MEN'S DISCUSSION GROUP
TUESDAYS AT 10:00 AM
In-person and on Zoom:
https://zoom.us/j/5955701807
Tuesday, September 20
The topic for this week is to discuss what is happening in the greater Church - specifically the evangelical side of the House.
How Politics Poisoned the Evangelical Church
Tim Alberta, The Atlantic 5.10.22
The movement spent 40 years at war with secular America. Now it’s at war with itself.
Having grown up as the son of a senior pastor, I’ve spent my life watching evangelicalism morph from a spiritual disposition into a political identity. It’s heartbreaking. So many people who love the Lord, who give their time and money to the poor and the mourning and the persecuted, have been reduced to a caricature. But I understand why. Evangelicals—including my own father—became compulsively political, allowing specific ethical arguments to snowball into full-blown partisan advocacy, often in ways that distracted from their mission of evangelizing for Christ. To his credit, even when my dad would lean hard into a political debate, he was careful to remind his church of the appropriate Christian perspective. “God doesn’t bite his fingernails over any of this,” he would say around election time. “Neither should you.”
Brighton, Michigan is a small town, and I knew the local evangelical scene like it was a second reporting beat. I knew which pastors were feuding; whose congregations were mired in scandal; which church softball teams had a deacon playing shortstop, and which ones stacked their lineups with non-tithing ringers. But FloodGate Church? I had never heard of FloodGate. And neither had most of the people sitting around me, until recently.
For a decade, Pastor Bolin preached to a crowd of about 100 on a typical Sunday. Then came Easter 2020, when Bolin announced that he would hold indoor worship services in defiance of Michigan’s emergency shutdown orders. As word got around the conservative suburbs of
Detroit, Bolin became a minor celebrity. Local politicians and activists borrowed his pulpit. FloodGate’s attendance soared as members of other congregations defected to the small roadside church. By Easter 2021, FloodGate was hosting 1,500 people every weekend.
Listening to Bolin that morning, I kept thinking about another pastor nearby, one who approached his job very differently: Ken Brown. Brown leads his own ministry, Community Bible Church, in the Detroit suburb of Trenton. I got to know him during the 2020 presidential campaign. Brown wrote to me explaining the combustible dynamics within the evangelical Church and describing his own efforts—as the conservative pastor of a conservative congregation—to keep his members from being radicalized by the lies of media figures.
When we finally met, in the spring of 2021, Brown told me his alarm had only grown. “The crisis for the Church is a crisis of discernment,” he said over lunch. “Discernment” (one’s basic ability to separate truth from untruth) “is a core biblical discipline. And many Christians are not
practicing it.” A stocky man with steely blue eyes and a subdued, matter-of-fact tone, Brown struck me as thoroughly disheartened. The pastor said his concern was not simply for his congregation of 300, but for the millions of American evangelicals who had come to value power
over integrity, the ephemeral over the eternal, moral relativism over bright lines of right and wrong. He made a compelling case.
But in leading their predominantly white, Republican congregations, Brown and Bolin have come to agree on one important thing: Both pastors believe there is a war for the soul of the American Church—and both have decided they cannot stand on the sidelines. They aren’t alone. To many evangelicals today, the enemy is no longer secular America, but their fellow Christians, people who hold the same faith but different beliefs.
How did this happen? For generations, white evangelicals have cultivated a narrative pitting courageous, God-fearing Christians against a wicked society that wants to expunge the Almighty from public life. Having convinced so many evangelicals that the next election could trigger the nation’s demise, Christian leaders effectively turned thousands of churches into loosely organized, hazily defined, existentially urgent movement — the types of places where paranoia and falsehoods flourish and people turn on one another. “Hands down, the biggest challenge facing the Church right now is the misinformation and disinformation coming in from the outside,” Brown said.
Because of this, the pastor told me, he can no longer justify a passive approach from the pulpit. The Church is becoming radicalized—and pastors who don’t address this fact head-on are only contributing to the problem. He understands their reluctance. They would rather keep the peace than risk alienating anyone. The irony, Brown said, is that by pretending that a clash of Christian worldviews isn’t happening, these pastors risk losing credibility with members who can see it unfolding inside their own church.
If this is a tale of two churches, it is also the tale of churches everywhere. It’s the story of millions of American Christians who, after a lifetime spent considering their political affiliations in the context of their faith, are now considering their faith affiliations in the context of their politics.
The first piece of scripture I memorized as a child is from Paul’s second letter to the early Church in Corinth, Greece. As with most of his letters, the apostle was addressing dysfunction and breakage in the community of believers. “We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is
unseen,” Paul wrote. “Since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” Paul’s admonishment of the early Church contains no real ambiguity. Followers of Jesus are to orient themselves toward his enduring promise of salvation, and away from the fleeting troubles of
humanity.
The nation’s largest denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, is bleeding members because of ferocious infighting over race relations, women serving in leadership, accountability for sexual misconduct, and other issues. The United Methodist Church, America’s second-largest
denomination, is headed toward imminent divorce over irreconcilable social and ideological divisions. Smaller denominations are losing affiliate churches as pastors and congregations break from their leadership over many of the same cultural flash points, choosing independence over associating with those who do not hold their views.
Christianity has traditionally been seen as a stabilizing, even moderating, influence on American life. In 1975, more than two-thirds of Americans expressed “a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the church,” according to Gallup, and as of 1985, “organized religion was the most revered institution” in American life. Today, Gallup reports, just 37 percent of Americans have confidence in the Church. This downward spiral owes principally to two phenomena: the constant stench of scandal, with megachurches and prominent leaders imploding on what seems like a weekly basis; and the growing perception that Christians are embracing extremist views.
Meanwhile, other pastors feel trapped. One stray remark could split their congregation, or even cost them their job. Yet a strictly apolitical approach can be counterproductive; their unwillingness to engage only invites more scrutiny. The whisper campaigns brand conservative
pastors as moderate, and moderate pastors as Marxists. In this environment, a church leader’s stance on biblical inerrancy is less important than whether he is considered “woke.” His command of scripture is less relevant than suspicions about how he voted in the last election.
More than a few times, I’ve heard casual talk of civil war inside places that purport to worship the Prince of Peace. If this all sounds a bit strange—ominous, or even “dangerous,” as one local pastor warned me the night before I visited—well, sure. But strange compared to what? Having spent my entire life in and around the evangelical Church, I had in recent years become desensitized to all the rhetoric of militarism and imminent Armageddon.
In a sense, Christians have always lived a different epistemological existence than nonbelievers. But this is something new. But what is left to hold together? When I visited, Aldersgate church—an elegant structure with room for 500 in the sanctuary—was hosting maybe 150 people total across two Sunday services. Pastor Bingham is proud to say that he hasn’t driven anyone away with his political views. Still, membership has been in decline for years, in part because so many Christians today gravitate toward the places that are outspokenly aligned with their extra-biblical beliefs. For all their talk of keeping Aldersgate unified, the two pastors acknowledged that in a few years’ time, they would belong to different churches. The same went for their members.
When I met with some of the longest-tenured laypeople of the church, almost everyone indicated that when the UMC divorce was finalized, they would follow the church that reflected their political views. It didn’t matter that doing so meant, in some cases, walking away from the
church they’d attended for decades.
“What’s coming is going to be brutal. There’s no way around that,” Bingham told me. “Churches are breaking apart everywhere. My only hope is that, when the time comes, our people can separate without shattering.” Ken Brown knows plenty of pastors like Bingham, who refuse to
talk about the very things tearing their churches apart. He knows they have their reasons. Some don’t know what to say. Others fear that speaking up would only make matters worse. Almost everyone is concerned about job security. Pastors are not immune from anxiety over their mortgage or kids’ college tuitions; many younger clergy members, in particular, worry that they haven’t amassed enough goodwill to get argumentative with their congregation.
Bolin tells me the church has sold the building we’re sitting in—where the congregation has met since the 1970s—and purchased a sprawling complex down the road. The pastor says FloodGate’s revenue has multiplied six-fold since 2020. It is charging ahead into an era of expansion, with ambitions of becoming southeast Michigan’s next megachurch.
Bolin says FloodGate and churches like it have grown in direct proportion to how many Christians “felt betrayed by their pastors.” That trend looks to be holding steady. More people will leave churches that refuse to identify with a tribe and will find pastors who confirm their own partisan views. The erosion of confidence in the institution of American Christianity will accelerate. The caricature of evangelicals will get uglier. And the actual work of evangelizing will get much, much harder.
God isn’t biting his fingernails. But I sure am
How Politics Poisoned the Evangelical Church
Tim Alberta, The Atlantic 5.10.22
The movement spent 40 years at war with secular America. Now it’s at war with itself.
Having grown up as the son of a senior pastor, I’ve spent my life watching evangelicalism morph from a spiritual disposition into a political identity. It’s heartbreaking. So many people who love the Lord, who give their time and money to the poor and the mourning and the persecuted, have been reduced to a caricature. But I understand why. Evangelicals—including my own father—became compulsively political, allowing specific ethical arguments to snowball into full-blown partisan advocacy, often in ways that distracted from their mission of evangelizing for Christ. To his credit, even when my dad would lean hard into a political debate, he was careful to remind his church of the appropriate Christian perspective. “God doesn’t bite his fingernails over any of this,” he would say around election time. “Neither should you.”
Brighton, Michigan is a small town, and I knew the local evangelical scene like it was a second reporting beat. I knew which pastors were feuding; whose congregations were mired in scandal; which church softball teams had a deacon playing shortstop, and which ones stacked their lineups with non-tithing ringers. But FloodGate Church? I had never heard of FloodGate. And neither had most of the people sitting around me, until recently.
For a decade, Pastor Bolin preached to a crowd of about 100 on a typical Sunday. Then came Easter 2020, when Bolin announced that he would hold indoor worship services in defiance of Michigan’s emergency shutdown orders. As word got around the conservative suburbs of
Detroit, Bolin became a minor celebrity. Local politicians and activists borrowed his pulpit. FloodGate’s attendance soared as members of other congregations defected to the small roadside church. By Easter 2021, FloodGate was hosting 1,500 people every weekend.
Listening to Bolin that morning, I kept thinking about another pastor nearby, one who approached his job very differently: Ken Brown. Brown leads his own ministry, Community Bible Church, in the Detroit suburb of Trenton. I got to know him during the 2020 presidential campaign. Brown wrote to me explaining the combustible dynamics within the evangelical Church and describing his own efforts—as the conservative pastor of a conservative congregation—to keep his members from being radicalized by the lies of media figures.
When we finally met, in the spring of 2021, Brown told me his alarm had only grown. “The crisis for the Church is a crisis of discernment,” he said over lunch. “Discernment” (one’s basic ability to separate truth from untruth) “is a core biblical discipline. And many Christians are not
practicing it.” A stocky man with steely blue eyes and a subdued, matter-of-fact tone, Brown struck me as thoroughly disheartened. The pastor said his concern was not simply for his congregation of 300, but for the millions of American evangelicals who had come to value power
over integrity, the ephemeral over the eternal, moral relativism over bright lines of right and wrong. He made a compelling case.
But in leading their predominantly white, Republican congregations, Brown and Bolin have come to agree on one important thing: Both pastors believe there is a war for the soul of the American Church—and both have decided they cannot stand on the sidelines. They aren’t alone. To many evangelicals today, the enemy is no longer secular America, but their fellow Christians, people who hold the same faith but different beliefs.
How did this happen? For generations, white evangelicals have cultivated a narrative pitting courageous, God-fearing Christians against a wicked society that wants to expunge the Almighty from public life. Having convinced so many evangelicals that the next election could trigger the nation’s demise, Christian leaders effectively turned thousands of churches into loosely organized, hazily defined, existentially urgent movement — the types of places where paranoia and falsehoods flourish and people turn on one another. “Hands down, the biggest challenge facing the Church right now is the misinformation and disinformation coming in from the outside,” Brown said.
Because of this, the pastor told me, he can no longer justify a passive approach from the pulpit. The Church is becoming radicalized—and pastors who don’t address this fact head-on are only contributing to the problem. He understands their reluctance. They would rather keep the peace than risk alienating anyone. The irony, Brown said, is that by pretending that a clash of Christian worldviews isn’t happening, these pastors risk losing credibility with members who can see it unfolding inside their own church.
If this is a tale of two churches, it is also the tale of churches everywhere. It’s the story of millions of American Christians who, after a lifetime spent considering their political affiliations in the context of their faith, are now considering their faith affiliations in the context of their politics.
The first piece of scripture I memorized as a child is from Paul’s second letter to the early Church in Corinth, Greece. As with most of his letters, the apostle was addressing dysfunction and breakage in the community of believers. “We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is
unseen,” Paul wrote. “Since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” Paul’s admonishment of the early Church contains no real ambiguity. Followers of Jesus are to orient themselves toward his enduring promise of salvation, and away from the fleeting troubles of
humanity.
The nation’s largest denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, is bleeding members because of ferocious infighting over race relations, women serving in leadership, accountability for sexual misconduct, and other issues. The United Methodist Church, America’s second-largest
denomination, is headed toward imminent divorce over irreconcilable social and ideological divisions. Smaller denominations are losing affiliate churches as pastors and congregations break from their leadership over many of the same cultural flash points, choosing independence over associating with those who do not hold their views.
Christianity has traditionally been seen as a stabilizing, even moderating, influence on American life. In 1975, more than two-thirds of Americans expressed “a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the church,” according to Gallup, and as of 1985, “organized religion was the most revered institution” in American life. Today, Gallup reports, just 37 percent of Americans have confidence in the Church. This downward spiral owes principally to two phenomena: the constant stench of scandal, with megachurches and prominent leaders imploding on what seems like a weekly basis; and the growing perception that Christians are embracing extremist views.
Meanwhile, other pastors feel trapped. One stray remark could split their congregation, or even cost them their job. Yet a strictly apolitical approach can be counterproductive; their unwillingness to engage only invites more scrutiny. The whisper campaigns brand conservative
pastors as moderate, and moderate pastors as Marxists. In this environment, a church leader’s stance on biblical inerrancy is less important than whether he is considered “woke.” His command of scripture is less relevant than suspicions about how he voted in the last election.
More than a few times, I’ve heard casual talk of civil war inside places that purport to worship the Prince of Peace. If this all sounds a bit strange—ominous, or even “dangerous,” as one local pastor warned me the night before I visited—well, sure. But strange compared to what? Having spent my entire life in and around the evangelical Church, I had in recent years become desensitized to all the rhetoric of militarism and imminent Armageddon.
In a sense, Christians have always lived a different epistemological existence than nonbelievers. But this is something new. But what is left to hold together? When I visited, Aldersgate church—an elegant structure with room for 500 in the sanctuary—was hosting maybe 150 people total across two Sunday services. Pastor Bingham is proud to say that he hasn’t driven anyone away with his political views. Still, membership has been in decline for years, in part because so many Christians today gravitate toward the places that are outspokenly aligned with their extra-biblical beliefs. For all their talk of keeping Aldersgate unified, the two pastors acknowledged that in a few years’ time, they would belong to different churches. The same went for their members.
When I met with some of the longest-tenured laypeople of the church, almost everyone indicated that when the UMC divorce was finalized, they would follow the church that reflected their political views. It didn’t matter that doing so meant, in some cases, walking away from the
church they’d attended for decades.
“What’s coming is going to be brutal. There’s no way around that,” Bingham told me. “Churches are breaking apart everywhere. My only hope is that, when the time comes, our people can separate without shattering.” Ken Brown knows plenty of pastors like Bingham, who refuse to
talk about the very things tearing their churches apart. He knows they have their reasons. Some don’t know what to say. Others fear that speaking up would only make matters worse. Almost everyone is concerned about job security. Pastors are not immune from anxiety over their mortgage or kids’ college tuitions; many younger clergy members, in particular, worry that they haven’t amassed enough goodwill to get argumentative with their congregation.
Bolin tells me the church has sold the building we’re sitting in—where the congregation has met since the 1970s—and purchased a sprawling complex down the road. The pastor says FloodGate’s revenue has multiplied six-fold since 2020. It is charging ahead into an era of expansion, with ambitions of becoming southeast Michigan’s next megachurch.
Bolin says FloodGate and churches like it have grown in direct proportion to how many Christians “felt betrayed by their pastors.” That trend looks to be holding steady. More people will leave churches that refuse to identify with a tribe and will find pastors who confirm their own partisan views. The erosion of confidence in the institution of American Christianity will accelerate. The caricature of evangelicals will get uglier. And the actual work of evangelizing will get much, much harder.
God isn’t biting his fingernails. But I sure am
Tuesday, September 13
Ever wonder why bankruptcy says on one's credit report for seven years? Why not five or nine? There is a Biblical principle of the Year of Jubilee where one's debts are wiped out after 7 years.
The discussion topic for next week ties in debt and shame in an interesting, if not controversial, way. Throw in some Biblical understanding of both and, well, it will be an interesting discussion.
Debtors, Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose but Your Shame
Astra Taylor, NY Times 9.6.22
Conversations about debt are never purely about economics. They are always, also, conversations about power, morality and shame. The debate over President Biden’s student loan relief plan is no exception.
Immediately after the initiative was announced, opponents of debt cancellation began denouncing “slacker baristas,” overeducated Ivy League lawyers and impractical “lesbian dance theory” majors. Immune to accusations of hypocrisy, Republican members of Congress who had received hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars in federal relief castigated student
debtors who might receive $10,000 to $20,000 in aid.
It was a stark reminder that shame, like wealth, is not evenly distributed in our society. For working-class people, insolvency is often seen as a sign of profligacy and personal irresponsibility, while large corporations and the wealthy routinely walk away from their obligations and are celebrated as savvy for doing so. Debts are, first and foremost, financial burdens. But most people in arrears must shoulder a boulder of shame, as well. This is the factor most commentary about Mr. Biden’s student debt relief plan has missed.
The mass cancellation of federal student loans will not only remove a crushing economic weight for tens of millions of people, it will lift a significant emotional one, too. This psychological shift could, in turn, have further political implications, by emboldening those who find their
obligations overwhelming to engage in collective action aimed at winning more relief and changing the policies that make indebtedness so pervasive.
