal health insurance is not because it violates our culture, but because special interests prevented the majority from getting what they were ready for.” Page 224

“The mainstream media continues to report the discourse of the political class as if it accurately reflects what Americans think. I find that many people in my audiences who think that Nordic style policies are sensible have no idea that they are, in fact, members of the American majority.” Page 233

Lakey says that “At any time we choose, Americans could decide to learn from our own abundant experience of people-power triumphing despite harsh opposition. In the 1960s, the civil rights movement faced down the largest terrorist movement in US history, the Ku Klux Klan, as well as lawless police. Brave African Americans with white allies won gains and took casualties, while a largely indifferent federal government looked on. Finally, the federal government was forced to act—by that same civil rights movement.” Page 238.

He urges us not to splinter the 5 to 12 million Americans in the streets which are succeeding to break the back of the current ugly cabal. We must not drive away many of the partners we will need for Project 2029. And likewise, we must not personalize this about you-know-who.

Again, Lakey is right on target in noting that the Norwegian left “understood that Quisling was a symptom, not the cause of the mess Norway was in, just as Donald Trump is a symptom, not the cause of the mess the United States is in. Rather than obsess about the symptom, progressive Norwegians focused on the cause, which was primarily the dominance of the economic elite…..by targeting the elite in nonviolent campaigns for specific widely shared demands. So many people joined the growing non-violent direct-action campaigns that Norway became ungovernable by the economic elite.“ Page 256.

Lakey closes his autobiography with a story from the improbably successful struggle against apartheid and the “joy that comes from going beyond awareness of injustice and toward acting for justice.” He remembers, “we turned a large protest in front of City Hall on frigid evening into an all-night dance, fueled by the heat of South African movement songs…..hour after hour of dancing did more than keep us warm physically. It reminded us that if we tune into what’s happening and act with others, we get to dance with history.”

Project 2029, anyone? Want to dance?