Hypocrites Among Us

No, God did not create government.

The ridiculous claim that "God created government" was made last week by the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. This court also decided that frozen embryos are children, and that anyone who destroys them can be charged with wrongful death. This nonsense is why I have started calling the state of Alabama, Alabamastan, or Talibama. It has a lot of similarities with the country of Afghanistan and its fanatical religious leaders.

This attorney has decided to ignore the Constitution's first amendment that states, in part, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ..." The chief justice, as so many other right-wing evangelical Christians have done, feels he can do whatever he chooses as long as he cites his religious beliefs. That’s the case, however, only as long as those beliefs are the ultra right wing evangelical Christian beliefs. Jews and Muslims need not apply.. 

The "God created governments" line arises from the belief that since God created people, and people created governments, therefore God created governments. This ridiculous assumption can be carried to unbelievable conclusions. For example, since God created people, and some people are murderers or rapists or pedophiles, it should then follow that God created murderers, rapists and pedophiles. God created people, and people created assault rifles. Therefore God created assault rifles. 

The United States is not now, nor has it ever been, a Christian nation. The United States has never been, and should not be allowed to become, a theocracy. The authors of the US Constitution made this abundantly clear, except to those blindly following their golden calf (or, I should say, their tacky golden sneakers).

A frozen embryo is NOT a child. An embryo cannot move. It cannot survive on its own. It cannot feel pain. It is not sentient. It cannot express emotions. A clump of cardiac cells beating in unison do not a heart make. A grape is not a bottle of wine. An acorn is not an oak tree. A tomato plant is not a tomato. An egg is not a chicken. A seed is not a flower. See the difference?

Evangelicals don't want the government to infringe on their rights as Christians (I question whether they are, in fact, Christians), while at the same time trying to force the government to infringe the freedoms of others, all in the name of their version of Christianity. 

Rather hypocritical, don't you think?

I Am A Real Christian

 I am a real Christian. 

This thought popped into my mind this Sunday morning as I was walking one of my dogs. Over the past few years, the words and actions of many so-called Christians have not been anything like what Christ taught.

These so-called Christians, aka evangelicals, oppose gay marriage. They tend to be anti-Semitic and homophobic. They pick and choose which biblical verses they will follow. They rail against the imposition of sharia law by certain Islamic countries, but they have no problem at all with attempting to impose their restrictive religious beliefs on their fellow Americans.

The recent decision by the Alabama supreme court that declared frozen embryos to be children, while the state has eliminated its summer food program for children who already have been born, tells me all I need to know about the so-called Christian nationalists.

I was raised in a church-going family who attended a mainstream Protestant church. Once I left home to attend college, and ever since then, I have not attended church on a regular basis. In fact, I can't recall the last time I attended church. I did attend a friend's church wedding many years ago, but that was a special occasion.

When I lived in Houston, I joined a local church that sponsored a group called Christians in Action. I enjoyed that group, as it gave me a chance to take part in things that helped others. One Thanksgiving, we were asked to purchase everything, from a turkey to a roasting pan to gravy, stuffing and everything else on the list we were given, for a family in need. We got to choose the size of the family we wanted to help.

One Christmas, we were asked to purchase a gift for a child. Again, we got to choose the age and gender of the child, and we were told what the child would like for Christmas. This was fun. I remember shopping for a pink bicycle for a little girl.

So although I don't attend, or belong to, any church, I believe I am a good Christian. Why do I believe this? Don't I need to attend church services each week to glorify God? I don't think so.

I don't need to promote or announce my religion. I'd guess that none of my friends has a clue about my religion, and that's just fine with me. I prefer to put my religious beliefs into action. After all, actions speak louder than words. 

My actions include donating to a dozen charities every year. They include funding a scholarship for two girls from rural Kenya so they can attend high school. They include being kind. They include adopting my daughter from an orphanage in Siberia. They include adopting 15 dogs during my adult life. They include paying forward a kindness shown to me. They include working to protect our planet from human destruction. They include being a witness at the wedding of a gay friend and photographing the brief civil ceremony.

My actions do not include trying to force others to follow and live by my beliefs. They do not include refusing to allow gay people the same rights I enjoy as a straight person. They do not include discriminating against others because of their race, ethnicity, skin color, political beliefs or gender preference. They do not include declaring frozen embryos to  be 'children' while simultaneously refusing to take part in a summer food program for children already born.

I'm not writing this blog post to hold myself up as a wonderful example of Christianity. I'm not looking for praise or accolades. I am merely pointing out the gross hypocrisy of many who call themselves Christians.

They need to read again the teachings of the one whom they allegedly follow.

Random Acts of Kindness Day

Today is Random Acts of Kindness Day.

Everyone is invited to participate. Random acts of kindness can be free or inexpensive. 

Don't know where to start? Don't want to deal with someone directly? How about simply letting a driver go ahead of you in traffic, or buying extra food and donating it to a food pantry, or paying for the coffee of the person behind you in the coffee shop drive-through?  

How about paying for someone's meal, letting a shopper check out ahead of you, giving someone a compliment, taking cookies or muffins to work, paying for another person's meal, letting someone go ahead in line, buying extra at the grocery store and donating it to a food pantry, or buying flowers for someone. 