To understand what a pivotal moment this is, we must first appreciate just how profoundly the moral decks are usually stacked against regular debtors. Even the seemingly innocuous phrase “loan forgiveness” implies culpability and blame, when in reality the majority of debtors are
simply struggling to make ends meet — a problem likely to be most acute for Black and brown people, who tend to lack family wealth and access to credit on fair terms.
Why is our society so invested in steeping debtors in shame? The answer lies in debt’s role as a core building block of our economy and unequal social order. Debt is wrapped around every necessity of life: We use credit to make daily purchases and pay for medical care, take out mortgages, finance our cars, and borrow for college; cities and states issue debt to pay for roads and schools. Monthly repayments are often a form of wealth transfer to the affluent investors who hold these debts as assets, fueling inequality.
If debt is a dual source of profit and power, shame is its handmaiden. Shame isolates and divides, making class solidarity more difficult. The kneejerk anger at the idea of student debt cancellation in some circles, while ostensibly about fairness, reflects the common though misguided view that when one persons gains, another loses. Imagining a zero-sum game, some ask why student loans were eliminated and not, say, medical debt — a reasonable question. But medical debt, too, should be erased, as a way to ease the unjust financial hardship that getting hurt or sick often entails. For example, Mr. Biden could, and should, take executive action to cancel all medical debt owed to veterans hospitals.
Meanwhile, the fever pitch of opposition to debt cancellation among conservative and centrist elites reflects a different fear: that debt’s utility as an instrument of social control may be weakening. Consider the reaction of Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, to Mr.
Biden’s cancellation news: “Student loan forgiveness undermines one of our military’s greatest recruitment tools at a time of dangerously low enlistments.” Student debt, or the fear of it, pushes people into certain careers and limits their life choices.
No wonder soaring student debt became a catalyst for protest, though only after borrowers began to overcome their shame. Under pressure from a growing coalition that traces its origins directly to the Occupy Wall Street movement a decade ago, Mr. Biden was forced to act — an outcome that is all the more remarkable given his previous allegiances. When he was a senator from Delaware, which is home to the nation’s biggest issuers of credit cards, Mr. Biden tended to side with lenders over debtors. He was a driving force behind the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which made it harder for distressed borrowers to discharge their student loans. Now, Mr. Biden appears to be switching sides in time for the midterm elections.
Tweeting moving stories from people eligible to receive loan cancellation, he seemed as though he were hosting a debtors’ assembly — an Occupy-inspired forum where people share their financial tribulations out loud, thus transforming burdens of shame into bonds of empowerment — in the Oval Office.
The president’s actions are certainly a break with the political status quo, but they are not unprecedented. In his groundbreaking work on debt, my friend, the anthropologist David Graeber, reported on the periodic debt amnesties, or “jubilees,” of the ancient world. Seeking to quell unrest, Sumerian and Babylonian kings periodically wiped away debts and liberated people from peonage, often over the objections of creditors. The Code of Hammurabi, written around 1750 B.C., proclaims that if a “storm wipes out the grain, or the harvest fails, or the grain does not grow for lack of water, in that year he need not give his creditor any grain in payment.” For these leaders, debt relief had little to do with the guilt of individual debtors. Jubilees were a practical way to recover from crises and avert societal collapse. Now, as then, inequality and insolvency imperil economic and political stability. Wiping the slate restores balance.
Many of today’s debtors have more in common with unlucky Mesopotamian farmers, subject to forces beyond their control, than it may initially appear. In a society where the federal minimum wage is stuck at $7.25, public services are paltry, and racial and gender discrimination run
rampant, a majority of Americans have no choice but to borrow to make ends meet. Where student loans are concerned, the steady erosion of state funding for higher education, and the resultant debt-for-degree system, is to blame, not individual borrowers.
Prominent critics of Mr. Biden’s plan have pointed out that granting relief this once will not permanently solve the student debt crisis nor the attendant problem of rising college costs, and here they are correct. The only permanent solution to the problem of runaway student debt is to make public education free for all (a model that was relatively common in the United States a few generations ago, which is why so many older people graduated debt-free). Only then can students who lack wealth avoid indenturing themselves for the chance to learn.
Though I believe Mr. Biden’s plan is inadequate in terms of the monetary relief it offers, his actions have already dealt a blow to debt’s symbolic, shame-inducing power. Everyone now knows federal student loans can be canceled with the flick of a president’s pen. And instead of feeling guilty and unworthy, millions of regular people suddenly feel entitled to relief, an entitlement previously reserved only for society’s elites.
Hundreds of millions of people are not in debt because they are immoral and live beyond their means, but because they are denied the means to live. Debt jubilees are part of righting this wrong, but as Mr. Biden’s student debt relief plan shows, they won’t happen unless debtors rise up and demand them. The first step is abolishing the shame that makes us reluctant to fight for what we deserve.
The discussion topic for next week ties in debt and shame in an interesting, if not controversial, way. Throw in some Biblical understanding of both and, well, it will be an interesting discussion.
Debtors, Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose but Your Shame
Astra Taylor, NY Times 9.6.22
Conversations about debt are never purely about economics. They are always, also, conversations about power, morality and shame. The debate over President Biden’s student loan relief plan is no exception.
Immediately after the initiative was announced, opponents of debt cancellation began denouncing “slacker baristas,” overeducated Ivy League lawyers and impractical “lesbian dance theory” majors. Immune to accusations of hypocrisy, Republican members of Congress who had received hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars in federal relief castigated student
debtors who might receive $10,000 to $20,000 in aid.
It was a stark reminder that shame, like wealth, is not evenly distributed in our society. For working-class people, insolvency is often seen as a sign of profligacy and personal irresponsibility, while large corporations and the wealthy routinely walk away from their obligations and are celebrated as savvy for doing so. Debts are, first and foremost, financial burdens. But most people in arrears must shoulder a boulder of shame, as well. This is the factor most commentary about Mr. Biden’s student debt relief plan has missed.
The mass cancellation of federal student loans will not only remove a crushing economic weight for tens of millions of people, it will lift a significant emotional one, too. This psychological shift could, in turn, have further political implications, by emboldening those who find their
obligations overwhelming to engage in collective action aimed at winning more relief and changing the policies that make indebtedness so pervasive.
To understand what a pivotal moment this is, we must first appreciate just how profoundly the moral decks are usually stacked against regular debtors. Even the seemingly innocuous phrase “loan forgiveness” implies culpability and blame, when in reality the majority of debtors are
simply struggling to make ends meet — a problem likely to be most acute for Black and brown people, who tend to lack family wealth and access to credit on fair terms.
Why is our society so invested in steeping debtors in shame? The answer lies in debt’s role as a core building block of our economy and unequal social order. Debt is wrapped around every necessity of life: We use credit to make daily purchases and pay for medical care, take out mortgages, finance our cars, and borrow for college; cities and states issue debt to pay for roads and schools. Monthly repayments are often a form of wealth transfer to the affluent investors who hold these debts as assets, fueling inequality.
If debt is a dual source of profit and power, shame is its handmaiden. Shame isolates and divides, making class solidarity more difficult. The kneejerk anger at the idea of student debt cancellation in some circles, while ostensibly about fairness, reflects the common though misguided view that when one persons gains, another loses. Imagining a zero-sum game, some ask why student loans were eliminated and not, say, medical debt — a reasonable question. But medical debt, too, should be erased, as a way to ease the unjust financial hardship that getting hurt or sick often entails. For example, Mr. Biden could, and should, take executive action to cancel all medical debt owed to veterans hospitals.
Meanwhile, the fever pitch of opposition to debt cancellation among conservative and centrist elites reflects a different fear: that debt’s utility as an instrument of social control may be weakening. Consider the reaction of Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, to Mr.
Biden’s cancellation news: “Student loan forgiveness undermines one of our military’s greatest recruitment tools at a time of dangerously low enlistments.” Student debt, or the fear of it, pushes people into certain careers and limits their life choices.
No wonder soaring student debt became a catalyst for protest, though only after borrowers began to overcome their shame. Under pressure from a growing coalition that traces its origins directly to the Occupy Wall Street movement a decade ago, Mr. Biden was forced to act — an outcome that is all the more remarkable given his previous allegiances. When he was a senator from Delaware, which is home to the nation’s biggest issuers of credit cards, Mr. Biden tended to side with lenders over debtors. He was a driving force behind the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which made it harder for distressed borrowers to discharge their student loans. Now, Mr. Biden appears to be switching sides in time for the midterm elections.
Tweeting moving stories from people eligible to receive loan cancellation, he seemed as though he were hosting a debtors’ assembly — an Occupy-inspired forum where people share their financial tribulations out loud, thus transforming burdens of shame into bonds of empowerment — in the Oval Office.
The president’s actions are certainly a break with the political status quo, but they are not unprecedented. In his groundbreaking work on debt, my friend, the anthropologist David Graeber, reported on the periodic debt amnesties, or “jubilees,” of the ancient world. Seeking to quell unrest, Sumerian and Babylonian kings periodically wiped away debts and liberated people from peonage, often over the objections of creditors. The Code of Hammurabi, written around 1750 B.C., proclaims that if a “storm wipes out the grain, or the harvest fails, or the grain does not grow for lack of water, in that year he need not give his creditor any grain in payment.” For these leaders, debt relief had little to do with the guilt of individual debtors. Jubilees were a practical way to recover from crises and avert societal collapse. Now, as then, inequality and insolvency imperil economic and political stability. Wiping the slate restores balance.
Many of today’s debtors have more in common with unlucky Mesopotamian farmers, subject to forces beyond their control, than it may initially appear. In a society where the federal minimum wage is stuck at $7.25, public services are paltry, and racial and gender discrimination run
rampant, a majority of Americans have no choice but to borrow to make ends meet. Where student loans are concerned, the steady erosion of state funding for higher education, and the resultant debt-for-degree system, is to blame, not individual borrowers.
Prominent critics of Mr. Biden’s plan have pointed out that granting relief this once will not permanently solve the student debt crisis nor the attendant problem of rising college costs, and here they are correct. The only permanent solution to the problem of runaway student debt is to make public education free for all (a model that was relatively common in the United States a few generations ago, which is why so many older people graduated debt-free). Only then can students who lack wealth avoid indenturing themselves for the chance to learn.
Though I believe Mr. Biden’s plan is inadequate in terms of the monetary relief it offers, his actions have already dealt a blow to debt’s symbolic, shame-inducing power. Everyone now knows federal student loans can be canceled with the flick of a president’s pen. And instead of feeling guilty and unworthy, millions of regular people suddenly feel entitled to relief, an entitlement previously reserved only for society’s elites.
Hundreds of millions of people are not in debt because they are immoral and live beyond their means, but because they are denied the means to live. Debt jubilees are part of righting this wrong, but as Mr. Biden’s student debt relief plan shows, they won’t happen unless debtors rise up and demand them. The first step is abolishing the shame that makes us reluctant to fight for what we deserve.
Tuesday, September 6
For this week, we will discuss God and culture wars waged in God's name.
The God I Know is Not a Culture Warrior
Tish Harrison Warren, NY Times 8.14.22
Two Sundays ago, my church had a baptismal service. Baptisms at our church are a mixture of solemnity and unbridled glee, often full of laughter and tears of joy. Those who were being baptized or, in the case of infants, their parents, took vows to put their trust in God’s grace and love and to renounce spiritual darkness, evil and “all sinful desires that draw” us from the love of God. After the baptism, the kids in our service ran forward, giggling, trying to get sprayed with the baptismal water that our priest, Ryan, slung over the congregation as he called us to “remember your baptism.”
On that Sunday, Ryan invited anyone else who wanted to get baptized to let him know. To my surprise, after the service ended and we were all mingling, two more people approached Ryan and asked if they could also get baptized. So after a short conversation with them, he hollered for the congregation to regather and, then and there, two others joined our ranks through baptism. People cheered and applauded as they emerged from the water. I left that service feeling pensive, grateful and in awe of the beauty of God and human lives.
I have thought of that incandescent Sunday a lot the past couple of weeks because there is a perplexing difference between the way we celebrated God that morning and the way I typically hear God discussed online and in our broader cultural discourse.
The God of that baptismal service is one of joy, kindness and peace. The God I often hear about in American politics, in the news and on Twitter is one of cultural division and bickering. The God of that Sunday service seemed powerful and holy, yet gentle and beautiful. The God in our cultural discourse seems impotent and irrelevant, a mostly sociological phenomenon related to political posturing and power plays.
In the news and on social media, God usually shows up when we are fighting about something.
The subject of faith seems most often discussed in conversations about voting patterns and campaigning. God appears in our public discourse when Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, calls for Christian nationalism. Or in Twitter debates about whether a coach should publicly pray on the 50-yard line. Or when the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Kandiss Taylor painted “Jesus, guns, babies” on the side of her campaign bus.
It’s not that I think God has no place in politics or public discussions. Faith touches all areas of life, and issues such as abortion, religious liberty and the relationship between church and state are important. But when we primarily talk about God in the context of political or ideological
debate, believers’ actual experience of God, worship and faith — not to mention spiritual virtues like humility, gratitude and kindness — often gets lost. God becomes merely another pawn in the culture wars, a means to a political end, a meme to own our opponents online or an accessory donned like a power tie.
I mentioned my growing frustrations over how we discuss faith in public to my friend Michael Wear, who worked on faith-based initiatives under President Barack Obama. Drawing from the work of the Yale University professor Stephen Carter, Michael made a helpful distinction
between discussing faith publicly and “taking God’s name in vain” in politics. “It’s the manipulation that matters,” he told me. It’s the “disingenuousness of so much religious discourse in politics” that tends to cheapen our spiritual lives, beliefs and experiences.
There are no bright lines here. It’s not always clear when we are honestly explaining how our heartfelt convictions play out in the public square and when we are “taking God’s name in vain.” Still, on the left, on the right and in my own life at times, I’ve witnessed a subtle shift where the
language of God is used to score points or to grandstand. I’ve seen God flattened into an amalgam of hot takes and personal branding, in ways that seem to track with the increasingly performative nature of politics writ large. Algorithms and mediums that reward shallowness,
rage and spectacle inevitably shape how we, as a culture and as individuals, discuss faith. And the ways we habitually hear God discussed inevitably shape who we understand God to be.
But how do we repair the damage done? What would truthful, humble and robust public religious discourse look like?
For starters, we must speak proactively and vulnerably about our faith, instead of only in reaction to the latest hot-button issue. There are questions that haunt every human life: How does one know what is true and false, right or wrong? Is there a God? If there is, can we interact with him, her or it? If so, how? Can God speak to us? Can God say no to us? What are our obligations to God and to other human beings? How can we have joy? How can we live well? How can we be wise?
Whether one thinks of oneself as religious or not, unprovable and value-laden assumptions about truth and meaning drive our lives, including our politics. Yet these often go unacknowledged. Engaging with the presuppositions and beliefs underneath the loudest cultural debates of our moment helps us more fully understand the crux of issues, our true points of disagreement and our common humanity.
Most people’s experience of faith is far more personal, rich, important and meaningful than can be summed up in our political sparring. We must keep this in mind when writing on, debating or discussing religion and spirituality. Part of the purpose of this newsletter is to preserve space to examine not only faith in public life but also how spiritual practices quietly mold us, our communities and our days.
Churches and other religious groups must continually highlight how our traditions address pressing issues that will never trend on Twitter or dominate political debates: problems like loneliness, despair, conflict in families, disappointment, grief, longing, loss and those all-too-human anxieties and insecurities that keep us up at night.
On a more personal note, sometimes I have to retreat from larger media debates over politics and theology to preserve the honest, tender and fragile heart of faith in my own life.
I often quote the fifth-century ascetic Diadochos of Photiki, who seems shockingly contemporary in our time of smartphones and social media. “When the door of the steam baths is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escapes through it,” he wrote. “Likewise the soul, in its desire to say many things, dissipates its remembrance of God through the door of speech.”
Sometimes, in order to retain a “remembrance of God,” I have to take a break from our societal discourse around faith, which can minimize who I imagine God to be. Practices like gathered worship, silence, reading the Scriptures and prayer remind me that if God is real, there are far more interesting, lasting and confounding things about God than what can be captured in our
public discourse.
The people who showed up to church two weeks ago and those who decided to be baptized that day were after something. They were searching for beauty, for truth, for a reality greater than can be summed up in words — or in voting patterns or in the antics of politicians. And the quest for that greater reality must also inform how we talk about faith in public life.
The God I Know is Not a Culture Warrior
Tish Harrison Warren, NY Times 8.14.22
Two Sundays ago, my church had a baptismal service. Baptisms at our church are a mixture of solemnity and unbridled glee, often full of laughter and tears of joy. Those who were being baptized or, in the case of infants, their parents, took vows to put their trust in God’s grace and love and to renounce spiritual darkness, evil and “all sinful desires that draw” us from the love of God. After the baptism, the kids in our service ran forward, giggling, trying to get sprayed with the baptismal water that our priest, Ryan, slung over the congregation as he called us to “remember your baptism.”
On that Sunday, Ryan invited anyone else who wanted to get baptized to let him know. To my surprise, after the service ended and we were all mingling, two more people approached Ryan and asked if they could also get baptized. So after a short conversation with them, he hollered for the congregation to regather and, then and there, two others joined our ranks through baptism. People cheered and applauded as they emerged from the water. I left that service feeling pensive, grateful and in awe of the beauty of God and human lives.
I have thought of that incandescent Sunday a lot the past couple of weeks because there is a perplexing difference between the way we celebrated God that morning and the way I typically hear God discussed online and in our broader cultural discourse.
The God of that baptismal service is one of joy, kindness and peace. The God I often hear about in American politics, in the news and on Twitter is one of cultural division and bickering. The God of that Sunday service seemed powerful and holy, yet gentle and beautiful. The God in our cultural discourse seems impotent and irrelevant, a mostly sociological phenomenon related to political posturing and power plays.
In the news and on social media, God usually shows up when we are fighting about something.
