Wednesday, September 02, 2026
Tuesday, September 01, 2026
Friday, August 28, 2026
Friday, August 21, 2026
the agony of thought
Sometimes a person seems to writing about one thing but turns out to be writing about everything.
For instance, William Barclay was writing about religious faith here, but come on....
We tend to accept things because we are told them and to possess them merely at secondhand. If we undergo the agony of thought there may be much that we must discard, but what is left is really ours in such a way that nothing can ever take it from us.
Source
https://www.bibliaplus.org/en/commentaries/290/barclay-daily-study-bible-nt/1-corinthians/15/1-11
Wednesday, August 19, 2026
Gospel Stew . a short story about 'it's complicated'
A short story, recalled from August 19, 2014, in which a curious unnamed reader looks for answers from evangelical advice columnist, Gospel Stew.
Dear Gospel Stew,
I am a new convert with a question I am embarrassed to ask in my local fellowship. I hope you will assist me.
From the very start, I couldn't help noticing the stares as my family entered the worship center. We usually sit toward the front, on the side away from the lead guitarist, which is generally the only area with a block of seats large enough for us to sit together (we could arrive earlier and get seats at the back, but I confess that getting 23 of us out the door on time is a Sunday morning challenge).
At first I thought perhaps people noticed us because of the way we dressed—we love the beautiful fabrics of our traditional garments—so I took the whole lot on a shopping trip to dress us more like the other worshipers. This may have helped a little, but I still catch people staring. "I must be missing something!" I thought. But what?
I may have just found a clue. A few days ago, an angry comment to an internet post (I believe I am correct that anger is signified by CAPITAL LETTERS and EXTRA PUNCTUATION!! Right?) Anyway, this commenter said, "THE BIBLE IS PERFECTLY CLEAR ABOUT MARRIAGE!!! contrary to what THE KENYAN says!!!"
"Ah..." I thought. I know some Kenyans (they seem like decent folk but I am learning that sometimes appearances deceive—which raises a question for a different time, because I am unclear about which times appearances deceive and which times they may be taken at face value...I have so much to learn as a Christian).
In any event, what this commenter made PERFECTLY CLEAR(!!) in the course of two or three paragraphs—though it causes me considerable pain—may hold the key to unlocking my dilemma.
So, to the question: Now that I am a Christian, how many of my wives must I divorce? All but one? If so, which one may remain? And how must I deal with the divorced wives? Must they be put out of the household entirely and all at once? And what of the children? Must they be sent away?
The internet commenter really caught my attention with the words, HOW CAN YOU CALL YOURSELF A CHRISTIAN WHEN YOU IGNORE THE CLEAR COMMANDS OF GOD'S WORD!!! I am very new to all this and there is much of God's Word that I have yet to read. Perhaps the commenter is right: perhaps it is too soon to call myself a Christian.
As you can probably tell, I find all this a bit overwhelming. I love my family with my whole heart, each and every one of them, but I am learning to love the God of Jesus Christ even more. And I am trusting that One to give me wisdom—through you, I hope.
Awaiting your reply, I am,
sincerely yours
p.s. I would also appreciate your insight on how to approach my parents, who arranged these marriages with great care and will almost certainly be dishonored unless I find a way forward that is both thoroughly biblical and "just right" in showing respect for the ones who bore me into this world and sustained me to adulthood.
The Ball is in your court, Gospel Stew ... Don't keep us waiting.
Sunday, August 09, 2026
permanent record
[Mitch McConnell did not vote; Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voted against confirming the new Attorney General; every other Republican voted to confirm.]
Now, instead of following through on their commitment to the American people and (especially!) the children who were victimized by Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and alleged offenders to be named, they voted to put the man who appears to be the most responsible for the Trump Administration's failure to enforce The Act in charge of the Department of Justice on a permanent basis (whatever *permanent* means these days).
Apparently, The Act really was an act. Go figure.
Also now, except for the ones who already retired, or got primaried by farther right voters (who, one is left to imagine, may have been signaling that, though it pains them, they've decided they can live with trafficking and sex crimes against children because, you know, Joe McCarthy was right), the senators in Class II are running for reelection this fall.
Of course, nobody *has* to do anything ... but if a person thought voting mattered at all, they might consider voting for whoever is running against Senators Armstrong, Capito, Cotton, Graham, Hagerty, Hyde-Smith, Lummis, Marshall, Ricketts, Risch, Rounds, and Sullivan on November 3, 2026. Just a thought.
Sources
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/08/politics/senate-vote-blanche-confirmation-vis
Friday, August 07, 2026
Saturday, August 01, 2026
don't look back in anger — but do look back
Things happen . Two years pass . Facebook provides a memory....
