Armistice-Veterans Day 2018

As human beings, we are a carbon-based life form. We are close kin to the higher order apes. We are homo sapiens, a bit of earth that can think. We stand up straight; have an opposable thumb; have the capacity for rational thought; are able to use symbols to communicate abstract thoughts; we can use symbols to communicate about symbols; we can remember the past and plan for the future. The gospel according to Jamie Lannister of the television version of “Game of Thrones”: “Strange thing, first time you cut a man, you realize we’re nothing but sacs of meat, blood and some bone to keep is all standing.”

Isolation Versus Community

Last night after meeting with my LGBTQ book club and talking about social isolation, and what I had written but not yet posted about the massacre in Pennsylvania, I thought I should go ahead and post the piece here. Then, this morning, I woke up to another massacre, this one in a Southern California club. In the hopes that in the midst of so many of our hearts breaking over the news, wondering what in the world we can do to make a difference, I post this so that it might be food for thought and perhaps food for action and hope. Sitting in Michigan visiting with my family a headline crossed the TV screen about the mass shooting at a temple in a Pennsylvania synagogue. My cousin dove for the remote and switched to another channel so her young children wouldn’t see the breaking news in the middle of a family reunion.

Voting, A Patriotic Duty

I am a black woman in America. I am a woke black woman who has been woke before woke was cool. I also love America. I am an American patriot, an Angela Davis patriot. I heard Angela Davis explain to a television talk-show host that her activism did not come from a hatred of America, rather, it comes from her love for her country.

My Dinner with the Devil (a short story)

He was a tall, dark, and handsome stranger standing in front of me in the grocery store line. He was “Oh my goodness fine.” But, I was cool, thumbing through a special edition of Rolling Stone about John Lennon. The man said something out loud, and I looked up. He seemed to be reciting his grocery list.

An “exodus” rather than a “caravan”

The Rev. Dr. Karen Bloomquist argues that we should refer to the thousands of mostly Hondurans fleeing oppression and violence as an “exodus” instead of a “caravan”; such a shift in language, she contends, might encourage people of faith to seek compassionate justice rather than perpetuate fear and violence.

With A Perfect Hatred (part 2)

I hate liars and lies with a perfect hatred. As it is written in the Psalms: “I hate and detest falsehood, But I love [God’s] law. (Psalm 119:163)
As I write this, the United States has been rocked by multiple acts of violence in the past few days. A Florida man has been accused of sending multiple pipe bombs to prominent Democrats. Thankfully, the bombs did not explode.