The subject of faith seems most often discussed in conversations about voting patterns and campaigning. God appears in our public discourse when Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, calls for Christian nationalism. Or in Twitter debates about whether a coach should publicly pray on the 50-yard line. Or when the former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Kandiss Taylor painted “Jesus, guns, babies” on the side of her campaign bus.
It’s not that I think God has no place in politics or public discussions. Faith touches all areas of life, and issues such as abortion, religious liberty and the relationship between church and state are important. But when we primarily talk about God in the context of political or ideological
debate, believers’ actual experience of God, worship and faith — not to mention spiritual virtues like humility, gratitude and kindness — often gets lost. God becomes merely another pawn in the culture wars, a means to a political end, a meme to own our opponents online or an accessory donned like a power tie.
I mentioned my growing frustrations over how we discuss faith in public to my friend Michael Wear, who worked on faith-based initiatives under President Barack Obama. Drawing from the work of the Yale University professor Stephen Carter, Michael made a helpful distinction
between discussing faith publicly and “taking God’s name in vain” in politics. “It’s the manipulation that matters,” he told me. It’s the “disingenuousness of so much religious discourse in politics” that tends to cheapen our spiritual lives, beliefs and experiences.
There are no bright lines here. It’s not always clear when we are honestly explaining how our heartfelt convictions play out in the public square and when we are “taking God’s name in vain.” Still, on the left, on the right and in my own life at times, I’ve witnessed a subtle shift where the
language of God is used to score points or to grandstand. I’ve seen God flattened into an amalgam of hot takes and personal branding, in ways that seem to track with the increasingly performative nature of politics writ large. Algorithms and mediums that reward shallowness,
rage and spectacle inevitably shape how we, as a culture and as individuals, discuss faith. And the ways we habitually hear God discussed inevitably shape who we understand God to be.
But how do we repair the damage done? What would truthful, humble and robust public religious discourse look like?
For starters, we must speak proactively and vulnerably about our faith, instead of only in reaction to the latest hot-button issue. There are questions that haunt every human life: How does one know what is true and false, right or wrong? Is there a God? If there is, can we interact with him, her or it? If so, how? Can God speak to us? Can God say no to us? What are our obligations to God and to other human beings? How can we have joy? How can we live well? How can we be wise?
Whether one thinks of oneself as religious or not, unprovable and value-laden assumptions about truth and meaning drive our lives, including our politics. Yet these often go unacknowledged. Engaging with the presuppositions and beliefs underneath the loudest cultural debates of our moment helps us more fully understand the crux of issues, our true points of disagreement and our common humanity.
Most people’s experience of faith is far more personal, rich, important and meaningful than can be summed up in our political sparring. We must keep this in mind when writing on, debating or discussing religion and spirituality. Part of the purpose of this newsletter is to preserve space to examine not only faith in public life but also how spiritual practices quietly mold us, our communities and our days.
Churches and other religious groups must continually highlight how our traditions address pressing issues that will never trend on Twitter or dominate political debates: problems like loneliness, despair, conflict in families, disappointment, grief, longing, loss and those all-too-human anxieties and insecurities that keep us up at night.
On a more personal note, sometimes I have to retreat from larger media debates over politics and theology to preserve the honest, tender and fragile heart of faith in my own life.
I often quote the fifth-century ascetic Diadochos of Photiki, who seems shockingly contemporary in our time of smartphones and social media. “When the door of the steam baths is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escapes through it,” he wrote. “Likewise the soul, in its desire to say many things, dissipates its remembrance of God through the door of speech.”
Sometimes, in order to retain a “remembrance of God,” I have to take a break from our societal discourse around faith, which can minimize who I imagine God to be. Practices like gathered worship, silence, reading the Scriptures and prayer remind me that if God is real, there are far more interesting, lasting and confounding things about God than what can be captured in our
public discourse.
The people who showed up to church two weeks ago and those who decided to be baptized that day were after something. They were searching for beauty, for truth, for a reality greater than can be summed up in words — or in voting patterns or in the antics of politicians. And the quest for that greater reality must also inform how we talk about faith in public life.
Tuesday, August 30
For our discussion tomorrow, the author of the topic, The Rot at the Core, Dennis "Mitch" Maley, will be joining the conversation via Zoom.
For the Women's Discussion Group - you are all invited Tuesday for this special event. We will still have the Women's Discussion Group on Wednesday; but, I wanted to make sure you had the opportunity to discuss the article with Mitch.
The Rot at the Core
Dennis “Mitch” Maley, The Bradenton Times 8.21.22
For the past couple of months, I’ve been deeply immersed in political race analyses followed by a much-needed vacation, which I spent helping my son drive his car across the country to Los Angeles. Road tripping through lower Americana while receiving regular updates on the state of Manatee County government made for an interesting perspective. As we head into Tuesday’s elections, this seemed like a good time to reflect on all of it.
One of the most disturbing elements of barnstorming across the I-10 corridor was the realization that every state we drove through felt just as broken, divided, and in need of a reboot as home. In fact, the most surprising takeaway may have been that good old Flori-duh, might not be as bat-shxx crazy as I had imagined. Either that, or the entire South had finally caught up. Perhaps it’s the climate. I’ve long held a theory that our brand of madness is largely owed to people of European ancestry putting down roots in a climate not suited for their blood, and the one thing that was constant from coast to coast for the two weeks we were out was that it was blisteringly hot everywhere.
The first stop was New Orleans, our long-time home away from home. In retrospect, it provided the most comfort in terms of familiarity. Governed by a famously corrupt ruling class, the infrastructure is still crumbling, potholes are still large enough to swallow compact cars, and
there are still more dangerous to downright deadly areas per square mile than any city not named Chicago. In other words, it has managed to maintain its downward trajectory, which is more than I can say for most places over the past five to ten years. The jazz music still rings in the air, the food culture is still the best in the United States, and, as long as you don’t get stabbed in the gut for pocket change and your iPhone, you can have a good time at a reasonable expense.
Most of the rest of the long drive across God’s Country seemed to have maintained its balance of old-fashioned (frighteningly) religious conservatism and run-of-the-mill, grease the skids and divide up the pie, good-old-boy GOP politics that are only unique by way of the cowboy dress code and empty idioms that sound more profound through a Texas drawl. Nonetheless, the barbecue and margaritas remain unrivaled and I got to hear Marty Robbins’ El Paso at the one and only Rosa’s Cantina, so I’d be lying if I were to say it wasn’t my favorite trip to the Lone Star State.
On the heels of an epic drought, monsoon rains chased us across Texas all the way to Phoenix, where we did get enough dry weather for an afternoon trip to Tombstone and the OK Corral, where, about a decade back, I’d first had a shot of Old Overholt at a saloon once owned by Doc Holiday. Tombstone is remarkably well preserved and one of the few places where you can forget you are in the Divided States of America, at least until someone brings up politics.
Arizona on the whole, however, is deeply divided, and there were many stretches in which the billboards reminded you that it was a state in which people were urged to choose a side and choose wisely. The best part of the trip was losing cell phone service for the couple of days we
spent camping in Joshua Tree National Park. It’s surprising how much of your sanity can be recovered while unplugged from the machine with little more than some primitive camping gear, a cooler of cold ones, and some of the most stunningly-gorgeous natural scenery anywhere on
this big blue ball of mud.
By the third day, however, we were grateful for a hot shower and a cold pool in Palm Desert, where we stopped for a day before heading into Los Angeles for a week. When I was a young boy, LA was little more than a dream. In eastern Pennsylvania, New York City seemed like a real place. After all, you knew people who’d actually been there, and it was close enough to get to that even desperate circumstances never made it feel as though it were out of reach. Los Angeles, on the other hand, might as well have been Mars.
I can still recall lying in my bed, falling asleep to dreams of seeing the place where all of my favorite reran TV shows had been filmed. When I finally made my way out there in the late ‘90s, California did not fail to impress. I can vividly recall the majesty of the Queen Palms on the
Sunset Strip and the unrivaled views of the city lights from the Hollywood Hills, the spectacular scenes of cliffs abutting the ocean in Malibu, and the way it felt to see the famed Hollywood sign up close.
Sadly, I’ve been visiting for nearly a quarter century, and it’s mostly been a slow decline into the sort of place in which the word hellscape doesn’t seem like hyperbole. On so many streets, there are nearly as many squalid tents and decommissioned RVs that have been converted to homes as there are actual housing units. An enormous population of untreated schizophrenics terrorizes locals, along with the tourists still willing to slog through the filth and excrement for Instagram selfies at iconic landmarks. Parking lots across the city are littered with the shattered glass of automobile break-ins and everything from heroin needles to crack vials can be found in the gutter of just about any neighborhood that isn’t behind a large gate or wall.
The price for all of this bedlam doesn’t end with such intangibles. Gas was still between $5-6 a gallon, hotels were two to three times that of any other stop, and meals for two at even the most modest hamburger and pizza joints routinely topped $60. In other words, getting a close-up look at something akin to the fall of Rome doesn’t come cheap.
I realize that there’s much to be said by partisans on red vs. blue states or cities, but as someone who is sickened by both brands in our Coke and Pepsi political duopoly, I have to say that not much changed from place to place other than it was intensified as you got closer and closer to the best climate on the planet, a place where too many people want to live for our status quo of political graft and bureaucratic ineptitude to keep things tolerable, which leads me back to Manatee County and our great state of Florida.
The trip at large, along with all of the conversations with various locals that two traveling journalists were bound to encounter, made one thing crystal clear: polarizing and largely irrelevant culture war, partisan, and ideological nonsense remains at the forefront of our society, a thin veneer of paralyzing distraction that has rendered us incapable of administering even the most basic and essential elements of bureaucracy that are required of a free society. Some places are further along in the race toward the bottom, but we’ve all veered dangerously off course and our hatred for the opposition has left us all but blind to the thievery and corruption of those we hail as our saviors.
While I was away, our inept leadership gutted even more of what precious little remains in terms of institutional knowledge within our county government. Our can’t-get-out-of-his-own-way county administrator’s ego got him into yet another petty and unproductive squabble, while
accusations of yet another scandal within the Bradenton Police Department surfaced. Meanwhile, our so-called elected leaders put the bulk of their energy into campaigning against their colleagues, hoping they can assist their special interest paymasters in capturing all of the elected
offices so that they can not only get their way but do it without the affront of a dissenting voice at the dais.
On Tuesday, we’ll simply learn how much worse our county commission will get, and, as we head into November, there’s little indication that there will be much (if any) improvement, top to bottom in our state. Like every place I’ve visited over the past two weeks, the future doesn’t look great and the citizens who hold the key to systemic change seem no more up to the task than the politicians. The former are getting robbed and the latter are getting fat, yet it seems like all of those who've been looted are content to root for their thief. From sea to shining sea, we seem to be locked into a hopeless death spiral in which Americans do little more than point, scream, and shxx-post on social media.
If we’re to come back from the brink, I’m afraid it will require much, much more than that. I sincerely hope we prove up to the job, but I have to admit that I see little here or anywhere else to suggest that is the case. Wake up, America. The saviors are not wearing fancy suits and making empty promises from a soap box. No, the saviors are your friends and neighbors, and the fact that they sometimes hold different values and opinions does not make them your enemy.
Quite the opposite, our ideological diversity and ability to listen to a different viewpoint without disqualifying the person expressing it used to be one of our greatest strengths back in the days before they managed to pit us against each other quite so savagely.
For the Women's Discussion Group - you are all invited Tuesday for this special event. We will still have the Women's Discussion Group on Wednesday; but, I wanted to make sure you had the opportunity to discuss the article with Mitch.
The Rot at the Core
Dennis “Mitch” Maley, The Bradenton Times 8.21.22
For the past couple of months, I’ve been deeply immersed in political race analyses followed by a much-needed vacation, which I spent helping my son drive his car across the country to Los Angeles. Road tripping through lower Americana while receiving regular updates on the state of Manatee County government made for an interesting perspective. As we head into Tuesday’s elections, this seemed like a good time to reflect on all of it.
One of the most disturbing elements of barnstorming across the I-10 corridor was the realization that every state we drove through felt just as broken, divided, and in need of a reboot as home. In fact, the most surprising takeaway may have been that good old Flori-duh, might not be as bat-shxx crazy as I had imagined. Either that, or the entire South had finally caught up. Perhaps it’s the climate. I’ve long held a theory that our brand of madness is largely owed to people of European ancestry putting down roots in a climate not suited for their blood, and the one thing that was constant from coast to coast for the two weeks we were out was that it was blisteringly hot everywhere.
The first stop was New Orleans, our long-time home away from home. In retrospect, it provided the most comfort in terms of familiarity. Governed by a famously corrupt ruling class, the infrastructure is still crumbling, potholes are still large enough to swallow compact cars, and
there are still more dangerous to downright deadly areas per square mile than any city not named Chicago. In other words, it has managed to maintain its downward trajectory, which is more than I can say for most places over the past five to ten years. The jazz music still rings in the air, the food culture is still the best in the United States, and, as long as you don’t get stabbed in the gut for pocket change and your iPhone, you can have a good time at a reasonable expense.
Most of the rest of the long drive across God’s Country seemed to have maintained its balance of old-fashioned (frighteningly) religious conservatism and run-of-the-mill, grease the skids and divide up the pie, good-old-boy GOP politics that are only unique by way of the cowboy dress code and empty idioms that sound more profound through a Texas drawl. Nonetheless, the barbecue and margaritas remain unrivaled and I got to hear Marty Robbins’ El Paso at the one and only Rosa’s Cantina, so I’d be lying if I were to say it wasn’t my favorite trip to the Lone Star State.
On the heels of an epic drought, monsoon rains chased us across Texas all the way to Phoenix, where we did get enough dry weather for an afternoon trip to Tombstone and the OK Corral, where, about a decade back, I’d first had a shot of Old Overholt at a saloon once owned by Doc Holiday. Tombstone is remarkably well preserved and one of the few places where you can forget you are in the Divided States of America, at least until someone brings up politics.
Arizona on the whole, however, is deeply divided, and there were many stretches in which the billboards reminded you that it was a state in which people were urged to choose a side and choose wisely. The best part of the trip was losing cell phone service for the couple of days we
spent camping in Joshua Tree National Park. It’s surprising how much of your sanity can be recovered while unplugged from the machine with little more than some primitive camping gear, a cooler of cold ones, and some of the most stunningly-gorgeous natural scenery anywhere on
this big blue ball of mud.
By the third day, however, we were grateful for a hot shower and a cold pool in Palm Desert, where we stopped for a day before heading into Los Angeles for a week. When I was a young boy, LA was little more than a dream. In eastern Pennsylvania, New York City seemed like a real place. After all, you knew people who’d actually been there, and it was close enough to get to that even desperate circumstances never made it feel as though it were out of reach. Los Angeles, on the other hand, might as well have been Mars.
I can still recall lying in my bed, falling asleep to dreams of seeing the place where all of my favorite reran TV shows had been filmed. When I finally made my way out there in the late ‘90s, California did not fail to impress. I can vividly recall the majesty of the Queen Palms on the
Sunset Strip and the unrivaled views of the city lights from the Hollywood Hills, the spectacular scenes of cliffs abutting the ocean in Malibu, and the way it felt to see the famed Hollywood sign up close.
Sadly, I’ve been visiting for nearly a quarter century, and it’s mostly been a slow decline into the sort of place in which the word hellscape doesn’t seem like hyperbole. On so many streets, there are nearly as many squalid tents and decommissioned RVs that have been converted to homes as there are actual housing units. An enormous population of untreated schizophrenics terrorizes locals, along with the tourists still willing to slog through the filth and excrement for Instagram selfies at iconic landmarks. Parking lots across the city are littered with the shattered glass of automobile break-ins and everything from heroin needles to crack vials can be found in the gutter of just about any neighborhood that isn’t behind a large gate or wall.
The price for all of this bedlam doesn’t end with such intangibles. Gas was still between $5-6 a gallon, hotels were two to three times that of any other stop, and meals for two at even the most modest hamburger and pizza joints routinely topped $60. In other words, getting a close-up look at something akin to the fall of Rome doesn’t come cheap.
I realize that there’s much to be said by partisans on red vs. blue states or cities, but as someone who is sickened by both brands in our Coke and Pepsi political duopoly, I have to say that not much changed from place to place other than it was intensified as you got closer and closer to the best climate on the planet, a place where too many people want to live for our status quo of political graft and bureaucratic ineptitude to keep things tolerable, which leads me back to Manatee County and our great state of Florida.
The trip at large, along with all of the conversations with various locals that two traveling journalists were bound to encounter, made one thing crystal clear: polarizing and largely irrelevant culture war, partisan, and ideological nonsense remains at the forefront of our society, a thin veneer of paralyzing distraction that has rendered us incapable of administering even the most basic and essential elements of bureaucracy that are required of a free society. Some places are further along in the race toward the bottom, but we’ve all veered dangerously off course and our hatred for the opposition has left us all but blind to the thievery and corruption of those we hail as our saviors.
While I was away, our inept leadership gutted even more of what precious little remains in terms of institutional knowledge within our county government. Our can’t-get-out-of-his-own-way county administrator’s ego got him into yet another petty and unproductive squabble, while
accusations of yet another scandal within the Bradenton Police Department surfaced. Meanwhile, our so-called elected leaders put the bulk of their energy into campaigning against their colleagues, hoping they can assist their special interest paymasters in capturing all of the elected
offices so that they can not only get their way but do it without the affront of a dissenting voice at the dais.
On Tuesday, we’ll simply learn how much worse our county commission will get, and, as we head into November, there’s little indication that there will be much (if any) improvement, top to bottom in our state. Like every place I’ve visited over the past two weeks, the future doesn’t look great and the citizens who hold the key to systemic change seem no more up to the task than the politicians. The former are getting robbed and the latter are getting fat, yet it seems like all of those who've been looted are content to root for their thief. From sea to shining sea, we seem to be locked into a hopeless death spiral in which Americans do little more than point, scream, and shxx-post on social media.
If we’re to come back from the brink, I’m afraid it will require much, much more than that. I sincerely hope we prove up to the job, but I have to admit that I see little here or anywhere else to suggest that is the case. Wake up, America. The saviors are not wearing fancy suits and making empty promises from a soap box. No, the saviors are your friends and neighbors, and the fact that they sometimes hold different values and opinions does not make them your enemy.
