The man simply can’t stop talking about himself. In the lobby of the Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters building in Langley, Virginia, there is a large marble wall. In the wall are engr…
Source: Who We Are and Whose We Are
Today’s New York Times Sunday Review op ed by Maureen Dowd’s includes this paragraph on the new president who’s captured the world’s full attention:
To Trump biographer Tim O’Brien, the new president conjured the image of “a guy on a pogo stick in the Rose Garden bouncing around with a TV remote control in his hand trying to decide what to respond to in the next 30 seconds on Twitter.”
He can’t watch as much television because he now has to get to work by 9:00.
Click Wild Child Takes Charge to read the piece.
The past week brings back memories of visiting inmates of state mental hospitals, including a state hospital for the criminally insane. I was their pastor.
As we sat together within these secure institutions, it was clear to them and to me which of us was free to leave. I was sane. They were not. I could leave. They could not.
On the way home I pondered the similarities between life outside the gates and inside the secured walls of these institutions, and the slim thread of difference that separates the outside from the inside.
During the last two weeks, it feels as though the thin thread line has disappeared.
We are all in the insane asylum now.
The difference between Ken Kesesy’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and America today is that Randle McMurphy, who organized the inmate revolt, is in charge, re-writing all the rules, ordering a lock-down that appalls the rest of the world.
The world looks on with horror. No visitors allowed. And we’re all inmates locked inside without a vote or effective voice.
Who will be our pastor now?
Richard Willmsen of Infinite Coincidence offers this reflection from a different angle worthy of a larger audience: “I … offer up this short account of my own personal emotional development, and then explain why I think it helps explain why Trump is heading for a breakdown very, very soon.
I believe that rather than smashing our own glass houses to pieces in the act of destroying Donald Trump’s Presidency, we need to be aware of our own inner Trump, to reflect on our own tendencies to think and behave in catastrophically immature, venal and insecure ways. I therefore offer up this short account of my own personal emotional development, and then explain why I think it helps explain why Trump is heading for a breakdown very, very soon.
I used to suffer from a quite disabling insecurity, particularly when it came to things like being creative and forming relationships with other people. I got better, partly by virtue of living in and studying Portugal, learning about its people’s tendency to swing between moments of self-aggrandisement and self-abnegation, from ‘we are great’ to ‘we are nothing’. I also learnt about my own habit of projecting my own feelings onto…
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Originally posted on Serendipity – Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth:
“Yesterday is another country, all borders are closed.” It was a wonderful piece of dialogue from “MidSomer Murders.” In the episode, Chief Inspector Barnaby is questioning a murder suspect about his…
Faith and hope come hard sometimes. Four days living next to the abyss brought the wisdom of Ecclesiastes came to mind:
“For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven . . . a time to weep, and the time to laugh. A time to mourn, and a time to dance . . . .” – Ecclesiastes 3:3-4
I’m not laughing or dancing. I’m weeping and mourning over what’s happening in America. This is the time, the season, for weeping and mourning. Maybe I’m sane after all?
Faith lives next to the abyss.
Today’s email from a respected friend calls attention to a British opinion piece on the American Inauguration.
Today I wish I could find a single line in this post-inaugural Guardian piece (God, even a phrase) that strikes me as false.
I can’t.
I can’t either.
Click to read The Observer view on bullying, aggressive, nationalist Donald Trump
Melania: Donald! Quick. Look out the window! This is bad!
President: I don’t want to! I’m the President!
Ivanka: Dad, you have to. This is serious! There are hundreds of thousands of women out there, Dad, as far as the eye can see, many more than yesterday, and they’re not happy!
Barron: I saw it too, Dad. Don’t look! It’ll turn your hair white. You know how the hair of every president before you turned white. Don’t look! Women don’t know anything, Dad. Don’t listen to Mom – she’s a foreigner! And don’t listen to Ivanka, Dad – she’s a spy!
President: I’m proud of you, son. I’m going across the river to visit with my friends at the CIA.
John Lennon invited us to imagine the unimaginable, a good thing to do on January 21, 2017.
Imagine . . . the new President and new First Lady hear the voices from the Women’s March today and take them seriously – as a voting bloc.
Imagine . . . candidate Trump meant what he said about universal health care.
Imagine . . . he surprises everyone by proposing Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All”, manages to get bi-partisan support and commendation from President Obama.
Imagine . . . he changes his mind about climate change, decides to become the world leader in reducing carbon emissions, and proposes that a green economy be the theme of the nation’s infrastructure re-building program.
Imagine . . . Michael Moore is correct that the new President is highly sensitive to criticism and changes his color for the sake of popular approval ratings.
“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.” – Maya Angelou.
This day of the Women’s March in Washington, D.C. and all across America, dare to imagine with Maya Angelou and John Lennon.
Imagine! Just for today.
Views from the Edge 