On the merits, to put it mildly, I don't think I was wrong on this.
[√] Grumpy
[√] Old
[√] Straight
[√] Married
[√] Parent
[√] Jesusy
[√] White Guy
[√] for Kamala
Thursday, July 30, 2026
coach needs coach
This week, Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama demonstrates the historical recall of [ ] a football coach [ ] a football [ ] something else...
Republicans can do better . If they won't, the rest of us must.
[photo courtesy of U.S. Senator
Wednesday, July 22, 2026
until *all* means *all*....
*All* still doesn't me *all* ... if anything, the sitting U.S. government administration is working to narrow the scope of *all* even further . We have not met our aspirations for goodness, let alone greatness — not by a long shot.
But neither have most Americans abandoned our aspiration to go on forming a more perfect union … we're not surrendering American democracy to authoritarian thugs, mugs, and slugs.
We understand the work: We won't rest until *all* means *all*.
[h/t Carolyn Custis James]
once more with feeling | this land is mine
Now and then, this timeless work from Nina Paley demands to be seen and considered one more time....
Trigger warning . everyone, everywhen gets skewered.
Trigger warning . everyone, everywhen gets skewered.
When will we ever learn?
From Nina Paley
Wednesday, July 15, 2026
who's looking into this?
 |
| African immigrant and dramatic wave enthusiast Elon Musk |
Seriously ... if it weren't for lawsuits filed in state courts, who would be looking into these election fraud allegations?
Donald Trump and [U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division] Harmeet Dhillon won’t shut up about election fraud. But somehow they don’t seem to notice the increasing claims against African immigrant Elon Musk for election irregularities. — Marcy Wheeler . Empty Wheel
Surely, white nationalists who believe that where a person was born is just about the most important thing about them are up in arms about this.
Sources
Tuesday, July 07, 2026
winners . losers . snoozers
Then and Now...
A year ago, July 06 2026, I wrote
Hey, so, your members of congress knew this ... or should have known it ... or certainty could have known it before they voted on the big fugly budget bill last week.
It hurts Americans in the 40 million households who can least afford to be hurt.It doesn't help that much in the 79 million households it helps.
But it sure is expensive, so....
Since *you* know *they* know, maybe send an email or letter (I hear congressional staff really like letters) so *they* know *you* know, too...
... and that you won't forget what the 51 in the Senate and the 218 in the House did — and what they failed to do...
... and who is paying the price for that...
... and who is benefiting from it...
... and whether or not you think their vote was a worthwhile expression of your American values.
Lately, it seems necessary to state the obvious:
- Losing $1,600 means a whole more to a household making $0 - $39k a year than gaining $12,000 means to a household with income of $217k - $517k.
- Facing the loss of $133 a month, a low income family of four may have to choose between nutrition, prescription drugs, a trip to the dentist, and keeping the lights on.
- With an extra $1000 a month, a high income family of four could lease a Tesla, or pop for a week at the White Lotus.
Now, one year later, to our shame, it's all playing out as predicted.
Americans living at the bottom of the income distribution will end the year down about $1600 .— losing about 130 bucks a month that *was* going to housing, food, medical care, and job expenses before the Republican Congress and President made it disappear into the pockets of Americans at the top of the distribution — who will end up with about a grand a month more than they would have taken in without the One Big Ugly Bill.
Independent researchers call this “one of the largest transfers of wealth from working families to the ultra-rich in American history.”
For your/our/my neighbors at the bottom of the economy, losing $130 a month is a much bigger deal than gaining $1,000 a month is for our neighbors at the top. Congress and this Administration are using public policy to deepen hardship for our most vulnerable households — and they knew that when they passed the bill a year ago this week.
Oh ... and it also adds between $3 and $4 trillion to the national deficit over the next decade.
What do you call it when someone chooses something they know is making the poor materially poorer to make the rich insignificantly richer, while adding consequentially to the deficit?
I call it foolishness ... I call it oppression ... I call it calculated evil.
The clearest path forward is sending members of the current majority in the Senate and House of Representatives back to the private sector to learn whatever they may from those who sent them to Washington to do the people's work.
In those seats, let us put people for whom *to know better is to do better* for the good of the nation and the world.
Sources
Saturday, July 04, 2026
our turn
 |
| New York . 2008 . Amnestic_Arts CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 |
Alexis de Tocqueville . Democracy in America . 1835 . London . Saunders and Otley, Conduit Street . translated by Henry Reeve, Esq . p 129
Wednesday, June 24, 2026
war + humiliation
 |
War, as some people apparently needed to learn, is not about the pleasure one takes in watching things blow up. It is politics by other means. To win a war means changing the politics of the enemy such that they must surrender. That is what Iran just did to the United States.