Quite the opposite, our ideological diversity and ability to listen to a different viewpoint without disqualifying the person expressing it used to be one of our greatest strengths back in the days before they managed to pit us against each other quite so savagely.
Tuesday, August 23
How Extremist Gun Culture Is Trying to Co-opt the Rosary
Daniel Panneton, The Atlantic 8.14.22
Just as the AR-15 rifle has become a sacred object for Christian nationalists in general, the rosary has acquired a militaristic meaning for radical-traditional (or “rad trad”) Catholics. On this extremist fringe, rosary beads have been woven into a conspiratorial politics and absolutist gun culture. These armed radical traditionalists have taken up a spiritual notion that the rosary can be a weapon in the fight against evil and turned it into something dangerously literal.
Their social-media pages are saturated with images of rosaries draped over firearms, warriors in prayer, Deus Vult (“God wills it”) crusader memes, and exhortations for men to rise up and become Church Militants. Influencers on platforms such as Instagram share posts referencing
“everyday carry” and “gat check” (gat is slang for “firearm”) that include soldiers’ “battle beads,” handguns, and assault rifles. One artist posts illustrations of his favorite Catholic saints, clergy, and influencers toting AR-15-style rifles labeled sanctum rosarium alongside violently
homophobic screeds that are celebrated by social-media accounts with thousands of followers.
The theologian and historian Massimo Faggioli has described a network of conservative Catholic bloggers and commentary organizations as a “Catholic cyber-militia” that actively campaigns against LGBTQ acceptance in the Church. These rad-trad rosary-as-weapon memes represent a social-media diffusion of such messaging, and they work to integrate ultraconservative Catholicism with other aspects of online far-right culture. The phenomenon might be tempting to dismiss as mere trolling or merchandising, and ironical provocations based on traditionalist
Catholic symbols do exist, but the far right’s constellations of violent, racist, and homophobic online milieus are well documented for providing a pathway to radicalization and real-world terrorist attacks.
The rosary—in these hands—is anything but holy. But for millions of believers, the beads, which provide an aide-mémoire for a sequence of devotional prayers, are a widely recognized symbol of Catholicism and a source of strength. And many take genuine sustenance from Roman
Catholic theology’s concept of the Church Militant and the tradition of regarding the rosary as a weapon against Satan. As Pope Francis said in a 2020 address, “There is no path to holiness … without spiritual combat,” and Francis is only one of many Church officials who have endorsed
the idea of the rosary as an armament in that fight.
In mainstream Catholicism, the rosary-as-weapon is not an intrinsically harmful interpretation of the sacramental, and this symbolism has a long history. In the 1930s and ’40s, the ultramontane Catholic student publication Jeunesse Étudiante Catholique regularly used the concept to rally the faithful. But the modern radical-traditionalist Catholic movement—which generally rejects the Second Vatican Council’s reforms—is far outside the majority opinion in the Roman Catholic Church in America. Many prominent American Catholic bishops advocate for gun control, and after the Uvalde school shooting, Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas, lamented the way some Americans “sacralize death’s instruments.”
Militia culture, a fetishism of Western civilization, and masculinist anxieties have become mainstays of the far right in the U.S.—and rad-trad Catholics have now taken up residence in this company. Their social-media accounts commonly promote accelerationist and survivalist
content, along with combat-medical and tactical training, as well as memes depicting balaclava-clad gunmen that draw on the “terrorwave” or “warcore” aesthetic that is popular in far-right circles.
Like such networks, radical-traditional Catholics sustain their own cottage industry of goods and services that reinforces the radicalization. Rosaries are common among the merchandise on offer—some made of cartridge casings, and complete with gun-metal-finish crucifixes. One
Catholic online store, which describes itself as “dedicated to offering battle-ready products and manuals to ‘stand firm against the tactics of the devil’” (a New Testament reference), sells replicas of the rosaries issued to American soldiers during the First World War as “combat rosaries.” Discerning consumers can also buy a “concealed carry” permit for their combat rosary and a sacramental storage box resembling an ammunition can. In 2016, the pontifical Swiss Guard accepted a donation of combat rosaries; during a ceremony at the Vatican, their
commander described the gift as “the most powerful weapon that exists on the market.”
The militarism also glorifies a warrior mentality and notions of manliness and male strength. This conflation of the masculine and the military is rooted in wider anxieties about Catholic manhood—the idea that it is in crisis has some currency among senior Church figures and lay
organizations. In 2015, Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix issued an apostolic exhortation calling for a renewal of traditional conceptions of Catholic masculinity titled “Into the Breach,” which led the Knights of Columbus, an influential fraternal order, to produce a video series
promoting Olmsted’s ideas. But among radical-traditional Catholic men, such concerns take an extremist turn, rooted in fantasies of violently defending one’s family and church from marauders.
The rosary-as-weapon also gives rad-trad Catholic men both a distinctive signifier within Christian nationalism and a sort of membership pass to the movement. As the sociologists Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry note in Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States, Catholics used to be regarded as enemies by Christian nationalists, and anti-Catholic nativism runs deep in American history. Today, Catholics are a growing contingent of Christian nationalism.
Helping unite these former rivals is a quasi-theological doctrine of what Perry and another sociologist, Philip S. Gorski, have called “righteous violence” against political enemies regarded as demonic or satanic, be they secularists, progressives, or Jews. The hostility toward liberalism
and secularism inherent in traditionalist Catholicism is also pronounced within Christian nationalist circles. No longer stigmatized by evangelical nationalists, Catholic imagery now blends freely with staple alt-right memes that romanticize ancient Rome or idealize the
traditional patriarchal family.
Some doctrinal differences and divisions remain. Many radical-traditional Catholic men maintain the hardline position that other forms of Christianity are heretical, and hold that Catholics alone adhere to the one true Church. Christian nationalism’s nativism and its predilection for “Great Replacement” theory alienate some radical-traditional Catholics who are not white or who were not born in the United States, and deep veins of anti-Catholicism persist among far-right Protestants.
Yet the convergence within Christian nationalism is cemented in common causes such as hostility toward abortion-rights advocates. The pro-choice protests that followed the leaked early draft of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which
overturned Roe v. Wade, led to a profusion of social-media posts on the far-right fantasizing about killing activists, and such forums responded to Pride month this year with extremist homophobic and transphobic “groomer” discourse. Rad-trad networks are also involved in organizing rosary-branded events that involve weapons training.
Catholics are taught to love and forgive their enemies, that to do otherwise is a sin. But the extremist understanding of spiritual warfare overrides that command. To do battle with Satan—whose influence in the world is, according to Catholic demonology, real and menacing—is to
deploy violence for deliverance and redemption. The “battle beads” culture of spiritual warfare permits radical-traditional Catholics literally to demonize their political opponents and regard the use of armed force against them as sanctified. The sacramental rosary isn’t just a spiritual
weapon but one that comes with physical ammunition.
Daniel Panneton, The Atlantic 8.14.22
Just as the AR-15 rifle has become a sacred object for Christian nationalists in general, the rosary has acquired a militaristic meaning for radical-traditional (or “rad trad”) Catholics. On this extremist fringe, rosary beads have been woven into a conspiratorial politics and absolutist gun culture. These armed radical traditionalists have taken up a spiritual notion that the rosary can be a weapon in the fight against evil and turned it into something dangerously literal.
Their social-media pages are saturated with images of rosaries draped over firearms, warriors in prayer, Deus Vult (“God wills it”) crusader memes, and exhortations for men to rise up and become Church Militants. Influencers on platforms such as Instagram share posts referencing
“everyday carry” and “gat check” (gat is slang for “firearm”) that include soldiers’ “battle beads,” handguns, and assault rifles. One artist posts illustrations of his favorite Catholic saints, clergy, and influencers toting AR-15-style rifles labeled sanctum rosarium alongside violently
homophobic screeds that are celebrated by social-media accounts with thousands of followers.
The theologian and historian Massimo Faggioli has described a network of conservative Catholic bloggers and commentary organizations as a “Catholic cyber-militia” that actively campaigns against LGBTQ acceptance in the Church. These rad-trad rosary-as-weapon memes represent a social-media diffusion of such messaging, and they work to integrate ultraconservative Catholicism with other aspects of online far-right culture. The phenomenon might be tempting to dismiss as mere trolling or merchandising, and ironical provocations based on traditionalist
Catholic symbols do exist, but the far right’s constellations of violent, racist, and homophobic online milieus are well documented for providing a pathway to radicalization and real-world terrorist attacks.
The rosary—in these hands—is anything but holy. But for millions of believers, the beads, which provide an aide-mémoire for a sequence of devotional prayers, are a widely recognized symbol of Catholicism and a source of strength. And many take genuine sustenance from Roman
Catholic theology’s concept of the Church Militant and the tradition of regarding the rosary as a weapon against Satan. As Pope Francis said in a 2020 address, “There is no path to holiness … without spiritual combat,” and Francis is only one of many Church officials who have endorsed
the idea of the rosary as an armament in that fight.
In mainstream Catholicism, the rosary-as-weapon is not an intrinsically harmful interpretation of the sacramental, and this symbolism has a long history. In the 1930s and ’40s, the ultramontane Catholic student publication Jeunesse Étudiante Catholique regularly used the concept to rally the faithful. But the modern radical-traditionalist Catholic movement—which generally rejects the Second Vatican Council’s reforms—is far outside the majority opinion in the Roman Catholic Church in America. Many prominent American Catholic bishops advocate for gun control, and after the Uvalde school shooting, Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas, lamented the way some Americans “sacralize death’s instruments.”
Militia culture, a fetishism of Western civilization, and masculinist anxieties have become mainstays of the far right in the U.S.—and rad-trad Catholics have now taken up residence in this company. Their social-media accounts commonly promote accelerationist and survivalist
content, along with combat-medical and tactical training, as well as memes depicting balaclava-clad gunmen that draw on the “terrorwave” or “warcore” aesthetic that is popular in far-right circles.
Like such networks, radical-traditional Catholics sustain their own cottage industry of goods and services that reinforces the radicalization. Rosaries are common among the merchandise on offer—some made of cartridge casings, and complete with gun-metal-finish crucifixes. One
Catholic online store, which describes itself as “dedicated to offering battle-ready products and manuals to ‘stand firm against the tactics of the devil’” (a New Testament reference), sells replicas of the rosaries issued to American soldiers during the First World War as “combat rosaries.” Discerning consumers can also buy a “concealed carry” permit for their combat rosary and a sacramental storage box resembling an ammunition can. In 2016, the pontifical Swiss Guard accepted a donation of combat rosaries; during a ceremony at the Vatican, their
commander described the gift as “the most powerful weapon that exists on the market.”
The militarism also glorifies a warrior mentality and notions of manliness and male strength. This conflation of the masculine and the military is rooted in wider anxieties about Catholic manhood—the idea that it is in crisis has some currency among senior Church figures and lay
organizations. In 2015, Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix issued an apostolic exhortation calling for a renewal of traditional conceptions of Catholic masculinity titled “Into the Breach,” which led the Knights of Columbus, an influential fraternal order, to produce a video series
promoting Olmsted’s ideas. But among radical-traditional Catholic men, such concerns take an extremist turn, rooted in fantasies of violently defending one’s family and church from marauders.
The rosary-as-weapon also gives rad-trad Catholic men both a distinctive signifier within Christian nationalism and a sort of membership pass to the movement. As the sociologists Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry note in Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States, Catholics used to be regarded as enemies by Christian nationalists, and anti-Catholic nativism runs deep in American history. Today, Catholics are a growing contingent of Christian nationalism.
Helping unite these former rivals is a quasi-theological doctrine of what Perry and another sociologist, Philip S. Gorski, have called “righteous violence” against political enemies regarded as demonic or satanic, be they secularists, progressives, or Jews. The hostility toward liberalism
and secularism inherent in traditionalist Catholicism is also pronounced within Christian nationalist circles. No longer stigmatized by evangelical nationalists, Catholic imagery now blends freely with staple alt-right memes that romanticize ancient Rome or idealize the
traditional patriarchal family.
Some doctrinal differences and divisions remain. Many radical-traditional Catholic men maintain the hardline position that other forms of Christianity are heretical, and hold that Catholics alone adhere to the one true Church. Christian nationalism’s nativism and its predilection for “Great Replacement” theory alienate some radical-traditional Catholics who are not white or who were not born in the United States, and deep veins of anti-Catholicism persist among far-right Protestants.
Yet the convergence within Christian nationalism is cemented in common causes such as hostility toward abortion-rights advocates. The pro-choice protests that followed the leaked early draft of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which
overturned Roe v. Wade, led to a profusion of social-media posts on the far-right fantasizing about killing activists, and such forums responded to Pride month this year with extremist homophobic and transphobic “groomer” discourse. Rad-trad networks are also involved in organizing rosary-branded events that involve weapons training.
Catholics are taught to love and forgive their enemies, that to do otherwise is a sin. But the extremist understanding of spiritual warfare overrides that command. To do battle with Satan—whose influence in the world is, according to Catholic demonology, real and menacing—is to
deploy violence for deliverance and redemption. The “battle beads” culture of spiritual warfare permits radical-traditional Catholics literally to demonize their political opponents and regard the use of armed force against them as sanctified. The sacramental rosary isn’t just a spiritual
weapon but one that comes with physical ammunition.
Tuesday, August 16
A Moment of Grace in a Season of Pain
David French, The Atlantic 7.29.22
Earlier this week I witnessed a moment that brought tears to my eyes, exposed the immense amount of hurt that lies just beneath the surface of American life, and demonstrated the necessity of grace. It involved my wife, Nancy. A local Christian college called Williamson College
invited her to speak to students on the topic of “loving your enemies.” The inspiration for the talk was a story she wrote for the Washington Examiner last December.
Nancy was slightly apprehensive before the speech. The last time she’d visited a local Christian college, a man rushed up to her after she had been honored in the college’s chapel, got in her face, and yelled “[Forget] you and your husband. You’re ruining America.” It was unnerving.
But this was supposed to be a feel-good speech about overcoming political differences. I’d urge you to read Nancy’s essay. She is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. A Vacation Bible School teacher molested her when she was 12-years old. It turned out that the man was a serial abuser.
Nancy’s pastor later told her that 15 women in the congregation had complained about him. Yet nothing decisive was done. He was never prosecuted. He left Nancy’s church and later coached girls’ basketball at a Kentucky high school.
My wife came of age politically during Bill Clinton’s administration, and she was repulsed by his sexual scandals. She was disgusted by the Democratic Party’s defense not just of a serial philanderer but of a man who’d faced his own corroborated reports of sexual assault. She’d
thought the Republicans had a moral spine. After all, they’d impeached Clinton. The Southern Baptist Convention had passed a resolution in 1998 highlighting the importance of moral character in public officials.
Then came the 2016 election and the blow-back against conservatives who did not support the president. She stopped following people on Twitter who were cruel. She started following people who were kind. One of them was a woman named Kathy Kattenberg. But when she followed Kathy, she noticed something peculiar. This person who was nice to Nancy went out of her way to constantly heckle me online. She trolled me constantly. She hated my pro-life positions, and she hated my defense of religious liberty. She was relentless.
Early in the pandemic, Kathy was in distress. She tweeted that she was having trouble finding food. It turns out that Kathy is disabled. She lives alone in New York, and she was struggling to get groceries delivered. Markets were out of basic goods. Delivery services were overwhelmed.
So Nancy activated. She worked with a pastor friend named Ray Ortlund and my former National Review colleague Kathryn Jean Lopez to find someone, anyone, who could shop for Kathy and find her groceries. It took time, but within a week, Kathy’s apartment was overflowing with food, and a troll had become a friend. Kathy and Nancy are friends to this day, and I think that maybe (just maybe) Kathy has softened a bit toward me as well.
Nancy told that story Monday night in her speech at Williamson College, and she ended with an exhortation. Civility and tolerance, she said, were milquetoast [mild/weak] compared with actual love. The lack of love is our nation’s real problem. Incivility is a mere symptom. And when you love people who seem to be your enemies, she said, it turns out they might not be enemies at all.
I’m biased, but I thought it was a necessary message that was beautifully delivered. Plus, the crowd seemed to love her. She received sustained, enthusiastic applause. Then the questions came. A young man went first. I had a hard time hearing what he said, but he sounded oddly aggressive. Nancy then leaned into the microphone and spoke directly to the questioner. “Sorry, did you just ask me if I love or merely tolerate the Vacation Bible School teacher who molested me as a kid?”
“Yes,” he responded. That’s exactly what he’d asked.
There was a gasp in the room. A number of women shouted out, “No!” and “You don’t have to answer.” Nancy absorbed the question like a physical blow. I could see her face change. She tried to speak, but words wouldn’t come. Was that student trying to humiliate her?
Nancy tried to move on to the next question, but she couldn’t continue. She handed the mic to her host and left the room. Immediately, three women followed her into the hallway. I left also, but by the time I got outside the room, Nancy and the three women were in the bathroom. I could hear the sound of crying, and it wasn’t just Nancy in tears.
When she came out, she asked for advice. She was embarrassed that she’d left the stage. She told me that the women who were crying with her were also victims of abuse. I told her that if she could, she should return to the stage. At the moment, I told her the student was trying to hurt her, and it was important to not let the pain silence her. I had no idea if that was good advice at the time. But Nancy decided to go back into the room. I knew it took every ounce of courage she had, because she’d just felt humiliated in front of the entire audience.
I didn’t know what she was going to say. Everyone turned when she walked in the door. But before she could speak, the young man asked for the microphone again. The audience was hushed, and they strained to hear what would happen next. However, this time his voice was different. He apologized. He said he hadn’t meant to offend, and his question didn’t come out right.
He paused for a moment. Then he revealed he was a victim of abuse, and he was struggling with how to read scripture that admonished Christians to love their enemies. He wasn’t a troll at all.
He was a hurting kid who had trouble expressing himself. Nancy responded beautifully. She didn’t just forgive him; she honored him. And she turned to the crowd and told them that there weren’t just hurting people in this room; there were hurting people across the Church—victims
of abuse at every level of Christian ministry. A moment that at first seemed profane and tainted by malice and cruelty turned sacred, enriched by love and compassion.