There are so many ways we can show kindness to others. No money is required. Just a bit of thoughtfulness can make someone's day.

So be kind to others, not just today, but every day.

I Am Angry

I am angry. 

I am very angry. There has been yet another mass shooting. Two gun-toting criminals -- both juveniles -- opened fire on a crowd of some 1,000,000 people gathered in Kansas City, Missouri, to celebrate the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl victory. Nine of the victims are children.

In other news, three police officers in Washington, D.C., were shot while trying to serve an arrest warrant on a suspect in an animal cruelty case.

And in Los Angeles Country, four people were shot and killed in apparently random killings.

So this is the state of America in 2024.

We have reached the point where it isn't safe to be in any large public gatherings. It isn't safe to go to the grocery store. It isn't safe to go to the movies. It isn't safe to attend church or synagogue. It isn't safe to attend school. It isn't safe to go to the mall. It isn't safe to walk down the street or to drive anywhere. 

The bottom line is, it isn't safe any place in America.

The state in which I live, New Mexico, has a couple of new laws aimed at the gun violence. The first will impose a 7-day waiting period on anybody wanting to buy a gun. This will allow time for the federally required background check to be completed. The bill as originally introduced would have mandated a 14-day wait, but after lots of screaming about their Second Amendment rights, the 7-day was a compromise both sides agreed to. 

The second piece of legislation bans firearms in or near polling places and during early voting. The only exceptions are for law enforcement and those with concealed carry permits.

Will these pieces of legislation, which our governor has said she will sign, actually make an impact on gun deaths in our state? That remains to be seen, but guns are so readily available on the streets that it doesn't seem likely. Our governor has declared gun violence to be a public health emergency, which it definitely is nationwide.

Gun violence is a serious matter, taking the lives of nearly 19,000 Americans in 2023. That number does not include suicides. Gun-related deaths dropped for the second consecutive year, but the number of deaths by firearms remains appallingly high.

Firearms are the leading cause of death among children and teenagers, with more than 1,600 deaths every year. Is this the world in which we want our children to live, with active shooter drills part of their education?

My father had rifles used solely for hunting squirrels and rabbits. I don't know that he kept them locked away, but I know they were not anyplace we kids could have found them. We were never tempted to pull out a gun and kill people.

Clearly mental health issues play a large role in gun violence, so that issue needs to be addressed in any discussion of gun deaths. But not all shooters have mental health issues. Some are just plain evil.

There were 800 armed law enforcement officers at the Chiefs' parade and celebration. Eight hundred armed officers on scene, and still they were unable to prevent the shooting. So much for the "only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun" theory. And who brought down one of the shooters? An unarmed civilian who tackled the guy with a gun and, with the help of other unarmed civilians, brought the guy down.

It's pretty clear that America care a lot more for its guns than for the safety and lives of its citizens. 

I have no answers to gun violence, but it's blatantly obviously our government's do-nothing-but-offer-thoughts-and-prayers to the victims of gun violence and their families is not enough. 

Little Things

Small things done with great love will change the world. -- Mother Teresa

I have seen a couple of posts on Facebook that started me thinking.

The first mentioned that a shopper in a grocery store noticed that the cashier was having a bad day. So the shopper decided to do something nice. She turned to the display of candy bars, said she couldn't decide what kind to buy, and asked the cashier for her favorite. The shopper bought that kind of candy bar, then gave it to the cashier as she paid her bill. This small act of kindness lifted the cashier's spirits.

Another person commented about a small act of kindness she had done for another cashier at another time. The cashier had mentioned that she was saving money so she could buy a blanket like the one being purchased. So the shopper bought an extra blanket and gave it to the cashier.

These acts of kindness made me realize how easy it is for people to brighten someone's day with a small kindness.

I have been the recipient of an act of kindness in a grocery store, where I was about to pay for the few items I was purchasing. The man ahead of me in line told the cashier to add my items to his bill, because he wanted to pay for them. I protested, but he insisted. I thanked him and said I would pay it forward.

And I kept my word. On three occasions I paid for the items of the person behind me. In one case, it was a young man buying a dozen yellow roses. The second case involved a Native American woman in a wheelchair who was buying a few items. Another time I paid for the doughnuts being bought by a man who really didn't want me to buy his treats. I asked him to please do this for me, and he relented.

My daughter once took my car to the car wash for a complete cleaning inside and out when I was out of town. I really appreciated not just the clean car, but most of all, I appreciated her act of kindness.

I guess the lesson is that not everyone can graciously accept a kindness. I didn't imply that the man couldn't pay for a couple of doughnuts; they cost very little. I just wanted to do something nice for him. But I guess accepting an act of kindness makes some people feel uncomfortable.

Maybe, if more people practiced small acts of kindness, they would be easier to accept. I have read about how someone paying for the coffee of the person in the car behind them set off a chain reaction, with that person then buying the coffee of the next person in line. I don't drink coffee, but I certainly would not want to be the person to break the chain of kindness.

For many years I had a colorful card with the following message: “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” –Aesop. These words of Aesop, a Greek storyteller who was born around 620 BC, remain true to this day.