— Timothy Snyder . June 20 2026
This attack on Iran was/is an impetuous, illegitimate, dumb war.
Maybe a fitting way to commemorate our 250th national birthday is a good old fashioned housecleaning.
What say we begin at the top....
Sources
Image: Donald J. Trump - Truth Social https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116624042090139559, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=192752626
Friday, June 05, 2026
nothing to see here
Nothing to see here ... nothing new anyway ... The sitting president has history when it comes to granting celebrity impunity — if the celebrity is the sort who lets the First Felon grab 'em by the pussy (metaphorically, I'm sure).
8 years ago, Michelle Goldberg wrote of one such celebrity:
“Besides being a huckster and a sexist weasel, D’Souza is a felon who, in 2014, pleaded guilty to routing illegal campaign donations through a woman he was having an affair with, and the woman’s husband. (At the time, D’Souza was married and serving as president of the evangelical King’s College. His ex-wife would later accuse him of physical abuse.) For his crime, he spent eight months in a halfway house. On Thursday, Donald Trump gave him a full pardon, tweeting that D’Souza had been ‘treated very unfairly by our government.’”
He’s been telling us who he is from the start. Nothing about that has changed. What are we waiting for? For him to break the world and then escape under cover of darkness?
I say make him pay … him and all his weasels … for every illegal act, high crime, and misdemeanor he and they committed against us all.
[h/t Pierre Whalon]
Source
Friday, May 29, 2026
I CAN'T GET CAUGHT UP
Six years ago, we were, many of us, reeling at having witnessed what a jury would come to call *the murder of George Floyd.*
Many of us - but not all - saw in the murder of Mr. Floyd a signifier of a work begun but still left wildly unperfected. Some looked right at it; let it wash over them; others looked away.
A few — but loud as hell — welcomed that extrajudicial killing as street justice, and so drifted farther from the golden shore.
Into the strong currents of those days — and *for* these days ... to echo here and now — John Polite wrote this lament....
I can’t get caught up in my hurt that so many don’t even make the effort to sympathize with what black folks go through. They turn their backs to the racism and racial terror that exists the same way one of the police officers kept his back to George Floyd. He’ll probably use that as a defense (IF this ever goes to trial.) “I never touched him so I’m not guilty.” Friends, racism works the same way. Turning your back to it is just as destructive and makes us just as guilty as those who actively engage in it. It’s not surprising. But it hurts nonetheless.
I can’t get caught up when some people seem to be more outraged over the destruction of property than the brazen, deliberate taking of a mans life by those assigned to protect and serve. I agree that it is counterproductive. But your silence on the murder that triggered it is deafeningly loud.I can’t get caught up in those who view #blacklivesmatter as a profane thing and divisive, when they know perfectly well its not always affiliated with the organization of the same name and it certainly doesn’t mean black lives matter more than others. To the contrary, America needs to finally recognize that black lives are not regarded as highly as many others. Some still view us as 3/5 of a person—an assertion that was used to justify slavery. A great segment of America doesn’t believe that black lives matter. I am convinced Mr Floyd, Mr Aubrey and Ms Taylor would be alive today if they were white.I can’t get caught up by my non black friends, some who I’ve known for decades, that I went to school and church with, broken bread with, prayed with, who not only don’t try to understand, but verbally assault those who call out racism and white supremacy, yet who have “lots of black friends.” That apparently they have not once thought “this could happen to (insert black friend here).” If you’re a friend, try, at some level, to hear us and understand.I can’t get caught up in those who insist all whites are devils when I see too many of them strongly speaking out against racism (some of them even more than I.) While I don’t believe they can begin to understand what it’s like to be black any more than I can understand what it’s like to be white, I won’t disregard those who are truly trying, who have reached out to me personally asking “what can I do,” and who have been a part of the battle for years. It’s a disservice to white abolitionists, to the john browns, the jane Elliot's and others. we must give credit to those who make the effort.I can’t get caught up, because ultimately it will make me as hateful as those who hate me. And I don’t have time for it. It would be an insult to my parents—who have seen racism far worse than I’ve seen—yet taught me to love one another as Jesus loved me. It would deny the fact that my family was embraced by the first baptist church of riverside when we were the first and for years the only black family to join. That they ordained both me and my mother (who served on their staff for more than 20 years.) That they packed that church at my dads funeral, and still weekly visit and bring meals to the house three months after his passing.I can’t get caught up in the hate. God has shown me too much love in spite of the racism and hatred that pervades American culture. “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” - Dr King
— John Polite . May 29 2020
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