I’m sharing this story for three reasons. First, because it is profoundly sad that in that relatively small crowd, there were multiple women and at least one young man who were survivors of abuse. They are in every crowd. Christians can’t look at abuse as something that happens in other
places to other people. The survivors are all around us.
Second, it was moving to see the immediate bond between Nancy and the women who comforted her and wept with her. As one of the women told me, there is a verse in the 42nd Psalm that says “deep calls to deep.” There is a beautiful and terrible fellowship that comes with suffering.
And third, we’re so primed to see evil in others that we can miss their brokenness. In her Twitter persona, Nancy’s new friend Kathy was an angry troll. In the offline world, she was alone and vulnerable. In his first question, a suffering young man seemed vicious. But he was uncertain. He didn’t know how to ask what he wanted to ask, and the question came out wrong.
If Nancy had left—if she hadn’t come back out on that stage and given the mic back to the person who’d just wounded her—we’d never know that truth. The telling of the story would be entirely different. We’d presume that he was malevolent. But in an act of grace, Nancy gave him
a second chance, and everything changed.
I know there are evil people online. I know there are evil people who are cruel up close and in person. But sometimes what seems like cruelty is really loneliness, or confusion, or heartbreak. We define each other by our worst moments and withhold forgiveness.
But we should forgive. We must forgive. Otherwise this nation of broken people will keep breaking each other. Pain can look a lot like anger, and when we know that to be true, we can take risks. We can give second chances, and when we do, we can sometimes see that an enemy
isn’t an enemy at all, but another struggling person who needs healing and grace.
David French, The Atlantic 7.29.22
Earlier this week I witnessed a moment that brought tears to my eyes, exposed the immense amount of hurt that lies just beneath the surface of American life, and demonstrated the necessity of grace. It involved my wife, Nancy. A local Christian college called Williamson College
invited her to speak to students on the topic of “loving your enemies.” The inspiration for the talk was a story she wrote for the Washington Examiner last December.
Nancy was slightly apprehensive before the speech. The last time she’d visited a local Christian college, a man rushed up to her after she had been honored in the college’s chapel, got in her face, and yelled “[Forget] you and your husband. You’re ruining America.” It was unnerving.
But this was supposed to be a feel-good speech about overcoming political differences. I’d urge you to read Nancy’s essay. She is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. A Vacation Bible School teacher molested her when she was 12-years old. It turned out that the man was a serial abuser.
Nancy’s pastor later told her that 15 women in the congregation had complained about him. Yet nothing decisive was done. He was never prosecuted. He left Nancy’s church and later coached girls’ basketball at a Kentucky high school.
My wife came of age politically during Bill Clinton’s administration, and she was repulsed by his sexual scandals. She was disgusted by the Democratic Party’s defense not just of a serial philanderer but of a man who’d faced his own corroborated reports of sexual assault. She’d
thought the Republicans had a moral spine. After all, they’d impeached Clinton. The Southern Baptist Convention had passed a resolution in 1998 highlighting the importance of moral character in public officials.
Then came the 2016 election and the blow-back against conservatives who did not support the president. She stopped following people on Twitter who were cruel. She started following people who were kind. One of them was a woman named Kathy Kattenberg. But when she followed Kathy, she noticed something peculiar. This person who was nice to Nancy went out of her way to constantly heckle me online. She trolled me constantly. She hated my pro-life positions, and she hated my defense of religious liberty. She was relentless.
Early in the pandemic, Kathy was in distress. She tweeted that she was having trouble finding food. It turns out that Kathy is disabled. She lives alone in New York, and she was struggling to get groceries delivered. Markets were out of basic goods. Delivery services were overwhelmed.
So Nancy activated. She worked with a pastor friend named Ray Ortlund and my former National Review colleague Kathryn Jean Lopez to find someone, anyone, who could shop for Kathy and find her groceries. It took time, but within a week, Kathy’s apartment was overflowing with food, and a troll had become a friend. Kathy and Nancy are friends to this day, and I think that maybe (just maybe) Kathy has softened a bit toward me as well.
Nancy told that story Monday night in her speech at Williamson College, and she ended with an exhortation. Civility and tolerance, she said, were milquetoast [mild/weak] compared with actual love. The lack of love is our nation’s real problem. Incivility is a mere symptom. And when you love people who seem to be your enemies, she said, it turns out they might not be enemies at all.
I’m biased, but I thought it was a necessary message that was beautifully delivered. Plus, the crowd seemed to love her. She received sustained, enthusiastic applause. Then the questions came. A young man went first. I had a hard time hearing what he said, but he sounded oddly aggressive. Nancy then leaned into the microphone and spoke directly to the questioner. “Sorry, did you just ask me if I love or merely tolerate the Vacation Bible School teacher who molested me as a kid?”
“Yes,” he responded. That’s exactly what he’d asked.
There was a gasp in the room. A number of women shouted out, “No!” and “You don’t have to answer.” Nancy absorbed the question like a physical blow. I could see her face change. She tried to speak, but words wouldn’t come. Was that student trying to humiliate her?
Nancy tried to move on to the next question, but she couldn’t continue. She handed the mic to her host and left the room. Immediately, three women followed her into the hallway. I left also, but by the time I got outside the room, Nancy and the three women were in the bathroom. I could hear the sound of crying, and it wasn’t just Nancy in tears.
When she came out, she asked for advice. She was embarrassed that she’d left the stage. She told me that the women who were crying with her were also victims of abuse. I told her that if she could, she should return to the stage. At the moment, I told her the student was trying to hurt her, and it was important to not let the pain silence her. I had no idea if that was good advice at the time. But Nancy decided to go back into the room. I knew it took every ounce of courage she had, because she’d just felt humiliated in front of the entire audience.
I didn’t know what she was going to say. Everyone turned when she walked in the door. But before she could speak, the young man asked for the microphone again. The audience was hushed, and they strained to hear what would happen next. However, this time his voice was different. He apologized. He said he hadn’t meant to offend, and his question didn’t come out right.
He paused for a moment. Then he revealed he was a victim of abuse, and he was struggling with how to read scripture that admonished Christians to love their enemies. He wasn’t a troll at all.
He was a hurting kid who had trouble expressing himself. Nancy responded beautifully. She didn’t just forgive him; she honored him. And she turned to the crowd and told them that there weren’t just hurting people in this room; there were hurting people across the Church—victims
of abuse at every level of Christian ministry. A moment that at first seemed profane and tainted by malice and cruelty turned sacred, enriched by love and compassion.
I’m sharing this story for three reasons. First, because it is profoundly sad that in that relatively small crowd, there were multiple women and at least one young man who were survivors of abuse. They are in every crowd. Christians can’t look at abuse as something that happens in other
places to other people. The survivors are all around us.
Second, it was moving to see the immediate bond between Nancy and the women who comforted her and wept with her. As one of the women told me, there is a verse in the 42nd Psalm that says “deep calls to deep.” There is a beautiful and terrible fellowship that comes with suffering.
And third, we’re so primed to see evil in others that we can miss their brokenness. In her Twitter persona, Nancy’s new friend Kathy was an angry troll. In the offline world, she was alone and vulnerable. In his first question, a suffering young man seemed vicious. But he was uncertain. He didn’t know how to ask what he wanted to ask, and the question came out wrong.
If Nancy had left—if she hadn’t come back out on that stage and given the mic back to the person who’d just wounded her—we’d never know that truth. The telling of the story would be entirely different. We’d presume that he was malevolent. But in an act of grace, Nancy gave him
a second chance, and everything changed.
I know there are evil people online. I know there are evil people who are cruel up close and in person. But sometimes what seems like cruelty is really loneliness, or confusion, or heartbreak. We define each other by our worst moments and withhold forgiveness.
But we should forgive. We must forgive. Otherwise this nation of broken people will keep breaking each other. Pain can look a lot like anger, and when we know that to be true, we can take risks. We can give second chances, and when we do, we can sometimes see that an enemy
isn’t an enemy at all, but another struggling person who needs healing and grace.
Tuesday, August 9
Are you familiar with the term "gaslighting"? It is a slang term that means to manipulate someone by psychological means into questioning their own sanity. Another way to look at gaslighting is when a friend or family member tells you that you don't feel the way that you actually feel or to dismiss something that you think with a phrase like, "It's crazy for you to think that way..." and then they will tell you what to think.
As troubling as that might sound, imagine if that person was your doctor.
The article for next week, from the NY Times, addresses medical gaslighting and what to do about it. Unlike our recent discussions, there is nothing really controversial about this topic, but it is a way for me to tell you that it is happening and to give us some ways to handle it.
Feeling Dismissed? How to Spot ‘Medical Gaslighting’ and What to Do About It.
Christian Caron, The New York Times 7.29.22
Christina, who lives in Portland, Me., said she felt ignored by doctors for years. When she was 50 pounds heavier, her providers sometimes blamed her body size when she discussed her health concerns. One instance occurred weeks after she had fallen off her bike. “My elbow was still hurting,” said Christina, 39, who asked that her last name be withheld when discussing her medical history. “I went to my regular primary care doctor and she just sort of hand-waved it off as ‘Well, you’re overweight and it’s putting stress on your joints.’” Eventually, Christina visited
an urgent care center where providers performed an X-ray and found she had chipped a bone in her arm.
The experience of having one’s concerns dismissed by a medical provider, often referred to as medical gaslighting, can happen to anyone. A recent New York Times article on the topic received more than 2,800 comments: Some recounted misdiagnoses that nearly cost them their
lives or that delayed treatment, leading to unnecessary suffering. Patients with long Covid wrote about how they felt ignored by the doctors they turned to for help.
Lately, the problem has been drawing attention for disproportionately affecting women, people of color, and geriatric patients. For example, studies have found that women are more likely than men to be misdiagnosed with certain conditions — like heart disease and autoimmune disorders — and they often wait longer for a diagnosis. And one group of researchers discovered that doctors were more likely to use negative descriptors like “noncompliant” or “agitated” in Black patients’ health records than in those of white patients — a practice that could lead to health care disparities. “Gaslighting is real; it happens all the time. Patients — and especially women —need to be aware of it,” said Dr. Jennifer H. Mieres, a professor of cardiology at the Zucker School of Medicine. Here are some tips on how to advocate for yourself in a medical setting.
What are the signs of gaslighting?
Gaslighting can be subtle and isn’t always easy to spot. When seeking medical care, experts recommend watching for the following red flags.
What can you do to advocate for yourself?
Keep detailed notes and records. Dr. Mitchell recommended keeping a journal where you log as many details as possible about your symptoms. Her suggested prompts include: “What are your symptoms? When do you feel those symptoms? Do you notice any triggers? If you have pain, what does it feel like? Does it wax and wane, or is it constant? What days do you notice this pain?”
In addition to your notes, keep records of all of your lab results, imaging, medications and family medical history. It is analogous to seeing your accountant at tax time, Dr. Mieres said: “You certainly do not show up without receipts.”
Ask questions. Then ask some more. Prepare a list of questions that you would like to ask ahead of your appointment, and be prepared to ask other questions as new information is presented. If you aren’t sure where to start, Dr. Mitchell recommended asking your doctor this: “If you were me, what questions would you ask right now?”
Bring a support person. Sometimes it can help to have a trusted friend or relative accompany you, particularly when discussing a treatment plan or difficult medical issue. When people are ill, scared or anxious, it can facilitate “brain freeze,” Dr. Mieres said. “We stop thinking, we don’t hear adequately, we don’t process information.” Speak with your support person to clarify their role and discuss your expectations, she added. Do you want them to take notes and be a second set of ears? Or do you primarily need them there for emotional support? Are there times where you might prefer that your friend or relative leave the room so that you can discuss private matters?
Focus on your most pressing issue. Providers are often short on time, and the average primary care exam is only 18 minutes long, according to a study published in 2021. Dr. Mieres recommended taking 10 minutes before your appointment to jot down bullet points that concisely outline the reason for your visit so that you can communicate with your doctor efficiently.
Pin down next steps. Ideally, you should leave your appointment feeling reassured. Tell your provider that you would like to understand three things: the best guess as to what is happening; plans for diagnosing or ruling out different possibilities; and treatment options, depending on
what is found.
If you’re still being ignored, what are your options?
Switch providers. A study using data from 2006 and 2007 estimated that approximately 12 million adults were misdiagnosed in the United States every year and about half of those errors could be harmful. If you are concerned that your symptoms are not being addressed, you are
entitled to seek a second opinion, a third or even a fourth. But in many cases that may be easier said than done. It’s not always quick or simple to find another specialist who takes your insurance and has immediate appointments available. If possible, try to get an in-network referral
from your current doctor. For example, you can say: “Thank you for your time, but I would really like to seek another opinion on this. Could you refer me to another specialist in your area?”
If you don’t feel comfortable asking your doctor for a referral, you can also speak with a patient liaison or nurse manager. Alternatively, you can ask friends and family, or call your insurance company to find someone in-network.
Reframe the conversation. If you decide to stick with your current provider, but that person doesn’t appear to be listening, Dr. Mieres recommended that patients try redirecting the conversation by saying something like: “Let’s hit the pause button here, because we have a
disconnect. You’re not hearing what I’m saying. Let me start again.” Or, alternatively: “I’ve been having these symptoms for three months. Can you help me find what is wrong? What can we do to figure this out together?”
Look to support groups. There are support groups for a multitude of conditions that may provide useful resources and information. Tami Burdick, who was diagnosed in 2017 with granulomatous mastitis, a rare, chronic, inflammatory breast disease, found help from an online
support group for women with the same condition. Initially, she was referred to an infectious disease specialist who dismissed a breast biopsy found to contain bacteria. “I developed horrible, painful abscesses that would open and drain on their own,” Ms. Burdick, 44, said.
In her search for answers she conducted extensive research on the disease. And from the support group she learned of a gene sequencing test that could identify potential pathogens. Ms. Burdick asked her surgical oncologist to order the test and discovered she had been infected with a specific microorganism associated with granulomatous mastitis and recurrent breast abscesses. It took seven months of investigating, but she finally had an answer.
Appeal to a higher authority. If you are being treated in a hospital setting, you can contact the patient advocacy staff, who may be able to assist. You might also address the problem with your doctor’s supervisor.
Finally, if you are dissatisfied with the care that you’re receiving, Dr. Mitchell said, you may consider reporting your experience to the Federation of State Medical Boards. “Any instances of abuse, manipulation, gaslighting, delaying diagnoses — those are reportable events
that providers need to know about,” Dr. Mitchell said. “Doctors need to be held accountable."
As troubling as that might sound, imagine if that person was your doctor.
The article for next week, from the NY Times, addresses medical gaslighting and what to do about it. Unlike our recent discussions, there is nothing really controversial about this topic, but it is a way for me to tell you that it is happening and to give us some ways to handle it.
Feeling Dismissed? How to Spot ‘Medical Gaslighting’ and What to Do About It.
Christian Caron, The New York Times 7.29.22
Christina, who lives in Portland, Me., said she felt ignored by doctors for years. When she was 50 pounds heavier, her providers sometimes blamed her body size when she discussed her health concerns. One instance occurred weeks after she had fallen off her bike. “My elbow was still hurting,” said Christina, 39, who asked that her last name be withheld when discussing her medical history. “I went to my regular primary care doctor and she just sort of hand-waved it off as ‘Well, you’re overweight and it’s putting stress on your joints.’” Eventually, Christina visited
an urgent care center where providers performed an X-ray and found she had chipped a bone in her arm.
The experience of having one’s concerns dismissed by a medical provider, often referred to as medical gaslighting, can happen to anyone. A recent New York Times article on the topic received more than 2,800 comments: Some recounted misdiagnoses that nearly cost them their
lives or that delayed treatment, leading to unnecessary suffering. Patients with long Covid wrote about how they felt ignored by the doctors they turned to for help.
Lately, the problem has been drawing attention for disproportionately affecting women, people of color, and geriatric patients. For example, studies have found that women are more likely than men to be misdiagnosed with certain conditions — like heart disease and autoimmune disorders — and they often wait longer for a diagnosis. And one group of researchers discovered that doctors were more likely to use negative descriptors like “noncompliant” or “agitated” in Black patients’ health records than in those of white patients — a practice that could lead to health care disparities. “Gaslighting is real; it happens all the time. Patients — and especially women —need to be aware of it,” said Dr. Jennifer H. Mieres, a professor of cardiology at the Zucker School of Medicine. Here are some tips on how to advocate for yourself in a medical setting.
What are the signs of gaslighting?
Gaslighting can be subtle and isn’t always easy to spot. When seeking medical care, experts recommend watching for the following red flags.
- Your provider continually interrupts you, doesn’t allow you to elaborate and doesn’t appear to be an engaged listener.
- Your provider minimizes or downplays your symptoms, for example questioning whether you have pain.
- Your provider refuses to discuss your symptoms.
- Your provider will not order key imaging or lab work to rule out or confirm a diagnosis.
- You feel that your provider is being rude, condescending or belittling.
- Your symptoms are blamed on mental illness, but you are not provided with a mental health referral or screened for such illness.
What can you do to advocate for yourself?
Keep detailed notes and records. Dr. Mitchell recommended keeping a journal where you log as many details as possible about your symptoms. Her suggested prompts include: “What are your symptoms? When do you feel those symptoms? Do you notice any triggers? If you have pain, what does it feel like? Does it wax and wane, or is it constant? What days do you notice this pain?”
In addition to your notes, keep records of all of your lab results, imaging, medications and family medical history. It is analogous to seeing your accountant at tax time, Dr. Mieres said: “You certainly do not show up without receipts.”
Ask questions. Then ask some more. Prepare a list of questions that you would like to ask ahead of your appointment, and be prepared to ask other questions as new information is presented. If you aren’t sure where to start, Dr. Mitchell recommended asking your doctor this: “If you were me, what questions would you ask right now?”