Maybe if each of us commits to doing some little thing whenever we can, we can make this world, or at least our little corner of it, a better place.

What little things can you do or have you done for others? Have you been the recipient of a small act of kindness? How did it make you feel as the giver or as the recipient?

Lessons From A Shoe Company?

Today seems to be a good day to revisit and update this post from 14 years ago. 

The origin of the post was a Sunday newspaper ad for Naturalizer shoes, from the days when I subscribed to the local California newspaper. The bottom the ad included the following five phrases: 

Be flexible.
Go lightly.
Find balance.
Move softly.
Breathe easy.

So, with apologies to Naturalizer, I present once more these thoughts courtesy of a shoe company.

Be flexible. Flexibility can refer to so many things, from being physically flexible (something I struggle with) to being mentally flexible. I see it as a reminder not to become rigid in our thinking and outlook. Be open to new possibilities and to new ways of seeing the world. Be flexible and willing to change your opinion about something or someone. Be willing to consider opinions other than your own. This is quite difficult in today's very polarized political reality.

Go lightly. The possibilities are many. Go lightly in the world. Don't use more than you need, whether it's water, energy or food. Recycle and reuse. Minimize your impact on the Earth. See the humor in things, and don't take yourself too seriously. Find your own 'lightness of being.' I recently joined my local Buy Nothing group and have found new homes for some gift bags and an ironing board I no longer need. My garage is a bit less cluttered, and nothing ended up in the landfill.

Find balance. This is a wonderful life lesson. We should all strive for balance in our lives. Balance work with play, activity with rest, crying with laughing, social time with personal time. This lesson is a difficult one for me, as for so many people. Life in 21st century America doesn't lend itself to balance, so it requires a real effort to find and maintain a balance in life.

Move softly. Move softly through the world. Treat others with respect. Minimize your negative impact on the world. Be firm when necessary, yet gentle. Think of the great people who have moved softly yet had tremendous impact: Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Rev. Martin Luther King.

Breathe easy. This is another dictum that is difficult for me. It is difficult to breathe easy, but oh so easy to become caught up in worry, fear and the 'what ifs' of life. But as I have learned during the past couple of challenging years, "Nothing gets done until we feel the peace inside," to quote a friend of mine. Things will happen as they are meant to. Sometimes those things are positive, and sometimes they are negative. But our worrying and fretting about them won't change the outcome. Trust in your higher power, Mother Nature, or whatever your source of strength.

So, here are today's life lessons, courtesy of an ad for shoes in the local newspaper. more than a dozen years ago. It always amazes me where I will find the inspiration or the kernel of an idea for a blog post. Yet these ideas offer timeless reminders of small things we can do to make this world a better place.

American Idiocracy

I read something online recently on the page of a writer and pundit. 

In response to his post, someone commented that we are living in the American idiocracy. Not a democracy. Not a democratic republic. An idiocracy.

Sadly, I believe the person who made that comment is 100 percent correct. The term certainly touches on many things that are prevalent in our society: anti-intellectualism, rampant capitalism, the growth of oligarchy, corporate control, overconsumption, rampant commercialism, lack of critical thinking skills, anti-science beliefs, anti-education, willingness to believe and follow the latest fraudster, etc. I would add the slavish following of the so-called evangelicals, who work tirelessly to impose their version of Christianity (which is about as far removed from the message of Christ as it can get) on everyone else. And let us not forget the most well known advocates of idiocracy in Congress: Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert.

The dumbing down of America is, sadly, real. I mean, it took Boebert three times to pass her GED. That means she struggled to pass a high school equivalency exam. And she's in Congress?

Put another way, we are living in the age of stupid, the era of the idiot. It's all about what's in it for me. It's about being too dumb or lazy to read, to think, and to make up one's own mind. People are incredibly gullible. Here's one example: drinking bleach to rid the body of the covid virus, suggested by the king of idiocracy.

During the recent pandemic, conspiracy theories were rampant. Among them: Bill Gates was having people injected with microchips along with their covid vaccinations. The vaccination was far more dangerous than the virus, according to various conspiracy theorists. The current example of rampant stupidity is that megastar Taylor Swift is part of a massive psychological operations plot by the NFL and the Democratic Party to ensure that the 2024 election is won by President Joe Biden. Now, Taylor Swift has encouraged her fans to register to vote, and she did endorse Biden in 2020. But there is no, zero evidence that she is part of some nefarious plot leading up to the 2024 election.

Social media, and its MAGAt pea-brains, are responsible for concocting and spreading this idiocy. They actually believe that covid vaccinations killed more people than did the pandemic. A friend of mine -- an intelligent, well-educated woman -- refused to be vaccinated until she would be guaranteed that the vaccine would make her asthma worse. Guess what? She got covid and was very ill. I have had all recommended vaccinations (five in total), and I'm still alive. And I didn't grow horns. 

People stupid enough to believe this and other conspiracy theories need to have their heads examined. Either our education system has failed abysmally, or the stupidity is more rampant and deeply rooted than we want to believe.

Welcome to the not-United States of Idiocracy!