Bring a support person. Sometimes it can help to have a trusted friend or relative accompany you, particularly when discussing a treatment plan or difficult medical issue. When people are ill, scared or anxious, it can facilitate “brain freeze,” Dr. Mieres said. “We stop thinking, we don’t hear adequately, we don’t process information.” Speak with your support person to clarify their role and discuss your expectations, she added. Do you want them to take notes and be a second set of ears? Or do you primarily need them there for emotional support? Are there times where you might prefer that your friend or relative leave the room so that you can discuss private matters?
Focus on your most pressing issue. Providers are often short on time, and the average primary care exam is only 18 minutes long, according to a study published in 2021. Dr. Mieres recommended taking 10 minutes before your appointment to jot down bullet points that concisely outline the reason for your visit so that you can communicate with your doctor efficiently.
Pin down next steps. Ideally, you should leave your appointment feeling reassured. Tell your provider that you would like to understand three things: the best guess as to what is happening; plans for diagnosing or ruling out different possibilities; and treatment options, depending on
what is found.
If you’re still being ignored, what are your options?
Switch providers. A study using data from 2006 and 2007 estimated that approximately 12 million adults were misdiagnosed in the United States every year and about half of those errors could be harmful. If you are concerned that your symptoms are not being addressed, you are
entitled to seek a second opinion, a third or even a fourth. But in many cases that may be easier said than done. It’s not always quick or simple to find another specialist who takes your insurance and has immediate appointments available. If possible, try to get an in-network referral
from your current doctor. For example, you can say: “Thank you for your time, but I would really like to seek another opinion on this. Could you refer me to another specialist in your area?”
If you don’t feel comfortable asking your doctor for a referral, you can also speak with a patient liaison or nurse manager. Alternatively, you can ask friends and family, or call your insurance company to find someone in-network.
Reframe the conversation. If you decide to stick with your current provider, but that person doesn’t appear to be listening, Dr. Mieres recommended that patients try redirecting the conversation by saying something like: “Let’s hit the pause button here, because we have a
disconnect. You’re not hearing what I’m saying. Let me start again.” Or, alternatively: “I’ve been having these symptoms for three months. Can you help me find what is wrong? What can we do to figure this out together?”
Look to support groups. There are support groups for a multitude of conditions that may provide useful resources and information. Tami Burdick, who was diagnosed in 2017 with granulomatous mastitis, a rare, chronic, inflammatory breast disease, found help from an online
support group for women with the same condition. Initially, she was referred to an infectious disease specialist who dismissed a breast biopsy found to contain bacteria. “I developed horrible, painful abscesses that would open and drain on their own,” Ms. Burdick, 44, said.
In her search for answers she conducted extensive research on the disease. And from the support group she learned of a gene sequencing test that could identify potential pathogens. Ms. Burdick asked her surgical oncologist to order the test and discovered she had been infected with a specific microorganism associated with granulomatous mastitis and recurrent breast abscesses. It took seven months of investigating, but she finally had an answer.
Appeal to a higher authority. If you are being treated in a hospital setting, you can contact the patient advocacy staff, who may be able to assist. You might also address the problem with your doctor’s supervisor.
Finally, if you are dissatisfied with the care that you’re receiving, Dr. Mitchell said, you may consider reporting your experience to the Federation of State Medical Boards. “Any instances of abuse, manipulation, gaslighting, delaying diagnoses — those are reportable events
that providers need to know about,” Dr. Mitchell said. “Doctors need to be held accountable."
Tuesday, August 2
The discussion about nationalism - so-called "Christian" or otherwise - was excellent and I have been asked to continue it. The interim director of Florida's ACLU wrote a piece for the Tampa Bay Times warning us of what she believes is an erosion of our 1st amendment rights in the state with a number of recent state legislative actions. I'd like to know what you think of her very strong opinion.
Secondly, I don't know when I'll be able to include the second piece as a topic so I thought I'd send it now. From the WSJ, there is an excellent piece about how to have better conversations. The author believes we have forgotten how to conversate - she blames Netflix - so she has some points for us to use.
Trampling on 1st Amendment Rights in Florida
Amy Turkel, Tampa Bay Times 6.24.22
Guest Columnist, Amy Turkel, is the interim executive director of the ACLU of Florida.
The First Amendment guarantees the rights to free speech, a free press, freedom to assemble and protest peacefully, the right to petition the government for change and freedom from the imposition of religious beliefs by government.
Over the past three years, the Florida Legislature has restricted Floridians’ First Amendment rights and repeatedly pushed for laws that violate basic American freedoms.
In the wake of national protests after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, State government leaders championed the anti-protest bill, House Bill 1. It dictated that any person participating in a rally or protest could be charged with a felony if three or more other
people at that event engaged in unlawful activity resulting in imminent danger of damage to property or injury to another person. In other words, you could be charged for an offense committed by people who were total strangers to you, even if you were protesting peacefully.
In 2021, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker struck down that provision of the law. Walker stated that HB 1 “could effectively criminalize the protected speech of hundreds, if not thousands, of law-abiding Floridians. … This violates the First Amendment.”
In this year’s legislative session, representatives pushed House Bill 7, an educational censorship bill, signed into law in April. That bill prevents content from being taught in schools that illustrates the discrimination, including race and gender discrimination, that has existed for
centuries in our society.
HB 7 even bans private employers from requiring diversity training or other workshops related to race and gender discrimination, which are often used to create inclusive, productive work environments. Worse, the law gives employees the ability to sue an employer for requiring such workshops. HB 7 is a clear attempt to whitewash American history and to ban viewpoints some leaders do not like.
The legislature continued to attack Floridians’ First Amendment rights by targeting LGBTQ+ youth and families with the “don’t say gay” bill (House Bill 1557). This legislation bans teachers from addressing LGBTQ+ topics in grades K-3. It also prohibits such discussions at any grade
level if someone else does not deem them “age-appropriate.”
Any parent who thinks a classroom discussion was inappropriate will be able to sue, a provision of the law that will end up chilling speech and creating chaos.
On Feb. 17, 2022, twenty-five people were banned from the Capitol for a year, and another was unjustly arrested and held in jail overnight. All because a few people were chanting in opposition to the passing of House Bill 5, the 15-week abortion ban. That law is yet another way that a
constitutional right — the right to privacy and bodily autonomy — is under attack in Florida.
In addition, over the past few years, we have witnessed journalists being denied access to official press conferences and briefings — attempts to block coverage of critical public matters, including coronavirus updates and bill signings.
There are elected leaders who are waging a terrifying and unconstitutional assault on Floridians’ First Amendment rights, and all Floridians should be outraged by the attempts to silence us.
Dissent is patriotic; government censorship is undemocratic, unconstitutional and un-American. We will all do better when we have leaders in Florida who use their power to improve our lives and our livelihoods and are dedicated to making the values of liberty and justice a reality for all of us.
Have Better Conversations with Anyone
Elizabeth Bernstein, WSJ 7.26.22
I was driving with my teenage nephew Noah recently when he blurted out: “Can we talk?”
We were on our way to meet friends, chit-chatting about the music on the radio and where to go
for lunch. Absolutely, I told him. What did he want to discuss?
“Oh, I don’t know,” Noah said. “Just something more interesting.”
It’s time to deepen our conversations.
We’ve talked to fewer people about fewer things in the past two years. Now, many of us are craving more meaningful conversations–ones that go beyond sharing recommendations for what to stream on Netflix. Trouble is, we’ve forgotten how to have them.
“Social skills are like muscles,” says Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, who studies how to find motivation and meaning.
“If you don’t exercise them, they start to atrophy.” People who have more substantive conversations are happier, research shows. Deep conversations make us feel more connected to others and help us understand one another. And most of us would like to have more meaningful conversations, psychologists say. When we do have them–even with strangers–we tend to enjoy them more and find them less awkward than expected, according to research published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. With practice, most of us can get better at meaningful conversations, psychologists say. Here’s what they recommend.
Pick a partner.
It’s easiest to start with someone you trust. “If you’ve had good conversations with them in the past, you’re likely to do so again,” says Sean Horan, professor and chair of the communication department at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Conn. But if you want to expand your world,
branch out. Choose someone you’d like to get to know better, such as a new co-worker. Don’t rule out having a deep conversation with someone you just met. You might make a friend or learn something new.
Share first.
“The most straightforward path to having meaningful conversations is to be willing to share something about yourself,” says Gillian Sandstrom, a senior lecturer at the University of Sussex in England, who studies social interactions. Research shows that when one person shares personal details in a conversation, the other person typically responds in kind. Psychologists call this mutual self-disclosure, and studies show it helps people feel closer to one another.
You don’t have to share intimacies. Start by talking about something you’re excited about or a fear or concern. During a turbulent plane ride, I told the woman next to me that I was scared. We ended up having a conversation that was so helpful to both of us that I wrote about it in my
column.
Ask better questions.
Where are you from? What do you do? Managing to stay cool in this heat?
Often, conversation-starters turn out to be dead ends. They can be answered in one word. And we’re not asking about anything the other person wants to talk about. Try deeper questions, suggests Wharton’s Dr. Grant. Instead of asking people what they do, ask them what they love to do. It’s exciting to talk about something you’re passionate about, and that energy can fuel a conversation, Dr. Grant says. His other suggestions: “What’s a goal you’re pursuing right now?” “What’s a challenge you’re facing?” “What’s the best change you’ve made during the
pandemic?”
Try an open-ended statement.
“Tell me about your hometown.” “Say more about your day.” “Explain your work to me.”
Statements such as these typically make people want to elaborate, says Jessica Moore, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Austin, Texas, who studies interpersonal communication. They’re tough to answer with one word. And you can tailor them to the depth of your
relationship. Because these statements are open-ended, they open the door to more interesting conversations. There’s no pressure to talk just about positive things, Dr. Moore says. And on the off chance you solicit a raised eyebrow, Dr. Moore has a response to suggest: “Tell me about that look.”
Become more intimate, slowly.
Years ago, social psychologist and research professor Arthur Aron created a research protocol called “Fast Friends” to help two strangers establish interpersonal closeness in a lab in 45 minutes. It consists of a list of 36 questions that start out slightly personal and gradually become more intimate. Each person answers a question before going on to the next, because any truly deep conversation is reciprocal. Dr. Aron says that we can use the same concept, which he calls “progressive intimacy,” to deepen conversations. We can begin a discussion by talking about relatively mundane information, such as vacation plans. Once the conversation is going well, gradually move toward more intimate topics.
Show appreciation.
The most important part of a substantive conversation is not the topic, it’s your response, psychologists say. Show the other person that you understand and care for them. You can do this by saying some version of: “I’m so glad you shared this with me.” When my nephew Noah asked to talk, I suggested high school as a topic. He’s starting his freshman year next month at a boarding school I also attended. To get the conversation rolling, I asked Noah what classes he’s looking forward to and why. I also shared my favorites. We talked about sports–which ones he’ll play and how it can be intimidating when some of your teammates are bigger than you. And we discussed how it can sometimes get lonesome when you’re away at school and what to do about it. When the conversation was over, I told Noah how happy I was that we’d gotten to have a real talk. “Yeah, that was awesome,” he said.
Secondly, I don't know when I'll be able to include the second piece as a topic so I thought I'd send it now. From the WSJ, there is an excellent piece about how to have better conversations. The author believes we have forgotten how to conversate - she blames Netflix - so she has some points for us to use.
Trampling on 1st Amendment Rights in Florida
Amy Turkel, Tampa Bay Times 6.24.22
Guest Columnist, Amy Turkel, is the interim executive director of the ACLU of Florida.
The First Amendment guarantees the rights to free speech, a free press, freedom to assemble and protest peacefully, the right to petition the government for change and freedom from the imposition of religious beliefs by government.
Over the past three years, the Florida Legislature has restricted Floridians’ First Amendment rights and repeatedly pushed for laws that violate basic American freedoms.
In the wake of national protests after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, State government leaders championed the anti-protest bill, House Bill 1. It dictated that any person participating in a rally or protest could be charged with a felony if three or more other
people at that event engaged in unlawful activity resulting in imminent danger of damage to property or injury to another person. In other words, you could be charged for an offense committed by people who were total strangers to you, even if you were protesting peacefully.
In 2021, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Walker struck down that provision of the law. Walker stated that HB 1 “could effectively criminalize the protected speech of hundreds, if not thousands, of law-abiding Floridians. … This violates the First Amendment.”
In this year’s legislative session, representatives pushed House Bill 7, an educational censorship bill, signed into law in April. That bill prevents content from being taught in schools that illustrates the discrimination, including race and gender discrimination, that has existed for
centuries in our society.
HB 7 even bans private employers from requiring diversity training or other workshops related to race and gender discrimination, which are often used to create inclusive, productive work environments. Worse, the law gives employees the ability to sue an employer for requiring such workshops. HB 7 is a clear attempt to whitewash American history and to ban viewpoints some leaders do not like.
The legislature continued to attack Floridians’ First Amendment rights by targeting LGBTQ+ youth and families with the “don’t say gay” bill (House Bill 1557). This legislation bans teachers from addressing LGBTQ+ topics in grades K-3. It also prohibits such discussions at any grade
level if someone else does not deem them “age-appropriate.”
Any parent who thinks a classroom discussion was inappropriate will be able to sue, a provision of the law that will end up chilling speech and creating chaos.
On Feb. 17, 2022, twenty-five people were banned from the Capitol for a year, and another was unjustly arrested and held in jail overnight. All because a few people were chanting in opposition to the passing of House Bill 5, the 15-week abortion ban. That law is yet another way that a
constitutional right — the right to privacy and bodily autonomy — is under attack in Florida.
In addition, over the past few years, we have witnessed journalists being denied access to official press conferences and briefings — attempts to block coverage of critical public matters, including coronavirus updates and bill signings.
There are elected leaders who are waging a terrifying and unconstitutional assault on Floridians’ First Amendment rights, and all Floridians should be outraged by the attempts to silence us.
Dissent is patriotic; government censorship is undemocratic, unconstitutional and un-American. We will all do better when we have leaders in Florida who use their power to improve our lives and our livelihoods and are dedicated to making the values of liberty and justice a reality for all of us.
Have Better Conversations with Anyone
Elizabeth Bernstein, WSJ 7.26.22
I was driving with my teenage nephew Noah recently when he blurted out: “Can we talk?”
We were on our way to meet friends, chit-chatting about the music on the radio and where to go
for lunch. Absolutely, I told him. What did he want to discuss?
“Oh, I don’t know,” Noah said. “Just something more interesting.”
It’s time to deepen our conversations.
We’ve talked to fewer people about fewer things in the past two years. Now, many of us are craving more meaningful conversations–ones that go beyond sharing recommendations for what to stream on Netflix. Trouble is, we’ve forgotten how to have them.
“Social skills are like muscles,” says Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, who studies how to find motivation and meaning.
“If you don’t exercise them, they start to atrophy.” People who have more substantive conversations are happier, research shows. Deep conversations make us feel more connected to others and help us understand one another. And most of us would like to have more meaningful conversations, psychologists say. When we do have them–even with strangers–we tend to enjoy them more and find them less awkward than expected, according to research published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. With practice, most of us can get better at meaningful conversations, psychologists say. Here’s what they recommend.
Pick a partner.
It’s easiest to start with someone you trust. “If you’ve had good conversations with them in the past, you’re likely to do so again,” says Sean Horan, professor and chair of the communication department at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Conn. But if you want to expand your world,
branch out. Choose someone you’d like to get to know better, such as a new co-worker. Don’t rule out having a deep conversation with someone you just met. You might make a friend or learn something new.
Share first.
“The most straightforward path to having meaningful conversations is to be willing to share something about yourself,” says Gillian Sandstrom, a senior lecturer at the University of Sussex in England, who studies social interactions. Research shows that when one person shares personal details in a conversation, the other person typically responds in kind. Psychologists call this mutual self-disclosure, and studies show it helps people feel closer to one another.
You don’t have to share intimacies. Start by talking about something you’re excited about or a fear or concern. During a turbulent plane ride, I told the woman next to me that I was scared. We ended up having a conversation that was so helpful to both of us that I wrote about it in my
column.
Ask better questions.
Where are you from? What do you do? Managing to stay cool in this heat?
Often, conversation-starters turn out to be dead ends. They can be answered in one word. And we’re not asking about anything the other person wants to talk about. Try deeper questions, suggests Wharton’s Dr. Grant. Instead of asking people what they do, ask them what they love to do. It’s exciting to talk about something you’re passionate about, and that energy can fuel a conversation, Dr. Grant says. His other suggestions: “What’s a goal you’re pursuing right now?” “What’s a challenge you’re facing?” “What’s the best change you’ve made during the
pandemic?”
Try an open-ended statement.
“Tell me about your hometown.” “Say more about your day.” “Explain your work to me.”
Statements such as these typically make people want to elaborate, says Jessica Moore, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Austin, Texas, who studies interpersonal communication. They’re tough to answer with one word. And you can tailor them to the depth of your
relationship. Because these statements are open-ended, they open the door to more interesting conversations. There’s no pressure to talk just about positive things, Dr. Moore says. And on the off chance you solicit a raised eyebrow, Dr. Moore has a response to suggest: “Tell me about that look.”
Become more intimate, slowly.
Years ago, social psychologist and research professor Arthur Aron created a research protocol called “Fast Friends” to help two strangers establish interpersonal closeness in a lab in 45 minutes. It consists of a list of 36 questions that start out slightly personal and gradually become more intimate. Each person answers a question before going on to the next, because any truly deep conversation is reciprocal. Dr. Aron says that we can use the same concept, which he calls “progressive intimacy,” to deepen conversations. We can begin a discussion by talking about relatively mundane information, such as vacation plans. Once the conversation is going well, gradually move toward more intimate topics.
Show appreciation.
The most important part of a substantive conversation is not the topic, it’s your response, psychologists say. Show the other person that you understand and care for them. You can do this by saying some version of: “I’m so glad you shared this with me.” When my nephew Noah asked to talk, I suggested high school as a topic. He’s starting his freshman year next month at a boarding school I also attended. To get the conversation rolling, I asked Noah what classes he’s looking forward to and why. I also shared my favorites. We talked about sports–which ones he’ll play and how it can be intimidating when some of your teammates are bigger than you. And we discussed how it can sometimes get lonesome when you’re away at school and what to do about it. When the conversation was over, I told Noah how happy I was that we’d gotten to have a real talk. “Yeah, that was awesome,” he said.
Tuesday, July 25
Christian Nationalists Are Excited About What Comes Next
Katherine Stewart, NY Times 7.5.22
The shape of the Christian nationalist movement in the post-Roe future is coming into view, and it should terrify anyone concerned for the future of constitutional democracy.
The Supreme Court’s decision to rescind the reproductive rights will not lead America’s homegrown religious authoritarians to retire from the culture wars and enjoy a sweet moment of triumph. On the contrary, movement leaders are already preparing for a new and more brutal
phase of their assault on individual rights and democratic self-governance. Breaking American democracy isn’t an unintended side effect of Christian nationalism. It is the point of the project.
A good place to gauge the spirit and intentions of the movement is the annual Road to Majority Policy Conference. At this year’s event, which took place last month in Nashville, three clear trends were in evidence. First, the rhetoric of violence among movement leaders appeared to
have increased significantly from the already alarming levels I had observed in previous years.
Second, the theology of dominionism — that is, the belief that “right-thinking” Christians have a biblically derived mandate to take control of all aspects of government and society — is now explicitly embraced. And third, the movement’s key strategists were giddy about the legal
arsenal that the Supreme Court had laid at their feet as they anticipated the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
They intend to use that arsenal — together with additional weaponry collected in cases like Carson v. Makin, which requires state funding of religious schools if private, secular schools are also being funded; and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which licenses religious proselytizing by public school officials — to prosecute a war on individual rights, not merely in so-called red state legislatures but throughout the nation.
Speakers at the conference vied to outdo one another in their denigration of Democrats who they said, are “evil,” “tyrannical” and “the enemy within,” engaged in “a war against the truth.”
“The backlash is coming,” warned Senator Rick Scott of Florida. “Just mount up and ride to the sounds of the guns, and they are all over this country. It is time to take this country back.”
Citing the fight against Nazi Germany during the Battle of the Bulge, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina said, “We find ourselves in a pitched battle to literally save this nation.” Referring to a passage from Ephesians that Christian nationalists often use to signal their militancy, he added, “I don’t know about you, but I got my pack on, I got my boots on, I got my helmet on, I’ve got on the whole armor.”
The intensification of verbal warfare is connected to shifts in the Christian nationalist movement’s messaging and outreach, which were very much in evidence at the Nashville conference.
Seven Mountains Dominionism — the belief that “biblical” Christians should seek to dominate the seven key “mountains” or “molders” of American society, including the government — was once considered a fringe doctrine, even among representatives of the religious right. This year, there were two sessions, and the once arcane language of the Seven Mountains creed was on multiple speakers’ lips.
The hunger for dominion that appears to motivate the leadership of the movement is the essential context for making sense of its strategy and intentions in the post-Roe world. The end of abortion rights is the beginning of a new and much more personal attack on individual rights. At a breakout session called “Life Is on the Line: What Does the Future of the Pro-Life Movement Look Like From Here?” Chelsey Youman, the Texas state director and national legislative adviser to Human Coalition Action, described the connection between vigilantes and abortion
rights. Instead of the state regulating abortion providers, she explained, “you and me as citizens of Texas or this country or wherever we can pass this bill can instead sue the abortion provider.”
Mrs. Youman, as it happens, played a role in promoting the Texas law Senate Bill 8, which passed in May 2021 and allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion. She said, “We have legislation ready to roll out for every single state you
live in to protect life, regardless of the Supreme Court, regardless of your circuit court.” To be sure, Christian nationalists are also pushing for a federal ban. But the struggle for the present will center on state-level enforcement mechanisms.
Movement leaders have also made it clear that the target of their ongoing offensive is not just in-state abortion providers but also what they call abortion trafficking — that is, women crossing state lines to obtain legal abortions, along with people who provide those women with services or support, like cars and taxis. Mrs. Youman hailed the development of a new “long-arm jurisdiction” bill that offers a mechanism for targeting out-of-state abortion providers. “It creates a wrongful death cause of action,” she said, “so we’re excited about that.”
The National Right to Life Committee’s model legislation for the post-Roe era includes broad criminal enforcement as well as civil enforcement mechanisms. “The model law also reaches well beyond the actual performance of an illegal abortion,” according to text on the organization’s website. It also includes “aiding or abetting an illegal abortion,” targeting people who provide “instructions over the telephone, the internet or any other medium of communication.”
Americans who stand outside the movement have consistently underestimated its radicalism. Christian nationalism isn’t a route to the future. Its purpose is to hollow out democracy until nothing is left but a thin cover for rule by a supposedly right-thinking elite, bubble-wrapped in
sanctimony and insulated from any real democratic check on its power.
Katherine Stewart, NY Times 7.5.22
The shape of the Christian nationalist movement in the post-Roe future is coming into view, and it should terrify anyone concerned for the future of constitutional democracy.
The Supreme Court’s decision to rescind the reproductive rights will not lead America’s homegrown religious authoritarians to retire from the culture wars and enjoy a sweet moment of triumph. On the contrary, movement leaders are already preparing for a new and more brutal
phase of their assault on individual rights and democratic self-governance. Breaking American democracy isn’t an unintended side effect of Christian nationalism. It is the point of the project.
A good place to gauge the spirit and intentions of the movement is the annual Road to Majority Policy Conference. At this year’s event, which took place last month in Nashville, three clear trends were in evidence. First, the rhetoric of violence among movement leaders appeared to
have increased significantly from the already alarming levels I had observed in previous years.
Second, the theology of dominionism — that is, the belief that “right-thinking” Christians have a biblically derived mandate to take control of all aspects of government and society — is now explicitly embraced. And third, the movement’s key strategists were giddy about the legal
arsenal that the Supreme Court had laid at their feet as they anticipated the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
They intend to use that arsenal — together with additional weaponry collected in cases like Carson v. Makin, which requires state funding of religious schools if private, secular schools are also being funded; and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which licenses religious proselytizing by public school officials — to prosecute a war on individual rights, not merely in so-called red state legislatures but throughout the nation.
Speakers at the conference vied to outdo one another in their denigration of Democrats who they said, are “evil,” “tyrannical” and “the enemy within,” engaged in “a war against the truth.”
“The backlash is coming,” warned Senator Rick Scott of Florida. “Just mount up and ride to the sounds of the guns, and they are all over this country. It is time to take this country back.”
Citing the fight against Nazi Germany during the Battle of the Bulge, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina said, “We find ourselves in a pitched battle to literally save this nation.” Referring to a passage from Ephesians that Christian nationalists often use to signal their militancy, he added, “I don’t know about you, but I got my pack on, I got my boots on, I got my helmet on, I’ve got on the whole armor.”
The intensification of verbal warfare is connected to shifts in the Christian nationalist movement’s messaging and outreach, which were very much in evidence at the Nashville conference.
Seven Mountains Dominionism — the belief that “biblical” Christians should seek to dominate the seven key “mountains” or “molders” of American society, including the government — was once considered a fringe doctrine, even among representatives of the religious right. This year, there were two sessions, and the once arcane language of the Seven Mountains creed was on multiple speakers’ lips.
The hunger for dominion that appears to motivate the leadership of the movement is the essential context for making sense of its strategy and intentions in the post-Roe world. The end of abortion rights is the beginning of a new and much more personal attack on individual rights. At a breakout session called “Life Is on the Line: What Does the Future of the Pro-Life Movement Look Like From Here?” Chelsey Youman, the Texas state director and national legislative adviser to Human Coalition Action, described the connection between vigilantes and abortion
rights. Instead of the state regulating abortion providers, she explained, “you and me as citizens of Texas or this country or wherever we can pass this bill can instead sue the abortion provider.”
Mrs. Youman, as it happens, played a role in promoting the Texas law Senate Bill 8, which passed in May 2021 and allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion. She said, “We have legislation ready to roll out for every single state you
live in to protect life, regardless of the Supreme Court, regardless of your circuit court.” To be sure, Christian nationalists are also pushing for a federal ban. But the struggle for the present will center on state-level enforcement mechanisms.
Movement leaders have also made it clear that the target of their ongoing offensive is not just in-state abortion providers but also what they call abortion trafficking — that is, women crossing state lines to obtain legal abortions, along with people who provide those women with services or support, like cars and taxis. Mrs. Youman hailed the development of a new “long-arm jurisdiction” bill that offers a mechanism for targeting out-of-state abortion providers. “It creates a wrongful death cause of action,” she said, “so we’re excited about that.”
The National Right to Life Committee’s model legislation for the post-Roe era includes broad criminal enforcement as well as civil enforcement mechanisms. “The model law also reaches well beyond the actual performance of an illegal abortion,” according to text on the organization’s website. It also includes “aiding or abetting an illegal abortion,” targeting people who provide “instructions over the telephone, the internet or any other medium of communication.”
Americans who stand outside the movement have consistently underestimated its radicalism. Christian nationalism isn’t a route to the future. Its purpose is to hollow out democracy until nothing is left but a thin cover for rule by a supposedly right-thinking elite, bubble-wrapped in
sanctimony and insulated from any real democratic check on its power.
Tuesday, July 19
Here is an on-line question that is sparking a lot of discussion: when someone asks, "Please turn down the a/c," does that mean to raise or lower the thermostat? For as much fun as it would be to discuss that, I'd like to take a step inward. I'd like to discuss spiritual detachment - letting go of our desires of what we want to happen and being aware of What Is (capitalized to show the presence of God in any moment and situation, including, of course, death).
Our author this week, Steven Petrow, practiced spiritual detachment with the impending death of his dog. However, he found it much more difficult to do that with his sister. Conversely, I have found that some people can let go of their loved ones easier than letting go of their pets. Regardless, spiritual detachment requires awareness, practice, and, well, discussion. I can't imagine a better place to have that discussion than at All Angels. And, if you find the room too warm, we can figure out if that means to turn up or down the a/c.
My Dog’s Death Taught Me Spiritual Detachment
Then My Sister Got Sick
Steven Petrow, NY Times 7.14.22
Shortly after my parents died in 2017, I nearly lost custody of my dog, Zoe, in my divorce. When we were reunited, I remember telling her firmly, “You cannot die now,” even though she had just turned 15. Not long after, the vet told me that new lab work indicated kidney failure. I was quite glad then that Zoe couldn’t talk, at least not in the traditional sense. We had no painful discussions about quality-of-life issues or end-of-life concerns.
I approached her final chapter with intention and indulgence, which is to say I followed her lead. I fed her whatever and whenever she wanted. I let her decide whether we’d go for short walks or longer ones. Before I went to bed, I made sure Zoe had settled into hers. Even as I prepared to lose her, I found myself exulting in our days together. When she died, I consoled myself with the thought that she was never mine to begin with; I was lucky to have known her; we only have anyone we love for a short time.
As it turns out, it’s much easier to practice spiritual detachment from a Jack Russell terrier who is gone than from my younger sister, Julie, who is here, and called later that same year to tell me she had ovarian cancer. It was Stage 4, she said, as bad as it gets. Julie was 55, a lawyer and
executive, a wife, and the mother of two daughters, 17 and 21. People with her diagnosis are only 31 percent as likely as those without cancer to live another five years. A surgeon explained that the median life expectancy for someone with her diagnosis was about five years. Meaning,
half of patients live less than five years, half more. Julie is the baby of our family, five years younger than me and three years younger than our brother, Jay. The three of us are best friends, closer still since Julie got sick, but she and I have our own history.
When I had my own bout with cancer in my 20s, she walked laps through the halls of Memorial with me and promised that the chemo hair loss would not keep me from finding a boyfriend. I was there when she met her wife and when they welcomed their daughters. When my husband
left me five years ago, Julie flew from New York to North Carolina to help me through those first scary days. She kept our favorite old TV shows on, knowing it would make me feel safe and like a kid again, while she scrutinized my investment accounts line by line so she could announce, after too many episodes of “Bewitched,” that I was financially OK. She was and is fierce, an extrovert among extroverts. We once went on a sunset cruise in Florida, and by the time we docked three hours later, she had befriended the entire crew and captain, a complete stranger who told me as we disembarked, “I love your sister’s zeal for life.” And now she would be lucky to make it to 60.
She started treatment immediately and gradually entered what many cancer patients call “the loop” — periods of treatment, remission, and recurrence that then start all over again. It was terrible and manageable.
In the meantime, as with Zoe, I focused on indulgence and intention. Our family rented a beach house in Rhode Island, a shingled cottage reminiscent of the house where we’d spent childhood summers. I traveled from North Carolina. Julie and her family came from New Jersey, and Jay hauled his from Connecticut. After the vacation, which included competitive canoeing, daily cook-offs and a raucous game of Hearts in which Julie was definitely eyeing Jay’s cards, Julie sent an email to the adults. “I sat at the house one night with you all there and imagined the scene with me just faded from the landscape,” she began.
Looking back, I recognize the gift in that email: She was giving us directions, almost a script, for how to go on without her. In the moment, though, I volleyed back a reassuring response — she was always on our minds wherever she was!
Then, after four years, the loop no longer held her. A clinical trial last October offered hope, only to dash it within eight weeks. A new chemo regimen held out the possibility of remission, which didn’t happen. Julie and I planned a trip to Australia and New Zealand for this fall, the five-year mark, but I didn’t count on it. Julie, always a kidder, began to joke about dying, here and there, seeming to invite a set of conversations I did not want to have. It had not been five years yet. I was not ready. But I’d learned during my mother’s bout with lung cancer to follow up on such openings. I remember once Mom asked, “Will it be painful to die?” and I replied, “What would you like for dinner tonight, Mom?”
With Julie, I wanted to do better, so I followed her lead. She, Jay and I began to have a series of talks about finances, medical decisions and what “the end” might be like. She was focused and calm. I hated every minute. But what I really hated was the virulent cancer.
Julie just turned 60, and even beyond the loop, she is very much alive. She is cycling on Long Island with her best friend, still planning trips to locales domestic and foreign, researching a Hail-Mary-clinical-trial. This past May the entire family spent a week at Nags Head, North Carolina, trapped in a creaky old house, while a nor’easter swirled around us. We cooked. We played card games.
But her blood work looks increasingly ominous, she naps more and we are not going to Australia and New Zealand this fall. Instead, I visit as often as I can, to make as many memories as possible. As year four becomes year five, I am preparing, finally, to lose Julie, while exulting in
our days together. Some nights, as she shuffles the cards, I want to grab her hand and say, “You cannot die now.”
But I know better.
Our author this week, Steven Petrow, practiced spiritual detachment with the impending death of his dog. However, he found it much more difficult to do that with his sister. Conversely, I have found that some people can let go of their loved ones easier than letting go of their pets. Regardless, spiritual detachment requires awareness, practice, and, well, discussion. I can't imagine a better place to have that discussion than at All Angels. And, if you find the room too warm, we can figure out if that means to turn up or down the a/c.
My Dog’s Death Taught Me Spiritual Detachment
Then My Sister Got Sick
Steven Petrow, NY Times 7.14.22
Shortly after my parents died in 2017, I nearly lost custody of my dog, Zoe, in my divorce. When we were reunited, I remember telling her firmly, “You cannot die now,” even though she had just turned 15. Not long after, the vet told me that new lab work indicated kidney failure. I was quite glad then that Zoe couldn’t talk, at least not in the traditional sense. We had no painful discussions about quality-of-life issues or end-of-life concerns.
I approached her final chapter with intention and indulgence, which is to say I followed her lead. I fed her whatever and whenever she wanted. I let her decide whether we’d go for short walks or longer ones. Before I went to bed, I made sure Zoe had settled into hers. Even as I prepared to lose her, I found myself exulting in our days together. When she died, I consoled myself with the thought that she was never mine to begin with; I was lucky to have known her; we only have anyone we love for a short time.
As it turns out, it’s much easier to practice spiritual detachment from a Jack Russell terrier who is gone than from my younger sister, Julie, who is here, and called later that same year to tell me she had ovarian cancer. It was Stage 4, she said, as bad as it gets. Julie was 55, a lawyer and
executive, a wife, and the mother of two daughters, 17 and 21. People with her diagnosis are only 31 percent as likely as those without cancer to live another five years. A surgeon explained that the median life expectancy for someone with her diagnosis was about five years. Meaning,
half of patients live less than five years, half more. Julie is the baby of our family, five years younger than me and three years younger than our brother, Jay. The three of us are best friends, closer still since Julie got sick, but she and I have our own history.
When I had my own bout with cancer in my 20s, she walked laps through the halls of Memorial with me and promised that the chemo hair loss would not keep me from finding a boyfriend. I was there when she met her wife and when they welcomed their daughters. When my husband
left me five years ago, Julie flew from New York to North Carolina to help me through those first scary days. She kept our favorite old TV shows on, knowing it would make me feel safe and like a kid again, while she scrutinized my investment accounts line by line so she could announce, after too many episodes of “Bewitched,” that I was financially OK. She was and is fierce, an extrovert among extroverts. We once went on a sunset cruise in Florida, and by the time we docked three hours later, she had befriended the entire crew and captain, a complete stranger who told me as we disembarked, “I love your sister’s zeal for life.” And now she would be lucky to make it to 60.
She started treatment immediately and gradually entered what many cancer patients call “the loop” — periods of treatment, remission, and recurrence that then start all over again. It was terrible and manageable.
In the meantime, as with Zoe, I focused on indulgence and intention. Our family rented a beach house in Rhode Island, a shingled cottage reminiscent of the house where we’d spent childhood summers. I traveled from North Carolina. Julie and her family came from New Jersey, and Jay hauled his from Connecticut. After the vacation, which included competitive canoeing, daily cook-offs and a raucous game of Hearts in which Julie was definitely eyeing Jay’s cards, Julie sent an email to the adults. “I sat at the house one night with you all there and imagined the scene with me just faded from the landscape,” she began.
Looking back, I recognize the gift in that email: She was giving us directions, almost a script, for how to go on without her. In the moment, though, I volleyed back a reassuring response — she was always on our minds wherever she was!
Then, after four years, the loop no longer held her. A clinical trial last October offered hope, only to dash it within eight weeks. A new chemo regimen held out the possibility of remission, which didn’t happen. Julie and I planned a trip to Australia and New Zealand for this fall, the five-year mark, but I didn’t count on it. Julie, always a kidder, began to joke about dying, here and there, seeming to invite a set of conversations I did not want to have. It had not been five years yet. I was not ready. But I’d learned during my mother’s bout with lung cancer to follow up on such openings. I remember once Mom asked, “Will it be painful to die?” and I replied, “What would you like for dinner tonight, Mom?”
With Julie, I wanted to do better, so I followed her lead. She, Jay and I began to have a series of talks about finances, medical decisions and what “the end” might be like. She was focused and calm. I hated every minute. But what I really hated was the virulent cancer.
Julie just turned 60, and even beyond the loop, she is very much alive. She is cycling on Long Island with her best friend, still planning trips to locales domestic and foreign, researching a Hail-Mary-clinical-trial. This past May the entire family spent a week at Nags Head, North Carolina, trapped in a creaky old house, while a nor’easter swirled around us. We cooked. We played card games.
But her blood work looks increasingly ominous, she naps more and we are not going to Australia and New Zealand this fall. Instead, I visit as often as I can, to make as many memories as possible. As year four becomes year five, I am preparing, finally, to lose Julie, while exulting in
our days together. Some nights, as she shuffles the cards, I want to grab her hand and say, “You cannot die now.”
But I know better.
Tuesday, July 12
The topic for this week is the importance of teaching/learning how to be lazy. Anyone remember number three of the ten commandments - take a day off!! Yep, right up there with not worshipping idols and taking other gods. Wait, you might say, doesn't the Bible condemn laziness? Yes and no - it lifts up the value of work and rest. I'd like to know what you do to rest and relax.
There is another reading, Protect the Sanctity of Every Life, that I'd like you to read. The author is our very own Maria Love - who is All Angels' graphic designer, webmaster, and Tidings sender. She had a piece published in the San Diego Union Tribune (the only newspaper in the second largest city in California). It is attached. If you'd like to discuss her thoughts, perhaps I could have her join in the discussion (but I'd have to convince her to wake up early which would go against the theme this week of rest).
Teaching How to be Lazy
Elliot Kukla, New York Times 1.20.22
Elliot Kukla is a rabbi who provides spiritual care to those who are grieving, dying, ill or disabled. He is working on a book about the power of rest in a time of planetary crisis.
“Abba, I have an idea,” says my 3-year-old. “Put on your pajamas and your big mask, turn off the light, and get into bed.”
“That sounds great,” I say, honestly. I strap on my sleep apnea mask, change into soft, worn cotton PJs and crawl under the fluffy white duvet with him. Within seconds, he is lulled to sleep by the familiar gentle wheezing of my breathing machine. He knows the sight and sound of my
sleeping body well; I have lupus, an autoimmune disease that causes chronic fatigue. On a good day, I can get by on 10 hours or so of sleep. When my condition flares, sometimes for weeks on end, I need to sleep for much of the day and night.
Before my child was born, I was afraid that my fatigue would make it impossible for me to be a good parent. And it’s true that I am often juggling parenting needs and exhaustion. What I didn’t anticipate is that prioritizing rest, sleep and dreaming is also something tangible I can offer my child.
He sees me napping every day, and he wants in. We build elaborate nests and gaze out the window together, luxuriously leaning on huge mounds of pillows. Most 3-year-olds I know fight bedtime, but we snuggle under the blankets on cold winter evenings, sighing in synchronized delight.
America in 2022 is an exhausting place to live. Pretty much everyone I know is tired. We’re tired of answering work emails after dinner. We’re tired of caring for senior family members in a crumbling elder care system, of worrying about a mass shooting at our children’s schools. We’re
tired by unprocessed grief and untended-to illness and depression. We’re tired of wildfires becoming a fact of life in the West, of floods and hurricanes hitting the South and East. We’re really tired of this unending pandemic. Most of all, we are exhausted by trying to keep going as
if everything is fine.
Increasing numbers of people are refusing to push through this mounting weariness: There are currently 10 million job openings in the United States, up from 6.4 million before the pandemic.
This trend is being led by young people; millions are planning to leave their jobs in the coming year. Some middle-aged people decry the laziness of today’s youth, but as a chronically sick Gen X parent, and as a rabbi who has spent much of my career tending to dying people as their lives naturally slow, I am cheering young people on in this Great Resignation.
I have seen the limits of the grind. I want my child to learn how to be lazy.
The English word “lazy” is derived from the German “laisch,” meaning weak or feeble, and the Old Norse “lesu,” meaning false or evil. Devon Price, a sociologist who studies laziness, remarks that these two origins capture the doublespeak built into the concept.
When we call people lazy (including ourselves), we are often pointing out that they’re too tired and weak to be productive, while often simultaneously accusing them of faking feebleness to get out of work for malevolent purposes. As Dr. Price puts it, “The idea that lazy people are evil fakers who deserve to suffer has been embedded in the word since the very start.”
Shunning laziness is integral to the American dream. The Puritans who colonized New England believed that laziness led to damnation. They used this theology to justify their enslavement of Black people, whose souls they claimed to have “saved” by turning them into productive
laborers.
This view has endured in American culture. Hundreds of years later, working to the point of self-harm to build the boss’s wealth is still lauded as a “good work ethic” in America, and the word “lazy” is still connected to racism and injustice. It’s poor, unhoused, young, Black, brown,
mentally ill, fat and chronically sick people who are most often accused of sloth. We rarely hear about lazy billionaires, no matter how much of their fortune is inherited.
For decades, I feared being labeled “lazy” because of my chronic fatigue. I pushed myself past my physical limits, all the way to severe illness, to prove my worth. Disabled activism taught me that stigmatizing rest is not just bad for my body, it’s bad for the world. The pandemic has also illustrated how respite is not widely available to most essential workers in this country, with tragic consequences for everybody. The lack of sick leave, family medical leave and the opportunity to work from home in essential, low-wage jobs has thrown kerosene on the viral
fires of the pandemic.
Even as we look with hope toward a post pandemic future, we will still be living on a fragile, warming planet with increasing climate disruptions. It’s urgent that we find ways to work less, travel less and burn less fuel while connecting and caring for one another more. In other words, it’s critical that we un-shame laziness if we want our species to have a future. The world is on fire; rest will help to quench those flames.
Right now, as the Omicron variant spreads wildly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has factored keeping people at work into their decisions on guidance, at times making it more dangerous for immunocompromised people like me to get health care or leave the house.
As a high-risk person, I am painfully aware of how profits and productivity matter more to those in charge than my survival does. As Sunaura Taylor, a disabled activist, points out, our grinding economic system inevitably leads to treating disabled people as disposable, while trapping able-bodied people in dangerous, exploitative jobs. “The right not to work,” says Ms. Taylor, “is an ideal worthy of the impaired and able-bodied alike.”
Laziness is more than the absence or avoidance of work; it’s also the enjoyment of lazing in the sun, or in another’s arms. I learned through my work in hospice that moments spent enjoying the company of an old friend, savoring the smell of coffee or catching a warm breeze can make even the end of life more pleasurable. As the future becomes more tenuous, I want to teach my child to enjoy the planet right now. I want to teach him how to laze in the grass and watch the clouds without any artificially imposed sense of urgency. Many of the ways I have learned to live well in a chronically ill body — by taking the present moment slowly and gently, letting go of looking for certainty about the future, napping, dreaming, nurturing relationships and loving fiercely —are relevant for everyone living on this chronically ill planet.
To be sure, it is my privilege that allows me to teach my child to be lazy. Many people in this country and elsewhere spend all their time working, some holding multiple jobs. Many still struggle to afford housing and food. For too many, laziness is not an option.
But rest should not be a luxury; our time belongs to us and is not inherently a commodity. Reclaiming our time is an act of sovereignty over our lives, deserved by everyone. “Rest,” says the nap bishop, the Black activist Tricia Hersey, “is a radical vision for a liberated future.”
Today, my child and I are playing a game of hill. We are lying under a giant pile of every blanket in the house, pretending to be a hill studded with soft grasses. His warm breath is on my neck, skinny limbs splayed across my soft belly.
“Shh, Abba,” he says. “Hills don’t move or talk … they just lie still and grow things.”
I am teaching my child to be lazy, and so far, it’s going really well.
Protect Dignity and Sanctity of Every Life
Maria Love, San Diego Union-Tribune, July 1 2002.
If you are someone who is cheering the end of abortion, it’s time to stop cheering and get to work proving that this will make our country better. Prove to young women who are terrified of what this will mean to them that their lives are not ruined.
Here’s how:
If you say you are pro-life, then support life in any way you can, including providing food to families who struggle to find enough, access to medical care and life-saving medications to people who need them, access to housing for people who struggle to put a roof over their child’s
head, access to job training, and support for decent wages so that no child dies from poverty. Don’t forget that environmental issues like clean air and clean water are also pro-life issues, as is gun control.
If you say there’s no reason to have an abortion with all the access people have to free contraception, then work to make sure that is true.
Many women do not have access to contraception, and even if they do, it is not always free or even inexpensive. And with the Supreme Court signaling a possibility of removing any right to contraception, it will be extremely important to show young women that we are working to preserve their right to contraception in order to prevent an unplanned pregnancy. (And if you say, “But wait — contraception is against my religion,” I would remind you that we still have freedom of religion in this country, and absolutely no right to dictate anyone else’s religion or morals.)
If you are someone who says there are plenty of parents who would adopt a baby, then start working on streamlining the process and pairing pregnant women with families who would adopt their child. Make sure it’s not just empty words. And if a single mother decides to keep her baby, let’s do everything in our power to make sure she has all the help she needs to raise a healthy child: access to food, housing, child care, medical care and a job that pays a fair wage.
Pro-life doesn’t end with banning abortion. It begins there. It’s time for pro-life people to show that we are willing to do whatever it takes to protect the dignity and sanctity of every life.
There is another reading, Protect the Sanctity of Every Life, that I'd like you to read. The author is our very own Maria Love - who is All Angels' graphic designer, webmaster, and Tidings sender. She had a piece published in the San Diego Union Tribune (the only newspaper in the second largest city in California). It is attached. If you'd like to discuss her thoughts, perhaps I could have her join in the discussion (but I'd have to convince her to wake up early which would go against the theme this week of rest).
Teaching How to be Lazy
Elliot Kukla, New York Times 1.20.22
Elliot Kukla is a rabbi who provides spiritual care to those who are grieving, dying, ill or disabled. He is working on a book about the power of rest in a time of planetary crisis.
“Abba, I have an idea,” says my 3-year-old. “Put on your pajamas and your big mask, turn off the light, and get into bed.”
“That sounds great,” I say, honestly. I strap on my sleep apnea mask, change into soft, worn cotton PJs and crawl under the fluffy white duvet with him. Within seconds, he is lulled to sleep by the familiar gentle wheezing of my breathing machine. He knows the sight and sound of my
sleeping body well; I have lupus, an autoimmune disease that causes chronic fatigue. On a good day, I can get by on 10 hours or so of sleep. When my condition flares, sometimes for weeks on end, I need to sleep for much of the day and night.
Before my child was born, I was afraid that my fatigue would make it impossible for me to be a good parent. And it’s true that I am often juggling parenting needs and exhaustion. What I didn’t anticipate is that prioritizing rest, sleep and dreaming is also something tangible I can offer my child.
He sees me napping every day, and he wants in. We build elaborate nests and gaze out the window together, luxuriously leaning on huge mounds of pillows. Most 3-year-olds I know fight bedtime, but we snuggle under the blankets on cold winter evenings, sighing in synchronized delight.
America in 2022 is an exhausting place to live. Pretty much everyone I know is tired. We’re tired of answering work emails after dinner. We’re tired of caring for senior family members in a crumbling elder care system, of worrying about a mass shooting at our children’s schools. We’re
tired by unprocessed grief and untended-to illness and depression. We’re tired of wildfires becoming a fact of life in the West, of floods and hurricanes hitting the South and East. We’re really tired of this unending pandemic. Most of all, we are exhausted by trying to keep going as
if everything is fine.
Increasing numbers of people are refusing to push through this mounting weariness: There are currently 10 million job openings in the United States, up from 6.4 million before the pandemic.
This trend is being led by young people; millions are planning to leave their jobs in the coming year. Some middle-aged people decry the laziness of today’s youth, but as a chronically sick Gen X parent, and as a rabbi who has spent much of my career tending to dying people as their lives naturally slow, I am cheering young people on in this Great Resignation.
I have seen the limits of the grind. I want my child to learn how to be lazy.
The English word “lazy” is derived from the German “laisch,” meaning weak or feeble, and the Old Norse “lesu,” meaning false or evil. Devon Price, a sociologist who studies laziness, remarks that these two origins capture the doublespeak built into the concept.
When we call people lazy (including ourselves), we are often pointing out that they’re too tired and weak to be productive, while often simultaneously accusing them of faking feebleness to get out of work for malevolent purposes. As Dr. Price puts it, “The idea that lazy people are evil fakers who deserve to suffer has been embedded in the word since the very start.”
Shunning laziness is integral to the American dream. The Puritans who colonized New England believed that laziness led to damnation. They used this theology to justify their enslavement of Black people, whose souls they claimed to have “saved” by turning them into productive
laborers.
This view has endured in American culture. Hundreds of years later, working to the point of self-harm to build the boss’s wealth is still lauded as a “good work ethic” in America, and the word “lazy” is still connected to racism and injustice. It’s poor, unhoused, young, Black, brown,
mentally ill, fat and chronically sick people who are most often accused of sloth. We rarely hear about lazy billionaires, no matter how much of their fortune is inherited.
For decades, I feared being labeled “lazy” because of my chronic fatigue. I pushed myself past my physical limits, all the way to severe illness, to prove my worth. Disabled activism taught me that stigmatizing rest is not just bad for my body, it’s bad for the world. The pandemic has also illustrated how respite is not widely available to most essential workers in this country, with tragic consequences for everybody. The lack of sick leave, family medical leave and the opportunity to work from home in essential, low-wage jobs has thrown kerosene on the viral
fires of the pandemic.
Even as we look with hope toward a post pandemic future, we will still be living on a fragile, warming planet with increasing climate disruptions. It’s urgent that we find ways to work less, travel less and burn less fuel while connecting and caring for one another more. In other words, it’s critical that we un-shame laziness if we want our species to have a future. The world is on fire; rest will help to quench those flames.
Right now, as the Omicron variant spreads wildly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has factored keeping people at work into their decisions on guidance, at times making it more dangerous for immunocompromised people like me to get health care or leave the house.
As a high-risk person, I am painfully aware of how profits and productivity matter more to those in charge than my survival does. As Sunaura Taylor, a disabled activist, points out, our grinding economic system inevitably leads to treating disabled people as disposable, while trapping able-bodied people in dangerous, exploitative jobs. “The right not to work,” says Ms. Taylor, “is an ideal worthy of the impaired and able-bodied alike.”
Laziness is more than the absence or avoidance of work; it’s also the enjoyment of lazing in the sun, or in another’s arms. I learned through my work in hospice that moments spent enjoying the company of an old friend, savoring the smell of coffee or catching a warm breeze can make even the end of life more pleasurable. As the future becomes more tenuous, I want to teach my child to enjoy the planet right now. I want to teach him how to laze in the grass and watch the clouds without any artificially imposed sense of urgency. Many of the ways I have learned to live well in a chronically ill body — by taking the present moment slowly and gently, letting go of looking for certainty about the future, napping, dreaming, nurturing relationships and loving fiercely —are relevant for everyone living on this chronically ill planet.
To be sure, it is my privilege that allows me to teach my child to be lazy. Many people in this country and elsewhere spend all their time working, some holding multiple jobs. Many still struggle to afford housing and food. For too many, laziness is not an option.
But rest should not be a luxury; our time belongs to us and is not inherently a commodity. Reclaiming our time is an act of sovereignty over our lives, deserved by everyone. “Rest,” says the nap bishop, the Black activist Tricia Hersey, “is a radical vision for a liberated future.”
Today, my child and I are playing a game of hill. We are lying under a giant pile of every blanket in the house, pretending to be a hill studded with soft grasses. His warm breath is on my neck, skinny limbs splayed across my soft belly.
“Shh, Abba,” he says. “Hills don’t move or talk … they just lie still and grow things.”
I am teaching my child to be lazy, and so far, it’s going really well.
Protect Dignity and Sanctity of Every Life
Maria Love, San Diego Union-Tribune, July 1 2002.
If you are someone who is cheering the end of abortion, it’s time to stop cheering and get to work proving that this will make our country better. Prove to young women who are terrified of what this will mean to them that their lives are not ruined.
Here’s how:
If you say you are pro-life, then support life in any way you can, including providing food to families who struggle to find enough, access to medical care and life-saving medications to people who need them, access to housing for people who struggle to put a roof over their child’s
head, access to job training, and support for decent wages so that no child dies from poverty. Don’t forget that environmental issues like clean air and clean water are also pro-life issues, as is gun control.
If you say there’s no reason to have an abortion with all the access people have to free contraception, then work to make sure that is true.
Many women do not have access to contraception, and even if they do, it is not always free or even inexpensive. And with the Supreme Court signaling a possibility of removing any right to contraception, it will be extremely important to show young women that we are working to preserve their right to contraception in order to prevent an unplanned pregnancy. (And if you say, “But wait — contraception is against my religion,” I would remind you that we still have freedom of religion in this country, and absolutely no right to dictate anyone else’s religion or morals.)
If you are someone who says there are plenty of parents who would adopt a baby, then start working on streamlining the process and pairing pregnant women with families who would adopt their child. Make sure it’s not just empty words. And if a single mother decides to keep her baby, let’s do everything in our power to make sure she has all the help she needs to raise a healthy child: access to food, housing, child care, medical care and a job that pays a fair wage.
Pro-life doesn’t end with banning abortion. It begins there. It’s time for pro-life people to show that we are willing to do whatever it takes to protect the dignity and sanctity of every life.